Boxes and Arrows Podcast

In this podcast, Jeff Parks talks with Jessica DuVerneay, the Global Director for the first annual World Information Architecture Day, held in February 2012. Jessica shares her experience of organizing a global event to celebrate and share the IA discipline.

In this episode Chris Baum speaks with Donna Spencer, Lynne Polischuik, Justin Spencer and Erin Jo Richey at the 2012 IA Summit about their interactive panel discussion Taking the plunge: Diving into Indie UX. They share practical and personal considerations of being an indie designer, including how to to get over the fear of making the jump, where and how to find clients, managing the business side of design and what it’s like to work alone.

Chris Baum talks with Patrick Quattlebaum at the 2012 IA Summit in New Orleans about his insights about holism vs. atomism and tools that designers can use to help companies see and develop experiences across channels.

Jeff Parks talks to Boxes and Arrows founder Christina Wodtke about the past and future of the magazine. Her key message is that designers still need to get their ideas out into the community.

Mr. McGovern, who will be teaching a Masterclass series in Canada on the importance of task management this November, discusses several of the key findings in his new book and how such knowledge can lead to better designs for all users.

Along with conference speakers, attendees share their thoughts of the IA Summit, its people, ideas explored, or whatever else they want to share... but they only have 5 minutes each to do so.

Adam Polansky shares how to shift the focus of your presentations to you, the storyteller, rather than living or dying by the content of your slides—and in the process getting your ideas into someone else's head more effectively.

With boundaries between the abstract digital world and the real physical world becoming blurred, we need new approaches to wayfinding, information scent and navigation.

What does location mean for UX? How does information architecture and design synchronize with urban architecture? How does mobile communication and web culture impact the streetscape? Are we living in facets of the same virtual city or does location still constrain us?

He shows how ORS can articulate a distinct information architecture role, shaping an IA practice, and how we align ourselves and our teams for growth, accountability, and discovery within our discipline.

They discuss how this technique will change your perception of personas, no matter what you think of them now, and how it can showcase how real people are behaving related to your brand, product, or project.

This calls to the next generation of user researchers to apply quantitative methods to our study of user behavior on the web.

You'll learn about the underlying causes, characteristics and consequences of flow, how flow is related to emotional design, and how to take user goals into consideration when designing for it.

You'll see the benefits of formulating a solid experience vision. And, you'll learn why it's critical to shift your organization's culture past risk-aversion.

Aaron Hursman introduces introduces a new user research technique that engages research participants. Learn how you can use this game approach to produce rich, quantifiable data.

In this session aimed at Information Architects interested in deploying social networking in organization, Manya Kapikian, Kevin Lynch, and Michael Patterson expose 11 hard lessons learned from the pilot that apply to this relatively undefined territory.

User experience designers need to stop thinking about interfaces as dumb control panels for manipulating machines and data and start thinking about them as human beings.

They focus on activities such as Laddering, Game play, Storytelling and Triading that can help expose opportunities for radical innovation and designing products that people can’t live without.

Through a website case study, they cover what worked and what didn't for testing content early in the project—from concepts to prototypes—to inform content strategy and tactics.

Peter explores what's needed to practice successful search-centered information architecture, how newer means of input and output are reshaping what's possible, and shares inspiring examples across different types of applications and industries.