User feedback challenges your IA principles. How do you navigate this conflicting terrain?

Feedback is an important element, but it is an element that is part of a group of things. Therefore, you need to consider it to help your evolution. For me, each thing has a value and can go together, there is no one or the other. Your mission is to know the weight of each one in each circumstance with a focus on evolution.

Quality design is always user-centric. How people digest content organization will change over time so you do have to have some flexibility in your approach. Know the foundations really well, and then know when to deviate. Embrace continuous learning as well. principles can change. Stay abreast with challenges facing IA with groups on social - changes are, the group has faced a larger set of user than you would individually.

Many, many, many, lol!, years ago, I trained to be a journalist. Objectivity was essential and we practiced detachment in our reporting. That's a skill I've kept with me as I've transitioned to digital and web. It's not about you. It's about the user. Be open as open as you can about what the stakeholders bring to requirements discussions. Also, have a health side helping of empathy with your objectivity. Your job is to organize information and help people.

We have a rule in my house - the 24 hour rule - which helps us avoid impulsivity. This works with projects as well. Don't panic. Take the time to breathe and think about all the changes coming at you, or things not working, or things that seem like shiny objects but are distractions, and prioritize. Don't be afraid to ask trusted stakeholders for advice - use that RACI matrix! Also, don't discard any changes. Today's unreasonable change is tomorrow's innovation!

Test, test, test, and test again. As a project manager, often stakeholders want to just get right to deployment and you have to slow them down. You have to build testing into the project and advocate for not allowing this to be depleted for other tasks. It's your job to protect your tech people, who always get blamed when things don't work out because there wasn't enough time to test. When scheduling, include adequate time for testing and pad as you would with design or development or any other necessary activity. And, if you can get a fresh group for each iteration of user testing, do it. Using the same group over and over again might not catch everything as they acclimate to the interface.

One of the nice things about the principles of IA is that they are relatively logical and most people understand what's going on. Communicating the principles helps get everyone on the same page but it's your job as an expert to also allow people to have free and novel thoughts around the framework of principles. It's a fine line because you don't want to influence users to the point where they miss an obvious issue because they've been trained. However, you also don't want so much deviation that it becomes a hot mess.