When the opportunity arose to write an article for Interactions Magazine’s Usability & Evaluation forum, I jumped at the chance. I’ve just sent off the final edit, and I’m very excited.

In short: I’m about the shortcuts, intentional and unintentional, that we take as overwhelmed and busy user experience researchers. In this piece, I lay out what these shortcuts look like and how they undercut the quality of our work, and I argue that there is no substitute for good, old-fashioned critical thinking. Keep your eyes peeled for it in the March/April 2012 issue!

I’ll be giving a presentation at Interaction ’12 in Dublin in just two short weeks! Here’s the brief:

Where’d this come from? Well, I’ve been noticing that as newbies, we’re not getting the experience we need, and as employers, we’re not getting the people we need. I found the guild system fascinating and inspiring, and I think we have a lot to learn from such a framework. If you’re interested in talking about what we can do in our everyday jobs to help grow talent, please do track me down. And if you’ll be in Dublin, let’s chat about it over a beer.

Us UX practitioners are a fidgety bunch. We love our office supplies. We love our whiteboards, our post-its, and we adore our sharpies. We love hands-on workshops, and we prefer to analyze problems in ways that we can see and touch them. It shouldn’t be a surprise to me, then, that I’d forgotten the value of focused, undistracted thinking. No tools, no props, no fiddly fidgety office supplies.

This realization came about quite accidentally. I moved a bit further away from work, and now my bike ride to work is 10 miles one-way. I love this ride, but one of its unexpected side effects is that every day, I have two full hours to think. There’s enough scenery and low-level attention required that I’m not going to fall asleep, but for two hours, my mind wanders, and since I’m usually going to or from work, I think about work a lot.

And I’ve discovered that my brain can do a lot of work without writing notes, making diagrams, or planning. My brain’s strength is in thinking things through and following trains of thoughts without commitment, and when I write things down, that’s an implicit commitment. When I plan, sometimes that’s an implicit procrastination of thinking a problem through. The end result is that more often than not, I arrive at work ready to get started and to put into action the things that I’ve mulled over, and I’m more confident that I thought something through.

Here’s your challenge: find as little as 10 minutes or as much as an hour to sit somewhere away from computers, notebooks, sharpies, food, drink, fiddly objects. For that entire time, just stare off into space and mull over a problem. Don’t rush, and don’t try too hard to find a solution before your time is done. Just ponder. And then when you’re done, go back to your workspace and turn your thoughts into reality. I bet you’ll be surprised with how good whatever you came up with is.

At the IA Summit, I gave a talk about how to up your game as an information architect. It was my very first conference talk and a very exciting experience!

I initially proposed this talk because as a fresh-faced newbie IA with a little more than a year of work under my belt, I’d attended a recent run of frustratingly uninformative UX conferences that seemed both repetitive and self-congratulatory. In fact, since I’ve graduated, I’ve needed to learn a bevy of new skills that I wasn’t taught in school and that weren’t covered in the professional events that I was attending.

To be specific, I was doing fine carrying out UX work like running usability tests and wireframing, but in the nuts and bolts of making my work relevant and actionable, the things that helped me out the most were not always part of the information architecture / user experience canon. Things like statistics, business savvy, interpersonal relations, narrative fiction, and psychology really helped me up my game. I’m not dismissing the value of existing UX resources at all, as we need to know these foundational things in order to do our jobs, but when it comes to the day to day work of analyzing some data or smoothing things over with a stakeholder, I don’t find enough guidance and help from UX to get by.

It seems clear to me that user experience professionals need to talk about subjects outside of the traditional UX canon more often, and I’m not entirely sure why we aren’t. Our field is very well-grounded in other disciplines; many of us got our educations in entirely unrelated fields. I asked the University of Michigan’s School of Information for some data on what the current class of human-computer interaction students were majoring before they came to the school of information, and the results were not surprising, but very interesting. Here’s a word cloud – click for a larger version.

We’ve got a staggering variety of backgrounds to draw inspiration and knowledge from, and to help us improve our work, but as far as I can tell, we’re not really talking to each other about it. Why not? Are we discrediting the usefulness of these backgrounds, or assuming that other UX professionals wouldn’t be interested in hearing about them? If something we learn from statistics bails us out in a work situation, do we assume that every workplace is unique and it was a one-off? Or are we reluctant to take on a teaching and mentoring role for things that we don’t do for a living? In any case, I’m concerned that UX may struggle to grow and mature as a profession if only reaches inward for insight and inspiration. We need to start stealing the best nuggets of wisdom that we can find from everywhere, even from the most unlikely disciplines, and to be inspired by the world.

For me, this means that I’ve got my eyes wide open for anything and everything that might help me up my game. I’ve found inspiration in unlikely places. Gaining a deeper understanding of statistics has been immeasurably helpful when I need to juggle analytics to convince stakeholders of a design decision. Understanding how the world of business works and knowing how to approach stakeholders and have difficult conversations has made my job much, much less of a struggle. I’ve even drawn inspiration from the carefully structured and meticulously plotted Infinite Jest, which taught me that good structure will save a complicated narrative. Here’s my $0.02 in the form of a reading list on UX Zeitgeist of non-UX books for UX professionals. I’ve written reviews for all of them, so do click on the review link and check them out if you’re curious why I recommend something in particular.

The good news is that I was very happy with the IA Summit 2011. IAS11 really reached beyond traditional UX conference topics, and I feel like the talks that were given and the topics that were discussed really helped IA to grow in unexplored new directions. I’m encouraged by this, and wild horses couldn’t keep me away from IAS12.

I got back from Denver a week ago and I’m still chewing over what I learned there. First and foremost, IAS11 did not disappoint. I’ve had some recent “meh” experiences with conferences. My main problem has been that sometimes talks aren’t about presenting innovative ideas in the UX field but rather about UX professionals patting each other on the back for being awesome, which feels good but is ultimately not that productive. Yeah, not a problem with the IA Summit at all. Well-curated talks, interesting topics, great speakers. So, good job to Jess McMullin and Samantha Starmer and all the other folks who put in the hard work to make the IAS rock – it paid off.

Denver was also my first experience speaking at a conference, and I presented on the topic of “Upping your game – Five things information architects need to talk about more”. I’ve had a couple of other smaller speaking gigs but nothing quite on this scale. I really liked that the IAS paired new speakers with experienced mentors to help them put together and polish their talks. Peter Morville’s mentoring really  helped me not only figure out how to present the material, but to figure out how to actually conduct this business of standing in front of people and engaging their attention for 45 whole minutes. It was invaluable, and my talk went really well. I’ll be writing a series of blog posts going over some of the ideas in my talk, so do stay tuned if you weren’t able to catch it.

A recap of some of my favorite talks:

Toilet Paper and Information Sharing: Designing Compelling Information Ecosystems by Justin Davis. This was probably my favorite talk of the Summit. Justin approaches the idea of cross-channel IA in a very practical way that really let me sink my teeth into the essence of what a good information ecosystem looks like: “a set of interactions supporting a singular narrative”. Firstly, different channels need to be considered as complementary, non-alternative domains, with each domain playing to its strength. Secondly, there should be seamless data persistence across channels. So much food for thought!

Discombobulation, Fire-Breathing Dragons and Wet Noodles: Creating Productive Workshops in Scary Situations by Beth Koloski. At my organization, we’re trying to hold more design workshops for a number of reasons (solve problems, help departments work together on projects, that kind of thing), and I came away with a big checklist of how to set up workshops and manage expectations as well as how to facilitate them and work with difficult people.

Ideas and Innovation by Adam Polanski (flex track – no link, sorry). This talk was a bit of a “down-to-earth” talk, ideal for those of us that are in organizations that move slowly and deliberately. Adam first outlined what innovation really is: just combining ideas in new ways that represent a good mix of effort and value. He then talked about how to innovate on a small scale: sneak in hundreds of bug fixes, suggest little interface tweaks, whatever you can do to win the small battles. Eventually that work pays off, and it may not be now or tomorrow, but maybe in five years, you’ll get to dust off a big design.

I’ll link the raw TweetNotes that I took for most of the talks I attended. (TweetNote is an iPad app that let me just take notes by capturing tweets in the #ias11 conference stream – I’d absolutely recommend it if you’re going to a conference anytime soon!)

Toilet Paper and Information Sharing: Designing Compelling Information Ecosystems by Justin Davis

Discombobulation, Fire-Breathing Dragons and Wet Noodles: Creating Productive Workshops in Scary Situations by Beth Koloski

Ideas and Innovation by Adam Polanski

Keynote by Nate Silver

Plenary by Cenydd Bowles

Beyond shrink it and pink it by Jessica Ivins

From Flab to Fab by Kim Bieler

Discussing design: The art of critique by Adam Connor, Aaron Irizarry

Posting our hearts out by Javier Velasco

The most valuable UX person in the world by Jared Spool

Interfaces are made of words by Carl Collins

Up your game: Five things information architects need to talk about more by Leanna Gingras

The value of design principles by Rob Fay and Johanna Hunt

Beyond Digital: What IAs Need to Know about Service Design by Samantha Starmer, Priyanka Kakar, Jess McMullin, Andrea Resmini

Pig-Faced Orcs: Design Lessons from Old-School Role-playing Games by James Reffell

Your Brain On Graphics: Research-inspired Visual Design by Connie Malamed

* 1:23 PM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – RT @robfay: reduce realism – makes graphics cognitively efficient – provides fewer distractions, less time to perceive, minimizes load #ias11 @cmalamed

* 1:23 PM (@tarastrobel) – Cognitive compatability: make the attributes of a graphic consistent with its meaning #ias11

* 1:23 PM (@bphuettner) – Visual methods of grouping: proximity, similarity, common fate (direction), connectedness, boundaries #ias11 @cmalamed

* 1:23 PM (@robfay) – cognitive compatibility – when attributes of a graphic are consistent with their meaning (e.g., displays “Red” using blue) #ias11 @cmalamed

* 1:23 PM (@robfay) – grouping – proximity, similarity, common fate (lines or elements in same direction), connectedness, boundaries #ias11 @cmalamed

* 1:23 PM (@romanocog) – RT @JDouglass: People believe info when it’s easy to process. Amazing examples of type and contrast choices affecting credibility. #ias11

* 1:23 PM (@romanocog) – RT @robfay: research-inspired design  considers how people perceive and comprehend visual information #ias11 @cmalamed

* 1:24 PM (@robfay) – examples of “pop out” – color, size , shape , direction (orientation), motion (movement) #ias11 @cmalamed

* 1:24 PM (@happybike) – If the info you present is easy for the user to process, they’re more likely to believe you. @cmalamed #ias11

* 1:24 PM (@robfay) – preattentive processing – pop out (color, contrast) and grouping give more meaning #ias11 @cmalamed

* 1:24 PM (@chiaraogan) – “If it’s easy to process it must be true.”-Connie Malamed No wonder Fox news has so many followers. #ias11

* 1:24 PM (@JDouglass) – People believe info when it’s easy to process. Amazing examples of type and contrast choices affecting credibility. #ias11

* 1:24 PM (@mokemonster) – RT @robfay: Processing fluency affects credibility (font type, contrast) #ias11 @cmalamed

* 1:24 PM (@robfay) – If it’s easy to process, it must be true! #ias11 @cmalamed

* 10:39 AM (@crfarnum) – Best session title- Pig Faced Orcs #ias11 (not about gamification)

* 10:49 AM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – Give them something to physically manipulate even if it’s not their turn – ie messing around with dice #ias11

* 10:50 AM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – Embrace showmanship – use tricks to enhance drama. Enhance emotion. Example of cute kitten on Etsy’s unsubscribe page #ias11

* 10:50 AM (@uxdlibrarian) – Give people feedback especially when they don’t have anything to do at the time #ias11

* 10:54 AM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – Use randomness to build a story. Good place to do this is user-generated content – go beyond just a simple “tell us about X” prompts #ias11

* 10:55 AM (@uxdlibrarian) – Randomness can help draw people in and keep them interested. Use randomness to build a story #ias11

* 10:58 AM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – Use sandboxes – give them many avenues of exploration. Example: ecommerce browsing. #ias11

* 10:58 AM (@uxdlibrarian) – Are you looking for a sandbox (free form) or a railroad (structured) experience? Decide if exploration is important #ias11

* 10:59 AM (@MattDempster) – #ias11 Consider: why is it fun to create a character?  How can we apply that to personal info online?  Is there a convergence? ~@jreffell

* 11:01 AM (@MattDempster) – #ias11 Sandboxes AND railroads.
The concept:  guided, rigid flow vs explorer flow.  The trick:  apply the right style at the right time.

* 10:59 AM (@crosswiredmind) – Traveller as metaphor for UX design and mini-games. #ias11

* 11:00 AM (@mokemonster) – Lesson 5: Use sandboxes and railroads. Understand the type of experience you are presenting. #pigfacedorcs #ias11

* 11:00 AM (@crfarnum) – Try thinking about user exp.in terms of a series of minigames. #ias11 #pigfacedorcs

* 11:02 AM (@MattDempster) – #ias11 Preserve inconsistencies and messiness.  This leaves room for evolution and discoverability. ~@jreffell

* 11:04 AM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – Steal ideas from everywhere – just use what works, don’t worry too much about making it completely consistent. #pigfacesorcs #ias11

* 11:04 AM (@mokemonster) – Lesson 7: Steal from everywhere. Use metaphors from wherever it works to create something new. #pigfacedorcs #ias11

* 11:04 AM (@uxdlibrarian) – Steal from everywhere – Tolkien, Lovecraft, medieval Europe, etc. For design this means pick metaphors that work for you #ias11

* 11:07 AM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – Consider ways to incorporate fun kinds of risk-taking. #pigfacedorcs #ias11

* 11:07 AM (@crfarnum) – James asks us to re-embrace metaphors – don’t be so afraid of them being incomplete and mixed. Steal from everywhere! #ias11 #pigfacedorcs

* 11:07 AM (@MattDempster) – #ias11 Enable risk-taking.  I think this is more about discoverability.  Lower barriers to entry whether that’s price or complexity?

* 11:07 AM (@uxdlibrarian) – Enable risk taking (carefully) – depends on your context but it can help keep things interesting and exciting #ias11

* 11:07 AM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – Consider ways to incorporate fun kinds of risk-taking. #pigfacedorcs #ias11

* 11:08 AM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – One way to incorporate randomness: invite completely random people to a design critique, see what new stuff shakes out. #pigfacedorcs #ias11

* 11:08 AM (@uxdlibrarian) – Great example of risk in first question – “daily deals” and social risk of inviting random people to critiques #ias11

Service Design Panel @pkspark @jessmcmullin @resmini @samanthastarmer – 4/2/11 – #ias11
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* 3:31 PM (@johunt0311) – Beyond Digital with @jessmcmullin, @pkspark, @resmini and @samanthastarmer  - starting soon. #ias11

* 3:38 PM (@dpan) – “huh… Something on the website is different from what’s in the store…” #service #ias11

* 3:45 PM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – “service design” focuses on service not users; lets us talk about the business side of things #ias11 #iasd

* 3:45 PM (@johunt0311) – Service design focuses on things beyond just the user and allows ppl to approach the experience of the business stuff too #ias11 #iasd

* 3:49 PM (@mojoguzzi) – Earliest mentions that @jessmcmullin could find. #IaSD #ias11 http://campl.us/OlJ

* 3:49 PM (@MattDempster) – #ias11 Do want: multi channel interactions that aren’t bounded by device or application, and that maintain state across all channels.

* 3:50 PM (@crosswiredmind) – 1908 user experience design used in advertising as a differentiator. #isd #ias11

* 3:50 PM (@johunt0311) – When ppl talked about service design and customer design and UX design in the 1960 was it the same stuff as today?? #iasd #ias11

* 3:50 PM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – Service design starts with ppl, then looks at different channels to reach people. Channels and ppl come together @ touchpoints #ias11 #iasd

* 3:52 PM (@dpan) – Defining moments: The highs and the lows of your interactions are impressed into memory of that interaction. #iasd #ias11

* 3:52 PM (@mojoguzzi) – Think of Defining Moments, not day to day. They create experiences. Need to execute on that #ias11 #iasd

* 3:52 PM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – Service design language is taken from theatre: front stage (ie retail) and backstage (all the prep behind the scenes) #ias11 #iasd

* 3:55 PM (@johunt0311) – think about front stage (user facing), back stage (prep), support and evidence (cues) when thinking about Service Design #ias11 #iasd

* 3:59 PM (@Dex) – Moments of truth will often be followed by an exclamation. #service #ias11

* 3:59 PM (@johunt0311) – Need to design for humans and all their emotional messiness – Service Design – #ias11 #iasd

* 4:02 PM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – How do you research feelings and needs around death of loved one? Talk to funeral home directors, listen to recorded support calls #ias11

* 4:04 PM (@Dex) – In service design the need for flexibility often requires adapting/creating new kinds of deliverables for communication. #ias11

* 4:04 PM (@inkblurt) – This work from @pkspark on designing for emotional & situational context is terrific. So glad to see this is happening at Vanguard! #ias11

* 4:04 PM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – “we shifted the work from the clients to us” pre filling forms, using resources smartly #ias11 #iasd

* 4:06 PM (@DotGridDotCom) – Build human connections that are channel agnostic and think about what is going on behind all of the touch points #iasd #ias11

* 4:06 PM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – Internally, interactions are processes but “for our client every interaction is part of an ongoing conversation” #ias11 #iasd

* 4:07 PM (@johunt0311) – @pkspark  has some incredibly interesting experience designing for the “human experience” – cool potential across UX #ias11 #iasd

* 4:07 PM (@karlfast) – How do you design for death? Useful talk about how service design adds key insights that you can’t get from IA, IxD, usability, etc. #ias11

* 4:11 PM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – REI sells a lifestyle, and a lifestyle includes a lot of different experiences. #ias11 #iasd

* 4:11 PM (@mojoguzzi) – @pkspark just awed me with her #iasd talk. Designing for the experience post-dea (of a loved one) can make all diff in the world. #ias11

* 4:11 PM (@mattzellmer) – “Wows” aren’t born from forms. @sparks #ias11 #iasd

* 4:12 PM (@mojoguzzi) – Services support the experience @samanthastarmer #iasd #ias11

* 4:14 PM (@mattzellmer) – From the customer’s perspective, touchpoints are are all parts of a single conversation. @pkspark #ias11 #iasd

* 4:15 PM (@mojoguzzi) – Multichannel experience resonates better with #REI than “service design” @samanthastarmer  #iasd  #ias11

* 4:15 PM (@johunt0311) – Not talking about “Service Design” at REI – talking about Customer Experience and Multi-channel experience #iasd #ias11 @samanthastarmer

* 4:17 PM (@quietaction) – RT @DotGridDotCom: Build human connections that are channel agnostic and think about what is going on behind all of the touch points #iasd #ias11

* 4:19 PM (@mojoguzzi) – Information is the foundation of good user experience. #ias11  #iasd

* 4:19 PM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – Cross-team pollination essential to success because everyone has the common goal of providing good service #ias11 #iasd @samanthastarmer

* 4:21 PM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – Use just enough deliverables to get everyone on the same page – same shared vision for service. #ias11 #iasd

* 12:33 PM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – Getting ready to hear about the value of design principles from @robfay @johunt0311 #ias11

* 12:38 PM (@sambr) – It needs to matter to someone #ias11 #uxprinciples

* 12:45 PM (@UXtina) – How does our team make a difference in the company? Shift in mental model from how does ux work impact product. @robfay #ias11 #uxprinciples

* 12:46 PM (@UXtina) – meeting product requirements does not equal meeting user needs, and that needs to matter to someone. #ias11 #uxprinciples

* 12:47 PM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – Get a diverse UX team to agree on a common goal and use it to guide your thinking #ias11 #uxprinciples

* 12:49 PM (@UXtina) – Started informally communicating design principles: incorporate in casual conversations & then into client discussions. #ias11 #uxprinciples

* 12:50 PM (@dennisschleiche) – Joanna talking about socializing the UX principles #uxprinciples #ias11

* 12:51 PM (@fraserlandia) – @inspireUX  #uxprinciples #ias11 And principals take the focus away from meeting the goals of our users to meeting requirements.

* 12:57 PM (@UXtina) – What makes it powerful is making it personal. Engagement with users and your development team. #ias11 #uxprinciples

* 12:57 PM (@inspireUX) – What makes design principles effective and powerful is making them your own.  Define the principles with your team. #uxprinciples #ias11

* 12:58 PM (@UXtina) – Be accountable to your design principles. #ias11 #uxprinciples

* 12:58 PM (@sambr) – RT @inspireUX: What makes design principles effective and powerful is making them your own.  Define the principles with your team. #uxprinciples #ias11

* 12:58 PM (@LeeGoesPlaces) – How do you delight people who are being forced to use your product (like BlackBoard)? #uxprinciples #ias11

* 1:04 PM (@UXtina) – Data driven design means tracking quality over time. #ias11 #uxprinciples

* 1:07 PM (@UXtina) – Evaluate the way you evaluate. This is growth. #ias11 #uxprinciples

* 1:07 PM (@uxdlibrarian) – RT @livlab: This pretty much sums up everything to me: “Data driven design means tracking quality over time.” #uxprinciples #ias11

* 4:44 PM (@chiaraogan) – “You can’t understand a religion outside its culture; you can’t understand a product w/out understanding its stakeholders.” #ias11 #iasummit

* 4:44 PM (@Kalabird) – RT @jcolman: Add “How to lie with statistics” to your reading list. #upyrgame #ias11

* 4:44 PM (@mediajunkie) – RT @chris_kiess: Highly recommend Switch to understand organizational behavior and change management  http://t.co/l5k51Vf
#ias11 #upyrgame

* 4:45 PM (@ravimynampaty) – 5 things IAs need to talk about more:  number 3: psychology, intriguing!  @leegoesplaces #ias11

* 4:45 PM (@dawntherese) – Build bridges. Having a difficult work relationship is a little like staying together for the kids. #upyrgame #ias11

* 4:45 PM (@Dex) – Try seeing people as humans rather than obstacles. (Apply this to users, clients, stakeholders, co-workers…everyone.) #ias11

* 4:45 PM (@uxdlibrarian) – Book title might be”Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz (http://t.co/joG6wbc) #ias11 #upyrgame