I’m pretty pleased with my current organic search listings on Google at the moment. Check out the screen shots below for a little evidence. All down to coding this site in an accessible way, writing relevant content and having industry knowledge of search engine optimisation.

Keyword phrase: Freelance Information Architect London

Keyword phrase: Freelance IA London

Keyword phrase: Freelance Information Architect Essex

Keyword phrase: Freelance Information Architect UK

You can now get all the latest news from Hungry Browser through the new widget I’ve just launched for Netvibes. It is availalbe for OS X, Windows Vista, iGoogle, Opera and Windows Live. Go check it out!

The new Freeview website is now live and is looking so much better than it was previously. I was part of the team that assisted in the redevelopment of the site and was in charge of developing the Information Architecture for the new site. Hopefully the new visual design and structure will be welcomed with positive feedback!

I have recently been in discussions with Together London about collaborating with them on forthcoming web projects. The idea behind the company is to put together a team of highly-skilled individuals who work together in a flexible and more efficient way. By being more agile, cutting out a lot of the inefficiencies that occur in larger agencies we can deliver higher quality projects, more quickly and cheaply.

URL: http://www.togetherlondon.com/

I came across these interesting data visualisation projects whilst working on the IA for the redesign of the Freeview website. There are some great ideas here involving the presentation and manipulation of data objects. As IA is very much about communicating ideas to clients and teams I am hoping to use some similar presentation techniques on future conceptual IA.

MooWheel

MSNBC Spectra Visual Newsreader

Reclam Literatur Doner

For more info about cool data visualisation experiments and projects check out: visualcomplexity.com

So after a year’s break from working for myself, I have taken the leap and re-established Hungry Browser. I left Crayon in April 2008 and re-started my Freelance career in the form of Information architecture and User experience consultancy. I’ve set up a Hungry Browser as a UK limited company with the view to have more control over my scedule and work/life balance. All is going well so far with great demand for IA and User experience skills.

Over the past few months Amazon have been tweaking their existing site to improve the design and user experience. They have done a good job, but I couldn’t help but notice that they have only gone half the way to using Web standards in their redesign efforts. Here’s a little (non-exhaustive) summary of what they are missing:

• The HTML isn’t really that semantic, if you remove the style sheet the content doesn’t really flow that well – a(ccessibility barrier to non-graphical browsers)
• No DOCTYPE to inform browsers of what version of HTML they are using
• A huge amount of page specific CSS and JavaScript, could this have been moved into an external file to be reused elsewhere?
• They are STILL using tables for content and page layout – very inflexible, non-semantic and harder to update, increases code to content ratio (lowers SEO – although Amazon are all over SEO)
• Page design doesn’t scale well when you increase the font size
• No use of access keys or tab indexes so a user can’t tab logically through the navigation
• No use of skip to content or skip navigation links

Amazon still provides a great online shopping experience, but you have thought that if they had gone to the trouble of redesigning their site they would have taken a few lessons out of Yahoo’s book and gone down the full Web standards route.

Am back in the office in London after a few days in Newquay surfing and now freelancing as an IA at a company called The Grand Union. I am supposed to be here initially for about a month. Am settling in, head down (being the new guy and all that) and I guess we’ll see how things progress next week. Only downside again is being given a PC to work on, am sure I will end up getting just as pissed off here using Visio as I did at Dare, maybe I will be able to get a Mac, we’ll see!

For the past 2 weeks I have been freelancing as an Information Architect over at Dare Digital in central London (the last time I was here was 2 years ago as a Web Developer).

I’ve been working on some interesting projects for Vodafone, Sony UK and Barclaycard. It is a nice break from a year of working pretty much solely on BT. I would say the only frustrating thing is I have had to work on a PC, which has felt clunky, unprofessional and at times rather retarded. But on the upside I have learned how to use MS Visio and can now add that to my CV.

It’s been quite strange working as part of a new team as opposed to being full time back at Crayon (where I used to walk around acting like I owned the place with my 1.5 hour gym lunches). You have to tone down your personality for the first few days, as not to walk in and end up offending people or acting too over confident (it is a fine balance). But they are a nice bunch and I have had a good time seeing how a different agency (much bigger than my previous one) works and “does” IA.

This weekend I have earned some much needed down time and hopefully the good weather will continue. The next few weeks look potentially busy with possible work offers on the table from: Dare, Grand Union, Sapient and the Glass Partnership. Just need to balance that with getting some decent surf time in and its all good!