The Egg Matrix
Creating a Ubiquitous Information Architecture and Designing Across Devices
The Egg Matrix is a tool for planning content, features, and scenarios when creating an information architecture that will exist across multiple devices and touch points.
Where Did the Idea Come From?
In college, I had an environmental design professor who described the field as such:
Architecture is the profession that designs the shell or the structure of the built environment. Interior design is the profession that designs the interactions and spaces inside that built environment. Landscape architecture is the profession that designs the space outside this structure.
Environmental design encompasses all three, studying our interactions with the built environment, how we move through it, how we move around it, how we integrate with the natural environment, and so on.
I always had the idea of an egg in my head, in part because he described architecture as being like a shell of sorts, and partially because we talked a lot about animal habitats and homes.
Environmental design is a human-centered design discipline that covers our physical surroundings. It considers the shared ecology between places and spaces, interiors and exteriors, the mechanic and the organic. Many of the same principles and ideals carry over into the digital space.
When the Digital World Spills Over into the Physical World
When we design for digital spaces today, it’s no longer safe to assume that the majority of our users will access our information from a similar static setup in an office or home. Digital information travels freely now between devices, locations, and online and offline habitats. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to know the context or situation that surrounds each of our users.
It also seems likely that even before we have mastered the art of designing across desktop and mobile platforms, we will find ourselves creating spaces in cars, kiosks, mirrors, table tops, refrigerators, and many other devices. There is no set of rules that tells us how to create the right mix of content and features so that our users will have a seamless experience whenever and wherever they access our information.
The Egg Matrix
The Egg Matrix is my attempt to create a tool for cataloging the different forces that should be considered when determining the architecture, features, and overall design of a multi-device experience. My hope is that it is flexible enough to be applicable to topical challenges, like designing for mobile vs desktop spaces, but that it also will encompass future needs, such as television or in-car apps.
The concept is simple. There is a subset of the experience (the egg) that you can directly control. You are responsible for the structure, the content, the messaging, and the interaction that goes into your design. There are also two equally important forces at play that contribute to the experience and overall success of what you’ve designed. There is the internal composition of the user (the yolk) and the extrinsic environment that the experience takes place in (the nest). You might be able to influence certain aspects of both areas, and you might be able to design around certain scenarios, but you’ll never be responsible for the creation of these realms.
By breaking each area down into individual factors, you’ll be able to create a better model for your structure. I’ve broken each field out into the initial factors that I thought were most crucial, but there is certainly room for expansion, refinement, and feedback.
Start with a single node of content, and build out from there. What features are needed to interact with that content? How often is the content accessed by the user? What possible contexts might the user be in when accessing the content? What belief systems might he or she be bringing to the experience?
The breakdown currently is as follows:
The Nest covers environment, location, context, and locomotion.
The Egg covers message, content, task, frequency, urgency, privacy, intimacy, tracking, and measurement.
The Yolk covers motivations, needs, desires, and knowledge.
You may find yourself creating multiple columns for a single content node to cover the array of possible touch points or devices your users might encounter.
I included a section called “messaging.” This may relate to a marketing campaign, a company brand message, or a common slogan. It’s important the spaces you design don’t contradict the messaging being broadcast to users.
I’ve also included fields for noting tracking and measurements. These are for listing how you plan to measure the experience and what measurement points you’re going to look for.
How Do You Know If The Model Is Working?
Like any other model, it has to be put into action and tested. Fortunately, this “model” can be tested in several ways. You can gather feed and ask questions of users. You can create a prototype to test. When you’re satisfied with the performance of a prototype, you can design the real deal, and then continue to make refinements with ongoing feedback.
I’ve listed the Egg Matrix worksheet here so that others can download it, play around with it, refine it, and provide feedback.