I had the pleasure of talking with Tal Schwartz, Co-founder and CEO of Clicktale Web Analytics on the IA Podcast in October last year.

Tal dropped me a note the other day sharing the fact that Clicktale recently won the Red Herring 100 Europe award. The Red Herring award is given to the top 100 private technology companies based in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region each year.

A big congratulations to Tal and his team for creating a brilliant web analytics tool! I have no doubt that Clicktale will receive many more awards in the areas of User Experience and Analytics.

ClickTale enables anyone involved with website design and optimization to capture mouse movements and keystrokes of website visitors in action, over multiple web pages, as well as within password protected sites. The company’s online website analysis tools let subscribers replay movies showing individual surfers clicking and scrolling pages, generate heatmaps with advanced overlay statistics, and uncover significant trends such as visitor hesitation and average hover times.

The first few Podcasts on Boxes and Arrows from the Information Architecture Summit have been posted.

I had never done Podcasting on this scale before and some of the presentations from the first day have some sound quality issues that I’m working with other Podcasters here in Canada and around the world to resolve.

My goal going to my first ever IA Summit was to ensure those who couldn’t attend for whatever reason: flight cancelations, other commitments, and the like, were able to share in the knowledge and experience the Summit in some fashion.

While I didn’t get a chance to see many of the presentations, the people I met and the conversations outside of the conference more than made up for it! It was a thrill for me to meet and exchange ideas with the IA and UX authors whom I’ve studied over the years.

I’ll be working on the interviews I did with select presenters at Adaptive Path’s MX San Francisco conference this week and hopefully we’ll be able to publish those conversations some time next week. A big thank you to the team at Adaptive Path for inviting myself and Boxes and Arrows to participate in this wonderful event!

As an aside, if you subscribe to the Boxes and Arrows Podcast in iTunes, you’ll notice my name instead of the presenters in the scrolling text within the player. This was an error on my part, which I will try and resolve in the near future. My main goal right now is to get as many of the shows published as quickly as I can for the global community.

I had the great pleasure of meeting and talking with Indi Young, author of Rosenfeld Media’s first publication, Mental Models – Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior at MX San Francisco.

It was a real treat for me to speak with her about different ideas and experiences in life. I hope to have Indi on a future I.A. Podcast to discuss her book and experiences with Adaptive Path.

I will be looking to incorporate her ideas into my own work as an Information Architect with current and future clients.

Many thanks for taking the time to share your ideas with the global community Indi and I would encourage all Information Architects, UX practitioners, and Interaction Designers to pick up a copy of Mental Models.

In fact, Louis Rosenfeld, owner of Rosenfeld Media contacted me the other day and wants to extend a 10% discount on Indi’s book. When purchasing at the Rosenfeld media site, enter the code FORPARKS10 when prompted.

There is no single methodology for creating the perfect product—but you can increase your odds. One of the best ways is to understand users’ reasons for doing things. Mental Models gives you the tools to help you grasp, and design for, those reasons. Adaptive Path co-founder Indi Young has written a roll-up-your-sleeves book for designers, managers, and anyone else interested in making design strategic, and successful.

After a tremendous experience at the IA Summit in Miami, I’m on the road again to Adaptive Path’s conference next week, MX San Francisco: Managing Experience Through Creative Leadership.

I have been invited by the firm to interview presenters at this conference for publication as Podcasts on Boxes and Arrows.

A big thank you to all of the folks at Adaptive Path for the invitation. I’m looking forward to the conference and talking with the brilliant line up of speakers.

After the second day at the IA Summit, I went down with friends and colleagues to South Beach.

While sitting on an outdoor patio I had the pleasure of chatting with Frank Ramirez. He had his iPhone and was watching this YouTube video, “Make the logo bigger”.

I had never seen this before and thought it was hillarious! A great example of how “less is more.” Thanks for sharing Frank!

Well I’m finally off to my first ever I.A. Summit in Miami. I’ve been waiting for this event for months as it’s my first time out and am looking forward to meeting colleagues I’ve only had a chance to talk with on email and Skype.

I’m going to be working with the good folks at Boxes and Arrows with the goal of recording all presentations at the Summit. As I mentioned in the last Podcast introduction, we’re going to publish a few shows every day to the Boxes and Arrows Podcast page.

For a complete guide to all of the presenters at the Summit check out the program for the conference. If there are presenters or topics of particular interest, drop me a note at jeff.parks@iaconsultants.ca and I’ll be sure to get back to you about a time and location when these presentations will be posted.

All Podcasts produced by Boxes and Arrows, just like the I.A. Podcast fall under the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic by Creative Commons.

Looking forward to meeting everyone in Miami and to hearing from listeners of both Podcasts while at the Summit.

Cheers!

I recently brought together some of the most creative minds in Ottawa around web design and user experience.

Ramius corporation was kind enough to open their doors for this discussion – many thanks guys!

We discuss Personas and the importance of continuing to understand their end users throughout the design process. There are many points covered during this conversation, a few key highlights from our discussion include:

Kristina Mausser from Digital Word! talks about her experience in helping the Jamaican Government in creating positive User Experiences through the creation of personas and the need to understand the client.

Jay West talks about the all important “Bozo Filter” when creating a great user experience.

Bohne Forsberg talks about how essential it is to understand the entire project as a designer from the start of the project.

Melany Gallant talks about the importance of understanding the purpose of the site when designing for UX and Findability.

Kristina talks about the difference in perspectives – how marketers tend to focus on hits, where communicators tend to focus on the misses.

Philippe points out that social networking is a microcosm of the web; and the importance of findability in identifying users to create the very best in social media / community solutions.

Simon Chen talks about the complexity of trying to not just create software that builds a community of users but also a solution that drives conversation to build upon the application they are using.

Philippe Dame – Ramius
Melany Gallant – Ramius
Simon Chen – Ramius
Bohne Forsberg – Forsberg Graphic Design
Jay West – Jay West
Kristina Mausser – Digital Word

Best wishes to Christina Wodtke for a speedy recovery and I’m looking forward to meeting everyone at the IA Summit

I’m also going to be attending the MX San Francisco conference being put on by Adaptive Path Managing Experience through Creative Leadership publishing Podcasts with presenters at that great event!

Design Researcher at Adaptive Path, Todd Wilkens blogged about his personal war against Crackberry and the idea of going “lap-topless” when attending meetings. He talks about the need for leaders of meetings to be a “hard ass” with seven ideas that have helped him and his team at Adaptive Path stay focused.

I think everyone can relate to the insanity that technology has brought to meetings; and from my experience the greater the accountability of individuals within the organization, the higher the probability that you’ll see people playing with their Crackberry’s and other technology.

Can someone explain to me how this demonstrates leadership? A team member is trying to discuss strategy or process and people are sending text messages during the meeting, or worse sending emails.

And people wonder why so much gets “lost in translation” on projects. The purpose of the meeting is to provide clarity and direction and the team is treating their colleagues as if they were listening to Charlie’s Brown’s teacher “wa wa wa wa”

At the second BarCamp Ottawa, I was talking with colleagues about how technology is going to create a culture where technical skills will no longer be the most sought after experience. Soft skills, I argued, will be paramount in the years ahead. We are building technology solutions for other people, after all – not other machines. And even if we are building systems to “talk” to each other, it’s the people who create these systems who have to be able to communicate effectively.

Perhaps its time for your own team to put down the Crackberry, iPhone, and other technologies during meetings as Todd suggests, and start taking the time to look your team in the eye and have a conversation.