Chicago 2017

Speaker 1: Carmen McDonald.

The title "0 Results" challenges our point of view of the eComm search experience and user expectations when performing on-site searches. The presentation looks beyond common optimization techniques and suggests employing an information strategy for improving product search. As information architects, by reframing our thinking around product search, we influence the structure of information and how it is interpreted by users.

Speaker 2: Tomoko Ichikawa

Our physical, tangible, multi-sensory environment is being reduced into narrow, numerical data. These datasets are increasingly available and, with readily available software, easily visualized. Data visualizations based on the highly filtered information of our surroundings omit the nuances and qualitative aspects of our everyday world.

This talk will share the work of Design students at IIT Institute of Design who explored how publicly available datasets could be visually represented in 2D and—more interestingly—in 3D as tangible artifacts. This project resulted in the exploration of location-based data expressed in various structures, from bumpy (3D), to flat (2D), then back to bumpy (3D).

A challenge for data visualizers is how to breathe life back into a dataset that has been quantified and filtered when it’s intention is to often represent a reality that is much more rich and nuanced. How can new forms of data representation and visual language—beyond conventional data visualizations—fill the gap between reality and numbers through the use of physical, material properties?

A big thanks goes to Zach Pino for co-instructing this class.

Speaker 3: Mike Carpenter

Part therapy, part theory, this session will discuss some common problems IAs face as part of larger teams.

As creative work has become more iterative, some of us have been left out of agile processes. By examining how we work, we just might uncover a better way. Design and product get to experiment, why can't the rest of us?

Speaker 4: Ara Berberian

Many consumers appreciate meaningful, personalized merchandising on today’s e- commerce sites. But what happens when Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant becomes your new intermediary to shopping bliss? As digital personal assistants become increasingly popular, design moves further away from visual interactive patterns and calls-to-action. This begs the question: How do we market through invisible UI? In this session, we’ll discuss how marketers might overcome these challenges, and how this paradigm to radio will change our tactics altogether.

Key learnings:

• How to design for unobtrusive, non-creepy experiences (or, at least, attempt to)
• Information architecture needs to sell products via AI
• Leveraging exposure to IBM/Watson
• Can marketing in the age of radio teach us something?

Speaker 5: Jessica DuVerneay

This practical talk begins by illustrating the relationship between strategy, IA, and UX. Then, it outlines the importance of information architecture as a crucial step between strategy and UX - and what to expect if any one of these key steps is overlooked. The presentation will conclude with actionable tips on advocating for IA to ensure great UX.