ia play

In the old days job titles were created by grabbing a bit of Latin/Greek and adding ‘er’ or ‘or’ to it. The suffix just means “one who does”.

Something of the bits of Latin /Greek are obvious, some not:

Carpenter=wagons, Cooper=vats, Plumber=lead, Lawyer=law, Miner=digging, Baker=roasting, Butcher=slaughtering goats, Doctor=teaching, Teacher=also teaching, Farmer=collecting tax/rent, Soldier=being paid, Tinker=jingles, Tailor=cuts, Dyer= dark/secrets

Vicar interestingly just means substitute or deputy.

And who slaughtered anything that wasn’t a goat? (I’m putting the etymological dictionary away now).

It seems for a modern job title that a single word is not enough. You need a combination of object and activity.

Possible objects in my professional sphere:

project/programme
product
business
content
user experience
customer experience
usability
interaction
systems
software
applications
development
technical
information
accessibility
search
web
digital
online
intranet
e-commerce
sharepoint

Posssible activities:

manager
analyst
architect
designer
producer
engineer

Some people seem to feel hemmed in by the activities bit and choose something vaguer. This usually implies they will only produce opinions not things e.g.

consultant
expert
specialist
professional

In the public and non-profit sector you also get ‘officer’ as in police officer but also projects officer or knowledge officer. This usually just means one who holds an office and seems to be a way of avoiding saying ‘man’. “Head of” is similar but usually at the opposite end of the hierarchy.

All combinations of object and activity are plausible and many are common. Although so far I only know one Usability and experience design oompa-loompa.

Recession-Proof Graduate is getting attention mostly for Charlie’s advocacy of working for free but there’s lots of good stuff about how to approach your career. None of it is rocket science but it is the sort of stuff we lose sight of when job hunting.

Some quotes, mostly from the stories contributed by others interesingly enough:

“Postpone getting paid now, for amazing opportunities later”

“I quickly figured out that the most important thing to do in college was to not focus on getting great grades, but to get out of the classroom and start working for people to build a solid portfolio.”

“I learned more from my Google Reader than I ever did in graduate  school.”

“There are absolutely no rules to what you can put on your blog.”

“Very few job seekers take the time to actually put themselves in the shoes of the people they want to work for.”

Also a must-read in this domain is Avinash Kaushik on Web Analytics Career Advice: Play In The Real World!. Gold dust if you want a career in analytics but still applicable to everyone else too.

I’m probably going to get a new job title. And it won’t be UX-anything, so don’t worry that I’ve had a change of heart on that.

I don’t use my IA title much within the organisation. The web team get it but that’s four people.  I tend to introduce myself by what projects I’m working on. In project kick off meetings and meetings with stakeholders I’ll explain what I’ll be doing on the project but not my title.

A lot of the teams I work with are intimidated by IT projects. And for them the language of user experience design and information architecture is as alienating and terrifying as the language of server architecture and database design. It is all big words from people who get paid more than they do and seem to work in an alternate universe of conferences, social networks and blogging.

So mostly my introductions go something like…”I’m Karen, I’m part of the project team and I’ll be responsible for making sure users can find their way around the new site”. Or “the search actually works this time”. Or “putting your content into the system isn’t such a nightmare”.

So my boss and I are trying to come up with something that both more accurately conveys what I actually do and is also a user friendly one.

Anyone got any examples of doing user research into what their job title should be?

Whilst I can’t be said to have planned this, it appears I only work for organisations that aren’t really about making money.

I started my career with the Guardian newspaper. We were told at the time that the Guardian was “profit making but not profit driven” although this really refers to the Guardian Media Group as I believe the Guardian itself is ‘loss-making’. The Group is owned by the Scott Trust, a non-profit organisation.

I moved onto the BBC. A public corporation, it is funded by a combination of TV licence fee, commerical activities (BBC Worldwide) and a grant-in-aid from the Foreign Office (for the World Service). It has a Royal Charter and is governed by the BBC Trust. When people join the BBC they are often excited to be working for the public rather than shareholders. They are right that this is lovely. However working out whether you are doing well or not is a lot harder to work out. Hence my struggles with defining a metric for the information architecture of bbc.co.uk.

My latest move is to the RNIB. This much more straight forwardly a charity, the patron is the Queen.

It appears that mostly I work for the Queen.

This is my last week at the BBC. Next week I’ll start my new job at the RNIB in Kings Cross.

I’ve seen lots of people quit the BBC for the wrong reasons. Or at least they don’t resolve those problems with their first new job (the spring board job). The only things you are guaranteed to get when you leave a job are the tangible things, the kind of stuff that is written in your contracts.  So I will definitely be getting:

• a much, much shorter commute
• less money, although pretty much the same benefits otherwise
• no working in the office over the weekends or late nights (they shut the place up)
• a greater variety of places to eat at lunchtime
• to be working for a charity, working for a goal worth getting out of bed for
• proximity to the British Library
• an office with purple floors

This really distills down to “closer to home, for a charity”.

Tangible sacrifices:

• I won’t have a community of IAs immediately around me (although I have high hopes for regular coffees with the lovely folks at the Wellcome Trust in Euston)
• I won’t be managing people (one of my favourite things about my BBC job)
• My projects will be lower profile
• I may end up less well-read (because of the shorter commute)

My intangible but realistic hopes:

• get some energy back. A shot in the arm
• to work with a lovely team of people
• re-apply stuff learnt at the BBC
• learn new things
• to unravel a new organisation and the way it works

I won’t be expecting to get unambiguous and stable strategy, respect that doesn’t have to be earned, and to get away from decision making I disagree with. But I think lots of people fall into that trap.

Pretty much every job ad asks for experience, which can make trying to break into a new field seem nigh-on impossible at times.

If you are trying to break into information architecture and hitting the ‘experience-required’ brick wall then consider doing some volunteering:

1. The IA Institute is always looking for volunteers. There’s a list of opportunities on their website and most of them can be done anywhere in the world.
2. Use the advanced search on do-it.org and select ‘computers, technology and website development’ to get results for charities looking for help with their websites. Or try idealist.org or the equivalent service in your part of the world.
3. Approach a local charity direct and offer to help with their website. Usually they’ll be looking for help write, publishing and troubleshooting but you can start there and suggest other improvements as you go along.
4. Get familiar with how people use technology – volunteer to help teach basic IT skills. Age Concern are currently looking for IT trainers and Help the Aged run a similar scheme. Schools and other community groups are often looking for help like this as well. Try the same computers search on do-it.org but narrow with the keyword ‘trainer’.

Volunteering gives you an opportunity to try out what you’ve read about, build up your portfolio and it is great experience at making IA improvements with a limited budget (or more normally, no budget). That’ll be attractive to any employer.

With all this fussing about professional identity at work, starting my archaeology course, and reading this…

“Prolific artists don’t question their artistic identities. They own the title of artist, writer, musician, etc. This might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important. Prolific people aren’t shy about what they do, or about their love of art. When they have corporate jobs they tend to view themselves as writers with desk jobs rather than a corporate employees who also write. “

…I realised I couldn’t pin down that sort of identity.

Somehow this morphed into writing down a list of everything I have formally studied over the years. As one angle on trying to see if there is a picture:

GCSEs
physics, chemistry, biology, maths, english lit + lang, french, geography, graphic product design.

A-Levels
physics, maths, english (and more maths)

BA Communications with Philosophy

(by year and then in descending grade order)

• reason and argument
• history of science B
• technology and society
• history of science A
• intro to practical philosophy
• intro to theoretical philosophy
• the mind
• communications in the modern world
• philosophy of science
• audio-visual communications

(sucked at my major, ok in my minor, excelled in my electives – doesn’t bode well for judgement)

• political communications
• modern political philosophy
• social communications
• communications arts
• meaning and truth
• theories of meaning
• modern moral philosophy
• communications sciences and technologies

• technology and society
• film theory and aesthetics
• media ethics
• advanced topics in political philosophy
• communications theory
• matters of life and death 1
• matters of life and death 2
• philosophy of science 3

MSc Information Science

• dissertatation – organisation of newspaper websites
• fundamentals of information science
• principles of knowledge organisation
• media information
• information retrieval systems and applications
• data representation and management
• research and communication skills
• information resources and users
• advanced online retrieval
• information law and policy
• information management and records

Open University

• fossils and the history of life
• life in the oceans
• studying mammals
• starting with psychology
• archaeology

Any themes? Well I’m good at logic, maths & organising stuff. I like science, but particularly the history and sociology of it. I find politics interesting enough to get good grades.

There are always some random courses in there: graphic product design, english, film theory. And film theory was one of my best grades ever.

Perhaps I’m just a serial student.

30 is fine. I still get ID’d in pubs so I’m not likely to be worried by the laughter lines.

Pileswasp thinking my birthday is tomorrow also fine. It would be churlish to be picky about exact dates when he bought Ribenna lollies.

Work today being just like the current Dilbert thread. Less fine.
(As a result I won’t be able to go to the IA coffee morning on Friday hosted by the lovely folks at Wellcome Trust. If you’re in London you should definitely go, if only for that cake!)

Being 30 also means that career #1 is 80% sorted. I’ve got lots of careers planned so none of them can take up more than 10 years. The plan is to retire at 82. Might be worried about the laughter lines by then.

A Whole New Mind proposes that business and hence our careers are changing under pressures from automation, abundance and outsourcing to Asia. Daniel Pink challenges the reader to consider their job and ask:

1. Can a computer do it faster?
2. Is what I’m offering in demand in an age of abundance?
3. Can someone overseas do it cheaper?

He sees a rise in ‘right-brain’ jobs that emphasise skills like empathy and design.
Pink is only really addressing affluent westerners with the message “your jobs are going to India”. I found the failure to universalise the message occassionally jarring. I also don’t buy the idea that ambitious middle class mothers will be encouraging their kids to become nurses. I think there remains a difference between valuable, needed roles and aspirational, status roles.

I feel a bit like my reading list is eating its own tail. This time ‘A Whole New Mind’ referenced Pat Kane, Martin Seligman, Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi and Matthieu Ricard. Older reads that also featured were Isaiah Berlin, Powers of Ten, George Lakoff and Scott McCloud.

I think I may need to get out (of my reading rut) more.

Ilaria got in touch to ask me to answer some questions for her thesis about Information Architecture:

1. First of all, I’d like you to introduce yourself, your job, main stages of your professional career and of your education (studies) that have brought you to deal with Information Architecture.
2. Do you think Information Architecture is more of a scientific or arts subject matter? Why?
3. Can you tell me any advantage in your Information Architecture job derived from being involved in communication/journalism?
4. Why, do you think, Information Architecture is so important and relevant?

Here’s my waffly responses:
1. I studied Communications at the University of Leeds and when I graduated I took a graduate trainee position with the Guardian newspaper in London. The role was working in their research and information department. It mostly involved putting newspaper articles into the electronic and paper archives and carrying out research for journalists.

My manager encouraged me to apply to study for an MSc in Information Science. Around a month before I was due to start the course, the website manager for the Guardian emailed everyone asking if anyone was available to work night-shifts on the Guardian website. I realised this would be interesting and a good way to fund my MSc so I applied.

Whilst studying for my MSc I was introduced to the concepts of information architecture. I read Rosenfeld and Morville’s Information Architecture for the World Wide Web and had a ‘eureka moment’ as I realised that IA would combine my interests in media and information management and just generally organising things! I decided to base my dissertation on IA.

At same time I was still working on the Guardian website. One night one of the team came and asked me where the letters page was on the website. I didn’t know off the top of my head so I had a browse around and I couldn’t find it. I realised if two of the staff couldn’t find it then there might be something wrong with the site navigation. I decided that my dissertation would be about the IA of the Guardian website. I carried out a number of card-sorts and category membership expectation tests and subsequently proposed a simplified navigation structure in my dissertation.

On graduation I applied to the BBC for a role called Assistant Producer, Search & Metadata. At that time there were no information architects at the BBC but shortly after I joined the BBC hired their first IA. I talked with him and tried to learn where I could. Later the BBC initiated a content management project and hired Margaret Hanley who had previously worked at Argus Associates. She built a team of IAs which I subsequently joined.

2. It is both, I’m afraid. Individuals who approach IA in very different ways. Some are very focused on metrics, search log analysis, multi-variant testing and rigorous user testing (although we rarely test to levels of statistical significance). Others come from a more creative background and focus more on the ‘design’ aspects of the role. Personally I think the reason IA is powerful and that IAs are valuable to organisations is because they combine thinking styles and should be at ease with both logical/analytical approaches and with more intuitive and inventive styles, and be able to use whichever is more appropriate at a given point in time.

3. Studying communications was useful in getting a foot in the door in media organisations but I’ve also been surprised at how much of both my degrees I have actually used in my career, particularly the sociology of communications that I studied in my first degree. I often find myself going back to David Gauntlett’s work (http://www.theory.org.uk/).

Journalism has always been about structuring information clearly. This can mean that in a media organisation an IA will find allies amongst the journalists who also think about IA problems. In my experience, however, it is also true that these allies can be found in the software engineering teams, design teams and amongst the product managers too.

Sometimes it can be difficult to be an IA in a news organisation. In journalism-led organisations the journalist is king and other disciplines may be relegated to the status of support staff. This can make it hard to be listened to. Luckily this is less the case in the BBC, hence why I have stayed so long!

4. For me, IA solves two main problems:
* ensuring content is findable
* making the complex clear

You don’t have to have an IA to do this. Many sites run by smart non-IAs have cracked these problems without having a dedicated IA but if they have thought about and solved these problems then they were applying IA thinking.

So why have an IA do this? It might be necessary to have someone operate in the role of facilitator/connector, who can talk the language of both the designers and developers. Or the project may be large enough to justify a specialist who concentrates on the IA aspects and frees up the other disciplines to concentrate to concentrate on, say, the emotional design, or the scalability of the technical solution.

My experience at the BBC has been that once a project team has had an IA on a project then they want one on the next project. They can’t necessarily explain why but they know it mattered.

A dedicated IA might be a luxury for many websites but having someone who thinks like an IA is vital.