PRODUCTHEAD: Building, wayfinding and landscape architecture

» Too often, ‘building’ becomes the default state for a product team, at the expense of other valuable ways of working

» An product team should not be so rigid that it cannot cope with the occasional mandate from above

#prodmgmt #agile #alpha #empowered #governmentDigitalService #productDiscovery #team

📖 Read more: https://imanageproducts.com/producthead-building-wayfinding-and-landscape-architecture/

Sad to see GDS is still on Twitter and not obviously on the Fediverse…

SocialMediaService.find_by(name: ‘Twitter’).destroy!

https://github.com/alphagov/whitehall/blob/main/app/models/social_media_service.rb

#gdsteam #governmentdigitalservice

Services are verbs combined with nouns

Information architecture normally focuses on the objects that need to be represented in a system. Some human-centred practitioners focus instead on the tasks users need to do. These approaches are sometimes framed in opposition. But combining these techniques can make services and systems easier to use as well as more efficient to manage.

https://duncanstephen.net/services-are-verbs-combined-with-nouns/

Object-oriented approaches in action

https://duncanstephen.net/object-oriented-approaches-in-action/

A plea for the lost practice of information architecture — Vicky Teinaki

I was sad to learn earlier that Vicky Teinaki has died. Vicky had been a designer for a few different government departments and public sector organisations.

I didn’t know her well. But I have read her blog posts for years, and I was delighted to encounter her in meetings about structured information since I joined the civil service a few months ago. I was struck by how she demonstrated both fresh thinking and wisdom.

Just a few days after I started in my information architecture role at the Scottish Government, she published this excellent article about the discipline.

It serves multiple purposes expertly. It is a comprehensive but concise history of information architecture, tracking its major milestones over the past 20 years.

Vicky argued that information architecture had become diminished when it got absorbed into user experience, and then got forgotten entirely when it suddenly became easy to churn out high-fidelity visual prototypes without tackling underlying structural decisions.

The post is also an incredible bibliography of key information architecture resources. I have turned to this blog post numerous times over the past six months, and I know I will continue to do so.

PRODUCTHEAD: What is a product? What is a service?

» Services are best identified as verbs rather than nouns

» You cannot have services without products, nor products without services

» A service is something that helps someone to do something

#prodmgmt #governmentDigitalService #service #serviceDesign

📖 Read more: https://imanageproducts.com/producthead-what-is-a-product-what-is-a-service/