World Information Architecture Day in Ottawa
On Saturday, February 20, 2016, UX practitioners from all over the Ottawa area, including information architects, designers, content strategists, and developers, gathered at Shopify’s headquarters in Ottawa, Canada to celebrate World IA Day.
This free mini conference coincided with events happening across 57 different cities in 28 countries.
We welcomed 10 speakers, who gave 7 amazing talks to around 50 attendees.
This year’s global theme was “Information Everywhere, Architects Everywhere”, and people around the world got together to discuss the practice and theory of IA.
If you’re not sure what Information Architecture is all about, Christina Wodtke’s essay, Towards a New Information Architecture, is a great place to start.
Talks
Evolutionary biology: lessons for IA
Alëna Iouguina, a UX Researcher from Shopify, started off the day with an amazing talk about the many lessons the world of nature holds for IA. She discussed how and why information is processed, stored, and applied to living and synthetic objects, processes, and systems. The biological lessons she taught us, and the intimate link between the structure (form) and function of an organism, can help us inform the future of IA.
Rock ’em sock ’em usability: in the ring with IA testing
Next up we had Sarah Folkes and Christina Leclerc from Systemscope, discussing IA usability testing. They opened up and told us not to be afraid of failure—it means our testing is working. Testing is a process, not an exercise. Usability testing also helps to shine a spotlight on the internal battles that happen within project teams, and it allows us to put down the gloves and talk with one another.
View Sarah and Christina’s slides.
Knowledge translation and information architecture
Dave Newton, a Front End Developer at Shopify, discussed knowledge translation as a process that aims to effectively disseminate information to relevant stakeholders. He looked at how knowledge translation models can inform and be applied to the web, and how they can influence IA.
IA: compromises, combinations, and clean-up
Next we heard from Kerry Surman, a Professor at Algonquin College, who helped us develop a richer understanding of the nuances of IA through metaphors.
Implementing filtered search: theoretically elegant, practically perplexing
After a delicious lunch, Jane Stewart from Aboutness had everyone’s attention with her talk on the many IA challenges of designing effective filtered search interfaces. Content structure, UI design, and technical implementation were just a couple of the considerations discussed. She gave us a brief history of the theory of facets, as well as a practical guide to avoid common pitfalls.
Using IA to get at your most valuable information: the voice of your customer
Dana Tessier, the Director of Knowledge Management at Shopify, shared how to use IA to get at your most valuable information: your customers’ interactions with support. She went over how Shopify tags their customer conversations with curated metadata and can therefore leverage valuable feedback to improve their product.
Towards a user centred IA for Canada.ca
Allen Pink and Gil Côté from Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, alongside Lisa Fast from Neo Insight, were the closing speakers for the day with a brilliant talk on how they consolidated hundreds of sites, 91 organizations, and millions of pages into one site: Canada.ca. They discussed how they engaged stakeholders, tackled the enormous scale of the project, and improved the overall user experience with a thoughtful and tested IA.
View their slides in English or French.
Photos and tweets
To find out what people were saying in Ottawa and see more awesome event pictures, check out @WIAD_Ottawa and #wiadOTT. If you’re feeling rather worldly, take a look at @WorldIADay and #WIAD16.
Appreciation
A big thank you goes out to our event’s sponsor, Shopify, and my fellow event organizers Adam Hollett, Dan King, Lina Tovbis, Rory Tanner, Samantha Nickerson, Therese Kirrane, Vanja Mitovic, and Virginia Start.
Without you all, none of this would have been possible.
Until next time
If you enjoyed what you learned on Saturday and simply can’t wait another year to hear more brilliant talks about IA, head over to Atlanta, Georgia, for the IA Summit, where where Shopify’s very own Virginia Start and Kylea Parker will be speaking!
Now, only 361 days until next year’s World IA Day…
