IA 2.0: An Open Conversation about Context, Mobility and Semantics

Information Architecture has the potential to take a leading role in making the next generation of web and mobile applications more valuable for our users. We have key skills to clarify structured data relationships, identify relevance and context, and streamline the usefulness of information. In order to lead, IAs need to understand and address the implications of an environment that is changing fundamentally from what we've known in Web 1.0 and 2.0. What does it mean to design for a Context Web? Note: This file contains points transcribed from the conversations with participants

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Duane Degler

Enabling Exploratory Discovery Through Taxonomy

Not everything can just be searched. “Aha!” moments deliver value. Exploration leads to insights and surfaces contexts. How do you prepare your content for these user experiences?
AI Explanations as Two-Way Experiences, Led by Users

How do we craft designs that "explain" concepts and respond to users’ intent? Can AI identify, elicit and apply relevant user contexts, to help us understand AI outputs? How do explanations become two-way, as users can explain their expectations and offer feedback?
Menu Mania: What's Wrong With Menus and How to Fix Them

Menus are ubiquitous in websites and applications of all types. They are critical to accessing the information and actions that users need, yet they can be very frustrating to use. In this presentation we review what we have learned about best practices for designing mega menus, context menus, hamburger menus, full page menus and other types, and share case studies of menu redesigns for enterprise applications, mobile apps, and information-rich websites.
Connecting Art & Archives for Research, Discovery, and Storytelling

If you’ve ever sat in on a discussion between a curator and an archivist, then you understand the breadth and richness of stories hidden in collections. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum has developed a scalable infrastructure supporting integrated information from art, archival, library and historic home collections. Collections Online is a vital shared resource for the Museum and the public. Exploring rich relationships reveals a wealth of contexts, perspectives, events, and places. Learn about how the Museum is envisioning the future of its publishing and collections-based storytelling.
IA for AI: Shaping the Experience for Human-AI Systems

Participants collaborated in building upon the IA-for-AI framework that was first presented at IAC 2021. We explored what it means to understand, translate, and describe the types of situations where human-machine interaction occurs, and the way the relationship changes in real-time. Participants discussed opportunities and responsibilities that IA brings to human-AI relationships.
Hello, Meet Hola! Design for Mixed-language Interfaces

A global online user population necessitates the exchange of content from different sources, and the ability to aggregate multilingual content is a critical requirement within many research and business contexts. To effectively reach a global audience and provide access to content in multiple languages, we must structure mixed-language content to support its successful presentation and delivery, and provide innovative designs that facilitate exploration. In this interactive session, we provide real-world examples for doing just that.
Guiding Users Towards Action: Empowering Decisions Through Effective Data Design

Good design can help users quickly grasp a situation, make better decisions, and take productive actions. In this session, we provide a framework that describes a progressive evolution of data displays and actions, and share a broad range of examples, from consumer products to enterprise web applications, to discuss ways to design effective data displays and integrate actions.
How IAs Can Shape the Future of Human-AI Collaboration

Sometimes people describe Artificial intelligence (AI) as an “emerging intelligence,” but it is, in truth, the emergent collaboration with humans that fosters positive personal, societal, and environmental outcomes. We outline a framework that Information Architects (IAs) can use to help them think about the key issues in designing for AI systems.
Sensemaking as a Learned Experience

Human ability to “make sense” in both sensory and information experiences is learned, then developed through attention and practice over time. This talk guides IAs, designers, and developers toward creating supportive environments for sensemaking. It outlines the role of language, symbols, structure, and tools that help us make sense of our interactions with information.
The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Collections Website

In this demonstration of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum's collection browse website, launched as a beta in September 2019, Duane Degler and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum's Rana Chan discuss the project background, linked data architecture approach, and the O'Keeffe team's thoughts on the future. This webinar was presented to the Museum interest group of the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) community.
Linked Information and an Enhancement Ecosystem

In his Information Architecture Conference poster, Duane Degler offers key steps in the theory and practice of managing information as linked data, a framework that supports ongoing enhancement of digital resources, and ways to support cross-silo information resources within, and across, organizations.
The Delicate Art of Facilitation

Good facilitation skills are essential for many IA tasks and projects. The ability to successfully guide internal colleagues as well as external groups to shared, valuable outcomes serves a wide range of project needs – achieving stakeholder and team consensus, creating a clear vision for IA strategy, refining a taxonomy, to name just a few. This IAC2019 workshop builds activities around real-world scenarios from the presenters' own experiences that participants can use to plan for and guide their own work.
User and Information Design Considerations for Effective Semantic Search

Semantic search seeks to enhance the meaning in content, to more closely align the searcher and the available information resources. This means there is a strong user-centered aspect needed to unlock the benefits. In this NFAIS Conference presentation, Duane Degler explores strategies and considerations for best supporting your users through effective semantic search.
Archives Strengthening Historical Narrative: Sharing Digital And Linked Data Resources For Broader Reach And Sustainability

In their MW2018 panel presentation, Duane Degler joins Mark Coffey and Alan Watts, both from the Texas Coastal Bend Collection, to provide insights into ways oral history and images can be used to assemble flexible topic-based narrative structures. This session provides insight into technical and curatorial approaches, so others don’t have to “start from scratch.”
Going Global: The Intersection of IA and UX in a Multilingual Environment

In their IA Summit talk, Kate Blanch, Rachel Sengers, and Janette Shew discuss how to structure multilingual content to support its successful presentation and delivery, and how to provide innovative designs that facilitate exploration of that content.
No Static: IA for Dynamic Information Environments

In this IA Summit talk, Duane Degler provides an overview of the dynamic information landscape, positions the role of IA firmly at the heart of its ecosystem design, and provides ideas for weaving this into your practice.
Linked Collections and an Enhancement Ecosystem

In their ARLIS/NA poster, Duane Degler and Kate Blanch offer key steps in the theory and practice of managing collection data as linked data, a framework that supports ongoing enhancement of digital resources, and ways to discuss your approach toward digital scholarship.
Integrating Taxonomies and Ontologies into Enterprise Search and Browse

In this Data Harmony User Group 2018 session, Duane Degler outlines approaches for increasing taxonomy integration into search and browse, thus drawing the greatest value from your taxonomies for your users.
Guerrilla Glue: Making Collaborative Digital Innovation Projects Stick

In this MCN2017 session, Duane Degler moderates a panel discussing how institutions and projects are using linked data and modern technologies to achieve long-term outcomes for themselves and others.
User Experience Design Considerations for Multi-Museum Online Collaborations

In this MCN2016 session, Duane Degler and Lesley Humphreys share human-centered user experience considerations and requirements that pertain specifically to the challenges faced by collaborations among multiple collections, sites, and institutions.
Understanding How Content Is Used in Enterprise Settings

Enabling knowledge management capabilities through search and discovery can benefit from richer data to learn the ways users think about the information they find and use. This article describes an approach we developed to support enterprise search and content synthesis for case management and research in legal and scientific/academic domains. We use an extremely lightweight (yet powerful) mechanism to bridge the silos and establish a network of data around the use of information.
Intelligent Understanding of Content Use

Using a rich network of data about how people actually use content, we can find insights by integrating it with other enterprise information sources. In this article, Duane Degler explores how it becomes a valuable input to governance processes, at both the organizational and content levels.
Building Bridges with Taxonomy: Enabling Semantic Integration

Taxonomies should be designed with enough flexibility and transition points to be a bridge to other taxonomies and datasets. Enabling your taxonomy to fit into the larger universe of partner companies, industry standards, federal requirements and complementary term sets gives it a solid foundation for future growth. We explore which vocabulary sets are available for reuse by the enterprise information architect and demonstrate how thinking about semantic integration from the beginning of the design process helps build a taxonomy that endures.
7 Steps for a More Accessible Association Information Ecosystem

It can be easy for associations to get buried under all the information they produce and curate. Here are seven steps create an information ecosystem in which resources are accessible and up to date.
Creating Personal Profiles Across Time and Distance

Personal data capture and algorithmic modeling of user preferences and interests is maturing. In this talk, Duane Degler explores some of the considerations for longitudinal preference management, how adaptive interfaces might play a role, and how users could interact with a model at a particular time in an application.
8 Tips For Achieving User-Friendly Search

Search is an increasingly important component in desktop and mobile online experiences, yet too often search is not designed to meet the needs of users. Associations have unique challenges that come with serving multiple audiences and delivering a variety of information types through search—for example, balancing the relevance of publications, issue summaries, research papers, membership information, and event information. Here, we offer a practical to-do list to achieve user-friendly search for association websites and apps.
Structure and Metadata: Shortening The On-Ramp To Linked Data

Information Architects codify information’s purpose and context – that is vital for effective use and management. This talk summarizes our approach to understanding dynamic, multi-dimensional information models and the practical tools that help us create them.
Emerging Tastes: Considering How Preferences Evolve

Experiencing cultural heritage is a voyage of discovery and learning, where emerging insights and serendipity play a significant role. The experience also happens in a blended personal and social context. At the broader level, engagement is longitudinal – what we learn from modern cultural experiences (daily life in our surroundings) can provide clues to analogous interests in cultural materials, and vice versa. This paper addresses richness of personal experience poses challenges and opportunities for capturing preferences in ways that support a user’s experience with cultural heritage across institutions and over time, both in the digital realm and where digital interaction blends with a physical space.
Positive Psychology and the Architecture of Information Happiness

The science of happiness has come a long way in recent decades: prominent scholars such as Martin Seligman, Tal Ben-Shahar, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi have studied and written about the impact that positive psychology can have in our lives. Csikszentmihalyi’s research on the concept of flow, in particular, is relevant to our work as information architects. Can we find the right mix of skills and challenges to bring our clients, our end users, and ourselves into the “flow” state of optimal experience? If we can achieve the right balance (in the stretch zone, as opposed to the panic zone!) happiness is found in the sense of accomplishment at what we’ve achieved.
Perspectives and Considerations for Linked Open Data in Cultural Heritage

An overview of considerations for creating, publishing, managing, and using linked data in a cultural heritage context.
Design Concepts and Lessons from Linked Data for Digital Humanities

Projects in LOD-LAM (Linked Open Data for Libraries, Archives and Museums) give us a perspective on creating rich, relevant, usable applications for heterogeneous linked data. This presentation shows examples and describes our design approach.
Now What? Creating Innovative LODLAM Sites and Apps

With the rapid evolution of a semantic web, it is no surprise that many cultural institutions, large and small, are exploring Linked Open Data (LOD) as a means of connecting distributed data across the Web and across internal repositories. This presentation explores the questions, practicalities, and implications related to designing sites and applications for linked open data.
Dynamic IA: External & Internal Contexts for Reframing

The world of information architecture has changed, and a reframing is moving the conversation forward. Duane Degler contributes a chapter called “Dynamic Information Architecture—External and Internal Contexts for Reframing” to Reframing Information Architecture, a book edited by Andrea Resmini.
Design Meets Data (Linked, Open, Heterogeneous)

The tide of available information continues to rise. The opportunities that come from open access, linked data, sharing resources with other institutions, and standards-based data are enticing - and perhaps overwhelming? In this talk, we discuss the role of design to help you find ways to make the most of your opportunities for new types of interactions and engagement with Information Objects. We share experiences from projects and research that help you think about Information Objects and the emerging drivers for user experience, including Getty and Mellon-funded systems where we’re beginning to test ideas about how to support a broad set of goals for interaction in complex information spaces we're facing today.
Designing for Information Objects: The Library, Archive & Museum (LAM) Information Ecosystem for Now and for the Future

Museums, libraries and archives hold physical objects that people interact with every day. Just as there is a physical object, there is an “Information Object” that people use, and authoritative institutions curate that information for now and the future. This talk is about designing the Information Object, and the role of shareable, structured information.
Enhancement Ecosystems: Enriching Structured Content with User Tagging and Annotation

Formal and informal metadata, classification and descriptions play a significant role in the quality of user experience with content and search. This talk describes “enhancement ecosystems” involving users and content experts.
Supporting Relevance for Users – A Design Challenge

Presenting “related” content can unfortunately be perceived by users as not relevant to their current needs, particularly in complex knowledge work and interactive applications. At risk is a loss of credibility, which can weaken trust in the application or underlying information, which in turn colors their ongoing experience with an application. Relevance algorithms have gotten more sophisticated, providing designers and developers with useful tools. But from a user experience perspective, relevance is often perceived in the context of a user’s immediate tasks and goals, as much (or more) than it is associated with their prior actions and patterns from similar users.
Lemonade out of Lemons: Design increases your data's value to your users

We all want users to gain value from our information and applications. The use of semantic technologies has grown significantly over the last few years, and with that growth has come the challenge of designing clear, useful interactions to help your users find meaning in large and varied datasets. This talk demonstrates that the risk of poor design is that much of the richness of semantically-enabled environments can be lost because the user experiences tend to be overwhelming rather than meaningful and engaging.
Design 10:5:2 - 10 Best Practices, 5 Examples, 2 Actions

Are you thinking about how to achieve designs that will get a positive response from your users? Are you wondering how to refine an interface to work well with semantic data? While the ‘magic’ in design can’t be boiled down to a few simple rules, this talk will show you things you can do that will help get your project started on the right path.
UI Design for Semantic Web: From Idea to Experience

User Experience is critical to success - we've seen the evidence of that repeatedly in the Web 1.0 and 2.0 worlds. What role does UX play in the Linked Data world? As more people engage with semantic-driven applications and information - both as consumers and creators - unique interaction styles and experiences are surfacing. At the same time, this presentation points out some new interaction challenges raised by the potential of the Semantic Web.
Layered, Adaptive Results: Interaction Concepts for Large, Heterogeneous Data Sets

Some data environments are not well served by current styles of search results presentation. One example of this is large-scale archival, library or museum collections. The range of user goals and interaction needs can be quite broad, and the information itself is highly structured yet very heterogeneous — it spans many subject areas, information types, and presentation/media. Based on the use of semantic web formats for metadata, in this paper we explore how to leverage the semantic relationships to drive aspects of results presentation — to change elements of the UI itself in response to the results data.
User Interfaces for the Semantic Web

This is a tangible guided tour of innovative semantic web applications and user interfaces, as well as interesting interfaces that ask the questions: “What is being adopted from current Internet — and Rich Internet — apps and sites? What new design concepts might be possible now or in the future?” The presentation begins to open up opportunities, issues, and implications for people who will be users of the “linked web of data.” And we continue to ask one of our favorite questions: How can it be made easier and more useful?
Achieving Business Value by Integrating Tasks, Topics and Content

“The shortest distance between two points is a relevant keyword.” When users need information, the most direct path returns them to their task as quickly as possible with the knowledge needed to be successful. This requires us to design and write with an understanding of the user's context, task, and need. We then reduce seeking time by carefully defining the 'glue' between applications and supporting information. In this paper, I discuss some 'big picture' ideas for User Assistance practices: understanding the user's context, identifying relevant keywords, and integrating applications and content using techniques from the Semantic Web and Topic Maps.
Preliminary Analysis of Users and Tasks for the Semantic Web

This position paper raises the importance of understanding the users of the Semantic Web and the tasks that will bring them to the Semantic Web. It proposes a high-level framework for categorizing those users and tasks, and provides implications to be considered in end-user interaction design.
Policy Content at SSA: Using XML and Semantic Metadata

A new content management and delivery system has been growing over the past years at SSA. From a content perspective, users have been asking for “simple answers, with all supporting information, relevant to my situation.” From an organizational perspective, the role of content is increasingly seen as integrated with transactional systems in order to sustain quality service delivery in an increasingly complex business environment. From a technology perspective, the use of emerging tools based on XML and semantic technologies provides opportunities for simpler systems that control content maintenance more effectively, improve integration, provide easier content access, and allow migration as systems evolve over time. This case study shows the application and discusses design considerations.
Maintaining Ontology Implementations: The Value of Listening

It's hard to argue against the concepts of self-describing data, contextual interfaces, and richer metadata for content that eventually will make up the Semantic Web. However, it is easy to imagine semantic environments suffering from the same challenges that many content management system implementations and the Web itself suffer from: the preoccupation with data could easily leave us drowning in it. This paper focuses on approaches being explored to promote feedback and user involvement for the maintenance of semantic representations, to ensure they remain useful and current.
The Usability Imperative Inherent in the Semantic Web

A tremendous amount of hope — and hype — has been attached to Tim Berners-Lee's concept of the Semantic Web, where machine-readable “meaning” enriches the promise of the web. Creating a positive, successful, trust-worthy experience for users is crucial to its success. What does that mean? What is imperative for it to become the “next generation” web? Most importantly, why must the usability community play a leading role to shape the Semantic Web in a positive, user-centered way? This paper addresses these questions and more.
Knowledge Management in Pursuit of Performance: The Challenge of Context

Much of the current focus on knowledge management is on the acquisition and storage of knowledge resources. Unfortunately, because most knowledge management solutions are developed to stand alone, the context of a person’s need for information when using business applications is often left to the individual. This article discusses ways to merge the best practices of knowledge management and performance support, so that knowledge can be integrated more seamlessly within working applications, and applications can be used to solicit knowledge as a byproduct of people’s work.