I don't think that there's a clear use case for something that's small but not as small as a phone, and useful but not as useful as a laptop. (Best effort in a weak field to define the use case so far comes from Luke Wroblewski: "a digital version of your leisure time activities".)

But that doesn't matter.

It's relatively easy for Apple to create a new platform. There are already plenty of apps out there that will run on it, and the developer community will soon provide us with many, many more. It's what they do. And although only a small subset of those apps will provide any compelling value, only a small subset of those eventual thousands of apps needs to work. All Apple has to do is provide the platform, and make sure that it works well enough to support all those apps.

They're essentially leaving it to the developer community to figure out a mind-blowingly large number of micro use cases. There will be enough to make the iPad attractive to enough consumers for the venture to be profitable for Apple. Apple can ignore the traditional keystone requirement for product design—the need for a broad use case—and simply deliver a well-designed and sufficiently open platform.

PS As a publisher, I am very happy that Apple's ebooks will use EPUB, the open ebook format that we've invested ourselves in at Rosenfeld Media. I'm hopeful that those EPUBs will also be DRM-free, though considering Apple's past record here, I'm pessimistic. Does anyone know if they will be?

If you don't mind, a word:

There are a lot of great opportunities to take good UX-related workshops in and around London. Why come to these?

Well, Steve Krug is simply fantastic. What can I say? We've been on the road for seven years, and every time I pop into his workshop, people are absolutely engaged: talking, interacting with each other and with Steve. (He's nice enough to say similar things about my workshop.)

Did you think I was going to say rapt? Worshipful? Well, they are, which is what you'd expect with one of the Three Gods of Usability. And they're entertained as well: Steve is even funnier in person. (Added bonus: Steve's new workshop matches his new book.)

What you might not realize is that Steve and I both teach our workshops to small groups (usually a couple dozen) and over the course of the day we work with you very closely. We often learn everyone's name. Steve may critique your site, and I'll likely sit down with you and we'll look at the query data together. Honestly, Steve and I are usually a bit surprised when attendees' evaluations emphasize the intimacy of our workshops; why would we (or you) want it any other way?

I'll never be as entertaining as Steve, but my attendees seem to enjoy themselves. I'm certainly very earnest (just check this photo and you'll see). I'll not just help you through the analytics (see my workshop slides): I'll also make a strong case for why UXers need to learn analytics in general, and suggest a framework for doing so (see this presentation for some of my ideas along these lines).

If you were wavering on attending, I hope this helps. So take advantage of the early registration deadline (again, it's January 31) and I hope we'll see you in March!

PS I'm hoping to take along my six-year old, Iris, who's fallen in love with geography and is absolutely desperate to cross an international border (any will do). Will be trolling for to-dos at some point here on Bloug; I don't think that the London Eye will keep her occupied for three days...

So, being the annoying consultant that I am, I gently scolded them, saying that there wasn't one ideal or even optimal local search implementation. But there were some principles worth considering. Here's my first stab; given that these took only a few minutes, I'll likely add more:

1. Keep the initial query entry UI simple
2. Make sure it's persistent in location on pages, and that it's on all pages
3. Support query refinement (and avoid "advanced search" UIs)
4. Repeat a query back in the refinement UI and display # of search results
5. Provide refinement options that fit the need (e.g., don't provide options that narrow result sets when 0 results have been retrieved)
6. Show just enough information—and the right information—per search result to enable users to get the information they need (either on the results page or by clicking through to a result page)
7. If you're searching multiple content areas, see if it pays to expose these differentiations; if so, what order should results be presented in? (federated search)
8. Support result sorting (e.g., chronological)—if it helps
9. Teach your search engine to recognize regularly occurring queries for specific types of information (e.g., names of people, products, unique IDs) and configure search results accordingly
10. Ask for feedback on search results pages—both quantitative and qualitative (e.g., "rate you satisfaction with what you found; if not satisfied, what would you have liked to find?")
11. Learn what your most frequent queries are; then test their performance regularly
12. Learn what queries fail most frequently, and fix them
13. Manually create recommended search results for the most common queries

Does this list stick against your wall? Anything obvious that I'm missing? If I can, I'll assemble good examples of each (and feel free to suggest some yourself).

Want to help me figure it out?

First, imagine a single, combined index—possibly a single page—that'd reference whichever books where an index entry occurred. Then picture the ability to filter that index by individual title. Now we're ready for some questions:

Does it make sense to put an individual book index on the web? Each Rosenfeld Media book has its own web site, and we already make each book's tables of contents, FAQs, and other materials available. Would there be additional utility in viewing a book's index? Coming from a background in librarianship, I know that there are a few index fetishists among us who might judge a book by its index (a character in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle goes further, judging the indexer's personality). I imagine one might indeed get a sense of a book's scope, but unless there is a link to a webified (and, likely, free) version of the book, there'd be no navigational value. (Given that we're a for-profit, we'd likely link to a way to quickly purchase the relevant title.)

Does it make sense to put a collective index of many books on the web? If the term "remote testing" or "Axure" occurred in multiple books, that might be an interesting factoid. Even more interesting—a report of the most frequently-occurring terms (hmmm, this is starting to sound suspiciously like site search analytics). Of course, a union index would say something about the collective scope of Rosenfeld Media books, but I'm not sure who—aside from me—would find that useful. So the jury's still out.

Does it make sense to create individual pages for each index term? On the surface, this may seem like the least useful idea yet. But what if each page could provide these things for an index term:

• Link to a glossary definition (if available).
• Retrieve the term's results from Google (duh).
• Retrieve the term's results from UX Zeitgeist (yes, we're still working on it, and it's going to improve radically).

That's still likely not much value to users. But to Rosenfeld Media? Could be quite promising:

• If we SEO these pages reasonably well, the more specific terms might bring in a decent amount of essentially free traffic. (After all, who else is going to do this?)
• We can promote our own books on those pages.
• We can insert some Google advertisements on those pages, which, while not bringing in retirement money, might fund some future Rosenfeld Media holiday party.

This is my first pass at fleshing the idea out, and frankly, my own reaction is lukewarm. Then again, these pages wouldn't be hard to create, nor would they get in the way of other, more critical aspects of the rosenfeldmedia.com user experience. So I'm tempted to go for it.

Still, it seems like I'm missing something. Any suggestions? Good ideas are always worth a free book, according to this publisher.

• Rosenfeld Media just published its fifth book: Todd Zaki Warfel's Prototyping: A Practitioner's Guide. I'm thrilled with Todd's work; this is a hugely practical take on a hugely practical topic, and Todd will show you how to prototype from low-tech approaches (e.g., paper) to high-tech (e.g., Axure). And it's on sale now!
• Our sixth title is just around the corner, and it could be a real game-changer for the user research community. I've read the draft of Nate Bolt and Tony Tulathimutte's Remote Research: Real Users, Real Time, Real Research, and it's amazing. Sign up here to receive early notice of its availability for purchase (as well as a discount).
• In March I'll be returning to old Ann Arbor (outside Detroit, Michigan) for something of a homecoming: the Merit Network will have me teach both of my workshops, Enterprise Information Architecture (March 30) and Search Analytics for a Better User Experience (March 31). Please sign up now and help get the word out; these are my only North American workshops scheduled for the first half of 2010 (Steve Krug and I are planning to return to London; details TBA).

Lots of other good things happening; I hope to be better about blogging here. But man, I've been going nuts posting in Twitterspace; you wouldn't know it from this posting, but I guess I just like the 140 character maximum thing. @louisrosenfeld and @rosenfeldmedia

Steve and I will also tag team in Washington, DC, November 9-10; the early registration deadline is October 9.

If you'd like to get a taste of what I'll cover, check out my slides on SlideShare or read my contribution to the recent special issue of A List Apart, which was devoted to site search analytics.

One more note worth mentioning: my workshops have been described as "wonderfully intimate". I've always assumed that's how workshops ought to be, but apparently that's not always the case. So, like it or not, you'll get a healthy dose of contact with moi if you attend.

OK, what are you waiting for; go and register! Hope to see you in Seattle or DC!

I have plenty of anecdotal information, but really, I don't feel confident in saying that this has or hasn't been a disaster for the IA community. But it's clearly been a disaster for the many, many individual information architects and fellow travelers that have lost their sources of income. Which gets me thinking: how might we work as a community to blunt, if not avert, professional disasters large and small?

Some ill-formed ideas follow; while you have a look, consider what you might need if and when you lose your job or consulting work. I know you'll come up with better ideas than these:

• Misery loves company. We need to know that we're not alone in our situations, especially if it's one of those "large disasters". Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks provide us with venues where we can inform people we know and trust about our situations. But they're not IA-specific; would it be useful to have such a venue? Would it be reasonable and practical to share the news and ask for help on the IAI-members list? If so, we'd probably need a "what happens on this list stays on this list" policy a la UTEST. Or maybe we'd need a separate "SOS Forum" altogether?
• How bad it is it out there? To scope the extent of the effects of an economic downturn, it might be useful for someone—say, the IAI—to take the pulse of the community on a regular basis. Perhaps a repeatable survey driven by metrics for successful employment would do the trick. Of course, these results will need to be shared and compared longitudinally. (BTW, given that IAI board members are usually pretty senior, they might be otherwise somewhat insulated from what's happening in the trenches, so such a survey might be helpful to them as well.)
• Send a care package Getting a job or finding contracting gigs is never simple. It's also not exactly rocket science. But when you've just had the rug pulled out from under you, it's all too easy to feel overwhelmed. To help, it might not be too hard for groups like the IAI to assemble a "care package" of useful resources in one handy place that can be zipped to those in need. It could include:
  • Links to job boards, mentoring programs, and volunteering opportunities (volunteering is one of the best things you can do when you have time on your hands).
  • Information on how to polish your resume and portfolio, and tips on how to sell IA/UX/whatever (and, by extension, yourself).
  • Links to relevant groups and networking opportunities in LinkedIn, FaceBook, as well as where and when local groups meet.
  • Reminders to remember to shower regularly, shave occasionally, and turn off the tube generally.
• Keeping the lights on. I've always been skeptical of having associations like the IAI offer health insurance. And, believe it or not, here in the US we're actually allowed to continue funding our own health plans for some time after being laid off. But perhaps group insurance and other programs and services that help us maintain such basics as good health are worth reconsidering? Or heck, perhaps microloans a la Kiva?

This is just a start, and though I call out the IAI, this is obviously relevant to other UXers and more. In any case, what would you need if a professional disaster befell you?

So I voted for the candidates that are not going to try to change the way that information architects think, or are thought of by the outside world. That's not something a small board can do. Ever.

Instead, I voted for the people who seem most likely to build and maintain the community's infrastructure to enable more bottom-up work to succeed. I want the Information Architecture Institute to help information architects and fellow travelers to engage with each other, and provide them with supporting tools and resources so they can accomplish Big Ideas that serve the community.

Top-down efforts are so limited and limiting, and a board is only in place for a short while. So it's better for the board to invest its top-down energy in tuning and improving the infrastructure that is the IAI, and keeping it flexible and responsive to the community's needs, rather than attempting to make the IAI a platform to execute their own plans. At the end of the day (or a two-year term), it doesn't really matter how good or noble those plans are, if they won't scale.

So let's vote for people who can curate the community's Big Ideas, rather than espouse their own.

I like to think that my heart is in the right place—after all, how many publishers actually sit down with their community on a monthly basis? But I've executed the idea poorly. I'm looking for your input on how these salons might be more engaging and, ultimately, more valuable for you. A little help here please?

It seems like there are at least two major problems with the current UX book salon concept:

1. Meeting in person: Whether carving out time at a busy conference or braving cross-town traffic, it's hard to find the time to make it to a brown bag discussion. Holding them after hours presents other challenges. So it seems time to consider going remote. But remote conversations can be cold and, um, remote. Would you even bother? If so, how high or low-tech should I go? Clearly it'd need to be real-time, but would we need voice as well as text? How about video? Of course, none of this matters if we don't have a clear...
2. Value proposition: This one's the tougher nut to crack. Obviously, I need to get something out of this—I'm trying to keep up with you and what you need when it comes to practical UX content and how it should be best presented. But what's in it for you? Certainly there's an opportunity to get your favorite topic out there and influence our editorial agenda. And I can promise you'll also emerge a far more critical consumer of book content, which is good for us all. But... eh; these won't cut it for most people.

So, assuming we use some remote technology and broaden the ability to participate, what might work? Or maybe a better way to ask it: if you had an hour or two with one of your favorite UX publishers, what would you like to discuss?

I'll throw out a couple of possibilities:

1. "Design the book you want" session. Let's say you really wish you had a book that'd help you solve a thorny UX problem; for example, the UX of shopping carts. You let me know, I get the word out, and we pull together a bunch of interested people. We meet for an hour with the goal of collectively hashing out the book we wish we had: its title, table of contents, back jacket blurb... maybe even a few mocked up testimonials. We share the outcome, and hopefully a publisher (it doesn't have to be Rosenfeld Media) and an author get together to make it happen. Nice thing: there'd already a clear group of interested parties there to weigh in and help out, so the author could really hit the ground running.
2. Regular office hours. I aired this idea out with a few folks, and the reaction was unenthusiastic. Then, about two days later, Whitney Hess announced that she'd be holding... office hours. So far, Whit Hour has taken place three times, and it seems to be a hit. By the way, Whitney's using TinyChat, and has found it works best with only one video channel (hers, of course). In any case, I like this approach because it's quite flexible. Then again, I'm not sure the value proposition is very strong (and let's face it, I don't have the personality to draw'em in like Whitney!).

OK, there's two; any other ideas for how you and I might be able to be in touch regularly? In a way that would be useful to you?

A million thanks!

Durability fears aside, it's really been a joy. I won't rehash what's been said often and better, but I'll attest that perhaps its greatest strength is as a device for coping with waiting. I was at the local package shipper yesterday, and waited for almost 20 minutes as the clerk futzed with a horrible Fedex interface, trying to massage an odd hyphen into the middle of a building number. Normally this would drive me nuts. But no worries; I checked my mail, exercised my brain with a game of Word Warp, and wasted a few minutes in Tweetdeck. I've certainly had less productive 20 minute segments.

So maybe we should reclassify this device as a blood pressure manager? That'd be nice; then I could pay for it tax-free from my Health Savings Account.

Oh, the apps. I'd tweeted for suggestions for apps to download. Here's what you suggested (and many thanks to all of you who helped!):

• Drop (7)
• EverNote (4)
• Shazam (3)
• Things (3)
• ExitStrategy (2)
• FlightControl (2)
• Yelp (2)
• 1Password
• Amazon
• Are My Sites Up
• Bibot
• Bloom
• Byline
• Constitution
• Eucalyptus
• Expert Soduko
• Fandango
• Foursquare
• GA
• Heart Monitor
• IM+
• InstaPaper
• irentmovie
• iSSH
• KoiPond
• Melodica
• Mint
• MLB.com
• NewsAddict
• Ocarina
• Pandora
• Pandora
• Peggle
• Pocket Universe
• Public Radio Player
• QuickDraw
• Quordy
• Radio Paradise
• Ragdoll Blaster
• Remote
• Rowmote
• SimpleMind
• Slugger
• SolFree
• Sticher
• Tipulator
• touchcalc
• TouchTerm
• TruPhone
• TweetDeck
• WeatherChannel
• WhatTheFont
• WHOA?
• Wikipanion
• WriteRoom
• WunderRadio
• Zenbe lists

Sorry for the light posting schedule. I'm busy as hell, despite it being August 24. Guess I'm supposed to be at the beach, but summer's over as far as I can tell.

I'll also be keynoting the first Delve event, here in Brooklyn, on August 5. I'll continue Marrying Web Analytics and User Experience until they give in, fall in love, and produce dozens of robust children.

Holy crap. They'll even fire a contractor? Good God.

But though I snark away, there but for the grace of that Good God go I.

I used to do a little IA consulting for the VA. My client was wonderful, as were some of his colleagues. Most of the people I encountered there, however, were what you'd expect to find within a large, highly dysfunctional agency: water-treaders that were counting the days until they could retire. And you could hardly blame them.

But there were a few that were so completely pernicious that I feel sick to have them traipse across my professional memory even occasionally. Let me tell you...

I was struggling with the upper layers of the site's information architecture. I had been for quite a while. It just didn't do a good job of making health benefits information—the stuff that's the VA's primary raison d'etre—easy to find. In fact, the existing design seemed to go out of its way to obscure benefits information from veterans, even the web-savvy ones that were starting to return from Iraq and Afghanistan in droves.

Naively, when I raised this issue, I thought I'd receive a more typical response, something along the lines of "Yes, it's a huge problem for us, but fixing it would require aligning content from many of our internal departmental silos. But that's why we hired you, Lou."

Nope. What they told me was that they didn't really want to make it easy for veterans—those people risking their lives for their country—to learn about the health benefits that they were entitled to. And that taxpayers had committed to funding. All to save money—and for what??

IT issue? Not. It was an issue of business model design, and this particular business model was shrouded in a sick morality emanating from the top levels of the VA's management structure. Absolutely immorally, shamefully, and horribly sick.

Stunned, I didn't do anything about it while I was still consulting at the VA. And until now, I haven't brought it up, even though it raises such strong feelings of disgust and shame for me.

But I'm hoping that posting my experience and angst here and now helps somehow. I certainly needed to get it off my chest. And maybe it will enable some of the good people in the VA's new administration to get a little further in making their site actually help veterans.

Most of all, I'd like to know what I should have done. This unofficial policy was so terrible in so many ways to so many people. An intentionally poor information architecture likely caused much suffering among thousands and thousands of veterans. But the VA was my client, and should expect a degree of discretion from consultants like me. I feel odd even going public now, five or so years after concluding my work there.

What would you do, fellow information architects?

I think we should all be prepared to answer questions like these, because it could happen to you. Ethical quandaries arise in any profession, but as a new profession, I'm not sure how much we've collectively discussed stuff like this. So...

What would you do?