Here’s the complete drawing:

Some close up photos:

Here’s what you’ll see on the drawing and his explanations of the drawing in quotes.

“My Dad’s job is an information architect”. Apparently I look like a transformer with 70s hair.

People – “you work with a lot of people Dad”. Naturally people are romans, knights and guys with swords.

Audiences – “here we have a drawing of the orchestra on stage with an audience “the guys at the right are bagpipe players, people will love them”

Labels – a drawing of a can of “mom soup”

Navigation – here we have a compass “like Jack Sparrow’s” and “pirate ships having a battle”

Organizing – “I made a site map of super heroes, organized by boy superheroes and girl superheroes with pictures in case people can’t read my writing”

Finding – “you have to find Waldo in this super big cave”

Search – “this is a hand holding a magnifying glass, looking at a spider”

Maps – “cause you sometimes need a map to find things”

Making things easy – “I decided not to draw anything for this because it was easier”

and lastly – “It’s fun, see they are smiling”

I think he has a pretty good grasp of what IA is. Who knows, maybe he’ll be an IA/UX/IxDA/Designer when he grows up.

NOTE: I only helped with printing out pictures of super heroes and the writing of this summary. I was totally amazed at what he knows about what I do and what things are part of it all. I have a fantastic son!

Explain IA is a post from: benry blog

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As UX practitioners we help create things that are better, more usable, better organized, easier to engage with, help sell more stuff or reduce costs (a non-exhaustive list). Many of our methodologies and approaches leverage a single important skill – listening. And while many of us recognize the importance listening plays in our work few of us are really good at it.

According to research about listening:

• We spend about 45% of our time listening
• We can recall about 50% of what was said after someone speaks and comprehend about 25%
• Spoken words only account for 30 -35% of the meaning. The rest is transmitted through nonverbal communication that only can be detected through visual and auditory listening
• The average person talks at a rate of about 125 – 175 words per minute, while we can listen at a rate of up to 450 words per minute

Effective communication and relationship building, whether with clients, peers or others, is dependent on good listening habits. So how important is listening in our day-to-day communication?

• Ralph G Nichols and Leonard A Stevens (researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Iowa, respectively) in their Harvard Business Review article, Listening to People found that managers and office workers earn 40% of their salaries listening; executives earn up to 80%.
• Three of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People are dedicated to communication and listening. Take for example Habit 5 that states, “seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

Effectively listening can help us understand a situation; make informed decisions; be more efficient and productive; build trust and respect; and help us develop strong relationships with others.

Here’s some examples of places where listening is required in UX:

• During sales: this is where we build relationships and understand need
• During design research or discovery: We need to actively listen and be attentive to the inputs being provided. Through listening we learn about the needs, pain points, issues, opportunities, goals, interests, etc. of our users
• When facilitating: Listening is critical to ensuring that we effectively guide discussions and gather input/feedback about end-user or business needs
• When presenting deliverables: Listening to what people say about our work through dialogue and feedback.

The good news is that like other forms of communication such as writing and speaking, listening is a skill that can be learned. All it takes is a bit of understanding and practice. Some of you will be great at it immediately, while others may need to continuously practice and build your skills.

How do you get better at listening? Here’s some suggestions:

• First, clear your mind so you can actively listen.
• Second, be quiet. Shut up. Don’t talk. Really, be quiet. Learn to tolerate silence and don’t interrupt. Hold back on the impulse to immediately answer questions or to jump in and share your point-of-view while others are talking.
• Third, try changing how you listen. Try to capture the message (listen with your ears, mind, eyes and heart). Make eye contact, use an open posture and be attentive to body language, volume, tone and pace. Look deeper than just the meaning of the words and try to understand the reason, feelings or intent beyond the words. Be empathetic, objective and analytical.
• Fourth, comprehend what was said.
• Fifth, clarify by paraphrasing back what was said. Use your own words to confirm that what you’ve heard is correctly understood. If you are told that you didn’t understand it correctly, try asking people to re-communicate it as a metaphor, this can often get you back on the same page. If you don’t understand something, say so.
• Lastly, respond to what was said (if you need to) or ask more questions and keep on listening.

If you want to practice these skills, give this a try:

Walk up to someone you don’t know and introduce yourself. Shake their hand and ask who they are. Then listen, ask questions, listen some more and don’t talk except to ask questions. See what you can discover.

The fine art of listening is a post from: benry blog

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When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Ask yourself at the end of this year — are you doing what you love?

Do what you love is a post from: benry blog

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I’m a big fan of Unicef and the work that they do around the world. Every year they are one of the charities that our family donates to. Normally we try to do something that can really have an impact, like helping build a school, improve literacy or health care options for others.

I have been fortunate this year to have had the support of many from the UX community and would like to “pay it forward” with a little side project and raise $20,000 which can purchase a water purification unit used to provide drinking water for about 15,000 residents or displaced populations in cases of emergency.

While that sounds like a lot of money, it really isn’t. In my address book are 1020 people. If each of them give $20 we can fund this. Not a lot to ask.

If you’re interested – follow the link and donate on the Unicef site. A tax receipt will be issued via email by Unicef for each donation received.

DONATE NOW

Help me bring water to 15,000 people is a post from: benry blog

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Design Slam

Matthew Nish-Lapidus and I put together this year’s design slam topic about food banks. The topic turned out to be a good challenge and though some similarities existed between solutions (e.g. colour coding, sorting methods), it was a great way to get people warmed up and thinking on Day 1.

Lane Becker – Get Satisfaction

Lane, a co-founder of Adaptive Path, shared with us his view of the ever-evolving landscape of customer satisfaction and how organizations are changing and learning to adapt in this age of transparency. The success of his company, Get Satisfaction, is impressive (over 28,000 companies on the roll) and some fantastic brands using the tools to connect with customers.

Jess McMullin – Business Origami

Business Origami

Jess shared his BETA of business origami — a methology originally created at Hitatchi. With thousands of cut-out paper characters we helped map scenarios for a number of problems. As basic as this tool was, the complexities of some scenarios could be effectively communicated. Everyone had a blast trying it out and sharing feedback on the BETA run.

Nathan Curtis – Modular Web Design

Nathan, from EightShapes, shared with us his approaches and thinking on modular web design. We were introduced to patterns, components and how these elements can be combined to speed up UX deliverable development. I’ve been using a similar approach for the past couple years (minus the InDesign supported workflow) and found it very interesting. I think the best part was the hands-on group work at tables that helped people understand components and how they can be re-assembled to create other pages.

Chad Fournier – Shaw Communications

Chad shared with us the Agile UX approach at Shaw in re-tooling their customer call centre application. An interesting inside look at creating a UX culture, advancing the purpose of UX, finding success and building on that success over time. Chad and his team have a lot to be proud of here and have clearly delivered a lot of value to the organization.

Matthew Milan and Alex Eberts – Akoha

A walk through the path to the game Akoha — a game that has the goal to make the world a better place. This start-up is exploring ways to leverage social capital and will be curious to watch over time as they continue to re-invent themselves and try to find their market niche.

Kristina Halvorson – Content Strategy for the Web

An entertaining and information-rich presentation from the author of Content Strategy for the Web. She was so excited when talking that she almost forgot to breathe, but had a lot to say and share. The big take-away is that you need to include content as part of our process — not as an afterthought. The exercises were a good intro into the pains of writers, the need for copy and the benefits of having copy earlier, rather than later in the process. Although you have to wonder how many people went back to the office and continued the same-old-same-old with content.

Rahel Bailie – Content Strategy Case Study

Following Kristina takes guts and Rahel delivered a ton of confirmations and insights into her content strategy and approach. I really enjoyed seeing some real-life application and the depth of effort and role of writers in interactive projects. Lots of room for growth in this area of UX, especially for those with a command of words, language and organization.

Peter Merholz – Upgrading our Mandate

Peter, as always, gets the last word. His talk took us through a range of inspiration, big and practical ideas. What really stood out for me from his talk is that designers are really becoming facilitators. We solve problems, that aren’t always visual.

p.s. if you are looking for a great run-down of the conference from Twitter, check out the work that Bryce Johnson did pulling them all together or Murray Thompson’s sketch notes

Reflections on CanUX is a post from: benry blog

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