The Wilson Project Blog of UX/Front-End Developer Ivan Wilson

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Tag Archive / information architecture

  • The Void

    These days, I have to use the term “app bulders” instead of “front-end developers” because most front-end developers aren’t working on the front-end anymore.

    One result is that I’m not part of any dev community. These days, I stay with the following communities:

    • UX
    • Information Architecture (IA) or
    • Accessibility

    because they have something of value that I can use across any tech stack.

    The thing I worry about is that developers like me are a) being pushed to non-coding/programming roles or b) pushed out of tech altogether.

    @iwilsonjr (8:09 AM · Mar 7, 2021) – https://twitter.com/iwilsonjr/status/1369817620741033984

  • The Long Game

    The past is the beginning of the beginning and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.
    – H. G. Wells

    I’m marking a special anniversary today.

    And all this started because I loved Vancouver.

    After my first visit in August 2008, I decided to plan another trip. Somehow, I found a conference that I hadn’t heard about called IxDA Interaction 09. Never knew anything about interaction design nor was it my first concern. All wanted was to get back to the city again. But instead, I learned from all the talks and people about interaction design.

    That was not only an introduction to interaction design. It was a gateway to me learning about user experience design and later information architecture.

    I decided to return the following year for Interaction 10 in Savannah, Georgia. At that conference, I attended the lecture Designing for the Web in the World by designer Timo Arnall.

    That and his film Wireless in the World a year earlier really influenced me. This is where re-evaluated my work as a front-end developer, viewing my work as dealing with information and not just coding.

    And after years of conferences, events, reading and self-study, I ended up working with an excellent UX team at CQ Roll Call and now the growing team at FiscalNote.

    And all this because I want another trip to Vancouver… 🙂

  • Future Imperfect

    As I’m writing this, it’s a rainy morning in Vancouver, Canada. Nothing new. Spending time with friends that I don’t see but once a year near my birthday. In this case, I’m here to attend the IA Summit conference this week. This is my first non-US conference since IxDA Interaction 13 in Toronto.

    Looking back at that conference there were a number of things that stood out. A number of them became influential years later. One of them was a short lecture by a designer named Nate Archer called “Beyond Responsive”.

    Nate Archer: Beyond Responsive from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.

    Well, four years later, those words seem prescient right now. The world has been filled with all sorts of devices that we access the web. More than just the trio of phone/tablet/desktop. Basically, any device that has access to the web is an access point – from watches to 4000K TVs. But there is another way of looking at this. Instead of “devices”, let us consider going in the direction of “inputs”. Responsive design appeared not just with mobile devices but devices which are also touch-enabled. Now, mobile devices are as ubiquitous as any household device, front-end developers like myself have to deal with coding for interactions that take place on touchpad as much (or even more) than mouse/keyboard. (Though we could be doing a better job at the keyboard then we are currently doing.)

    [Note: touch-enabled devices are not necessary phones/tables and doing feature support for touch is still a bit tricky]

    In some respects, the beautiful lie of responsive design is that the constraints are visual, via breakpoints and media queries? But what if those constraints aren’t visual. CSS has hidden artifacts describing inputs – media types. If one would look at the specs (https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/media.html#media-types), the following types are supported:

    screen, print, speech/aural, handheld, tty, etc.

    Screen is the most familiar with print/speech following. But there’s tty? From the spec, tty refers to devices like terminals and teletypes. The later was a telecommunication device that has long since disappeared with the advent of email. But back in the day, it was considered important enough to be considered in the W3C CSS spec. Now think about the future. Someday, will we may consider mouse/keyboard interactions as obsolete as teletype?

    Now, we are seeing the advent of AI interfaces – sophisticated interfaces that allow access to the same information like we do with mouse/keyboard and touch.

    Which comes back to the conference I’m attending, IA Summit. This year’s topic is artificial intelligence and information architecture. The main job of a front-end developer is building interfaces for acquiring information. Obviously, things will change in the next couple of years. But change into what?

  • News On The Homefront

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    NYC IxDA Redux

    A big belated “Thank You” to IxDA New York for Interaction 10 Redux (3/6). It was nice to meet all the people who attended and to see all of the presentations that I missed at Savannah.  Would come back for another event hosted by the group if my schedule allow it.

    Of course, that means I have to start paying attention to the home IxDA branch as well.

    More Opera

    Ironically enough, after NYC IxDA Redux, I went back to New York for my scheduled vacation for Met’s performance of The Nose. This weekend, went back to The Met for Lulu, the Alban Berg opera composed a few years after The Nose. Same decade, different moods but both are considered some of the most avant-garde works of their time. This was the last performance for me this season. Already planning for attending two performances next season in 2011 — John Adam’s Nixon in China and Alban Berg’s Wozzeck.

    Futura

    If you have not noticed, the font has changed in this site. After the font change last year, I decided to re-evalute my choice and changed to the first choice of Futura. I like Super Grotesk and it was choosen because of its closeness to Futura. However, there were just some things that I felt were not right (weight, letter styles) for me. It was nagging me in the back of my mind for a few months. So I decided to go back to the first choice of Futura.

    I am still on the look out for any other Futura-like fonts but the right choice has been made right now.

    Recent Blog Entry for CDG

    Last week, finally completed a book review of Morville/Callender ‘s Search Pattern for CDG and posted on the blog. Interesting read and really changed my ideas about search engines and how search result can be displayed for easier use.

    I mentioned on Twitter (5/4) that this would be my blog for CDG for the next couple of months as I will be spending writing for this blog. A consquenence will be some important announcements about The Wilson Project and Project Charles, as well as some important blog entries.