TriUPA Modeling Concepts

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
100 Capitola Dr., Suite 106
Durham, NC
http://triupa.org/ModelingConcepts

A staple in the information architect’s tool chest, the site map, approaches obsolescence faster and faster every day. The site map–a literal representation of every page on a web site–no longer adequately captures the structures behind today’s web sites. Information architects need a new tool.

About the speaker

Dan Brown is founder and principal at EightShapes, LLC, a user experience consulting firm based in Washington, DC that has engaged with clients in telecommunications, media, education, health, high-tech, and other sectors. Dan has been practicing information architecture and user experience design since 1995.

Prior to founding EightShapes, Dan consulted with organizations ranging from the US Postal Service, the World Bank, and the Federal Communications Commission to USAirways, FirstUSA, and Fannie Mae. From 2002-2004, Dan was a Federal employee, leading the content management program for the Transportation Security Administration. His portfolio includes work on public-facing web sites, intranets and extranets, and addresses most aspects of the user experience, from information architecture and content strategy to interaction and interface design.

Drawing on his expertise in communicating complex ideas and abstractions through high-quality visual documentation, Dan wrote a book on user experience deliverables: Communicating Design (New Riders, 2006). Amazon reviews call it “authoritative”, “practical, personal, comprehensive” and “a cool nerdbook”. He’s written more than a dozen articles for Boxes and Arrows, an online journal dedicated to information architecture, on topics ranging from PowerPoint to the information architecture of home audio devices. He’s also written for UX Matters, the CHI Bulletin, and Interactive Television Today.

A concept model can be that tool. While similar to the site map, a concept model avoids confining information architects to a specific framework for representing structures. It provides flexibility for accommodating a range of concepts and objects–not just web pages. It can represent a variety of relationships and easily incorporate contextual information. Modern web sites no longer are a collection of static HTML pages. Instead, they rely on templates, portlets, and complex interactivity. A user’s experience of such sites are hardly linear or hierarchical. Information architects need a visualization tool to capture the range of abstractions that form the foundation of modern sites.

This workshop will help participants adopt concept modeling into their own processes. Besides introducing the deliverable and providing advice on how to create them, the workshop will help participants understand where and when concept models are appropriate to use. We will discuss the range of problems concept models can address and how to translate a model from an abstract representation of a site’s structure to concrete wireframes.