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.
As with my other social media accounts, its main purpose will be to let my followers know when I have posted something on my blog. But if you’re on Bluesky, feel free to follow me there.
I have long been an advocate of agile ways of working. One of the things that originally drew me to user experience was the opportunity to have evidence-based ways of understanding the changes you need to make. So I was surprised whenever I encountered people who believed that user experience methods ran counter to the principles of agile.
The latest chapter in my career has closed, as I have found an incredibly exciting new opportunity. But the past couple of years have given me a lot to reflect on.
Perception–Cognition–Action (PCA) analysis is a method of uncovering the root causes of usability errors and accessibility challenges in systems. By understanding these underlying issues, designs can be enhanced in order to avoid hazardous situations and cater to a wide array of user needs.
The approach is particularly recommended for medical devices, and is described in the international standard IEC 62366 on the application of usability engineering to medical devices. But this powerful technique can go so much further than that. It can help us understand how to improve usability and accessibility for a wide range of products.
My article for the User Vision website describes how the Perception–Cognition–Action approach works, how it aligns with established accessibility best practice, and how we at User Vision have applied it to transform a complex medical system used by both patients and healthcare practitioners.
I will also be speaking about the technique at this week’s UX Edinburgh meetup, which is an accessibility special in recognition of Global Accessibility Awareness Day. If you are around on Thursday 16 May at 18:30, it would be great to see you there.
I will be speaking at the UX Healthcare conference in London on Friday 12 April. Book now to learn about using Perception-Cognition-Action analysis to improve accessibility and outcomes in healthcare products.
