What Semantic Web means for Information Architecture - by Claudia Urschbach

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Hello. Welcome to my session. I’m Claudia Urschbach. I’m working as IA for the BBC and I’m VERY nervous about presenting at such a cool conference. How nice to see you all. Hope you enjoy it. Change is inevitable. What Semantic Web and Web 3.0 mean for IA

What the hell is wrong with you?

Do you have any idea what time it is?

Oh dear. She’s one of those.

Nee, oder? Ich glaub’s nicht! Jetzt is das hier echt so ein Blödsinn.

Too slow!!! Come on, coooome ooooon.

I can’t believe it. I’m missing the Kalbach session on Ethnography for this?!

What happened to normal presentations?! Nothing wrong with slides & bullet points!

Again. What the hell is wrong with you?

Do you have any idea what time it is?

They don’t get it. They really don’t get it !!! How embarrassing ! What if I just say it was all a big mistake? No! Augen zu und durch. (Eyes shut and go.)

You are in a dark room to listen to another presentation. It’s Friday 5.15pm. You are in Amsterdam. About Semantic Web!!! And you tell me you don’t know what’s wrong with you?! It is a sunny day.

WEIRDO !!!

The good news is: You are not alone.  Look to your left, look to your right. 

We all suffer from Beinginterestedinfartoomanythings Syndrome. Some of us also have chronic Mustreallyunderstandthis. Only yesterday I had another attack of Detailsmania. You won’t find a full stop missing in this presentation. In this room I can sense a lot of Will-i-miss-out-if-i-don’t-read-this-blog Phobia.

After all, we are Information Architects

User Experience Designers

Usability Experts

Business Analysts

etc

because we have these

dysfunctions / abilities.

Thank God, some bullet points.

The IA-Persona lives a stressful life

It is a curious species with a good-sized brain that needs feeding regularly.

It likes progress & being up-to-date with the latest.

It experiments with techniques and invents solutions.

It is technology savvy but not too keen on coding. But it hates situations where others know more.

Everything the IA-Persona does has to do with change. Creating change, adapting to change, managing change.

A lot of its time is spent hunting. For the next contract, client or staff member. For opportunities around a new technology/product/audience.

Making choices about what to stay on top of A hard thing to do for the IA-Persona. Do we really have to? Is this a a) Must? b) Should? c) Could? d) Simply unnecessary? Where should the boundaries of your knowledge be? Do you want to consciously set them or see where the world takes you?

Stating the Obvious

Professions become more segmented the longer they are around.

The more complex a subject matter the more segmented the profession becomes that deals with it.

Most professions keep having specialists & generalists.

IA always had specialists, eg. taxonomists.

UX is becoming more segmented already, eg. Accessibility experts.

Specialists often earn more but take a higher risk.

What new specialist opportunities arise with Semantic Web/Web 3.0? Semantic Web Personalisation Mobile Internet IA User Data Process

Semantic Web

Semantic Web has to do with

Unique identifiers

Linked Data Cloud Social Media Linking structured data Rich Media RDF, FOAF, SIOC, MOAT… Ontologies & OWL Open Source OpenID Feeds & APIs

Linked Data Cloud – Who is who?

Microformats RESTful websites Understanding meaning Sharing knowledge Personalisation Users, their friends & their activities Web without sitemaps Semantic Web has to do with dbpedia User generated content

Increasing demand for skills around

Unique Identifiers Defining unique identifiers Standardising mapping controlled vocabularies & user tags Finding existing identifiers in the Linked Data Cloud Integrating existing identifiers in auto-classification engines Communicating with Linked Data Community

Relationships Identifying relevant relationships Creating domain models & RESTful site concepts Creating ontologies & ongoingly manage/grow them

Social Data Understanding & interpreting different types of social data Creating algorithms offering users useful data

Content Management Creating user-friendly data entry points & procedures away from WYSIWG for one output format Integrating metadata steps but classifying content with unique identifiers used beyond the own ‘silo’

Social Data Understanding & interpreting different types of social data Creating algorithms offering users useful data

All this additionally to the usual Conducting user research, requirements gathering, wireframing, prototyping, sitemaps…

Personalisation

Relationships Single customer view Recommendations OpenID Cross platform user journeys Personalisation has to do with Collaborative filtering Identifying users User Experience Accessibility Data Protection

Cookies RESTful sites User generated content Drag n Drop Social Graph RSS APIs Users, their friends & their activities My Tags Personalisation has to do with Targeted advertising Widgets

Conceptual Models Conducting user research around needs & preferences of target audience sub-groups Business analysis to identify missing or poor quality data Communication with other organisations that provide user data via API (eg. OpenID framework)

Conceptual Model work I Flickr User Model by Bryce Glass

Conceptual Model work II Richard Northover, BBC

Conceptual Models Conducting user research around needs & preferences of target audience sub-groups Business analysis to identify missing or poor quality data Communication with other organisations that provide user data via API (eg. OpenID framework)

Data Mining Analysing & interpreting Social Graph Data Developing useful implicit personalisation ideas Defining algorithms & tuning rules engines for collaborative filtering Feeding data requirements back to the business

Social Data Understanding & interpreting different types of social data Creating algorithms offering users useful content Developing advertising ideas that make use of social data Exploring options of using social data – like data for collaboration in a work environment

Interface design Wireframing & prototyping for X users & variable journeys Developing design patterns that allow transparency Championing user’s interest & developing interfaces that enable users to not just set preferences but to manage & control their personal data & their data history Defining Publishing/CMS-requirements for sites to be built in a way that users can withdraw their contributions at any time Developing interfaces for transferring preference settings across sites & platforms

Mobile Internet

Understanding context of use Conducting user research to understand enablers for rich & valuable mobile services – not just ‘on the go’ services Developing new methods around contextual research & observation

Interface design Wireframing & prototyping for X screen sizes and navigation concepts Rapid changes & new apps every month Seamless user journeys web  mobile

Innovation Driving innovation of new commercial & public services for the fastest growing platform in new media Investigating social media potential beyond ideas ‘carried over from the web’

Anything for you?

Think about it ;-)

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