Category: Information Architecture

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The Information Architecture of Emergency Response

Now that I have been accepted into the Pratt Institute Masters of Library and Information Science program, I have started a journey to document the convergence between two of my favorite disciplines, Geographic Information Systems and Information Architecture. In the past few months, I’ve noticed an explosion of conferences and meetups addressing the geolocational aspects of digital applications for the web and especially mobile. I am a member of 16 different Meetup groups, eight of which address some aspect of the User Experience umbrella, four of which specialize in mapping and/or GIS, two somewhat general technology groups and two more that approach these disciplines from the fascinating perspectives of digital semiotics and data visualization and infographics. Each have hosted topics on user experience and location based design at some point. Many maddeningly scheduled for the same evening.

Commiserating with some of my colleagues with whom I helped create the NYC GeoSymposium 2001-2011-2021 back in November, we have found that in each of our practices, cartographers, GIS specialists and those working with visualizing location based information are finding a great need for design assistance. This seems natural, if somewhat belated and perhaps even surprising. Think of some of the most beautifully designed images and one must of course reflect on the maps of National Geographic magazine, those gorgeous squares of folded paper that come in every issue. Certainly, there is a longstanding sensibility around the design of useful and pleasing maps. Increasingly, these maps are in our hands on tablets and smart phones, so optimizing the display of information that used to be represented in enormous, rolled or folded pieces of paper is a challenge for our community.

Let’s Talk About Maps

So I am doing my part in continuing this discussion of the place for design in online mapping. In March, I presented a talk in New Orleans at the 2012 IA Summit on The Information Architecture of Emergency Response. The presentation explored the evolution of technology in emergency response, with a special focus on advances in geographic systems, incident management, social media and policy in New York City since September 11, 2001. In it, I cover questions like:

  • What technologies do emergency responders in NYC use?
  • How have events like 9/11 and other incidents influenced technology advances?
  • What effect, if any, has the change from a Law Enforcement Mayor to a Media Mayor had on data policy?
  • What are the challenges and opportunities of open government data?
  • How is social media being used in NYC and elsewhere to engage the public in emergency preparedness and response?
  • And, finally, are app contests and hackathons an effective way to improve public services in difficult economic times?

I reprised the presentation, modified somewhat for an emergency responder audience for the Office of Emergency Management’s annual Women’s History Month Breakfast, where I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Dr. Irene Osborne of Mount Sinai Hospital, who treated patients’ internal injuries during the Haiti earthquake, and IA Institute founder and Development Manager, Bev Corwin, who presented on language translation in crisis situations, in particular a handheld Creole language translation device that she developed with colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University.

Continuing the Discussion

I have been asked to present another redux of Information Architecture of Emergency Response at the IxDA NYC’s July meetup. I hope to conclude the IxDA with a Town Hall discussion of how the IA community can support emergency response efforts throughout each of our own neighborhoods. I ran out of time in New Orleans and would like to get a good conversation going with the UX community on issues and ideas for further exploration. My daughter’s 6th grade graduation is June 7, so I will be missing the IxDA meeting that focuses on the Social Lives of Maps, with UX designer Ray Cha and Green Map’s Thomas Turnbull. But I understand the GIS community will have someone there. If you attend, please introduce yourself to Jack Eichenbaum, who founded GISMO, a 20+ year old, NYC-based GIS user group. In the meantime, stay tuned for RSVP information for the July event.

It may also be interesting for my UX friends to hear (as I’ve heard through the grapevine) that ESRI, leader in GIS software, is developing an internal UX practice and should be hiring soon.

Slide decks of my IA of Emergency Response talks are now available at Slideshare:

March 23:

March 28:

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IA Institute Newsletter #6.05 Released

I am almost finished with the NYC Digital Roadmap and will have a blog post coming soon. In the meantime, there is a lot of new publications on Information Architecture. Put this on your nightstand, bring it to the beach or carry it on the metro, cause we’ve got reading to do:

IA Institute just released Newsletter #6.05 with Part Two of Finding IA at the Enterprise Search Summit by Shari Thurow, a follow up to my article from the previous newsletter.

http://iainstitute.org/news/001263.php

The Journal of Information Architecture released Issue 1, Volume 3 with a focus on the unique way of seeing what Jorge Arango terms “Environments for Understanding” and how they persist across channels and media.

http://journalofia.org

Also the long awaited IA issue of the ASIS%T Bulletin is out:

http://www.asis.org/bulletin.html

And if that’s not enough, here’s an inspiring blog post on “Information Architecture,” building bridges and making maps from Peter Morville:

http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000647.php

I’ve got a lot of reading to do….

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Conversations with Richard Saul Wurman

I was having a nice conservation on Monday with my friend, journalist Amanda Robb, about topics that floated in interesting ways from pitching social awareness campaigns to women’s magazines to the role of Twitter and other social media in reporting. The conversation got me thinking about the two different angles that we approach our respective careers in media: she with the words and stories and publications of a journalist and me with the technology platforms, codes and administration of new media operations that bring those words to the world.

So what a treat to find out about Richard Saul Wurman’s newest venture, the WWW.WWW Conference, which will celebrate improvised conversation.

Simply pairings of amazingly interesting individuals prompted by a question, generating a conversation. For 10 minutes to 50 minutes. And so it will go

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I Joined Google+ Today

I appear to be a late joiner to Google+, if the list of people in my contact’s circles are any indication. It appears to have pulled my info from LinkedIn and has features of Facebook and a very interesting what if discussion among designers going on. I expect it will be a similar experience to LinkedIn and Facebook, perhaps with less of the silliness of Facebook but with similar features, such as Circles which lets you categorize people into groups. 

Just like Facebook, only better.

I’ve always liked that Facebook lets you group people. It’s so natural. I tend to get frustrated by LinkedIn’s degrees of separation – you are either in someone’s network or you have someone or a chain of people between you and the other person. In a way this is nice because you are still able to contact people in your second network while preserving how you know that person (so and so’s friend). Without a grouping feature, once you accept a person to your network on LinkedIn, you lose information about how you are connected to your new contact, unless you go to their page to see shared contacts.

Circles makes Google+ more personal and organized than LinkedIn. It is also more spare, sort of like the defunct Facebook Lite, but I’m witholding judgement for now. Facebook ended up dropping its Lite feature, and I suspect Google will eventually add in Facebook-like distractions and ads, since advertising is their ballywick.

If you are interested in learning more, let me know and I’ll invite you to my Circle.

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Finding IA at the Enterprise Search Summit

(this article originally appeared at iainstitute.org on June 20, 2011)

Last month in May, I had the pleasure of attending the Enterprise Search Summit East in New York City with IA Institute board member, Shari Thurow. Shari and I were on a quest to discover the role of information architecture in Enterprise Search. We didn’t have to look too far, as both days were keynoted by IA Institute veterans: former IA Institute president and CEO of FatDux, Eric Reiss, on Day 1 and IA Institute founder and Principal and Senior Consultant at InfoCloud Solutions, Inc., Thomas Vander Wal, on Day 2 . Institute founder Bev Corwin was also in attendance and I quite was pleased to make a personal connection with a former coworker from PricewaterhouseCoopers, whom I hadn’t seen in ten years.

In Reiss’s keynote, “The Dumbing Down of Intelligent Search,” he challenged search professionals to have the user, not the application, serve as the frame of reference for search. Using Google as an example, Eric showed how the algorithm may not provide the correct context. Those who build the algorithm need to ensure that contextual metadata is available in the CMS. Eric also challenged implementers to understand the business and educate the content providers of those needs. “Matching patterns is not the same as matching needs,” he explained. And lest the users themselves forget their own power, Eric encourages all users to be critical and experiment, learn basic strategies and not to take for granted that the search solution is intelligent.

Thomas Vander Wal’s keynote on Day 2, “The Search for Social,” was a fitting bookend, showing how to deal with all the input once your Enterprise Search team has embraced the user. VanderWal described tools that go beyond searching for artifacts such as documents, emails and image/video content to searching for human resources, knowledge and expertise within the enterprise. Many presenters demonstrated social search tools for finding user profiles, activity streams and Yahoo! Answers-style knowledgebases.


A Common Theme

IA/UX was a prominent theme. Throughout the conference we noted terminology from the information architecture/user experience umbrella nestled within discussion of ECM, SEO, text mining, predictive analytics, policy and governance. Terms like information glut, findability, folksonomy, facets, and rich semantics, as well as a big focus on the user experience.

A major concern in the Enterprise Search community is the question of what exactly is new in search these days? Reiss noted that there has been no major new search engine since Google launched in 1998. Google Search Appliance and Microsoft Sharepoint are still dominant. According to a panel of experts moderated by Martin White, called “The Renaissance of Search,” Enterprise Search has been running on autopilot for a long time and is only now finding innovation coming from places like mobile and social technologies. Panelist Alan Pelz-Sharp of Real Story Group said that consolidation around a product (Google, for example) does not equal maturity of a discipline. Panelist Hadley Reynolds of IDC, pointing to the now established mobile platform, said that the Google model is not ideal for mobile apps. For example, “A playlist model would work better for mobile search applications,” he said. Innovative thinking around search for mobile should be a growth area.

As stated above, user experience was a huge theme at the conference. Panelist Lynda Moulton of The Gilbane Group highlighted improvement in user experience as a major new effort in Enterprise Search. She said that semantic technologies have been built on artificial intelligence platforms and wondered if it will “disappear like AI” or if they just need better UX packaging.

Focus on the user was refreshing but also pointed to a challenge. A theme I found running through many presentations was the sense that after 15 years, the Enterprise Search field is not marketing itself well as a discipline, both to business management and to the users themselves who benefit from search. Search managers feel they have to continually explain the value of search to users, which ”

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The 2009 IA Institute Salary and Benefits Survey Opens

The 2009 IA Institute Salary and Benefits Survey is now open at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=rnk5PuDVMuIRC1QwwS9PtA_3d_3d

The survey takes only a minute or two to complete, so we hope you’ll stop by and contribute.

We have made slight edits from last year including a much simpler matrix of responses for IA related tasks, a more normalized breakdown of salary ranges and a further refinement of job titles and experience levels. I enjoyed reviewing last year’s comments regarding medical benefits especially in light of current debate over US healthcare, but because we are an international organization, we went for simple this year and made only a few minor changes.

As in previous years, the survey will remain open through October, and we will post the results on the IAI website in late November/early December.