The City is not a Site Map - World IA Day 2012 Vancouver

What is a city? How is it organized? How do we make sense of the city? Join OpenRoad VP Gordon Ross as he covers some of the challenges faced in attempting to design information architectures for civic websites. Based on his research for the City of Vancouver’s web redesign project, Gordon will share observations, conclusions, and IA design implications. In contemplating the task of civic IA, Gordon seeks to describe the limits of our abilities as designers to classify and categorize and invites IA’s and designers to look for new methods and inspiration to reflect the richness and complexity of the real world in our designs. (*with apologies to Christopher Alexander)

This talk was given at the IA Institute’s World IA Day 2012 in Vancouver, Canada. @WIAD_Vancouver / #WIAD

Transcript

1. The City is not a Site Map* World IA Day 2012 – Vancouver Gordon Ross Vice President, OpenRoad email / gordonr@openroad.ca twitter / @gordonr *with apologies to Christopher Alexander
4. Why is this a problem?
8. Richard Nisbett
13. LATCH Location Alphabet Time Category Hierarchy Richard Saul Wurman
14. LATCH Location Alphabet Time Category Hierarchy Ambiguous classification schemes Richard Saul Wurman
15. LATCH Location Alphabet Time Category Hierarchy Ambiguous classification schemes Richard Saul Wurman
19. Resident Business Visitor
21. Who am I?
22. Who am I? Who does the City think I am?
23. Who am I? Who does the City think I am? What am I looking for again?
24. Who am I? Who does the City think I am? What am I looking for again? Based on who the City thinks I am, where would they put what I’m looking for?
25. Who am I? Who does the City think I am? What am I looking for again? Based on who the City thinks I am, where would they put what I’m looking for? Uh… what am I doing again?
26. 1. What are you trying to accomplish today? 2. Why? Can you explain that further?
30. Man, there’s no pleasing this Gord guy… #civicIAsucks #WIAD
35. city of Vancouver City of Vancouver
36. What is a city?
37. Lewis Mumford
38. • Geographic plexus • Economic organization • Institutional process • Theatre of social action • Aesthetic symbol of collective unity
39. Big C City of Vancouver = that which they come into contact with, but might not even realize it Small c city of Vancouver = that which is in focus for most of the citizens, most of the time
40. Our City IA Manifesto
42. Everybody's last stop, refuge, terminus, lotus land, Shangri-la, Canaan, utopia. Paradise colonized. Babylon unbound. Wayde Compton Performance Bond map of Vancouver: Charles Demers, Vancouver Special
46. Design Implications
50. From City A to Z, Pile & Thrift, 2000
51. • Categories • Time • Geography (Space) • Personal Geography (Place) • Maps • Conflict • Demand • Transparency/Translucency • Visibility / Invisibility • Jurisdictional Boundaries • Seasons • Voluntary/Mandatory • Language • Channel Preference • Engagement
52. Jurisdictional Boundaries Different levels of government are responsible for different aspects of our everyday lives. It is often not clear who is responsible for what. Citizens are interested in who is responsible in order to seek action and resolution to a particular issue. They have a problem that needs resolution and want to find out who to contact. The seemingly arbitrary by-products of the design of government need to be clearly communicated to the citizen user, even if the responsibility for the service is not entirely that of the City’s. Examples of jurisdictional boundaries that affect citizens include transportation (City owns streets, TransLink runs the buses); animal control (stray dogs are City, stray cats are BCSPCA); and water (pipes are City, water itself is Metro Vancouver). observation conclusion design implication
53. The Process of Design Squiggle by Damien Newman, Central Office of Design (Creative Commons - CC BY-ND 3.0 )
54. The Process of Design Squiggle by Damien Newman, Central Office of Design (Creative Commons - CC BY-ND 3.0 )
56. Happy World IA Day
57. We’re OpenRoad We’re always looking for interesting new projects We’re hiring IA / UX / ID talent We’d like to meet you I’m Gordon Ross, Vice President & Partner at OpenRoad. Email me at gordonr@openroad.ca or follow me on twitter at @gordonr Find out more about OpenRoad at http://www.openroad.ca