Keith Instone

On June 24th, I was honored to be part of the TorCHI program and talk about information architecture on ibm.com. The talk was entitled There is a story behind every link:

Ever wonder how a large corporate web site navigation system is designed, and how it evolves over time? How certain links find their way to the corporate home page, while other ones do not? How major changes in the corporation's business affect the web site navigation? And how the IA of the corporate web site can give clues about how well the business is doing?

If so, then join Keith Instone as he tells stories about the information architecture of ibm.com. Example stories may include:

• The evolution of sitewide navigation categories like "solutions" and "services"
• Worldwide information architecture challenges
• The cultural shifts required to do something as (theoretically) simple as adding a "sign in" link to the masthead
• Tracking the evolution of a single web page as it signals fundamental shifts in how the business is operating "behind the scenes"
• The effect of selling off a key division of the company on the navigation system
• Balancing the strategic goals while handling day-to-day requests for changes to the navigation
• Techniques for dealing with executive home page link requests

The stories Keith tells will be in part determined by what you want to hear. Come prepared to select some high level links on ibm.com and see if Keith has any interesting stories to tell about them.

I prepared about 100 slides of possible things we could talk about, but, by design, the session was driven by what the audience wanted to talk about. Here is my (incomplete) list of what we covered:

• Sign in / register, country location in the masthead today (logic for placement today, and in the future)
• Who owns what, how to manage the millions of pages
• Solutions, services, products and corporate strategy over the years
• Masthead sign in challenges and compromises
• My IBM: use as anonymous user, gateway to various applications
• Who does the 3 prongs of user feedback: User research studies, analytics, qualitative user feedback
• Search challenges: technology/budget, tagging, UI (easiest of the 3)
• User-generated content (silos likely initially, integrated over time)
• Accessibility challenges overall, why the link in the footer
• Role based navigation (home page Learn about tab), task based navigation
• Standards for page design ("what we offer" module as an example)
• Content management, sharing, the "4th tab owners" of a solution page
• Tactical, medium-term, long-term planning for changes (add 1 link now, work with groups for better tactical changes later, save some things for a big, strategic redesign)

As it happens with these things, you really had to be there to get any value out of my artifacts from the talk. For those of you who were there, you can download (below) a PDF of screen grabs from some of the parts of ibm.com that we talked about. And I included some of the text slides that I prepared ahead of time that were relevant to what we discussed. I included the "history of the ibm.com masthead categories" slide that several people have asked for.

There are lots more stories to tell: I will have to save them for some other talk.

Thanks for all the messages-of-support about the upcoming Catalyze webcast about UXnet. See my other blog posting for links to some of the things we will talk about. The Catalyze marketing engine is impressive, so I think there will be plenty of attendees. I will post a version of the presentation here (and other places) afterwards. See you on the webcast tomorrow.

I will be spending Thursday, April 26th, on the campus of Kent State University, hosted by the wonderful folks at IAKM. I will be meeting with various groups throughout the day, but at 4pm will be my main presentation, an update to my "Applying information architecture to university web sites" (first presented at CASE V). I will also be meeting with the Usability I class in the evening.

A joke term we used when planning the event was Keith Instone Day - and that term stuck. I am kind of embarrassed to have my own day at KSU, but I do like the idea where experienced professionals spend a day on a local campus and share their expertise with students (and others).

I am also on the IAKM Advisory Board. Spending a day there seems like a good way to strengthen those practitioner / researcher / educator bonds (something I think IA needs more of).

Also, Karl Fast, who I worked with at Argus, will also be on campus, as he prepares to join the IAKM faculty. With Samantha Bailey also coming, another Argus Alum, it really should be Argus Associates Day.

I will be a part of the panel "The State of Web Site User Experience in 2007", along with Dave Mitropoulos-Rundus and Stephanie Rosenbaum on February 21st. This will wrap up the second day of presentations at Internet User Experience 2007, a conference in Ann Arbor.

This panel explores the user experience that is most prevalent on web sites today and debates the highest impact options for making improvements. The panelists, each of whom is involved in web design, explain how satisfied or dissatisfied they are with the state of web site usability today. Attendees will walk away with a sense of purpose and focus on the highest impact improvements for today and the future.

Dave runs these panels about once a year; I am glad that I could return after participating in 2003. I wonder what I will say! And how will I make sure folks come away with a "sense of purpose...for today and the future."

My ibm.com colleague Will Smith and I presented at NEOUPA on September 20th: ibm.com - Experiences of the User Experience Design team. An update to our Internet User Experience presentation from earlier in the year.

We told lots of stories about what it is like working on the IBM web site, from year-long re-designs to day-to-day maintenance and everything in between. Great questions from the audience - hard to remember all of the topics but some where accessibility, search log analysis, standards vs. guidelines, Web 2.0, politics.

I participated in the panel "Setting the IA research agenda" at the IA Summit in Vancouver yesterday. Great talks by the panelists (of course), but more importantly, excellent participation from the audience and a good birds-of-a-feather at the end of the day. See my presentation, background information, and other notes.

In a few years, will this panel be seen as an important kick-off to an IA research agenda, or will it be seen as just another event where we talked about "IA research" but did nothing about it?

I presented "ibm.com re-design and standards" last month at Internet user experience (Ann Arbor, Michigan).

Leave a comment (with your email address) if you want a copy of the presentation. Here is a simple outline.

• Evolution of ibm.com over the past 10 years
• 2004 project: OneXperience
• Standards site: IA before and after
• Page elements
• Automation tools
• Relationship with other corporate standards
• Special events: Lenovo
• Business as usual
• Challenges ahead

I presented at the CASE V conference in Chicago yesterday. I went into detailed IA issues such as specific-to vs. relevant-for audiences, org-chart-itis, faceted browsing and navigation frameworks. Actually, there was so much good discussion on the audience organizational scheme (central to university sites) that I barely got to cover the rest.

Attached (way) below is a PDF of my slides. Here are links to items covered in the presentation.

"The difference between a good website and a great website happens before you begin coding"

I presented at the SEOMUG Spring <br> conference yesterday. This talk focused on work products and methodologies for IA and UCD.

I only had 45 minutes, so I had to breeze thru things. Hopefully the book references will help people who want to learn more.