“ Wouldn’t you like to know that the people who design and manage products and systems do so with a core set of values in mind?”

Toward Codified Values for IA and UX

I’m a user experience (UX) consultant with a specialty in information architecture (IA), the organization of information to make meaning. I joke that my job is to make the world a better place, one interface at a time. I also joke that I am a web therapist. Neither of these statements is really a joke.

I’ve been working on a couple of things I want to share with the overlapping fields of UX and IA—and with you: A statement of core values, and a maturity model to gauge adoption of those values. They’re meant to help make the digital world better, fairer, less harmful, more user-centered for all users by giving IA/UX practitioners and organizations guidelines for making ethical decisions in their work. We’ve never had widely adopted core values before, and perhaps you’ve noticed that in their absence, a lot has gone awry. Technology has become mercenary.

Values Statement and Maturity Model for UX & IA practitioners and organizations (click to reach image page, then click link for full-size image)

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Feeding the Beast: Some Thoughts on Carousels and Other Website Features

Our website redesign clients often want a collection of large, rotating images on their new homepage (we’ll call this an image carousel, though these features vary in functionality). Clients say they want to use the carousel to feature their programs and initiatives and promote upcoming events. One client wanted a huge carousel because they saw one they liked on another organization’s website. But more recently, a client told us, “We just can’t support a large carousel.” They knew their limitations.

Carousels can be compelling, but they require high-quality, high-resolution photography or graphics, and stock art rarely fits the bill unless it’s skillfully edited and isn’t used by other companies. (How many times have we seen that same ethnically balanced group of people huddled around a laptop?) So before you opt for a carousel, make sure you can support it so producing appropriate images and supporting content doesn’t become an unwelcome chore, or, as one of our clients called it, “Feeding the beast.”

Having a carousel on your homepage is a commitment to provide fresh promotional images and supporting content regularly. …

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You’re Not Applezon

When we ask what they want from their new websites, many of our design clients say they want their sites to be like Apple.com or Amazon.com. But why? Most of these clients bear little resemblance to Apple or Amazon. Their websites are primarily meant to communicate and inform, not to sell products. They may have member or customer databases, but they haven’t invested in capturing the kind of customer data Amazon or Apple have.

So what are these clients really saying?

“What is it you like about Apple?” I ask. Usually, they say something along the lines of, “It’s so clean.” They are reacting against the busy-ness and excess of their current sites.

What do they want to emulate about Amazon.com? “We want people to feel like the website knows them.” When we probe further, we find this can mean many things: personalization based on an individual log in, role-based access to content, targeting by interest area, topical navigation, or just plain usable navigation and search. But wanting the website to “know people” is usually a reaction to the fact …

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