Pleased to see the DRAFT IDEF Baseline Functional Requirements v1.0 have been released. I am proud to serve as the Vice Chair of the User Experience Committee and would love to hear comments on the Usability guidelines.
Information Architecture Wikipedia Editathon at IAS15
I am very happy to announce that I will be presenting an Information Architecture Wikipedia Editathon as an interactive session of the Information Architecture Summit, on April 22-26 in Minneapolis.
As an amateur IA historian and keeper of many things IAI for several years, I have decided to go one step further and present my proposal to the WikiProjects committee to create an Information Architecture group at Wikipedia. I was inspired by Christina Wodtke’s Medium article, Towards a New Information Architecture, from just over a year ago, where she urged those of us in the discipline to recommit to IA and the IA Institute, to “look beyond the title people have and instead at the work being done,” and to “Invite the innovators in understanding in, and make them part of Information Architecture.”
This is exactly what I plan to do with your help. Many artifacts from the initial establishment of the Information Architecture Institute, including the “25 Theses,” ASIS&T’s SIG-IA, and the now defunct IAWiki (via archive.org) hold testament to the evolution and collaboration of practice and community over the past 15-20 years. These are artifacts that deserve to be preserved and made discoverable. And what are we if not uniquely skilled to do exactly this?
This is our livelihood. While we have been defining the damned thing within our own, relatively closed community, Wikipedia editors have been labeling our artifacts “stub” to “start” quality and of “low” to “mid-importance.” Years-old, unaddressed criticism of the Information Architecture article on Wikipedia includes the admonishments that we have no academic conferences or publications, that we use “peacock” terms and unverified claims. Much of this can be easily debunked, but a lot of information on these wiki pages should be edited, sections on academic research and proceedings should be added, and more complete cross referencing of IA practitioners and thought leadership should be included, so that these criticisms can be put to rest.
You can help by joining me and supporting my proposal. To do ths follow these steps:
To join the IA WikiProject:
- Sign up for a Wikipedia.org account.
- Go to the proposal page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals/Information_Architecture
- Click “edit” next to the Support section.
- Type ~~~~ on new line. (This is Wikipedia’s simple way to add your account name and time stamp.)
- Click Save.
Once you have signed on, and even if you are not ready to add your name to the list, you can use the Talk page (a tab at the top left of the proposal page) to add any comments or suggestions for content.
#BlackLifeMatters Wikipedia Editathon
A news clip from the New York Public Library’s February 7, 2015 Wikipedia Editathon, #BlackLifeMatters, where I am interviewed about the editing my daughter Jay and I were doing on the life and career of costume designer Judy Dearing, best known for her work on Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize winning drama A Soldier’s Play, the 1976 stage adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s book, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf and the musical Once On This Island. Lead story on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s InnovationTrail.com:
http://innovationtrail.org/post/wikipedia-editing-workshops-aim-increase-black-history-content
Upcoming Events: Agency GIS Forum and Brooklyn Technology Transfer
Two upcoming events brought to you by GISMO and OWASP Brooklyn.
GISMO
Thursday, February 5, 2015
100 Church Street
2:30 – 4:30 PM
Join us to hear a round of lightning talks given by GIS directors and managers of City agencies. This will be a great opportunity to learn about innovative GIS projects and programs being implemented across municipal government, and to meet with colleagues from other agencies.
GISMO and the Municipal Information Technology Council (MITC) are co-hosting this event. MITC is the organization of City IT professionals. This get together is a unique opportunity to learn about how NYC’s nation leading GIS program is progressing and to have direct contact with the City GIS leadership and staff.
Registration Required
Attendance at this meeting will be by RSVP only and is reserved exclusively for GISMO members*, MITC members and City agency GIS personnel. Please register early as there are a limited number of seats available, and this event will fill up fast!
* GISMO membership means paid dues for the 2014 – 2015 membership year. People on the GISMO mailing list who do not satisfy the above criteria will have to join GISMO and pay their dues in order to attend.
Register at http://www.gismonyc.org/events/next-event/
Technology Transfer – Creating Cultures of Innovation
OWASP Brooklyn
Saturday, February 28, 2015
2:00 PM to 6:00 PM
NYU Poly Pfizer Auditorium
5 MetroTech Center, Brooklyn, NY
To attend this event, you must also register on Eventbrite at this URL to get your ticket: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/technology-transfer-creating-cultures-of-innovation-tickets-15406554419
Description: TBD
Facilitator – Moderator: TBD
Speakers:
Zach Tudor, SRI, Author of Technology Transfer: Crossing the “Valley of Death” – his research on Cybersecurity startups will discuss “Creating Cultures of Innovation” Bio: http://www.csl.sri.com/people/tudor/
Professor Nasir Memon, NYU Polytechnic will discuss NYU Poly’s Technology Transfer. Bio: http://isis.poly.edu/memon/
Brett Scharringhausen, USCENTCOM CCJ8-Science & Technology Chief, Discovery & Integration will discuss CENTCOM Requirements.
Ryan Letts, Veterans Advisor, Brooklyn SBDC CityTech will present and discuss SBA research on Veterans Startups in NY.
NYPL Open Book Hack 2015
For the 2015 edition of the NYPL Open Book Hackathon, I participated with a team that was interested in pulling poetry out of Project Gutenberg and creating a user dialogue with a goal toward creating a custom book of poems, based on user preferences. We started out calling it “Pandora for Poetry,” but settled on Musapaedia to avoid obvious copyright issues.
Image Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Musapaedia.pdf
With Musapaedia:
User can (possibilities)
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Upload/enter a poem and get a set of poems in custom e-book or web“experience”
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Choose a set of attributes and get a set of poems in custom e-book or web“experience”
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Use up/down vote system to determine what kinds of poems that come up
User Experience:
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Poem “mood”, color/image changes with type of poem
Since this year’s edition of the hackathon was one day as opposed to two, we had much less time to complete the project than previous years, but we were able to create a sample user interface and code the processes that extract the poems. Our team will continue to work on this and hopefully release a working application soon.
Final code we completed today is on GitHub!
https://github.com/rossgoodwin/musapaedia
Team:
Ross Goodwin Ross.goodwin@gmail.com
Noreen Whysel nwhysel@gmail.com
Vimala Pasupathi vcpasupathi@gmail.com
Clarisa Diaz clarisadiaz@gmail.com
Rike Franklin rikefranklin@gmail.com
Beth Dufford emdufford@gmail
Stephen Klein stepheniklein@gmail.com
Semiotics in Mapping and Emergency Response
On November 1, 2014 I participated in a Semiotics Web and Information Architecture meetup at New York Public Library. Mypresentation, “Semiotics in Mapping and Emergency Response,” discusses symbology in mapping as an aspect of semiotics and presents an example of emergency response map symbology and a discussion of applications for first responders and broader uses.
Joining me were Loren Davie on Conversational Architecture – http://telltrail.me/ and CAVE language, Laureano Batista who discussed Steps Toward a Pragmatic Philosophy in the Age of Big Data and Neural Networks and Donald Gooden, the NY Chapter Leader of the OWASP Foundation, who spoke about the OWASP.org.
Read a detailed write up of this event by Nathaniel Levisrael at http://scignscape.appspot.com/meeting1-summary
Better Experience is the Payoff in Education
In Jon Kolko’s article, “Why Investment in Design is the Only Way to ‘Win’ in Education” (UX Magazine, September 16, 2014), he discusses how the value proposition of educational technology should be better education, and that the design of that experience should not be simply a “forgivable attribute.”
“…for us to collectively realize the benefits of advanced technology in the context of education, we need to treat the experience of learning as the primary ‘thing we are trying to improve.’ This requires empathy with the people doing the teaching and learning, which is gained through a qualitative design process.”
Read more at: http://uxmag.com/articles/why-investment-in-design-is-the-only-way-to-win-in-education
Architecture_MPS Launches Pinterest Campaign
Architecture_media_politics_society is a a peer-reviewed academic journal and its website serves as a forum for the analysis of architecture, landscape and urbanism in the mediated, politicized environment of contemporary culture and society. I have been managing the social media campaign for Architecture_MPS. My goal is to drive traffic to the journal and its resource content and conference series.
The primary social media outreach channels include Twitter (@architecturemps) and Facebook. I have begun developing several Pinterest boards related to published articles in the journal, Architecture_MPS, and architecture conferences, competitions, films and books. Curated engaging content to help drive readership to the journal’s articles and resource repositories. Sample content includes gender and public space, satellite imagery and human rights, and laissez-faire development in early 20th century Chicago. The journal has recently received approval to create a Google Gallery, which will be a site of further curation and experimentation.
Architecture_MPS is a collaboration of Ravensbourne University College, UK and Adelphi University, New York. The journal hosts a number of conferences related to “The Mediated City” and “Housing-A Critical Perspective.” We have released a Call for Papers and Proposals for Housing-A Critical Perspective, to take place in Liverpool on April 6-8, 2015 and encourage interested parties, students and researchers to submit projects. The Los Angeles edition of “The Mediated City” will be at Woodbury University in LA on October 1-3, 2015. To register, visit: woodburymcd.wix.com/mediatedcityla
West 104th Street Block Association Talks IA
The April 15 issue of the West 104th Street Block Association Newsletter featured the efforts of my design team in an article about the Association’s pending website redesign. I also had the unexpected honor have my profile featured on their website.
As part of the project, my design team conducted interviews, surveys and user testing of current residents, neighbors and prospective residents. These were divided into four test groups including families with children, younger residents (couples and singles), those aged 55 and over and those considering a move to the neighborhood. The block association reported that “The respondents to the survey requested that the website be reorganized to find information more easily with an emphasis on portraying a ‘neighborhood feel.'” Indeed, my team found a great need among the test population for findable and accessible information.
My specific user test population included site users aged 55 and older. Among the requirements of this group, legibility and safety information was the most important need, and descriptive pictures of the block’s people and activities were especially appreciated.
The Information Architecture community also got a shout out:
“We are very lucky to have an information architect on our block to develop our ‘new and improved’ website that will be informative for all our residents.”
It is an honor to be recognized by the block for our contribution, and I thank my teammates for doing such a great job. We expect to launch the new site in June.
Read more about the West 104th Street Block Association Web Redesign.
NYC Emergency Management Timeline
Client: NYC Office of Emergency Management
Date: May 27, 2014
Visit Website
In 2011, I participated in the NYC GeoSymposium 2001-2011-2021, which took a look at the advances and challenges of Geographic Information Systems in emergency response since 2001. I had been working with colleagues at GISMO for many years to draw attention to the important role geographers played in the 9/11 rescue and recovery. The GeoSymposium was a great experience, because it intended not just to honor those who participated in these efforts, but also to highlight the need to preserve the thousands of maps that tell the story.
OEM Timeline Poster
My own contribution to the GeoSymposium was to explore the legacy of these efforts by examining the technological improvements at the Office of Emergency Management in the context of emergency events that had occurred since 2001. I was looking for a way to present time-based information in a map format and also to start a conversation with attendees about the history of emergency response technology and the importance of the preservation of geographic artifacts. My project contained a map of New York City with events plotted and color-coded by discrete periods, characterized by a common group of new technologies.
An online version of the map is available at ArgGIS Explorer Online.
Download OEM Incident Map – Poster
NYC Emergency Management Incidents Presentation
Sample Slide:
View Detail Slides (Requires Microsoft Silverlight)
The map highlights how the events surrounding 9/11 prompted improvements in incident management technology. Attendees, including the keynote presenter and eminent information designer, Edward Tufte, gathered around to discuss their experience with the events I had mapped and to offer advice on ways to enrich its design. (Some of Mr. Tufte’s comments led to further improvements which you can see via the links above.)
Simply talking about how to improve the map was an exercise in exploring history and memory. How people understand what happened, how events are related to one another, how what you choose to include and what not to include can influence a person’s understanding of the events, how the description of one event can bring to mind another similar one, etc. It was thrilling to observe the spontaneous conversation that started all because of a three by four foot piece of foamboard.
For more details and context around the planning for a 9/11 Map Archive, see my blog post, Towards a 9/11 GeoArchive.