LOUDER

2012 Information Architecture Summit Schedule

I’m excited to be attending and humbled and terrified to be speaking at the upcoming 2012 Information Architecture Summit. The Summit is a week of programming aimed at people who design, plan and build things like websites and software applications. Folks at the Summit have job titles like User Experience Director/Designer/Manger, Business Analyst, Content Strategist, User Researcher, and, of course, Information Architect. If those mean nothing to you, try try this description: it’s for technology people who love sketches, whiteboards, diagrams, surveys, charts, wireframes, process, research and other stuff that makes technology strategy work easier and more successful.

The event is being held at the end of March in New Orleans. Organizers recently released the full schedule, and thoughts about the event have loomed large in my mind this week.

I’ll be debuting a solo presentation I call “Communicating Change”. It’s scheduled for 2:30 on Saturday in the “Exploring and Thinking” track. I’m sandwiched between Veronica Erb’s session on Sketchnoting and my e-pals Adam Connor and Aaaron Irizarry’s session on The Art of Critique, which I had a chance to chat with them about on The Flyover Effect. I couldn’t be happier with my spot on the schedule.

Here’s my session overview:

Communicating Change

Stop me if you’ve heard this one:

Q: What did the developer say to the users in the changelog?

A: Minor bug fixes and enhancements.

Whoops, sorry, that’s not a joke. It is unfortunately common, though. Far too often, changes in software and websites are communicated to users with a cavalier attitude — if it all.

In this session, you’ll learn why it’s important to communicate clearly about change, why we often don’t, and how to do it better. We’ll explore examples of industry best and worst practices, from the rollout of #NewNewTwitter to the bizarre PR backpedaling of the Netflix/Qwikster saga.

BONUS: Be prepared for a lightning round of comically-curt changelog text collected from apps and sites across the web. No brand is safe.

As stoked as I am about all this, that jerk Impostor Syndrome has been creeping around the edges of my brain and trying to bum me out. I think I’ll cover that more in another post, but for now I’ll say I’ve been doing my best to remember I wasn’t selected to be an end-all/be-all expert, but rather just to give the most thorough, professional and interesting presentation I’m capable of. There are a lot of really neat people who organize and attend the IA Summit, and I’m not embarrassed to admit I want to impress them and make them happy with their selection.

My flight is booked and I landed an adorable little spot near the conference site through AirBNB. If I’ll see you in NOLA this March, say hey! I’m getting in on Tuesday of the conference week and have Wednesday free for exploring the city a bit and getting oriented. Would love to make some new friends and meet more of you lovely internet people in real life.

Shame Buttons

That’s what I call ‘em anyway. I think these are great. They give me that tongue-in-cheek, “All healthy people smoke Lucky Cigarettes for vigor!” kind of old-school advertising vibe.

Here’s one from Living Social:

Who hates cupcakes? Practically no one, that’s who. While they’re pushing the limits a wee bit with usability on this, I think it’s overwhelmingly clear which option lets you skip the ad and which one doesn’t. You’re used to seeing “No thanks.” — this makes it a lot harder to skip over.

And here’s one from the mobile gaming service OpenFeint:

Not as effective as the Living Social ad, but still great. You don’t just have to say “Nah, I don’t want it”, it forces you to acknowledge internally that what they are offering is in fact great, you’re just not interested right now.

I know this kind of button text isn’t new, but the small screen real estate of mobile—not to mention the frequent need for pop-over, full-screen advertising—makes them more interesting and more valuable. As long as designers don’t overuse the concept, I think we’ll continue seeing great “shame buttons” for years to come.

Is it easy to complain?

I’m adding this question to my checklist for evaluating the user experience of websites and web services:

Is it easy to complain?

With any product or service, there are a few Very Top Level Things people will want to do:

• Use or purchase your product
• Learn about your product
• Get help with your product
• Complain about your product

Think about your last bad retail experience. Were you able to speak to a manager about it? Assuming that manager was polite, did you feel better or worse than hearing “the manager isn’t in today” would have made you feel? Better, right?

You’re not perfect. People are going to want to complain about your product. Might as well make it an easy for them. 

Apple made me feel dumb today

Apple made me feel stupid today as I tried to access the new Mac App Store. People were buzzing about it, and neither of the two articles I’d read about it actually said how to GET the Mac App Store, so I turned to Apple’s website for help. Keep in mind that I’ve been a Mac user for all of about two weeks now.

So I hit their website, scan the page, and click on the first relevant-looking link I can find (satisficing, as Steve Krug would call it¹) labeled “The Mac App Store, Now Open”. Nothing useful there, so I click on the next relevant-looking link I can find, labeled “See some of the apps available from the Mac App Store”. Okay, fine. I think, “This is a pretty new thing, maybe they’re making people walk through a little info first before downloading. I’m okay with that. Surely there will be a big download button on the next page.”

There wasn’t. There was a beautifully laid-out page highlighting some cool apps. Each app is labeled with a link that says “Learn more in the Mac App Store”. Clicking that takes me to a page to download iTunes. I think to myself, “What the fuck?”

I HAVE iTunes, thank you, and it’s up-to-date. So I look in iTunes. Nada. Lost, I ask in the BitMethod Campfire room. Dan tells me I need to do a system software update, and that the instructions are on the Mac App Store page on Apple’s site. I’m apparently looking right at it and still not seeing it. He posts this screenshot:

“Ohhhh. Well, now I feel dumb.”

I don’t feel dumb for feeling dumb, though. You know why? Because that’s a terrible place to put instructions. Allow me, if you will, to put those three pieces of information above into categories.

INSTRUCTION - FEATURE - FEATURE

I already KNEW about the features of the Mac App store, I didn’t need to read them. And since the instructions were next to two features (and pretty much surrounded with promotional crap), I completely missed it.

It’s a good reminder that even “smart” or “power” users like me, who’ve been around the Internet block a few times, can be pretty dumb if you don’t give them a little help. My goodwill meter was depleted and I’m sour on the experience. It will pass by the time I hit publish on this post, but it still happened. An experience like that could mean a lost customer for a smaller brand or web app.

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1. If, like me, you’re relatively new to the world of UX and content strategy, you might not have read Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition (affiliate), by Steve Krug. You should. It’s also where I took the idea of the “goodwill meter”.