IBMer's blog

I made a "last minute" decision to attend the UPA conference in Colorado in a few weeks. Like we did at the IA Summit, I'd like to meet with other IBMers while I am there. I have blogged this internally and emailed a few people who I saw on the program, but sometimes it is easier to reach you here.

Plans so far: an "IBM table" at lunch on Wednesday, June 14.

If you are an IBMer who is attending and I have not contacted you yet, please email me or leave a comment here. Thanks!

IBM's internal UX newsletter summed it up well: "End of an Era." Tony Temple retires after 44 years with IBM. It is hard to capture what Tony has meant to the company, and to the user experience field as a whole. Here are just a few links which I have selected about Tony.

• Bio
• IBM Ease of Use group which Tony ran and put on the Make IT Easy conference
• IBM Fellows
• NNG Executive Forum 2003 where Tony was a speaker
• IPCC 99 Keynote speaker (love that photo from 1999)
• IBM heeds message to integrate IM, e-mail - NotesBuddy interview

I never worked with Tony, but I enjoyed a few dinners and other conversations with him. End of an era, indeed.

Dick Berry is retiring, too, after 38 years, and Susan Mills (Director of User Technologies) passed away in December, so there is a definite sense of loss at the top of the IBM user experience family.

IBM's ThinkPlace and Dogear are both mentioned in CIO magazine's The Name Game: "tagging tools let users describe the world in their own terms as taxonomies become folksonomies."

Lou and Thomas are also quoted.

Magic Book looks like the newest "gadget" from IBM. Some early coverage:

• MobileMag: Magic Book: Record digitally, search effortlessly
• Gizmodo (The gadgets weblog): IBM Magic Book Audio Recorder
• Techblog (Latest tech and gadget news): IBM Magic Book

I did not even know we were in the "gadget" / "gizmo" business!

(Once I find information about this on ibm.com, I will let you know.)

Angelo K. on our ibm.com team just found this interview with our VP Lee Dierdorff that includes comments on ibm.com from Jakob Nielsen:

The site has deep information, as required by these highly complex IT products. And yet, as you move around the huge number of pages, the page design stays consistent, with a standardized navigation system encompassing global options, a local menu, cross-references to related links and nice breadcrumbs that make it easy to move to a higher level of the site. Even though it looks easy, it takes a lot of work to make the various divisions of a huge company comply with such design standards, but it's required in order to present one face to the customer.

How we accomplish this with design standards was the topic of my talk at the Internet user experience conference earlier this week. If/when I get clearance to share that presentation more widely, I will let you know.

More Jakob/IBM connections: Jakob included the IBM home page in his book and he used to work in our research division long ago.

Which IBMers (or former IBMers) are attending the Information Architecture Summit in Vancouver in late March?

So far:

• Dmitry Nekrasovski, an IA with the Vancouver Innovation Center, and fellow UXnet local ambassador.
• Lada Gorlenko, IBM Warwick, is part of the team giving the pre-conference Interaction Design Symposium.
• Alex Wright, founder of the ibm.com user experience team (which I am on) but no longer with IBM, is presenting "Stone Age Information Architecture".

I will be there - who else? How about an IBM gathering? There were 7 of IBMers last year!

I have nothing to do with IBM's intranet, but I am happy to announce that it has won an award.

• IBM's Intranet One of the World's Top Ten

So, of course, I am obligated to provide a link to the Nielsen Norman Group Intranet Design annual report that you can buy to learn the details. And don't forget the Alertbox article for more information.

I enjoyed this interview with Mike Beltzner where describes his start in UCD at IBM's Toronto Lab before he moved on to Mozilla to be the user experience lead.

Mike's comments about Firefox usability reminded me of Scott Berkun's note on why he switched.

I have not been tracking intel.com but a colleague (thanks Brian) just pointed out their current home page.

Screen shot of intel.com from today (click to enlarge):

Compare that with last year's home page (from way back).

And then compare with ibm.com.

I wonder if they read our poster (big file, save to hard drive, may crash your Acrobat plug-in) from the 2005 IA Summit? Anyone know when the change took effect? Just curious.

Frances West, director of IBM's Worldwide Accessibility Center, is CIO magazine's October Ask the Expert. Here is the page of questions she has answered.

I wonder if my link is going to break when they realize they put this page in the 2006 directory. And Frances must be able to tell the future because it states this on the page as I write this blog:

West answered your questions about regulation compliance and how to build accessibility into your business plans from October 1 until October 31, 2006.

Some links to IBM's worldwide accessibilty centers:

• United States - while there, be sure to read the ibm.com Accessibility statement
• United Kingdom
• Europe
• Asia Pacific: in English (our older design) and in Japanese (newer design)