At the fourth European version of the Information Architects Conference held in Amsterdam this year, User Intelligence won the IA Jam with submission of a Web Traffic Map. The one page A3 map – displaying the clients web traffic information in a concise and informative overview – was judged by peer Information Architects to be the most valuable deliverable that provided 'real learning'.
The Web Traffic Map (WTM) was first used for one of UI's major clients to provide clear insight into their web analytics of an existing product support site. Instead of delivering long reports or vast amounts of numbers, the WTM presents the key problem areas in a brief and to the point format. "This is the ideal deliverable for senior marketing people, who are only interested in the essential information", explains Adam Cox.
Cox –senior Web Analyst at User Intelligence – is happy with the acknowledgement from his peers. "There are so many brilliant minds attending a conference like this, and when they are all excited about your deliverable, it's truly rewarding and encouraging. Plus the competition was seriously fierce this year". Cox is referring to some of the other deliverables submitted by the international audience.
Amongst the submissions was a very promising US deliverable that showed how the gaming experience could be extended to conventional User Interfaces and how this dynamic interaction could be documented. Also, the end result of a Spanish project was demonstrated, were the website of a commercial bank let their accountholders chose which charity projects they wanted to invest their money in.
"A lot of strong ideas and deliverables were shared, but I think it was the simplicity of our deliverable that convinced the audience", Cox summarises. Cox is not sure what will be submitted next year, but is hoping to "definitely prolong the title".