My talk at the 2015 #ConveyUX conference on using UX techniques to design information infrastructures.

1. Modeling…
in
the
Real
World
@bramwessel
factorfirm.com

2. What
is
Modeling
in
the
Real
World?
Understanding how to design
strategic information infrastructures
grounded in user and business goals
to enable complex human experiences

3. 3
Blue
Sky

4. Future
vision
for
an
integrated
experience
• 2-5 years out
• Integrated physical and digital
• Retail and e-commerce
• Currently anticipated technologies

5. Meet
Julia
• She works as an Art Director for a stock photography
company in the Pacific Northwest
• She’s 32, single, and has disposable income - she’s
looking for a social hobby
• She aspires to enjoy “the finer things in life,” but
within her means
• She’s a smartphone owner and uses her phone to
shop
• She does a lot of local travel to go on photo-shoots to
interesting locations…

6. Julia
And she’s also a model!
You can use stock images for Personas, but be sure to clear the rights!

7. 7
Julia
has
a
photo
shoot
in…
The
middle
of
nowhere.
Toppenish,
WA.

8. But
8
But
it’s
at
a
vineyard.
That
sounds
kind
of
interesting…

9. 9

13. So,
Julia
decides
she
wants
to
get
into…
WINE

14. Where
does
she
start?
Here?

18. 18
Back
to
Toppenish.

19. Where
does
she
start?

20. Here?

23. Where
does
she
start?

24. H
e
r
e
?

25. 25

26. Where
does
she
start?

27. H
e
r
e
?

28. 28

29. Where
does
she
start?

30. Here?

31. 31

32. 32

33. 33

34. 34

35. 35

36. 36

37. 37

38. 38

39. 39

40. 40

41. 41

42. 42

43. 43

44. 44

45. 45

46. 46

47. 47

48. 48

49. 49

50. 50

52. So,
what
just
happened?
Crate and Barrel helped Julia “get
into wine” by selling her everything
she needed except actual wine.

53. OK,
what
do
we
UX
folks
think
happened?
An integrated omni-channel experience
expressed in:
• A Persona
• Scenarios
• Taxonomies
• Physical and Digital Environments
• Operational Integration

54. Factors
of
this
experience
• Data/Information-rich
• Multiple experience providers and
touchpoints
• Not controlled or self-contained
• Triggered professionally, migrated to
consumer
• Riven with false starts and detours
• Driven by passion, emotion over utility

55. You're
the
design
team.
What
does
it
take
to
make
this
experience
possible?
• User goals and how they evolve
• Your own business goals and drivers
• Your experience environments
• Your taxonomies and information assets
• Your information infrastructure
• Your resources
• Your readiness
Understanding…

56. You
are
the
design
team
-­‐
how
do
you
make
this
experience
possible
in
your
organization?
• User Research
• Business goal analysis
• Experience Modeling
• Information Modeling
• Assessment of systems at play
• Governance Planning
• Organizational Alignment

57. User
and
Business
Goals
Experience Taxonomy
Information
Infrastructure
Resources
and
Governance
Readiness
and
Alignment

58. User
and
Business
Goals
Experience Taxonomy
Information
Infrastructure
Resources
and
Governance
Readiness
and
Alignment

59. Why
Understand
User
Goals?
• Do your users want or need this
experience? Why?
• Are your users ready for this
experience?
• What’s the value of this experience
going to be for users beyond
successful transactions?
User
and
Business
Goals

60. How
to
Understand
User
Goals
• Contextual Inquiry
• Card Sorting and Tree Testing
• Personas
• Scenarios
User
and
Business
Goals

61. Back
to
Julia
• She works as an Art Director for a stock photography
company in the Pacific Northwest
• She’s 32, single, and has disposable income - she’s
looking for a social hobby
• She aspires to enjoy “the finer things in life,” but
within her means
• She’s a smartphone owner and uses her phone to
shop
• She does a lot of local travel to go on photo-shoots to
interesting locations…

62. Personas
and
Taxonomy
Taxonomies and the relationships between them often
surface in Personas:
• Stage of life
• Areas of interest
• Geography / Location
• Types of desired products / services
• Relationships between and among products and services
• Channels and touchpoints
• Level of technical facility or savvy
• Audience Segment
• Gender
• Goals

63. Why
Understand
Business
Goals
and
Drivers?
• Does it make sense to deliver this experience?
Why?
• What is it going to take to deliver this
experience?
• Are you ready to deliver this experience?
• What will you need to change to deliver this
experience?
• What are the qualities of experience you can
commit to?
User
and
Business
Goals

64. Exposing
Business
Goals
and
Drivers
There are many techniques but they share a common
thread - understanding not just what your business
goals are, but what’s driving them.
businessmodelgeneration.com

65. Experience
User
and
Business
Goals
Taxonomy
Information
Infrastructure
Resources
and
Governance
Readiness
and
Alignment

66. • You can’t deliver an experience without a
complete grasp of the information assets
required to support it
• You must understand all facets of the
experience to know what systems will need to
be in play, when, and in what context
• Experiences don’t begin and end with your
properties (especially digital properties)
Experience
Why
Understand
Experience?

67. Experience
Map
Discover Consider Decide
Attachmate
Enters
Find information for
the people who need
it
Training offerings
Share
Collect feedback in
collaborative tools
TCO and ROI
Calculators
Training Offerings
TCO and ROI
Calculators
TCO and ROI
Calculators
Implementation
planning kit
How to guide: plan
deployment
Product road map
NotSure
NotSure
No
NoNo
No
No
No
No
No
Yes
Yes Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes Yes Yes
Content:
Decision
Process
Content
Start/stop
Doug
IT Influencer
Megan
Business
Influencer
Ben
Business
Decision Maker
Yes
No
NotSure
No
Yes Yes
Yes
No
Renewal
New Customer or Expansion
Robert
IT Decision
Maker
User Goals:
⁃ Establish company credibility.
⁃ Determine whether this solution is credible.
⁃ Gather questions to ask, both of internal
stakeholders and external experts.
⁃ Evaluate solutions against the requirement set.
⁃ Compare solutions.
⁃ Keep track of content, begin to share, and accumulate intelligence.
⁃ Understand ROI.
⁃ Plan for deployment and implementation.
⁃ Finalize planning.
⁃ Fill gaps in solution knowledge.
⁃ Get in touch with sales and/or experts
Megan:
In a strategy meeting for the next year,
Megan identifies an important tactical need
that her company’s computer systems
won’t support. After getting approval from
her superior, she dives into the problem.
She sees Attachmate on a list of approved
vendors, and discovers that another sector
of the company has been using an
Attachmate solution for a similar problem.
She investigates to make
sure the solution solves her immediate
problem, and spends a brief amount of
time on TCO & ROI calculators on
Attachmate.com to make sure it’s feasible
for them, and she knows she will be asked
for Attachmate’s Product Roadmap, so she
saves all of this information to her shared
project space for eventual distribution to
other stakeholders.
Megan holds a meeting to brief
stakeholders and leadership, who give
their support to the expansion. Once the
decision is made to move forward, she
contacts their existing sales representative.
After she has a good handle on her
information, she prepares for briefing
leadership and other stakeholders by
routing tech and business information to
the people best suited to consuming it. She
uses the project space to collaborate with
other members of the company and
creates a comprehensive presentation of
the product.
Megan's company recently merged with
another large corporation, and they’ve
been having difficulties because of the
differences between their legacy systems.
In determining the exact nature of her
company’s new needs, Megan consults
solution briefs by trend, to see if similar
problems are common in the corporate
world today, and case studies by vertical,
to see if companies in similar industries
have been successful in navigating these
problems.
To make sure that Attachmate’s product is
a good fit for their business, Megan reads
through product roadmap and solution
briefs. There are technical questions she’s
not sure about, though, so she brings it up
with Robert, who hands it off to Doug for
research.
After she’s collected feedback from her
colleagues, Megan presents the proposed
course of action at a meeting with the
stakeholders. The feedback from the
meeting is positive, so Megan begins
collaborating with leadership to review and
confirm the details, ensuring that
everything is in order.
Everybody seems to think it will work, so
she focuses on building her case,
collecting data from the TCO & ROI
calculators on Attachmate.com and
relevant information from expert briefs and
case studies.
After all her stakeholders are onboard,
they decide to continue with the new
solution and contact their sales
representative to start the buying process.
Doug:
Doug's superiors notify him that they have
failed a security/risk audit and assign him
to find a solution to make sure it doesn’t
happen again. He begins to investigate the
problem, and determines that none of their
usual vendors offer solutions.
While conducting research online, Doug
sees several references to Attachmate,
which deals with this kind of problem
frequently. He checks them out to make
sure they’re a good company to do
business with, and the company
background information on the website, as
well as third party information online,
convinces him easily.
Attachmate.com shows him several
examples of expert briefs on best practices
in his industry, and how their products can
solve common problems like his. He dives
deeper into the solution briefs to make sure
Attachmate’s product will work with all the
systems his company has in place.
In order to learn more, he provides some
credentials so that he can access a tool
where he can save content from the
website, share it with others, and make
notes. As he checks the solution against
his requirements, he makes notes in this
project space.
There are business and information
security questions he can’t answer, though.
In order to resolve those questions, he
forwards the appropriate information to the
other stakeholders, Ben, Megan, and
Robert, with a short message explaining
the project.
They all make notes based on their
expertise, with their impressions and
questions about the product, and Doug
plans a meeting with leadership.
Through the Attachmate project space,
he’s able to create packets of information
to distribute to everybody at the meeting,
where they can quickly see that this
solution is a good fit and that all the
stakeholders are bought in, as well.
After everybody determines it is the best
solution for this problem, they move ahead
with the sales team.
Doug's company has been a Reflection
customer for several years, and IT’s
internal renewal tracking system notifies
him that their license and maintenance
benefits will expire soon.
After performing an internal audit, Doug
determines that Reflection has been very
valuable to them so far.
He’s not sure, though, whether they should
continue with it indefinitely. It’s a good way
to interface with their legacy systems, but
his superiors might at some point decide to
modernize those systems.
To decide, he consults with Robert to see if
there are any strategic architecture
changes on the roadmap.
Doug confirms with Robert that they're
continuing with the current architecture for
this renewal period.
Based on the information they find on
Attachmate.com and talks with their long-
standing sales representative, they decide
that Reflection is still a better option than a
new system.
After everybody has weighed in and
collected their comments on the project
space, Doug presents the proposed course
of action at a meeting with the
stakeholders. The feedback from the
meeting is positive, so he gets back in
contact with their sales representative and
the renewal goes forward.
In order to keep the renewal process
moving forward, Doug consults
Attachmate’s product roadmap and TCO &
ROI calculator, to make sure he knows
what they’re really signing up for.
In preparation for briefing the stakeholders
and getting final approval, Doug collects IT
and business information through the site
and saves it to his project space and
routes it to the appropriate people in his
organization.
Megan's company has previously
contracted with Attachmate, and they’ve
been happy with the service, but the
current project is unlike any of the previous
ones.
Robert:
Once the stakeholders have signed off on
the renewal, Robert helps review and
check all of the gathered material,
including case studies, tech specs, and
ROI and TCO numbers. He then ensures
that each part of the organization is
appraised and comfortable with
Attachmate's solution before he contacts
sales.
Before briefing the stakeholders, Robert
confirms the details of the product
roadmap, collects information on the ROI
and TCO calculations, and reviews training
offerings, sharing his findings with other
members of the company to create a
comprehensive presentation of the
product.
Once the stakeholders are briefed and
have signed off on the course of action,
Robert helps review and check all of the
gathered material and associated notes,
including case studies, tech specs, and the
ROI and TCO calculations.
He then ensures that each part of the
organization is consulted and comfortable
with Attachmate's solution before he
contacts a sales representative.
NewRenewalNewExpansionNewRenewal
Once the stakeholders have been briefed,
Ben helps review and check all of the
gathered material, including case studies,
tech specs, and the ROI and TCO
calculations.
After reviewing her comments and the
sources she consulted, Ben also reviews
the how-to guide for deployment and an
implementation planning kit to make sure
it’s a feasible situation for their current
business situation.
He then ensures that each part of the
organization is appraised and comfortable
with Attachmate's solution before
contacting sales.
New
Ben: He attaches his comments to the
documents in the project space, and
shares them with other stakeholders before
scheduling a meeting to review
Attachmate’s solution.
After she learns more about the business
side of it, she routes information to Robert,
who delegates checking against IT
requirements to Doug.
Note: Robert and Ben do not appear in the
early stages of the process because they
are consumers of this information.
⁃ Find out more about the landscape.
⁃ Gather detailed requirements.
⁃ Evaluate criteria and prioritize requirements.
⁃ Share content internally
⁃ Assemble and publish an easily consumable
business case
⁃ Get and/or demonstrate buy-in.
Merger/
Acquisition
Displacement
BYOD / Mobility
concerns
(Competitor)
Outbound
Marketing
Marketing Automation Opportunities:
MA 1: At this point, the system is aware of very
little about anonymous visitors other than
where they're linking from. These users
should be exposed to early-stage content.
⁃ MA 3: At this point the system can infer level of engagement from content exposure
and whether or not users are authenticated. Information about content exposure and
inferences about engagement level is more reliable for authenticated than anonymous
users. Anonymous users can be exposed to "consider" stage content and
authenticated users could be eligible for nurturing outreach from sales.
MA 4: Once a user shares content with another user, the system has highly
reliable and actionable information. Since authentication is required for
this kind of activity, the system is aware that multiple users from a
prospect company are engaged and what content they are exposed to.
These users can be suggested specific content and could also be
eligible for outreach from sales.
MA 6: By this point, the system has enough data on the prospect that
sales should be in contact with them. Dormancy at this stage
strongly suggests the need for a response from sales.
MA 7: This stage represents an opportunity for sales to ascend the org
chart of the prospect and identify who will make the final decision.
MA 8: Distribution of business case indicates highly qualified lead - content
presented to users should reflect that.
MA 9: Dormancy at this stage may indicate a difficult deliberation with the
prospect or rejection of the solution. It should trigger a notification to sales
that requires a high-touch human contact with the prospect.
⁃ Whitepapers with POV on current business
issues/landscape.
⁃ Third party POV on issues or endorsements
⁃ High level product and solutions information,
wrapped in messaging and proof points.
⁃ Case studies focused on solving business
issues.
⁃ Detailed product specifications
⁃ Case studies with implementation stories
⁃ Product demos
⁃ TCO/ROI Tools
⁃ Implementation support content
MA1
MA2
MA3
MA4 MA6
MA5
MA7
MA8 MA9
Created for by
MA 2: In a renewal scenario, the system knows a significant amount
about users and their stage of engagement and this information
is highly reliable. These users should only be exposed to
content that maps to their renewal scenario and level of
engagement to keep them moving forward with their scenario.
MA 5: Once multiple users see and comment on content, the
system can flag this for sales staff to interpret and act on.
This opportunity represents the transition from consider to
decide, and sales can take an active role in decision support.
MA4
Security Breach
Merger/
Partnership/
Consolidation
Audit Failure
Do I understand my
specific need?
Does this solution
support my
requirements?
Trends in security
and productivty
Expert briefs of best
practices
Do my stakeholders
know what they need
to?
Category solution
comparisons
Does leadership
understand the
implications of this
purchase?
Is the organization
bought in?
Review materials
generated during
collaboration via
project portal
Do we want to move
forward with
Attachmate?
Follow up /
Post-mortem
with Sales
Sales
Review shared
materials on project
portal
Consult an expert
Expert briefs on best
practices
Do I understand the
implications of this
renewal?
Product Roadmap
Should we continue
with this solution?
Expert forecast of
landscape
Product roadmap
Can an existing vendor
fill this need?
Is this similar to
anything we're
currently doing?
Do I understand the
implications of this
expansion?
Is this a credible
solution?
3rd party validation
Company
background
Expert Brief on Best
Practices
Product Roadmap
Consult an expert
3rd party blog posts
Social media
Link from sales
campaign
Tactical Need
Save materials with
the project portal
Share materials with
peers
Internal renewal
tracking
Contact from
Sales
Internal License
Audit
Have we gotten value out
of this?
Common
criteria and
guidelines
Internal audit
Internal
Helpdesk
records
ROI & TCO
Calculator
Case Studies by
vertical
Company
Background
Implementation
planning kit
Case studies by
vertical
Expert Forecast of
landscape
Solutions briefs by
trends
Best practices by
vertical
Expert Forecast of
landscape
Hand off for detailed
research
TCO and ROI
Calculator
TCO and ROI
Calculators
Contact sales /
consult an expert
How to guide:
choose a solution
Internally identify
general need

68. Understanding
Experiences
Discover Consider
Attachmate
Enters
TCO and ROI
Calculators
Training Offering
NotSure
NotSure
No
NoNo
No
Yes
Yes Yes
Yes
Content:
Decision
Process
Content
Start/stop
Doug
IT Influencer
Megan
Business
Influencer
Ben
Business
Decision Maker
Yes
No
NotSure
No
Yes Yes
Yes
No
Renewal
New Customer or Expansion
Robert
IT Decision
Maker
Merger/
Acquisition
Displacement
BYOD / Mobility
concerns
(Competitor)
Outbound
Marketing
⁃ Whitepapers with POV on current business
issues/landscape.
⁃ Third party POV on issues or endorsements
⁃ High level product and solutions information,
wrapped in messaging and proof points.
⁃ Case studies focused on solving business
issues.
MA1
MA2
MA3
Security Breach
Merger/
Partnership/
Consolidation
Audit Failure
Do I understand my
specific need?
Does this solution
support my
requirements?
Trends in security
and productivty
Expert briefs of best
practices
Category solution
comparisons
Do I understand the
implications of this
renewal?
Product Roadmap
Should we continue
with this solution?
Expert forecast of
landscape
Product roadmap
Can an existing vendor
fill this need?
Is this similar to
anything we're
currently doing?
Do I understand the
implications of this
expansion?
Is this a credible
solution?
3rd party validation
Company
background
Expert Brief on Best
Practices
Product Roadmap
Consult an expert
3rd party blog posts
Social media
Link from sales
campaign
Tactical Need
Save materials with
the project portal
Share materials with
peers
Internal renewal
tracking
Contact from
Sales
Internal License
Audit
Have we gotten value out
of this?
Common
criteria and
guidelines
Internal audit
Internal
Helpdesk
records
Case studies by
vertical
Expert Forecast of
landscape
Solutions briefs by
trends
Best practices by
vertical
Expert Forecast of
landscape
Hand off for detailed
research
TCO and ROI
Calculator
TCO and ROI
Calculators
Contact sales /
consult an expert
How to guide:
choose a solution
Internally identify
general need

69. Experience
Mapping
and
Taxonomy
Taxonomies and the relationships between them
often surface in Experience Maps:
• Channels
• Touch-points
• Events
• Device context
• Environment
• Retail outlet
• Retail floor plan
• Retail display
organization
• Transaction data
• Session
• Profile
• Personal Data
• Locations

70. TaxonomyExperience
User
and
Business
Goals
Information
Infrastructure
Resources
and
Governance
Readiness
and
Alignment

71. A collection of terms, and relationships between terms used to
describe a domain
• ANSI Thesaurus
• Traditional BT/NT taxonomy
• Controlled Vocabularies
• Ontologies
• Controlled value lists
• Folksonomies
Terms or relationships may or may not have rich attributes
associated with them
Taxonomy What
is
Taxonomy?

72. • Capital-T Taxonomy is a loosely applied term
for the discipline of creating taxonomies,
metadata, attribution, faceting, etc.
• Accidental vs. Intentional
• Information in the head vs. Information in
the world
Taxonomy
Capital
and
lowercase

74. Taxonomy wine.com
taxonomies
Facet / Metadata # of vocabulary terms
Type 46
Region 16
Winery 750
Price 6
Rating 6
Total terms 824
Total combinations 1,656,824
Morante, Marcia. Creating Useful Taxonomies: Metadata, Taxonomies and Controlled Vocabularies. SLA – PER
Division, June 8, 2004. http://www.kcurve.com/Metadata_Taxonomy%20Development_SLA_060804.ppt

75. • Taxonomy is like math - it exists whether you realize
it or not
• You have taxonomies, yes taxonomies
• Your Taxonomy (or set of taxonomies) are a critical
business asset
• You must have multiple, related taxonomies if you
want to provide an integrated omni-channel
experience
• The relationships between taxonomies are critical
Taxonomy
Why
Understand
Taxonomy?

76. • Personas, Scenarios, Experience Maps, even
prototypes
• User research, especially card-sorting and tree testing
• Taxonomies should be designed based on well-
understood user mental models
• Your organization structure is not your customer
facing taxonomy!
• Your merchandising taxonomy is not your customer
facing taxonomy!
Taxonomy
How
to
expose
Taxonomy?

77. Information
Infrastructure
TaxonomyExperience
User
and
Business
Goals
Resources
and
Governance
Readiness
and
Alignment

78. How
to
understand
Information
Infrastructure
• What are the systems at play?
• What are systems of record for each
information type?
• What are the operational capabilities of
systems?
• How are information assets implemented in
systems?
• What is the information flow between and
among systems?
Information
Infrastructure

79. Resources
and
Governance
Information
Infrastructure
TaxonomyExperience
User
and
Business
Goals
Readiness
and
Alignment

80. Why
do
you
need
Governance?
• Do you have the workflows to support the
experience and manage the information?
• Do you have the level of resources to support
the experience?
• What are the operational capabilities of staff?
• How is information policy implemented in
your organization?
• How will information assets be modified and
maintained or evolved over time?
Resources
and
Governance

81. Resources
and
Governance
Information
Infrastructure
TaxonomyExperience
User
and
Business
Goals
Readiness
and
Alignment

82. Why
do
you
need
to
be
in
alignment?
• Organizational mis-alignment is the biggest
cause of failure
• These experiences are complex and require
profound levels of integration
• Technical complexities are easier to resolve
than political complexities
• If your organization is not ready to commit to
what the desired experience requires,
DO NOT ATTEMPT
Readiness
and
Alignment

83. Enterprise
Information
Model
Resources
and
Governance
Information
Infrastructure
TaxonomyExperience
User
and
Business
Goals
Readiness
and
Alignment

84. The
Enterprise
Information
Model
What is it?
A set of related taxonomies, workflows, and policies
that can support all facets of integrated omni-
channel experiences across people, processes and
platforms.
An enterprise information model is a critical
information asset of any company that wishes to
provide integrated omni-channel experiences.

85. THANK
YOU
@bramwessel
factorfirm.com