Advanced IA Course Development

I was the lead instructional designer heading the design, development and teaching of this course, with support from one teammate in the design aspect.

Existing Research

We took advantage of several listening channels OrangeMethod employs. The main one used was the post-workshop surveys administered at the end of each workshop. We analyzed these results to look for indications of what areas students needed more help with, which skills they had difficulty implementing in their day-to-day work, what they desired to learn more about, etc.

We combined that information with anecdotal feedback and requests received on the OrangeMethod Slack channel, as well as challenges we heard in our frequent interactions with the Enterprise User Experience (EUX) team, such as at their team meetings and stand-ups.

A main theme that arose was a need for a deeper dive into Information Architecture (IA).

Interviews

We conducted individual interviews with EUX team members at varied levels of seniority, all of whom were identified by leadership as strong in IA. These interviews provided insight into what specific skills, methodologies, and mindsets most benefited them in their work, what deficiencies and questions they often saw with teammates less-skilled in IA, and relevant case studies from inside and outside of The Home Depot, which could be leveraged as a teaching tool.

An insight that emerged was that many designers understood the concepts of Information Architecture, and may have been aware of some IA methodologies, but didn't understand when to employ them, or how to apply the results to their IA.

This insight served as a cornerstone for the design and development of the workshop.

Design

We created a lesson plan, first outlining achievable learning objectives in line with the needs discovered in research. We then mapped out the sections of content as well as several hands-on activities that would support these. Each section or activity had specific questions it would seek to answer, that connected to the course objectives. Our goal was not to provide detailed instructions on how to execute a variety of methods; while there was education on methods, the goal was to guide students to critically think about their problems and how to solve them.

Development

Once the lesson plan was complete, I had the responsibility of executing the development of the workshop. I created it as a full-day in-person workshop, with the time roughly split half and half between lecture and activities. The lecture and activity instructions were built in a Keynote presentation, while activities involved paper handouts, online work, sticky notes, index cards, Sharpies and pens. Activities were completed individually, in pairs, and in groups. Ample opportunities for discussion and knowledge checks were built in throughout the workshop.