Today we speak with developers John Wiseman of Blogging Squared and Shawn Simister of Simister Consulting. We discuss the topics of information overload and how this hinders our ability to find information. We also talk about various web applications such as Digg, Pounce, and Twitter and whether there is value in such tools to find what you want. John and Shawn share their thoughts around User Experience and debate whether the concept of Community will ever replace a single leader guiding solutions for organizations.

The dConstruct Conference is taking place on September 7th, 2007 in Brighton England. I look forward to a pre or post podcast with the organizer of this event, Andy Budd.

I will also be talking with Rebecca Hope of Tecads in New Zealand and their product, Infographics.

As well I look forward to chatting with Tal Schwartz in Israel and the web analytics tool he developed, Clicktale.

John talks about his work with Easylistings, a start-up company that is working on improving the search for real-estate, with offices on Canada’s East coast.

Seth Godin’s new book The Dip

Mike Moran’s new book is coming out soon, Doing It Wrong Quickly. Mike and I will be doing a show again in the fall about his new book.

I mentioned that John worked for 37 signals, and what I meant to say is that John worked for 76 Design. My apologies to Brett Tackaberry and his team over at 76 Design as I meant to promote your company in the Podcast.

Mark Hurst and Creativegood on Listening Labs.

This demonstration of the new Microsoft tool Photosynth represents an incredible way to use folksonomies in web applications like Flickr to build on the global community’s vocabulary to construct models from photographs.

…we can do things with the social environment. This is now taking data from everybody from the entire collective visual memory of what the earth looks like and link all of that together; all of those photos become linked together and they make something emergent that is greater than the sum of its’ parts…and this is something that grows in complexity as people use it and whose benefits become greater to the users as they use it…their own photos are getting tagged with metadata that someone else entered. If somebody bothered to tag all these saints and say all who they are then my photo of Notre Dame cathedral gets enriched with all that data and I can use it as an entry point to dive into that space, using everyone else’s phoots and do a kind of cross modal and cross user social experience that way…

The other thing that struck me about this presentation is the amount of detail that exists in the objects we interact with every day, like a newspaper for example.

Take a day this week and start to make a mental note of all the verbal and non-verbal communication, time reading emails, and the multiple conversations you have or listen too. We are bombarded with an overwhelming amount of data in many different forms.

It’s amazing we can still find anything!

IT World Canada recently published an article on the Creative Commons License, (CC)”. This licensing process, which this Podcast is under, allows others to share the content I publish, but does not allow anyone to use my ideas for their own monetary gain.

At the heart of this issue are the baby boomers. This generation represents the largest population in North American history which are all leaving the work force within the next one to five years. In most cases there is little to no attrition planning taking place. Thirty to forty years of experience and wisdom is walking out the door and no one is capturing it!

What’s worse is that many public sector organizations are refusing to accept this reality which will only cause them to fall further and further behind in delivering on what their citizens are already demanding.

Combine these facts with the massive change in the approaches to sharing content that the “Gen Xers” are demanding; the transition time in between; and you’ve got a “perfect storm!”

As Joichi Ito, Chairman of CC and who also sits on the board of directors for the Mozilla Foundation points out:

The gap between the two generations is bigger than between cultures…The new generation is more interested in creating and sharing than consuming…(Creative Commons) creates a method to allow anybody to decide how their work is used…CC is open source for content and a user interface for copyright.”

From a Canadian perspective:

Marcus Bornfreund, Toronto project lead, CC Canada, said while CC is “a” solution, it’s not “the” solution for the digital environment.

While I agree that CC is not the perfect solution, it is the best solution that has been presented to date. The Information Age isn’t about controlling content – it’s about community and sharing knowledge with others. But as Russell McOrmond, an open source consultant and policy coordinator for Canadian Linux Users Exchange (CLUE), points out:

The purpose of the CC movement was not so much as the licenses…It was about raising the level of debate about creativity in general so the policy people can sit there and say there are licenses that allow people to share for non-commercial uses.

In other words, CC is about removing the politicians and lawyers from the creative process to allow new and different ideas to flow freely within, and outside of organizations.

I can only hope that this debate continues such that citizens; employees; and clients are able to freely create and inspire others for generations to come.

I have been waiting for Donna Maurer’s book on Card Sorting to come out ever since Rosenfeld Media made the announcement a few months back. (The book is due out by the end of the year.)

In the mean time, Donna was kind enough to share several templates and the methodology she follows when collecting and evaluating the data for open card sorts:

Over the past few years I have been slowly developing and refining a spreadsheet I use for analysis of card sorts. I have used it on many projects and find it invaluable for helping me manage the data and spot patterns…I have refined it to the point where I’m happy with it, and have prepared instructions for it. The instructions and spreadsheet are completely free for you to use however you wish.

Card Sorting is a brilliant methodology for getting into the heads of your end users to discover how they would organize all of the content on your site, given the opportunity.

These tools will make the life of any Information Architect or Usability professional ten times easier when running their own Card Sort.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge with the IA/UX communities, Donna. I can’t wait for your book to be published!

In a post back in April last year, Lisa Reichelt wrote what she saw as the, Six Species of Information Architect. I thought this was a brilliant post as it took a positive approach to trying to “define the damn thing” as is the popular phrase amongst IA’s.

After reviewing what Lisa had wrote, I believe I fall into the Usability IA category:

…these guys started off testing everyone elses bodgy work and got so frustrated that they decided to do it themselves. Fair enough too.Not surprisingly, these guys love to research and test. They love talking about Human Factors, and quite fancy themselves as anthropologists. Their favourite conversations include the words ‘ethnography’, ‘mental model’, and ‘metaphor’.These guys can spend more budget before doing a sitemap than any other species. But we love them for it.They’re also more responsible for the validity of the profession than any other species. Because they did the research and wrote the papers. Then they started the conferences to speak at so they could present their papers.(Although, don’t tell the Information Science species that, because they think *they* started the conferences).

I don’t meet every aspect of this definition. (However I did Vice-Chair CapCHI last year, the Human Factors group here in Ottawa, and I do use the terms “mental model” and “metaphor” quite often.

I think the most valuable lesson organizations learned after the dot com bubble burst, is that technology is simply a tool. It’s not the “end all / be all” solution to every problem. In reading and speaking with some of the leading experts in this field (Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, Christina Wodtke, Peter Merholz, Derek Featherstone…and others) it is clear to me that this diversity is needed more today than at any other time.

Overwhelmed with choice, deadlines, being forced to multi-task, an Information Architect can help members of your team pull back and focus on the purpose of any technology and how to organize all content, making everything easy to find; regardless of their “species”.

In a recent Blog Post, fellow Canuck and Information Architect, Jess McMullin shares the conversational sketching toolkit that nForm uses when working with clients.

The toolkit includes laminated, letter-size grid paper printed with a browser display, dry erase pens, erasers, and post-it notes.

As Jess points out, the sketches provide the opportunity for clients to not only illustrate their ideas on paper, but also discuss their thought process with their colleagues and nForm’s design team:

The most important part is discussing why the things they sketched are important to them. That discussion helps each stakeholder understand others’ positions, and to modify their own perspective accordingly.

Doing several iterations of sketching and conversation with a group of stakeholders goes a long ways to converging perspectives and viewpoints about project priorities…

…Remember that the key is not the literal representation – it’s about getting people to talk together about what’s important to them.

Any tools, such as the Conversational Sketching Toolkit, which aid in the dissemination of knowledge through the sharing of personal experiences can only improve design choices for future projects.

Thank you for sharing this with the IA and UX communities, Jess!

Since everyone and their mother seems to be writing about the new iPhone, I thought I’d tell you about the new smart phone I purchased, the Blackberry 8830 World Edition.

I’ve broken down some of the key features into the categories of Findability, Usability, and Community for ease of review:

Findability

Search – Excellent serach capabilities. Easy to find email, phone numbers, and other contact information.

Bluetooth – Bluetooth is a short-distance technology designed to wirelessly connect electronic devices while maintaining the high level of security. Another key strength of Bluetooth is the ability to simultaneously handle both data and voice transmissions.

BlackBerry Maps – Not as good as Google Maps but a decent start.

GPS2 – Are you directionally challenged? The GPS2 can help you find your way around in any city on the planet, quickly and easily through the GPS Nav application.

Organizer – One stop for all of your contacts and their information. Incredibly easy to manage all contacts.

Password Keeper – Got Passwords? This application lets you store your passwords for your Blackberry as well as others to access anytime you forget – without having to have companies email you a reminder, or worse, have to re-set your password.

Usability

Voice-Activated Dialing (VAD) – This not only makes the Blackberry easier to use, it also addresses key Accessibility issues. With Voice-Activated technology, the new Blackberry lets you easily access any information on your phone by simply saying “Call Kristina Mausser“. If there is only one number it will tell you that the phone is dialing that number. If there is more than one number it asks you to pick the correct one. All you have to say is “mobile” to call her cell phone.

Browser – Brilliant color display and the text is very easy to read.

Multi-Media Player – All the look and feel of iTunes, iMovie, and iPhoto with the same functionality – minus Play Lists.

Full Keypad – This is one of the great usability features on this phone. By comparison, the Pearl doesn’t have a full keypad mking the 8830 much easier to use when sending text messages and emails.

Trackball – I love this feature! Just like a trackball on a laptop, roll your finger across the trackball to smoothly move through applications and content. With one click of the trackball you’ve made your selection and you’re up and running.

Community

CDMA World Edition – This is the first CDMA BlackBerry smartphone that lets you roam globally on GSM/GPRS networks. So you can travel the world with full mobile voice and data coverage, without having to change smartphones, phone numbers or email addresses.

Tethered Modem – No need to carry a wireless PC card – simply connect and browse the web and exchange files at broadband speeds with anyone within your community.

Messaging – The 8830 comes with Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger built right into the device. These are free services. I use Google Talk as my primary chat client. Now when I’m on the road or away from the computer, I can easily let others on my list know where I’m at and what I’m up too.

Windows Live Messenger – Data transfer rates are still rather expensive! Be very careful before signing up for this service. There is a $300/month fee for using Windows Live Messenger! Can anyone explain why you would pay such a fee for this service?

I think the iPhone is very cool – the functionality and the ease of use is right in line with other Apple products. That said, the iPhone is still a beta. It also has limited battery life and memory.

Blackberry is tried and true. This new model also allows you to travel anywhere in the world and stay connected with the CDMA World Edition.

In a great new series from Boxes and Arrows, IA’s and other UX professionals will share how past failures have resulted in better solutions for future projects and in turn, how these lessons have served to strengthen their own careers.

Introducing the series is Christian Crumlish. Christian is the curator of the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library, and he outlines the inspiration for this series from discussions at this years Information Architecture Summit:

We talked about our failures—individual, structural, institutional, societal—and not just “failure” in the abstract, but specific situations, specific projects, where we personally failed. We also strove to hold back from blaming stakeholders and clients for these disasters. We owned our catastrophes and spoke about what we learned and why we are doing better information architecture today because of these painful, harsh lessons.

The first article in this series is entitled, “It seemed like the thing to do at the time” by Joe Lamantia. Joe does a wonderful job outlining his own experiences in attempting to start a dot-com company and his subsequent failures / lessons learned from the experience.

Joe also discusses how important perspective is when working on projects, and draws a wonderful comparison between two ancient societies – Easter Island and Tikopia – and how the Tikopia society learned to adapt and change with their environment, while Easter Island parished.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on this series and I would encourage other IA and UX professionals to do the same. Thank you Chris for starting this series and to all the authors who will be allowing us to learn from your individual experiences.

At what point in time did we as a society stop realizing that learning is hard? It takes time, effort, and concentrated study to become knowledgeable about any subject. In his book “High Tech Heretic” Clifford Stoll writes several great stories illustrating this idea. Now you have to keep in mind this book was written in 1999, however the heart of the issues discussed still ring true today.

One story in particular really stuck with me. It’s about how Stoll was at a parent-teacher night. All of the students in a junior class had printed off images from the web and the teacher posted them in the room. In the background a young boy was creating a model of a building out of construction paper. When he went to proudly display the finished product to his teacher, the teacher said, “That’s nice Johnny but we’re looking at the art work you and your classmates created.” Created? They clicked a button and the printer created the image! How did any aspect of any of the kids creative capacity enter into that process?

e-learning is another topic covered in this wonderful book. Take a math program that has the question “2+2=?” and five balloons float slowly across the screen with numbers on each of the balloons – 2,3,4,5, and 6. Just because the child clicks on “4″ does that mean they know how to add?

I had a great professor who taught Psychology 101, back in the day. He gave the entire class a multiple choice test. The questions had nothing to do with psychology, it was more like being on a masters edition of Jeopardy. It was literally “multiple guess”. He then took up the answers and put up a picture of a gorilla in a lab setting. He said, this is “Sally”. Sally was given this exact test and Sally got 52%! How did I do? Let’s just say the gorilla kicked my butt! It proves the point that Stoll was making. If you can’t explain the answer, there’s no way of knowing whether or not the information has been understood.

Our educational institutions should be shrines – especially at the earliest stages of life. We have the ability to learn more between the ages of one to five than at any other time in our lives.  Some would argue, and I’m in this camp, that education is the silver bullet.

The information age has created an unprecedented level of knowledge for our children like no other time in our history. Is it any wonder behaviours in our classrooms have increased? They have more knowledge at a younger age, without the cognitive maturity for how to handle this bombardment of data.