UX Business

I sometimes get asked about our name, why Analytic Design Group. People get confused and think maybe it has to do with site analytics. I will admit it is a little awkward, especially that confusion between analytics and Analytic. Every now and then someone tells me I need to rebrand, the name is just no good, they say.

The City of Vancouver finally launched their redesigned website. I say finally as it was at about a two year long project and it was something that was long overdue.

Full disclosure: Analytic Design Group did the in-depth usability and accessibility assessment on both the mockups for the redesign as well as a prototype.

Several years ago (2003 - 2005) when I was an Information Architect at Creo (a once-upon-a-time tech darling in BC that got bought out by Kodak) I learned a very valuable lesson about the weight that data and evidence carried over my in-depth knowledge of the content and IA (information architecture) of the site.

Today I stopped by a favourite local bakery (Uprising Breads) to get an iced latte and Avocado and Hummus sandwich. The people there are always friendly and that sandwich always terrific. The problem arose when the barista served me my coffee.

There's been quite a bit of buzz recently about the "daily deals" business, what with Groupon's upcoming IPO and the advent of competitors such as Google Offers.

The term innovation is often used, in conversations that I’ve been around, to describe product innovation. If you haven’t invented a new product or greatly enhanced a technology, then it’s not called innovation.

A couple of weeks ago Justin and I went to the Corporate Affiliates Day at University of Washington’s Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) program.

Last Fall, Karyn, Jessica and I attended the Gel Health Conference in New York. It was an amazing experience.

In 2008 I led a large intranet implementation project where the senior sponsors demanded that there be a governance plan developed. But when asked what governance meant, they were mostly interested in making sure that content was updated and that there be some form of oversight to ensure that business units were using the same platform for sharing information.

One of the main attributes of the design work we at ADGi do (and when I say design I mean interaction design and information architecture, not so much visual design) is that all of it is evidence-based. That is, all of it, and I really mean all of it, every interaction, every node in the site map, is driven out of user research and expert analysis.