An interesting talk here @ SXSW on Saturday - it was called 'Re-Inventing the Wheel: Sketching your own IA process'.
Technology is changing how and where we as consumers interact - experiences are becoming increasingly complex and frequently happen outside of the browser. But as Chris Fahey from Behavior Design points out the tools and the processes we use today are no longer cutting mustard.
A lot of us are using very linear processes to build non-linear digital experencies. Here at McKinney for instance we have process that tends to work for the most part. It goes somewhat like this:
- Research
- Briefing
- Site Strategy
- Personas
- Wireframing/ Sitemaps
- User flows
- Clickable prototypes
As illustrated below there are a lot of different steps and tasks that can go into the IA process. If you work in the industry there is a good chance that you use some or all of these steps in your journey to creating great digital work.
However it is becoming increasingly important to look at the how we get to great digital work. For instance how does the process above work for creating game experiences, or Digital Out of Home (DOOH) installations that use motion or gesture based interactions- quite simply it doesn't.
In his talk Chris suggests thinking about using some or all of the following steps:
The blank canvas
before any work has begun get the entire team together (including your client team) and ask everyone to describe what the final product is going to be- it will be interesting to see how varied peoples ideas are at this stage. if it's a website consider asking:
- how many pages is it going to be?
- will it be Flash or HTML?
- how many users are we expecting to visit the site?
The least wanted technique
again before any work has begun ask the entire team what they least want to see in the site. this will help you prioritize features.
User persona flash mob
instead of creating a fixed number of personas get the team together and brainstorm all types of users- create micro personas on the back of a card. Then as a team find patterns amongst the personas and group them. this will help you define much tighter more focused personas.
Product personality
create a personality for your product. imagine your product as a person and ask yourself what is the voice of your product.
Design themes
create keywords that describe your site. then use visual mood boards that represent each one of the keywords and share these with the client to help pick a design inspired direction.
Sketching
designers more than anyone are often shy to share rough skecthes. but often these are the quickest way to illustrate a foundational direction for design before anyone has even opened up photoshop. however rough think about integrating skecthes into your process, even go as far as sharing with your client. you might be surprised how much this step will quicken the process.