Ian@work

That giant sigh you hear...

...is me wrapping up a major commitment for '06.

Tuesday I was in front of a group that's been awaiting the product of nine months of interviews, research and (in the client's words) blue sky thinking. The strategy that we (a colleague and me) delivered was, by all appearances, well received.

How much breathing room does this create? Uh, not much. One major project is accelerating, another is about to go from planning into implementation, and several others are simmering.

As for this semi-neglected blog, it's about to go offline - for me, not you - for a few days. I've been thinking about revamping it, folding in elements of my other blog, and adding a few other ingredients.

I won't be gone long. Promise.

Kansas City here I come...

Or there I went, as the case may be. Spent much of today at Kansas City MCI, tapping away at the computer, after a client meeting. My first ever airplane ride originated at that airport -- the place hasn't changed much in the 30 years since then. Oh, except they now have free WiFi, though the signal doesn't extend all the way to Starbucks.

One point in Kansas City's favor: Wherever I went, the people were unusually helpful and cheerful.


Technorati Tags: kansas+city, travel

Uncle Mark's Almanac

Stuck for a gift idea? Looking for useful lifehacks? Download and read the always excellent Uncle Mark's Gift Guide & Almanac.


Technorati Tags: uncle+mark, gifts, good+experience

Have an experience

Creating a retail store is very different than creating an experience.


Technorati Tags: free+city+supershop, retail

Winer v. Scoble

Dave Winer and Robert Scoble discuss innovation. Rather, Winer addresses innovation while Scoble occasionally confuses "innovative" with "cool" and "better". While the back and forth is interesting, the discussion bogs down because Winer's talking about big-picture innovation, while Scoble often focuses on incremental improvements as kinda, maybe, sorta innovation.

The real meat of the article is whether Microsoft can drive innovation and fight off irrelevance. Sorry, but improving Windows error messages isn't the kind of "innovation" that will save them.


Technorati Tags: innovation, wsj

Beyond the Minox

A lot of you wander in looking for my review of the Minox 35gt, a wonderful little camera I've carried around for years. I use it often, and sometimes it's the only camera I carry when traveling. It's pretty hard to beat its combination of light weight and superb image quality.

These days I use a digital camera as a way of recording ideas or images that I need to share with colleagues. For example, I often take digital stills when scouting photo shoots. Being able to hand the photographer a visual guide outlining what I need has saved me a lot of time and money in the past. Until its recent demise my main digital camera was a Minolta X20, which filled the role of digital notetaker pretty well.

Now, I'm playing around with a camera that has none of the Minolta's shortcomings -- which were many -- and which might replace the Minox as my travel/work/everyday camera once and for all. More on this later.


Technorati Tags: minox+35gt, digital+camera, photography

Chicago

Activity here as been at a low, seeing as how I'm immersed in client work.

I raised my head just long enough to take notice of Edelman's ode to Chicago. He gets it exactly right, and expresses why Chicago has long been one of my favorite American cities. In the '90s my wife and I lived three hours up the lakeshore and spent many weekends in Chicago. Now we're fortunate to go once or twice a year.


Technorati Tags: chicago, edelman

Death of IA?

Yesterday I started a long post on the IA deathwatch, but as I wrote it my thoughts kept winding around to why information architecture is so difficult to sell to site owners. I regularly talk to Web designers and agencies that exclaim, "Nobody wants to pay for IA!"

That's not surprising, when you consider that at the not-so-bleeding edge of Web design (where most companies live) a lot of what is presented as IA hasn't changed in 10 years:

Designers have shown site owners a linear, hierarchical arrangement of information, instead of  illustrating relationships between users and the information they own and access. In one case, I ran across a firm that assigned creating site maps to the administrative assistant. That's not to say that some sites can't be adequately defined in this way, particularly if it's a micro site with limited content and interactivity, but too often this approach is applied to much more complex sites. It's part of the "start designing the home page and work our way down" mentality.

A more sophisticated approach to modeling processing and information pays off. It makes the user experience better. Happier users (people) are more likely to use the site, complete transactions -- if that's the goal -- and tell others. Those are the kinds of benefits that have to be explained, or better yet, demonstrated.

I've recently finished a couple of projects where IA has been an integral part of site development. One of the more satisfying aspects of both projects was the way our IA work drew site owners into the process and gave them, well, a sense of ownership. Rather than seeing a hierarchy followed by a homepage, they were drawn into a discussion about how people think about themselves, others, and the information they use. It turned an abstract process into something really tangible, and informed other discussions -- about functionality, look and feel -- in some valuable ways.

IA might change identities (per Bokardo), but if it does I hope that part of the change is making its function and outcome more obvious to the people who pay for it.

Second Life, by the numbers

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that Second Life is gaining momentum. For me, the number of clients asking about it is a clue.

Business Week has just published a data-based overview of Second Life.


Technorati Tags: second+life

A more efficient me

My big concern right now is finding enough time in the day. Maybe that's why I'm drawn back to 43Folders, a site that reminds me of how to GTD.


Technorati Tags: gtd, 43folders, david+allen