Category: Career, Industry & Enterprise

Designing for clients, designing within enterprises, insights from conferences and events, and growing your career. Whether you are new to the design field, or an established professional, you’ll find inspiring guidance in these posts. And perhaps a few warnings of what to avoid.

Conferences and Events / Deliverables / Foundational Thinking / Process and Methods / Professionalism

Information Architecture’s Teenage Dilemma

Posted by

Imagine if you will information architecture as a pimply-faced, malcontent teenager.  IA is eager to express and redefine itself. It wants to be an individual yet accepted by its peers. It is simultaneously aggravated and apathetic about its parents, mentors, and role-models. It is a bit of a mess, but a wonderful, beautiful mess with endless opportunity and potential. The IA Summit (and information architecture) enters adolescence The first IA Summit was held April 8-9, 2000, in Boston, MA, and

Continue reading
Conferences and Events

RE:DESIGN/UXD

Posted by

It feels like we are experiencing a fascinating “Powers of 10”-style paradox with experience design and the digital design community — where we’re excitedly pushing beyond interface on many levels — attacking multiple interfaces at once with responsive and adaptive design and seriously embracing the massive world of service design and that broader brand and customer “experience” — yet also pushing deep into the extreme details of interface on other levels — tackling unique design rules tailored for the nuances

Continue reading
Professionalism / Workplace and Career

Are You Going Soft?

Posted by

When was the last time you read your resume? Go ahead and give it a look. Read your last job description. It’s impressive, right? Chances are, you emphasize your accomplishments, your ability to create stunning deliverables, and your extensive knowledge of the user experience practice. Now, think back to your last project. But, ignore the deliverables and design ideas. Forget the budgets and timelines. What are you left with? Aside from a handful of sharpies and post-its, you’re left with

Continue reading
Case Studies / Learning From Others

The Power of Collaboration

Posted by

A quote that I stumbled on during grad school stuck with me. From the story of the elder’s box as told by Eber Hampton, it sums up my philosophy of working and teaching: “How many sides do you see?” “One,” I said. He pulled the box towards his chest and turned it so one corner faced me. “Now how many do you see?” “Now I see three sides.” He stepped back and extended the box, one corner towards him and one

Continue reading
Foundational Thinking / Professionalism / Workplace and Career

A Perfection of Means and a Confusion of Aims

Posted by

“A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem” – Albert Einstein My work involves helping people to understand how to best plan circumstances in which users are engaged and satisfied with their experience. Yet, I do not call myself a user experience designer. I am an information architect. I work on clarifying information and the structure it should take to best enable understanding. I create maps, controlled vocabularies, diagrams, flows, hierarchies, and statements of

Continue reading