Andrea Gandino

On Feb. 20 – 21 I’ve attended the Third Italian IA Summit, in Forlì.

First off, let me give a public thank to the guys who organized the event: Alberto Mucignat, Andrea Resmini, Dario Betti, Luca Rosati, Emanue­le Quintarelli.

A huge thankyou also to my buddies Simone Economo and Piotr Fedorczyk, who I have been very pleased to meet in first person, and who have been two great companions for this wonderful experience.

I’d also like to thank all of the people who organized the summit, and all of the guys I have talked to, especially Francesco Casale, Elia Contini and Giacomo Neri.

So what have I learned? I’ve learned that Information Architecture is a science that can be quite hard to describe, as several different disciplines are somehow involved and connected together. This implies that serveral people, each one with a different academic background, can be gathered and still talk about the same things. Architects, psychologists, developers, visual designers, interaction designers, user experience experts, etc.

Such a plurality of opinions and points of view form the basis for something that exalts the social aspect of our lives as they are today, more and more connected by that thing we call the Internet.

In describing what the meeting has been all about, I’m going to quickly run through some keywords that I’ve chosen.

#### Context

The Web is a medium that constantly evolves. The fact that we use it on a daily basis has changed many rules in many games. Besides the obvious game of communication, there’s a new simple aspect about the Web that has become not only relevant, but crucial: we now access the Web with different devices, not only computers. Expecting to be able to accomplish the same tasks on different devices in different *contexts* is the primary corollary to this statement.

Different contexts mean different methods and methodologies to do stuff. This substantial difference among various devices and the way each one of them is used *must* be perceived by all of those people that somehow create things on the Web. The overall user experience that connotes a service is now the sum of all the individual experiences related to the specific devices that service is delivered by. I think that’s what defines the *Ecosystems* Leonora Giovanazzi (slides), and later Gianluca Brugnoli, referred to.

If the design and development phase is able to intercept this need, by developing softwares and interfaces tailored on the device that will host them mantaining the brading aspect of the service, then the same service will truly offer a global and, most of all, enjoyable experience of use: an example of that could be what Maria Cristina Lavazza talked about in her speech—about organizing goods in a grocery store, with the hope of a technology not only more user friendly, but also more efficient, really helping the people that make use of it.

And speaking about context, I’d like to cite Luca Mascaro’s presentation, concerning adaptive interfaces. It has been a great talk, both innovative and sharp, and really got me thinking about many things I didn’t take into account before. But, this is a vast topic, way too complex to be exposed here and now, so as soon as I’ll have elaborated something deeper, I think you’ll find a new article here on the subject.

#### Collaboration

Collaboration is strictly connected to that game we’ve talked about earlier, that is communication.

Collaboration can happen in different ways, at different levels, in different circumstances and for diffe­rent purposes.

Collaborative tagging, for example, is something we deal with and contribute to it almost every day, and I’m pretty sure many of you will have noticed some intrinsic problems with it. The case study made by Renata Durighello about collaborative tagging done by kids has surprisingly pointed out that those issues are transversal through different ages. Having common issues is a good start to find solutions for at least part of those problems like normalizing keywords, correcting typing errors with a smart interpretation of the tags based on thesauri and frequence of occurrence.

Of course, it isn’t *that* easy. In fact, smart interpetation will never be as smart as we want it to be, and human control will always be the best way of ensuring quality tagging. Still, those workarounds, combined with education towards the act of tagging, especially working in order to find shared conventions, are the best chance of reducing the tagging noise.

Always speaking of collaboration, the talk delivered by Søren Muus introducing an european community of information architects, together with the idea of sharing opinions and experience, not being limited or stopped by differences and cultural boundaries was *truly inspiring*. I got to talk to Muus for a couple of minutes the day after, and he was very nice towards me, and I think this explains better than anything else a serendipituous attitude towards others we should have.

#### Participation

One word that rhymes well with collaboration is participation. I was particularly impressed by the concept of participative design applied to the building of an airport, well exposed by Davide Potente and Stefano Bussolon. Very clever.

In the closing keynote of the Summit, Jim Kalbach introduced the concept of Commercial Ethnography, pointing out that a new approach towards commerce should be user research, not product research. It’s all about User Centered Design: the customers are seen as a resource. If you get into their shoes to study their problems, their needs, the conditions they live in and how these (and more) factors affect the way they behave, you can get precious new perspectives.

#### Evangelization

I want to sum everything up with one word: evangelization. It’s a vague term, I know. But one thing emerged from this meeting: we are not alone and, as Bussolon said, we need to keep communicating with each other. Also, I’d add, we need to spread the word evangelizing the people around us not only to a higher degree of technology awareness, but also introducing what we’ve talked about this weekend in our daily working lives.

It’s gonna be hard, OK, but it’s damn worth the effort.

P.S. If you’re interested, videos of the presentations are available, and so are my photos from the event.