An information architect will create the structural design of a website and the process flow with a user’s experience in mind. They will guide the designers, developers and clients on how best to deliver the information that a user is looking for and how to simplify tasks that you want them to complete. An information architect is involved in a website from start to finish. Post project, they look at how the user experience and conversion rate of a website can be improved.

We are currently looking for an Information Architect to join our team. Is the job described above something that you have experience in, or an area that you can see yourself getting involved in?

Let us know if you are already an information architect or are a graduate that has studied relevant courses and wants to progress their skills further.

Confidence is a preference.

The job, based in Manchester would involve dealing with all stakeholders in a project, initially with the owner of the project and some potential users, then onto the designers and developers. Once a project is live, you would be feeding analysis and recommendations back to the SEO team.

A few handy skills that an information architect would have or need:

• Understanding user data and constructing personas
• Wireframing/prototyping
• UX design
• Process flow (including some experience of card sorting)
• Conversion rate optimisation with usability testing experience
• Insatiable appetite for continuous improvement
• Project management expertise would be a great addition

Speak to Dave if you fit the bill.

dave@evolutiadesign.co.uk

0161 868 0008 ext 104

Apple released iOS 5 yesterday with over 200  new features.

To upgrade your iPhone 4 “Just connect your device to your Mac or PC and follow the onscreen instructions in iTunes.” or so Apple will have you believe; unfortunately for the swarms of people with upgrade issues it’s not quite so simple.

In my instance, when I try to upgrade, it takes 5-10 minutes before alerting me that “There was a problem downloading the software for the iPhone. The network connection timed out….”. The advice on the error is to ensure that my network settings are correct and that my network connection is active. If you are reading this post then it’s safe to say that all is well under the bonnet.

After looking around I stumbled upon a blog on the osxdaily site. http://osxdaily.com/2010/11/18/itunes-network-connection-timed-out-error-3259-iphone-update-fix/ and thanks to Manish Patel, I found that the network setting that Apple are referring to was my antivirus and firewall.

Although iTunes is added as a trusted application, the download was still being rejected. Temporarily disabling my antivirus and downloading the update again solved my problem.

For those with windows and Kaspersky Internet security 2011, to do this, click on the Kaspersky icon in your system tray (The one in the bottom right hand corner of the screen) and on the protection Center, click on the down arrow on the System and Applications Protection box. From this screen you can disable some of the antivirus options (Remember to turn them back on when you are done) and try the download again.

Google have recently announced that they will be enforcing their new Google Product specification and policy changes on the 22nd September 2011.

What this means for anyone who feeds products up to Google’s Merchant Centre is that if your feed does not comply by the 22nd September, Google will take action against you, most likely rejecting your feed and removing your products from the Merchant Centre.

One of the policy changes, “Data Freshness” means that the data in the feed needs to be accurate and up to date. Currently a lot of merchants are gaining a competitive edge by violating Google’s policies such as listing prices excluding VAT, while others who follow Google’s policies are forced to list them including VAT. Hopefully Google’s latest changes should move a little further towards resolving this and putting all merchants on a level playing field. If a competitor is gaining an edge by violating Google’s policies, you can still submit a violation report to Google at http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/request.py?contact_type=policy.

For a summary of the policy and specification changes, see Google’s blog post (http://base-forum-announcements.blogspot.com/2011/07/weve-made-changes-to-google-product.html).

For the full UK product feed specification see http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=188494&expand=GB.