archive.Joe Lamantia.com

Boxes and Arrows just published my article Analyzing Card Sort Results With a Spreadsheet Template. Thanks to everyone who made it possible to share this tool. I hope it helps your next project!

If you need the template file, it’s available here – card_sort_template_ba.xls.

If you’re looking for an open-minded, effective problem solver with solid experience in the major realms of an integrated User Experience effort – business, technology, design, user research, project management – contact me (joe(at)joelamantia.com). I’m now looking for my next position, and interested in discussing full-time and contract opportunities.
For background: I’ve just finished an eighteen month assignment as on-staff Information Architect for Parametric Technology Corporation (Nasdaq: PMTC) , where I focused on the strategic integration of several large websites and numerous application-based User Experiences under a single, user-driven Information Architecture.
Broadly, my responsibilities during the past two years centered on defining and building Information Architecture and Usability programs within large software companies.
Some of my specific Information Architecture responsibilities at PTC included designing an integrated system of 60 modular interface templates and content-display objects, as well as meta-data, XML DTDs, a complete categorization system, a detailed attribute taxonomy, data fields, and display schematics for a custom-built content management system dynamically serving 50,000 Web pages in nine languages.
While with PTC, I also started a Usabililty Program for the e-Business Group that grew to include an active community of three hundred regular testing volunteers, consistent field research at major industry trade shows and conferences, and the company’s first dedicated Usability facility.
In 2000 and 2001, I founded an Asia-Pacific B2B startup with a team of US and China-based partners. Before this, I spent six years creating innovative interactive design solutions for leading consulting firms (Onward, CSC, Zefer) and boutique interactive agencies (One21). Accordingly, I can contribute as both leader and team member in many business snvironments.
In addition to eight years spent architecting and managing large corporate sites and enterprise applications as a developer and designer, I have considerable experience with project management in high tech and software settings, strong communication and consulting skills, and an entrepreneurial outlook on business analysis.
I’m most interested in opportunites in the User Experience and Information Systems fields, but I’m also eager to work outside the United States and am open to positions in other areas. Some fields I have experience in or find interesting include consulting, publishing, entertainment, travel, government, and telecommunications.
I’m looking for an environment that supports individual initiative, respects talent, rewards accomplishment, and encourages innovation across disciplines and boundaries. I enjoy multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary teams, and I feel most alive when I’m travelling in a new place or new environment. Additional international experience is one of my most important personal and professional goals for the next several years.

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Found this morning on the BBCi while looking for something completely different –
“Sensation Seeking Scale
This questionnaire is designed to test your tendency towards varied, novel and intense senations. This is sometimes known as thrill-seeking or arousal seeking.”

Here’s the link: Sensation Seeking Scale

It’s to be expected that punk cognoscenti (and — shud­der — would be punk cognoscenti…) would dis­sagree vio­lently over the influ­ences, ori­gins, qual­ity, rel­e­vance, and impor­tance of almost every band that any­one else arro­gat­ing the label ‘punk cognoscenti’ to them­selves has ever had the temer­ity to point to as “sem­i­nal”. (A term which, by the way, may be uniquely suited to punk music by virtue of its ety­mol­ogy). So it’s no sur­prise that even in a set of reviews of Young Loud and Snotty as trite as those offered by Ama­zon patrons, the infight­ing is rife and the gram­mar is bad. Frankly, it’s amus­ing. After all — if you’d buy the album in the first place, would you really care what any­one else thought about it? If ever a music was tor­tured by its own crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess, and all the con­com­m­mit­tant dis­pu­ta­tional vagaries, it was punk…

Not nearly so the case with rap and hip-hop, which became wont to use mate­r­ial declaim­ing it’s stars mas­sive mon­e­tary prowess very soon after emerg­ing from the inchoate chaos of block par­ties and DJ duels in Brook­lyn, the Bronx, and many other places that sub­ur­ban white record buy­ers still fear to visit. So it was with­out any taint of gone-rotten-anti-capitalism that I picked up Full Clip, A Decade of Gang Starr at the same moment. I agree with the review on this one — there are sev­eral juicy cuts miss­ing, but the over­all pack­age is an excel­lent ret­ro­spec­tive of what Guru and DJ Pre­mier achieved between ’89 and ’99.

Lastly in the new acqui­si­tions depart­ment, Come With Us makes the drive home from work pos­i­tiv­ely invigorating.

So it’s nice to see that my first exquis­ite corpse is com­plete, as I was won­der­ing how long it would be before I got to see the final result. What’s an exquis­ite corpse, you say? A sort of col­lage invented by the Sur­re­al­ists, wherein each per­son work­ing on a can­vas sees only a small por­tion of the work done before, and then passes on their con­tri­bu­tion to the next in line. Anony­mous col­lab­o­ra­tive processes always fas­ci­nate me, espe­cially when they expose how ten­u­ous con­text and mean­ing really are. I like the jux­ta­po­si­tion of irrel­e­vant ele­ments, the lunges for mean­ing across dis­con­ti­nu­ities, the idea of inter­rupted and altered mes­sages; there’s much to savor in a good corpse…
Here’s the link:

http://anexquisitecorpse.net/cadavre-exquise/crypt/000122.shtml

Slow to begin, and very, very French, my imme­di­ate reac­tion to this open­ing novel in Sartre’s Roads to Free­dom tril­ogy is pos­i­tive. It is an oddly obvi­ously organic lan­guage, full of ref­er­ences to the flu­ids, flesh, smells, and tex­tures of human­ity; per­haps a con­se­quence of the trans­la­tion? The con­clu­sion took me by sur­prise, again per­haps an after effect of los­ing sub­tleties in the trans­la­tion — or the fact that most of my read­ing was done late at night while about to fall asleep.

Instead of a fun and furi­ous live set from an up and com­ing retro Mod punk out­fit, this was a frankly dis­ap­point­ing exam­ple of the mis­for­tu­nate mis­match­ing that occurs when the media appa­ra­tus deter­mines what it wants us to like. Friends loaned me their sec­ond album just as the pub­lic­ity wave was crest­ing a few weeks ago, and I was mildly excited by the energy I heard on repeated lis­ten­ings; their live per­for­mance didn’t sus­tain the feel­ing, how­ever, and given what I saw Tues­day, I wouldn’t rec­om­mend that any­one hop­ing for as much from them on stage as on disc take the time or trou­ble.

The basic prob­lem? Bluntly — Howlin’ Pete Almqvist wouldn’t shut up. I know it’s a chal­lenge to play a full set when your cat­a­log is as brief as theirs, but there’s just no excuse for stop­ping after every two-minute song to chat­ter about how won­der­ful your band is, and how ter­ri­bly enter­tain­ing you just were; espe­cially when it takes you longer to chat­ter about your song than it did to play it in the first place. At it’s worst, this is like musi­cus inter­rup­tus — it demol­ishes the nat­ural cycle of build­ing and releas­ing ten­sion that any dra­matic per­for­mance in the West­ern world not explic­itly billed as exper­i­men­tal should fol­low. I’ve never been this gen­uinely annoyed with a head­line act. I’ll con­fess to feel­ing a bit fraz­zled before I set foot inside the club, as I’d flown up from Atlanta only an hour before the show, after two full days of user research at an engi­neer­ing con­fer­ence (the joys of prac­tic­ing IA on a tight bud­get…), but I wasn’t alone in feel­ing the inter­rup­tions and dis­lik­ing them. On my left was a table of five frus­trated concert-goers yelling the inevitable “You SUCK”, con­tin­u­ously. I’d say it was lack of expe­ri­ence, given their age and new­ness, but I know The Hives have toured for years, and it seemed that their refusal to engage was more capri­cious than acci­den­tal.

Oh, Mooney suzuki was there as well. What’s with the Snake? I didn’t mind their prod­uct (and it had those sly “we’re art school kids lark­ing about with the iden­tity of musi­cians” tim­ber), but the vocal­ist looked and acted too much like Nicholas Cage doing his best Mod impres­sion of Elvis to allow me to sim­ply immerse myself in the music. The drum­mer looked like one of the Nerds from Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer…