Trip Report: IA Conference 2009

Hamburg, Sat. 16 - Sun. 17th May 2009

Participants MPDL: Rupert Kiefl

For the MPDL the talk 'Design und praktischer Einsatz von UI Patterns' was contributed.

Note: The conference website available here. Please ask for Presentations if you are interested.

The field of information architecture has gained better recognition and is growing fast in Germany. It's scope ranges between web development, project management and usability engineering.

Web reference

See impressions of the conference here: Flikr

Follow the corresponding twitter feed: Twitter

View the presentation Slides: Slideshare

Collection of presentations:

Keynote 'Marrying Web Analytics and User Experience' by Louis Rosenfeld
The relationship and combination of both metrics and qualitative heuristics was pointed out:


 * examples of metrics where given
 * limitation of both approaches were discussed
 * the difference of 'what does someone' and 'why' was pointed out
 * a 'landscape of user research methods' was introduced
 * for practical use, some hints were given, how to interpret metrics

IA & E-Commerce 'Ticketbuchung auf bahn.de: Ein Reiseportal wird mobil' by Fr. Bußmann, I. Skowranek
A typical 'user experience project' which gave a fine example how the shift in building web applications takes place:


 * Approach to a complex procurement process was presented
 * Methods and practice was introduced
 * The process from flow chart to wireframe draft and prototyping was shown
 * prototyps were shown (done with Axure)

IA & Project Integration 'Wenn IA statt IA Geschäftsprozesse und eServices konzipiert. Über Grenzbereiche der IA. Bogo Vatovec
How a user experience consulting project turned into a nation wide role out of a complete web infrastructure for a US bank.


 * processes and their implications (legal issues, localization issues)
 * problems in project management through change requests were discussed
 * project lead challenge through a lot of stakeholders

IA & Project Integration 'Visual Modeling im UCD-Prozess.' by Holger Deist, Wolfgang Teusch
Holger showed how the UCD-process is established within the development process.


 * flowcharts from a product development phase were discussed
 * entry points for engagement of user cantered design iterations where suggested

IA Toolbox 'Design und praktischer Einsatz von UI Patterns.' by Rupert Kiefl
Our way of defining interface patterns was presented using publication management as an example.


 * difficulties and implications for web frontends with JAVA applications were discussed
 * the abstract pattern was introduced
 * alls steps from abstract pattern to style guide definition towards implementation were presented
 * the outcome PubMan R4 and outlook to future work was presented

More presentations were offered in parallel (only presentation with focus on user centred design are listed)

IA & Project Integration 'Der Informationsarchitekt: Sparringspartner oder Regisseur?' Jutta Korn
Different roles of information architects in various projects.


 * Short term campaigns with focus on creative input and their impact towards the team setting was shown
 * Long term customer projects were shown in comparison

IA & Project Integration 'Keine Ausreden mehr - Usability Tests im Team erleben und auswerten.' Rolf Schulte Strathaus
A very usefull presentation. A new approach to usability evaluation was given, it reduces the effort in analyzing results and at the same time introduces stakeholders to the use and benefit of usability testing.


 * Introduction of the problem: 'no money for usability tests'
 * Presentation of the new approach: 'Thinking aloud, combined with a usability workshop'

IA & Agile 'Agile User Centered Design. IA und UX Methoden im Agilen Software Entwicklungsprozess.' Oliver Emmler, Wolf Nöding (ICW, Walldorf)
Both speaker introduced a project dealing with eHealth.


 * The scrum method was introduced
 * The role and integration of the user centered design team was presented
 * Development phases and outcome was presented

Guest speaker: 'User Experience Deliverables in Practice.' Peter Boersma (Info.nl, Netherlands)
A definition of the term information architecture was given. Varieties of methods were shown.

IA & Intranets: 'Ein Intranet für alle.' Arno Bublitz, Urs Schnabel
A project with focus on integration of globally spread intranets was presented.


 * An overview of the former intranet landscape of evonics was given
 * Transition and migration issues were discussed
 * Development phases and outcome was presented