Thinking and Making: Stories by Austin Govella

Evaluating experience design

Austin Govella — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 17:31:00 GMT

I edited this post to clarify how the facets would be used based on a conversation with Paula Thornton.

One of the most limiting factors in Design isn’t the splintering of specialist groups, nor the emergence of specialised vocabularies. We lack common language for discussing Design, for communicating and evaluating the creation of experience.

We all contribute to the overall user experience, but we don’t have a clear definition for what we do: what is experience? We have fuzzy definitions. Several models are emerging (I’m working on one as well), but we still lack an objective means for evaluating experience design. We may not understand it, but we know what it looks like, what it feels like, its general shape. I think we can use several facets to evaluate the resulting user experience:

Personal: How well does the experience relate to the individual user? A conversation with your best friend compared to talking to the clerk at the DMV.
Desirable: How much do the users desire the experience? How much do they want to experience it? How much do they need it? A triple heart bypass versus having your ears pierced.
Enjoyable: How much do users enjoy the experience? A chore versus something you enjoy doing.
Accessible: How accessible is the experience for the user? How understandable, comprehendable, physically available? Climbing Mount Everest versus climbing the curb.
Negotiable: How able is the user to negotiate the experience to better communicate with them? How customizable?

Theoretically, you could survey a group of users to evaluate a given experience in much the same way psychological surveys are performed. A numeric value can then be given to the experience in question. Two quick examples illustrate how you can evaluate different kinds of experiences using these facets:

Heart surgery: A very personal experience and very desirable (if you want to live), but not enjoyable.
Solving a rubix cube: A very personal experience, and very negotiable, but not very accessible. Anyone can try, and almost everyone can manipulate the cube, but very few can solve them.

Evaluating successful experiences

A successful experience evaluates differently for different purposes. Successful sales and education require the almost perfect transmission of mental models. The better sales or education evaluate across all five facets, the more effective the sales and education will be.

Compare learning on your own to learning how to program your VCR, and you can see why so many people have learned how to do the latter. I think one can say that communicative experiences, experiences where the primary goal is to communicate, should evaluate highly on all five facets in order to be successful.

Other experiences evaluate differently for success. The success of jail time’s deterrence requires it be neither desirable, nor enjoyable. And we work at making it undesirable: restricted freedoms; small, overcrowded quarters; and a culture of violence and racism. But, in the eyes of someone trapped in a recidivist culture, jail time loses many of its deterrent features.

None of these facets are mutually exclusive. If we assign values for a given experience, there’s an interaction among these values, but no zero-sum interplay. Improvement along one facet may improve or worsen an experience’s value for another facet. And a high value in one facet might suggest high values in another, but this is not always the case.

The more enjoyable sex becomes, the more desirable the experience will be. But desirablity won’t always correlate with enjoyment. A divorce may be very desirable, but it’d be foolish to suggest it’s an enjoyable experience.

Most importantly, just as no two users ever have the same experience, these evaluations are highly subjective and can only measure the users perception of a future experience (their expectation), or it can measure their perception of the past.

Secondly, though we assign values for an experience for each of these facets, we’re not making value assessments. A successful experience does not necessarily achieve a good end. Nazi propaganda had great design, fulfilled goals, successfully transmitted mental models: it’s a stunning portfolio piece. Nazi propaganda was a successful experience even though the result was far from “good.” Tobacco advertising is another example.

Also, “accessibility” has everything and nothing to do with web accessibility. It has to do with how able I am to participate in the experience. For example, when communicating with my cat, I can enter the same room, and even pet her. She’s physically accessible, but verbal communication isn’t possible. I don’t speak Meow. Who knows what she’s saying, or what she’s thinking. We could say the same thing about my girlfriend.

Finally, these facets for experience should work independent of device or medium. Most of us work on the web, but experience happens with everything, so evaluation methods should work any where. We should use the same method to evaluate using a watch as we use for reading a novel, having sex, or ordering books from Amazon. Experience is independent of devices or objects. It happens in the head, so we need to evaluate the way a given experience interacts with what some have come to call a user’s infospace.

Other facets and models

Splitting experience into conveniently digestable bits is nothing new, and I can’t say I’ve even come close to examining every other model (check out “Forlizzi”), but of the few I’ve seen that work independent of device and medium, they inevitably conflate the mechanics of interaction with the experience that results from the interaction. I think this muddles things.

Probably the most well-known model using “facets” and “expereince” in the title is Peter Morville’s “Facets of user experience.” For the most part, the five facets I’ve mentioned here overlap with several of Peter’s seven. For example, that an experience be usable or findable, I would evaluate as accessible and negotiable. However, the center colum for Peter’s UX honeycomb attempts to evaluate the “value” of an experience. For the web and for communicating with clients, I think the honeycomb works great. For other experiences, though, I don’t think usefulness or credibility have anything to do with an experience’s value.

But my partner at Grafofini, Alex, suggests that valuability and credibility represent additional facets we should add to the list. I’m not so sure credibility can’t be reduced and evaluated using the other facets. And isn’t value an abstract conglomeration of how an experience evaluates against all five of these facets for experience?

I’m not sure I have the answer just yet, but my gut says no.

Personal information spaces, diagram by Dan Brown

Austin Govella — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 17:53:00 GMT

Personal info space diagram analagous to commmunication/interaction model: the users mental model (personal information space) interacts via an interface (the task) with external actors (the external information supply):

http://www.greenonions.com/index.php?p=80

Experience design at the brink of infinity

Austin Govella — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 21:37:00 GMT

Design’s fundamental product is experience, but we don’t really understand experience: why our tools help create a good experience, or how our decisions might affect this experience. Lacking this understanding, we’re driven more by common sense, luck, and instinct than by any expertise or discipline.

We face an astonishing future. Design in the age of information, no longer hindered by the material and technological limitations that faced the industrial age, can now create artifacts that communicate experience more quickly and with higher fidelity than ever before. But we can also create these experiences across a greater range of possibility — seemingly limited only by the human imagination. To have any hope of designing this impending infinity, we must understand the structure and properties of the experiences we create. We need to understand what we do and why we do it.

We need a better understanding of experience. We need clear definitions and models that apply to all ranges of experience, independent of media or interface.

Defining the user’s mental model: three factors that drive experience

Austin Govella — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 19:17:00 GMT

Once a user participates in an event, the user evaluates their expectations of the event with their realisation of the event. This point, where the user tempers their expectations with their realisations, we call this point experience.

However, before the user will participate in an event, three factors guide their participation:

What does the user want?
How do they try to achieve that want? What’s their course of action?
What do they expect to happen?

These actions happen in a chronological sequence: one, two, three.

The user has an idea about something they want or need.
They have an idea about a course of action, and
They have an expectation that this course of action will let them fulfill their want or need.

I find it useful to envision this as a conversation.

The user has an idea for something they want. This is their goal. Since this is an idea they have, we’ll illustrate this as a lightbulb.
In a conversation, they think of something they can say that will get them closer to this thing they want. I call this “message,” so we’ll use a dialogue bubble to represent this.
Finally, they have an expectation of what will happen. I’ll use a stack of coins to illustrate what the user expects to receive.

An expectation can’t be formulated without a message (course of action), and the message (course of action) can’t be formulated without the initial goal. We can illustrate this by expressing our sequence of events as a simple equation:

The goal, message, and expectation constitute the user’s mental model. All of this takes place in the user’s mind, so we’ll finish things up by placing it all inside a thought-bubble above our humble little user’s head (his name: Ulysses Xavier).

The user’s mental model is an important aspect of user-centered design. But user-centered design’s chief conceit is that it’s not about users, but context, and not only the context of use, but the user’s mental context.

The user’s mental model describes the mental context, but we still don’t have the full picture. The mental model operates in context with both the event the user participates in (a conversation, driving a car, browsing a website) and the user’s personal information space (see Dan Brown’s diagram of personal information spaces). The personal information space is a nebulous cloud of facts, tidbits, and rules the user leverages to choose goals, devise messages (courses of action), and formulate expectations.

Products as duck-billed platypi

Austin Govella — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:08:00 GMT

Products evolve, and I get that, but it's driving me crazy. 37Signals's Backpack lets me email to-dos, but there's no way to date them. I can added dated to-dos (reminders) manually. As a bonus the reminders are available as an ical feed, which means I can import my reminders into the Backpack calendar. That's cool. I can see appointments and dated tasks side-by-side. Brlliant. Highrise also has to-dos, but they're called tasks. The only difference between Highrise and Backpack tasks is that Highrise gives you the option of dating a task. Essentially, any task can be dated or undated. And of course, a dated task is essentially the same as a Backpack's reminder. As a bonus, Highrise supports this really robust email feature that lets you email tasks to the application. And you can email them as dated or undated, and you can even associate them with one of your contacts. So, if I need to email Mike mockups in March, I can email this to Highrise and forget it. Highrise will tell me later. This is great, but Highrise doesn't have an ical feed for dated tasks (reminders) like Backpack does, so there's no way to see if I've scheduled 15 tasks on the same day I already have an all-day meeting. Did I mention that Backpack has a calendar? And it accepts ical feeds from other places. So, if my wife and I have our family events in a Google calendar, I can pipe the Google calendar into Backpack and see that I'm in Dallas for a wedding adjacent to the all-day meeting I scheduled in Backpack. Too bad I can't see the 15 tasks I scheduled on that day in Highrise. And forget the to-dos I've already emailed to Backpack. I assume that at some point, the fine people at 37Signals will unify their email and calendar APIs for each of their products, but it would sure would make my life easier if they did it sooner, rather than later. Or if by some magic moment, I acquired a personal assistant to follow me around, take my appointments, open my pickle jars, and tell me which shirt to wear. Did I mention these shenanigans are taking place because Mac's iCal has started eating my machine whenever it's open? In my original system, my family calendar in Google was piped into iCal alongside the synced work calendar from Entourage (Outlook for the Mac). That was great, and all my to-dos were in Backpack. Days started with me printing out my Backpack to-do list and that day's view from iCal. Man was that awesome. Two printouts and an entire days worth of focus and productivity. Man does it suck that iCal doesn't work anymore.

How to not boil lobsters: strategy keeps projects on track

Austin Govella — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 19:06:00 GMT

Joel Spolsky writes about drastically realigning the design on the new website. "Drastically realigning" is corporate-speak for scrapping the whole thing and starting over.

Joel's post reminds me of a story I saw Douglas Adams tell at a lecture in the early 90s:

Lobster think

Apparently, throwing a lobster into a vat of boiling water is a little cruel. You throw them in, they writhe about, die in agony without so much as a smidgeon of dignity.

On the other hand, if you put a lobster into a pot of cold water that's over the fire, the lobster doesn't mind. When the water gets warmer, the lobster thinks: "It's only one degree warmer. The previous temperature was okay, so one degree warmer is okay, too."

Then the water gets warmer, and the lobster thinks again: "It's only one degree warmer. The previous temperature was okay, so one degree warmer is okay, too."

This goes on and on until, finally, the water is boiling, and the lobster sits there, looking very dignified, obviously very deep in lobster thought.

Joel and his design firm were boiling a lobster instead of designing a website. How do you stop yourself from making the same mistake?

Lobster strategy

Basic lobster strategy goes like this: if you do not want to be boiled, do not get into a pot.

This sounds very silly, but we paid a very senior lobster consultant (with suspicious burn marks) a LOT of money to tell us this. He told us in person, put it in a PowerPoint, and made a nice, BIG, pretty poster with arrows and bars and iconographic pictures of lobsters and pots and grim reapers.

Obviously, Joel and his design team know better than to boil a lobster. They're trying to design a website, for crissakes! And in the original meeting, I bet everyone at the table agreed they would not put any lobsters in any pots.

So what happened? Joel sums it up:

Links had sprouted up all over the place, making it hard to tell where to go next and where you've already been. Most of the elegant whitespace in the original design was lost when we went from the original 1024 pixel wide design to an 800 pixel design.

Joel Spolsky, "There's no place like 127.0.0.1", Joel on Software, September 11, 2007.

In essence, they forgot their rule about lobsters and pots. Someone had a change that brought in a lobster. And then someone else had a change that introduced a pot. And then somehow they added some water. And then somehow the lobster ended up in the pot...

If everyone knows the strategy for your project specifically states no lobsters in no pots, ever, then when someone else walks in with a lobster, everyone at the table can say "no".

The worst part about Joel's story, somewhere along the way, the smart people at the table noticed the lobster, and the pot, and the water, and either they said nothing, or they said something, but not in a way anyone understood.

Joel's absolutely right that good design is a process of learning what's wrong, and sometimes you learn later, rather than sooner.

The take away is that you need to be comfortable being wrong. If you think you see a lobster, stand on the conference table and scream out loud: THAT IS A LOBSTER!

Maybe it's not a lobster. Maybe it's a polar bear and everyone will laugh at you. But if it is a lobster, and another smart person at the table agrees with you...

I look forward to a day where lobsters can live long, fulfilling lives without the fear of being boiled alive.

Changing the Channel (interview with Livia Labate and Austin Govella)

Austin Govella — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 20:04:00 GMT

Last March at the IA Summit, Christina Wodtke grabbed myself and Livia Labate for a quick discussion about how information architects can better interface with the business.

I'm a few months late on mentioning this, but our interview inaugurated Boxes and Arrows podcast series, 'Straight from the horse's mouth', that also included great interviews with Behavior's Chris Fahey, Dan Brown, Yahoo's Tom Wailes, and Derek Featherstone. (The interviews are no bullshit, Summit conversations captured in little audio time capsules.)

One of the reasons I wanted to work with Livia at Comcast Interactve Media is because she has the amazing ability to enter a conversation, immediately understand the key issues, intuit exactly how the participants need to be spoken to, and then say the perfect thing at the perfect time.

For anyone in any service industry, this is THE skill to have.

And of course, Madame Wodtke wields this same magic. Her summation of the interview with me and Livia?

Learn the language
Lose the agenda
Be a resource
Dress better

If you don't speak PowerPoint, that translates to learn the language of business, lose the user agenda and focus on what the project needs, become a trusted and dependable resource for the business, and if you look like you're on the business team, you'll have more business conversations than design conversations.

That's the gist of it. The complete interview is up at Boxes and Arrows. Straight from the horse's mouth: Changing the channel.

The International Conference on Managing Design in Global Environments call for papers

Austin Govella — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 11:18:00 GMT

The International Conference on Managing Design in Global Environments will take place on November 20, 2007, in Seoul, Korea. The Korea Institute of Design Promotion -- with the assistance of DMI -- is now seeking submissions of a broad range of papers that discuss the globalization of design and design management, including those focused on theory-building and empirical research as well as case studies.

All proposals must be emailed to the Scientific Committee Chairs by October 11, 2007.

For complete information about the conference, please visit the DMI website.

There and back again (a return to Houston)

Austin Govella — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:21:00 GMT

The last three weeks have been beyond crazy and bizarre. Finally, I can detect a hint of normalcy creeping into my life. Three weeks ago I was preparing the windows for a Philadelphian winter and hanging new art on the walls. Two weeks ago, I arrived back in Philadelphia from a visit to Houston. One week ago, I pulled into Houston behind the wheel of a U-Haul that gets 8 miles to the gallon when hastily loaded with the various accoutrements of ones life. I'm still working for Comcast, no doubt because it's a great place to work. (They're hiring!!!) Today is my first real day in my new "office". I set up the wireless network, cleared a place for the laptop, handed the toddler off to our man nanny (or "manny", as we call him), and hit my to-do list. Houston hasn't changed at all. The bars and clubs have new owners. The good restaurants are closed. The mediocre ones are still dependable, and the bad ones still looks as unloved and grimy as they ever have. My previously involved friends are married and/or spawning, everyone's moving into the Heights, and an unhealthy obsession for karaoke has crept into my social circle. It's good to see everyone again and good to be home even though the circumstances were rather abrupt. Working remotely should be interesting. I'm already missing working with the Fancast team and my peeps at Comcast. So, anyway. I'm in Houston. Refresh Houston is Wednesday and there's a holiday party thrown by printers on Thursday. If you're in town and want to get together, give me a holler.

Assessing your team's UX skills

Austin Govella — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 05:11:00 GMT

Jared wrote such an awesome article over at UIE, I'm actually posting: Assessing your team's UX skills.

The best part isn't the assessment. It's his breakdown of core and enterprise UX skills.

Web standards didn't kill HTML

Austin Govella — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:13:00 GMT

There's some noise floating around about how web standards have destroyed the web. The argument goes like this:

1. We haven't anything new and cool in ages (implementing new features).

2. We haven't even had anything old and cool in ages (finally implementing old specs).

3. This is because of web standards.

This seems pretty silly to me. Web standards never said browser developers couldn't come up with crazy new, proprietary features. And, standards advocates never said browser makers had to implement all of the spec.

The web standards goal was that if browser makers would implement some standard in a standard way, then the web would be a better more accessible, easier to create, and easier to maintain.

And they were right.

If you're pissed you aren't getting enough new markup toys this Christmas, go yell at the toy makers.

Too many feeds? Ration your feed subscriptions!

Austin Govella — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 02:31:09 GMT

I read feeds to keep up with the industry, as well as with the community and my friends. So, when I moved 1500 miles away from the local community I enjoyed seeing at PhillyCHI events, it was important I get back into "readin’ mah feeds".

However, as a feed junkie, I tend to collect large numbers of interesting reads (inbetween periodic culls). Definitely, I watch too many to check on anyone day.

In the past, I grouped my feeds by subject: business, marketing, ia/design, and web dev. That worked pretty well, and I could ignore huge tracts of RSS real estate based on mood, time, or interest.

And, sometimes, I don’t really care. I’ll check a couple of websites and then ignore the feed universe for weeks at a time.

But, if I want to keep up with everyone all (or most) the time *and* not blow chunks of each day in my RSS reader, then I need a good way to ration what I read every day.

A screenshot of Newsgator where I created a folder for each day of the week, each with an equal number of feeds.

So, instead of grouping my feeds by subject, I rationed them evenly by days of the work week. To keep the daily read minimal, I split them across two work weeks (10 days, instead of five).

I segregated a small set of daily reads into an "everyday" folder.

I’ve been using this method since Wednesday, and so far, it’s fantastic. I feel like I’m keeping up with everyone, and my daily update takes about 15 minutes. Perfect timing for waking up with my morning coffee.

About Austin Govella

Austin Govella — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:20:45 GMT

In 2006, Austin Govella joined Comcast Interactive Media’s IA and Usability team as a Sr. Information Architect where he worked as a project lead IA on Comcast Interactive’s two largest and most important products: Comcast.net and Fancast.

A top 10 site, Comcast.net is a news and entertainment portal used by over 15 million unique visitors each month. Austin also worked on Fancast, a next generation entertainment site that launched in beta in September 2007, and was featured at the Consumer Electronics Show (C.E.S.) in January 2008.

Prior to joining Comcast, Austin worked as a project lead for Satyam Computer Services, one of Forrester's top 50 global IT integrators. As a member of Satyam’s award-winning User Experience Management group, Austin helped improve user experience at the World Bank while working on projects for enterprise search, mapping (GIS), mobile, intranets, extranets, knowledge management, and workplace collaboration.

Austin’s industry experience includes financial services, education, non-profits, and entertainment. His broad expertise spans visual design, client- and server-side development, information architecture, search engine optimization and marketing, accessibility, interaction design, usability, and experience strategy.

In addition to client work, Austin is currently writing the second edition of Information Architecture: Blueprints for the web with Christina Wodtke for New Riders/Peachpit. His work is also featured in the third edition of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (the Polar Bear book).

As an active member of the user experience community, Austin is a development editor at Boxes and Arrows, one of the web’s leading design publications, and he is a member of the Information Architecture Institute, helping design and manage the Institute’s IT infrastructure.

Austin's writing has appeared in ASIS&T's Bulletin and Boxes and Arrows, and he has presented at several I.A. Summits, industry conferences, and local meetings.

Contact Austin Govella

Austin Govella — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:28:18 GMT

Download my contact information (Austin-Govella.vcf)

austin@thinkingandmaking.com

Austin Govella 225 East 24th Street, Houston, TX, 77008, USA

215-240-1265 713-568-6235 (9:00 AM – 6:00 PM, EST)

The best books on innovation

Austin Govella — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Over at Noise Between Stations, Victor Lombardi asks "What’s your favorite innovation book?"

I recommended Marty Neumeier’s latest book, Zag, one of my recent favorites. Not only is it a great discussion of experience-driven innovation, but it’s like business analysis 101 in book form, and rounds everything out with the "Only Statement", a new method and deliverable for aligning your team and keeping everyone focused on what’s important.

There are some great answer’s to Victor’s survey with some excellent and less than obvious recommendations. If you’re looking to hone your design thinking skills and boost innovation in your organization, head over there and check out the comments.

Fancast officially launches

Austin Govella — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:11:00 GMT

Tuesday at CES, Comcast officially launched Fancast, a next-generation, personalized, cross-channel entertainment website.

So far, work on the project has run everywhere from ecstatic to calamitous, but it's definitely been one of the most interesting sites I've worked on.

But Wired rewards all the sweat and tears in one sentence: "Fancast turns out to be surprisingly well-designed -- and useful enough that the biggest complaint is likely to be, what took so long?"

Lazy Site Map Generator

Austin Govella — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 05:04:52 GMT

Jason Pearce has put together a Lazy Site Map Generator that takes a site architecture in Excel, converts it into a Visio-friendly format, and then creates your sitemap in Visio.

I haven’t tried it, but it looks very useful.

How do we know who you are?

Austin Govella — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:22:42 GMT

When you read a post here at Thinking & Making, and get down to the comment form, you might notice we know your name. Spooky? Perhaps. Insidious? Definitely. So, how do we know? Thinking & Making is published using "Cucina Media's":http://cucinamedia.com/ brilliant "Public Square":http://publicsquarehq.com/ content management system, the same software used to publish "Boxes and Arrows":http://www.boxesandarrows.com/. One of the interesting things about the Public Square system is that your profile is portable to any other site that also uses Public Square. So, if you've ever left a comment at Boxes and Arrows, it's quite possible that when you come here, we'll know who you are.

About Thinking & Making

Austin Govella — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:40:40 GMT

Thinking & Making is a blog by "Austin Govella":http://future.ourpublicsquare.com/about/about-austin-govella about creating better products, better teams, and better experiences. I'm Austin. Thinking & Making picks up from my previous blog, formerly located at desiremedia.com. I even had an ISSN, which was pretty swanky at the time. Thinking & Making officially started in 2002 and is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States license. The Thinking & Making blog is published using "Cucina Media's":http://www.cucinamedia.com/ brilliant content management software, "Public Square":http://publicsquarehq.com/. The design sweetness is all by me, and damn is it sexy. Bookmarks are saved with "Ma.gnolia":http://ma.gnolia.com and the feeds are managed with "Feedburner":http://feedburner.com. The rest of the Thinking and Making site runs on "Dean Allen's":http://textism.com god-like content management system, "TextPattern":http://textpattern.org. Things used to run on "Wordpress":http://wordpress.org, despite it being a hulking piece of crap to customize. I LOVE YOU MATT MULLENWEG!

Designing with patterns: Lessons from Yahoo! and Comcast

Austin Govella — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:00:00 GMT

Christian Crumlish and I will share design pattern lessons learned at this year's IA Summit in Miami. Christian will talk about his experience with Yahoo's design pattern library while I'll share what we've done at Comcast Interactive Media.

Presentation info

Designing with patterns in the real world: Lessons from Yahoo! and Comcast

Monday, April 14 2008, 11:45 - 12:30PM

Presentation description

Can you streamline web design and development with design patterns? Really? How?
Do patterns help or hinder agile user-centered design?
Do design patterns stifle innovation?

We’ll share what we’ve learned about bootstrapping pattern libraries from scratch and how to “extract” patterns from existing products. We’ll share stories (er, I mean real-world case studies) to illustrate ways pattern libraries can both aid and stifle innovation, how they help solve real-world web design problems, and how they support rapid production of common IA deliverables. We’ll bask in the glow of the “magic triangle” of patterns + code modules + wireframe templates that enable rapid prototyping and agile development, and then cower in the miserly shadow of the “iron triangle” of fast, cheap, or good. How to structure and maintain a pattern library? Check. We’ve got you covered. How do you trick… er… get people to adopt patterns and help improve them? What tools help you do this? Are wikis the answer? How far can you get with an open-source CMS, a boatload of other people’s mistakes, spit, baling wire, and wing and a prayer? To find out, come to Austin and Christian’s presentation where we’ll share what we’ve learned, what works, and what we will never ever do again at Comcast and Yahoo!

More information

You can find more information about the 2008 IA Summit at the conference website.