Jorge Arango

People often ask me: “How does an architect get into designing websites?” I tell them that when I was studying, there were few academic disciplines as relevant to web design as architecture. The reason for this is that successful architectural design balances a series of forces that pull a project in different directions:

[...]

One of the advantages of living in the developing world is that I am exposed to a wide variety of UX disasters. If you find it hard to define UX, try dealing with a Panamanian government office. You will quickly see what a lack of UX thinking looks like, and this will in turn aid your appreciation and understanding of good UX.

[...]

It’s been over a year since I last posted here. Much has happened in the last 12 months:

• My second daughter, Ada, was born.
• I bought out my partners in BootStudio.
• I wrapped up a few of my non-work commitments, including my roles in the IA Institute and Boxes and Arrows.

These things are not unrelated.

In parallel, two other important shifts happened during this time:

• Twitter became my main venue for publishing pithy throwaway comments.
• Facebook became my main venue for reconnecting with friends and family.

As a result, I’ve been trying to figure out what role this site plays in my toolbox. I was toying with the idea of discontinuing the blog altogether, and last week even went as far as replacing the homepage with a static one page site with links to my main social media accounts. I regretted it almost immediately.

So this is the deal: I’ll be using this site as a notebook where I will work out half-baked ideas, primarily about (but not limited to) IA and UX design. I hope it’s of interest to someone else, but that won’t be the driving factor. Let’s see where it goes.

The IA Institute will be hosting the fourth annual IDEA conference in Toronto from September 15-16. This year’s conference, which is being organized and chaired by Russ Unger, will focus on social and experience design, and will feature an outstanding roster of presenters, including:

• Stephen P. Anderson – product strategy and design consultant
• Christian Crumlish – Curator of the Yahoo! design pattern library, and co-author of the upcoming book Designing Social Interfaces
• Jeff Dachis – CEO, Dachis Group and cofounder of Razorfish
• Erin Malone – Principal, Tangible UX, and co-author of the upcoming book Designing Social Interfaces
• Leisa Reichelt – UX designer and researcher, currently working on the UX for Drupal 7
• Christina Wodtke – Principal Product Manager at LinkedIn, and co-author of the book Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web
• Luke Wroblewski – Director, Product Ideation and Design, Yahoo!
• … and many others!

There will also be a pre-conference workshop on September 14 led by Nathan Curtis of EightShapes; this promises to be an excellent opportunity to learn how to craft effective deliverables from one of the world’s top experts in the field.

Design for the social web is one of the hottest areas in UX today. I encourage you to register today to attend IDEA 2009! (BTW, you can take advantage of special Early Bird pricing if you register before August 15. Update: early bird pricing has been extended til August 22!)

Note: because of previous personal and professional commitments, I’m unfortunately not going to be able to travel to IDEA this year. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go!

The first issue of the Journal of Information Architecture has been published. This project, which is co-sponsored by the IA Institute and the Copenhagen Business School, is a major milestone in the development of our field. Congratulations to everyone involved!