The kids like nothing better than to lay on the floor playing their favourite games in the same animated dynamic as I used to play board games on the floor as a kid. It’s great for reading in bed without feeling like you’re ruining a lazy morning in the same way bringing a laptop into bed does. Also, it’s perfect for using those online recipes while cooking without having to print it out or take up valuable food preparation area!

At my recent leaving do down the pub I was rather hesitant about taking the iPad along when the audience was a clutch of ‘new media’ types, mac fans, programmers and tech-savvy business types. However, I had promised a usability challenge as well as beer and I had thought of something that involved the iPad. I needn’t have been worried, it didn’t lay idle and get beer spilt on it. In fact, it was a warmly received distraction, discrete and easy to handle around the pub table.

The usability challenge? Well, I had downloaded the well-received iA Writer app which boasts ‘Focus’ as it’s special sauce / point of difference / key selling point. Not only does it strip down and re-think word processing to it’s bare bones beautiful minimum with a writer’s take, but it has a ‘focus’ mode to help you… focus!

Anyway, the first time I used it I couldn’t for the life of me find the key feature that backed up the ‘focus’ promise… Yes, I was falling foul of Jakob’s assesment that the iPad suffered low feature discoverability. I thought this situation ironic and took the challenge down the pub to share with others in my field…

The result? Well, my peer UX architect was none the wiser (phew, not just me then!) and was rescued by a developer who’d clocked the last icon that had gone untouched. The die-hard mac fan was positively Italian in his flurry of arm movements and gestures to reveal the hidden feature and clearly had become accustomed to a world where a little more discoverability effort paid dividends. And what was the icon that hid the valuable ‘focus’ mode? A lock (opened) which is locked when in focus mode. All agreed it was unintuitive, our understanding of convention had told it was for something else. However, now we know what it means in this context…

Next post: Can you really touch type on the iPad?

Here it is in full (below) and you you can see all the other entrants to the ‘Explain IA’ competition run by Peter Morville of Semantic Studios on flickr: Explain IA

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Information Architecture is…

The user-friendly organisation of information

In the same way that an architect can help make the most of your home or building, an information architect can help you make the most of your website or digital application.

That’s why they’re called architects, because they’re responsible for the structure that upholds the design. They understand how things can work and the limits of what can be done.

The first port of call when you design a building is an architect. The first port of call when you design a website should be an information architect.

Information architecture is to digital spaces what architecture is to physical places

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This definition is also available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/42840294@N05/4322913677/in/pool-explainia

I could easily digress into the current state of print publishing (too much to say!) or the way technology news stories in the media fall into a handful of clichés that aim to polemicise our opinions (too annoying to begin), but I won’t!

The newly opened central library in Cambridge City centre nestles neatly into the newly updated shopping centre that has always been around it. The library has had a refreshing make-over that has brought it up-to-date not only in furnishing and habitat but also in technology.

It now boasts self-service check in and check out systems. You can also pay your fines and renew your books that are at home if you want to. I’ve got used to using the online catalogue (which is hard to find online!) to find books in the catalogue that I can then ‘hold’ for pick up or to renew items that are about to go over. Very handy.

Now when I pop in to the library (2 floors above the nice new bike parking facility in the basement) my ‘held’ books are  waiting on an open shelf for me to pick up…. Then I can check them out myself.

I scan my barcode into under the check out screen, enter my PIN (inevitably!) and put the books on the blue circle.

Hey presto they’ve been checked out and I’m off (after I’ve paid any fines if I need to, by putting money into the machine). Gawd bless RFID tags eh?

If I have books to check in I walk up to the check in screen and put my books on the conveyor belt, it checks them in and then the conveyor belt whisks them off to hidden depths. It’s all easier than using the self-service checkouts at the supermarket. Well done 3m! Great user experience

Don’t worry, there are library staff around (still behind desks, this isn’t the apple store you know) if you want to get help, ask questions or whatever it may be.

I’m looking forward to giving the BFI Mediatheque a spin, but I’m saving that for a busy shopping day when I can slope off with the kids to escape from the retail frenzy into the preserve of the library…

At the outset I was confident that my ‘transferable’ IA skills could be applied to this situation without too much difficulty. This turned out to be the case, and the main challenge it transpired was finding out about the nuances of SharePoint and how best to design an information architecture and user experience that would play to its strengths and not require aeons of development to implement and consequently a horrible maintenance overhead when a new release came along.

I searched high and low online to find the gems from other IA practitioners who I imagined would have it all sorted out. However, I didn’t find a load of useful blog posts as I expected…. Why the dearth of information about SharePoint?

Rather like searching for a graphic designer to work in Microsoft Word, my search was in vain, well nearly.  I did find lots of technically led coding advice or a raging debate about the worth of the product (well it’s a Microsoft product isn’t it!). Oh and there was lots of moaning about how painful a SharePoint implementation can be. Rather short of what I was seeking.

So I downloaded the relevant implementation guides about SharePoint and if a 400+ page word document wasn’t frightening enough I also bought the SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices book too (runs to 700+ pages).  I would imagine that those 2 things are enough to stop most people in their tracks! Maybe that explained why I couldn’t find much about ‘SharePoint IA’!

Resolute and fearless I carried on, this may be the dark side to some, but it didn’t put me off… though when I searched for ‘SharePoint design’ or ‘SharePoint designers’ I also didn’t get what I was expecting.

I became frustrated by the lack of information about how people were implementing SharePoint and the IA challenges it throws up. After all, I’d been approached to help a client overcome their issues surely this would be pretty common to SharePoint implementations for many, many organisations around the world? Was this a closed shop (in the sense of unions)?

Thankfully, I did find some nuggets (see below) and I was able to help my client overcome their challenges by clearly defining a firm-wide taxonomy and sticking to a very pragmatic and practical approach. The 4 things I’d recommend for a successful SharePoint implementation are:

1.    Don’t get carried away
Remember that the 3 basic types of SharePoint site are as follows:
a.    Publishing capability
b.    Collaboration capability
c.    Records management capability
This will serve you well in striving to keep things simple (for the sake of your SharePoint implementation and your developers’ sanity) and keeping the various sites’ purpose/rationale clear (necessary to adjudicate the debates the business will throw at you and to make sure the business can walk with SharePoint before it starts to try to run!).

2.    Keep your technical and implementation team close
Iterate your proposals based on what they can easily deliver. Have you technical team wittle away at them and sense check them before you go blabbing to the wider ‘business’. Then move quickly into turning those ideas into actual templates and pages that seek to achieve what you’re trying to do so that you can see if the theory is going to be possible in practice.

3.    Put the business users centre stage
At the centre of the IA / EIA work has got to be the end users, but you’d expect me to say that eh? You want to make sure you get the input of the experts and the day-to-day users of the information, both are equally valid and useful. Card sorts are the quick and cheap way to make sure you’re listening to as many people as possible in a structured way.
Plus, the more you explain the principles of what you are trying to achieve, the constraints that exist and the difficulties of trying to emulate the powerful user experience of a Google search, the better. With your business users on side and involved they’ll be your allies rather than just critics. They need to be bought in to tagging because ultimately their involvement and acceptance will make the solution live or die.

4.    Don’t underestimate the task, communicate realistically
In fact, you need to make sure that everyone involved has a clear understanding of the difficulties and challenges involved. While it’s great to paint a nice vision of where you want to be and make people feel like you’re ever so capable because you’re good at saying ‘yes, no problem’ at the requirements gathering stage, you’re going to end up with egg on your face when you don’t deliver and you’ve raised expectations very high without any understanding of what’s involved. If you’ve left the scene by this point you might have dodged the egg, but you’re hardly likely to get any word of mouth recommendations.
The aim is to find a balancing act. On one hand you need to be positive and constructive, on the other you need to be realistic and explain how things that sound simple and easy actually belie how complex and difficult they really are. Especially when it comes to SharePoint, ahem!

Sorry for the digression into management advice that might not be the nitty gritty detail you are looking for to help you solve your particular IA/EIA problems. There’s simply too much to say and not enough time! However you might find the following links help you, or you can drop me a line and I’ll see if I can help.

Roll on SharePoint 2010! Oh yes!

So, here’s my round up of what I did find for anyone looking for the top 10 sharepoint EIA / IA resources out there here’s what I did find that was worth bookmarking:

In alphabetical order:

Ari Bakker: How we did it: Tag driven Information Architecture using MOSS
http://ari.provoke.co.nz/archive/2008/01/22/how-we-did-it-tag-driven-information-architecture-using-moss.aspx

A Matter of Degree
http://amatterofdegree.typepad.com/a_matter_of_degree/sharepoint/

A Picture is worth 1,000 Words: Achieving Good SharePoint Usability
http://www.mindsharpblogs.com/Phil/archive/2008/08/22/7676.aspx

AMBIENT KM 0 Bottom-up approach to taxonomy development
http://www.ambientkm.com/2008/01/bottom-up-approach-to-taxonomy.html

Architects Rule! Community blog for architects in the Belgium and Luxembourg region moderated by Bart Vande Ghinste, Enterprise Architect for Microsoft Belgium and Luxembourg.
http://blogs.msdn.com/architectsrule/archive/2009/02/26/forrester-the-critical-role-of-sharepoint-information-architecture.aspx

Beating Down the Breadcrumbs – The 404 Blog
http://404uxd.com/2008/12/09/beating-down-the-breadcrumbs

CleverWorkarounds: The one best practice to rule them all
http://www.cleverworkarounds.com/2009/02/12/the-one-best-practice-to-rule-them-all-part-1/

Consejo blog
http://blog.consejoinc.com/search/label/SharePoint

Earley & Associates: Taxonomy for SharePoint
http://www.earley.com/webinars/taxonomy-for-sharepoint

End User SharePoint.com
http://www.endusersharepoint.com/

Eric Shupps – The SharePoint Cowboy
http://www.binarywave.com/blogs/eshupps/default.aspx

Forrester – How to Build a High-Octane Taxonomy For ECM And Enterprise Search Systems
http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/build_high-octane_taxonomy_for_ecm_and_enterprise/q/id/46459/t/2

Forrester: The Critical Role Of A SharePoint Information Architect
http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/critical_role_of_sharepoint_information_architecture/q/id/47565/t/2

fumsi: Creating User Centred Taxonomies
http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/manage/3126

fumsi: Information Architecture: Why SharePoint 2007 needs it
http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/manage/3730

Green Chameleon: Organising Knowledge: Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organisational Effectiveness
http://www.organisingknowledge.com/

Heather Solomon – SharePoint Resources
http://www.heathersolomon.com/blog/articles/resources.aspx

InfoStrat – Top Ten SharePoint Best Practices
http://www.infostrat.com/home/TopTenLists/SharePointTopTen.htm

International SharePoint Professionals Association
http://www.sharepointpros.org/Pages/Default.aspx

Joe Oleson’s Blog – SharePoint Land
http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/tags/Information+Architecture/default.aspx

Mark Eichenberger’s SharePoint blog
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/MarkE/default.aspx

Mark Schneider’s SharePoint Taxonomy and Governance Blog
http://www.sharepointplan.com/mark_schneiders_sharepoin/

Microsoft Sharepoint Team Blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/

Mastering Sharepoint with Bob Mixon
http://bobmixon.com/

Microsoft TechNet: Determine the information architecture of your site
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262873.aspx

Not Otherwise Categorized
http://sethearley.wordpress.com/category/sharepoint-moss/

SharePartXXL
http://www.sharepartxxl.com/products/taxonomy/default.aspx

SharePoint 2010 Evolution Conference (previously Best Practices conference)
http://www.sharepointbestpractices.co.uk/

SharePointIACoP
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SharePointIACoP/

SharePointless – One man’s experience with Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies
http://geekswithblogs.net/SharePointless/Default.aspx

SharePoint Magazine
http://sharepointmagazine.net/

SharePoint My Sites: It ain’t just about profiles, people.
http://www.giatalks.com/2007/12/sharepoint-my-sites-it-aint-just-about-profiles-people/

SharePoint User Group UK
http://suguk.org/

Taxonomy Watch
http://taxonomy2watch.blogspot.com/2007/09/microsoft-sharepoint-2007-taxonomy.html

Teblog: Social software and a troubled bank
http://teblog.typepad.com/david_tebbutt/2008/10/social-software.html

Using MOSS: SharePoint for Designers
http://designshare.wordpress.com/category/using-moss/

ZDNet: SharePoint as a Gateway Drug to Greater Efficiency
http://blogs.zdnet.com/collaboration/?p=406&tag=rbxccnbzd1

ZDNet: Sharepoint and Enterprise 2.0: The good, the bad, and the ugly
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=280

“It’s brilliant and smash-tastic” Reid, 8

This and the previous Professor Potts book ‘Uneversaurus‘ (about dinosaurs) are especially popular with boys. This is evidenced by my son’s school’s copy of Uneversuarus  being a bit hit with lots of boys who borrow it from the school library a lot. However, don’t just take my word for it, Uneversaurus was picked for the prestigious ‘Boys into Books” scheme run by the School Libraries Association!

Go on, buy a copy and make a little boy (or girl) very happy… and more educated about recycling, the big bang, atoms etc.

It’s definitely a great thing to encourage boys to read books with such engaging reading matter at a crucial age for their educational development and reading skills. Both books are suitable for 5-11 year-old’s according to the School Libraries age category.