Must say, this looks both relevant and fascinating for folks interested in site search analytics: Lorelei Brown and Hallie Wilfert's pre-conference workshop the morning of March 18 at next week's IA Summit in Memphis.

Information Archaeology: How to discover the users when talking to them isn't an option

Design meetings should be about having productive discussions about what our users want, and how we can match the business goals to the users' needs. Unfortunately, without access to real users, these meetings can be bogged down in details like which business unit is more important, what the CEOs favorite color is, or which corporate brand is hottest.

Too often IAs are brought into projects where they have little or no access to actual users and expected to justify their decisions with real data to elevate themselves out of the "I think"/ "you think" discussion. However, with a little elbow grease and some creativity, you can discover quite a lot about your users without ever talking to them directly!

Most organizations have artifacts on hand that help tell the story of the audiences, but you'll need to get out your magnifying glass, pith helmet, and your tiny little broom, because we're going digging for data! We can conduct user research by proxy with information on web traffic, user behavior, and user opinions with free or low-cost tools. Plus, there is also a huge set of Internet usage and user research available to tap into to augment what you can gather.

But it doesn't just stop there! Learn how to present and justify your data so that you can use your research convincingly in a meeting to support your design choices.