ASIS&T;
Since 1937, ASIS&T; has been the society for information professionals leading the search for new and better theories, techniques, and technologies to improve access to information.
Is Having No Limits a Limitation?
What if you had time, money and autonomy to do whatever you wanted and build it exactly the way you wanted? Oh and to add, you also have no risk. What do you think would be your biggest challenge in building a large scale product this way? Content? Structure? Or is the biggest challenge that there were no boundaries?
We are often frustrated by our limitations, blockers and other obstacles but what do we become without them?
We wanted to provide our users with relevant and inspiring content which is tailor made to each individual experience. We want to display content that adapts to a user’s behaviour but do this in a meaningful and charming way. But what we already had wasn’t scalable enough to allow us to do this.
How did we convince management that we needed to take drastic measures and completely rebuild a product to fulfil our future vision? Was this even the right thing to have done?
I will speak about the decisions we made along the way, the successes and the failures. I won’t go into details but will briefly summarise the decisions made and even talk about building our own device lab. I will expand on points that have value to an Information Architect but the key practical take aways will be centred around:
• API-first design • URL structuring • Responsive prototyping
What things are manufactured by limitations and boundaries? What things result in having no limits? Did we have to force limitations on ourselves? Are our limitations often merely just perceived? Did our lack of limitations help us innovate or did they hinder our goals?
Ben Brignell
Ben is a digital product designer in London. He blogs and posts his scribblings at benbrignell.com. As Head of Design and User Experience at Bookatable, he designs web apps, APIs and booking interfaces that are used by millions of consumers and managed by thousands of restaurants. He has worked in design for 15 years building web sites, applications, touch screen systems and games.
As a product designer his skills involve a wide range of design disciplines from illustration and brand development through to user centred design and prototyping for multiple devices. He approaches problem solving as a generalist, experimenting with different techniques along the way, and enjoys finding solutions with new tools that he doesn’t always know how to use.
When not working Ben sketches, writes, plays music and tweets quite a lot. He also tweets while working. And while walking.
He can pat his head and rub his tummy at the same time, but not while walking.
