“Here’s where I begin to fly in the face of common consensus – it being that if you code to web standards, it makes for easier maintenance of your site to those joining a project later. My experience has, thus far, shown the opposite to be true. It pains me to admit this.” (Ian Lloyd – Mezzoblue)
All posts from
August 2003
Synonym Rings and Authority Files
“Synonym rings and authority files are simple, common-sense ways to help users connect the various semantic concepts that are inherently intertwined with the term they choose. They are particularly good for large decentralized sites that are search dominant and have little centralized control over content.” (Karl Fast, Fred Leise and Mike Steckel – Boxes and Arrows)
History Flow: Visualizing Dynamic, Evolving Documents and the Interactions of Multiple Collaborating Authors
“Most documents are the product of continual evolution. An essay may undergo dozens of revisions; source code for a computer program may undergo thousands. And as online collaboration becomes increasingly common, we see more and more ever-evolving group-authored texts. This site is a preliminary report on a simple visual technique, history flow, that provides a clear view of complex records of contributions and collaboration.” (IBM Collaborative User Experience Research Group) – courtesy of vanderwal
IIID Expert Forum, Financial Services 
April 1-2, 2002 NYC: Agenda, Participants, and Presentation Abstracts (IIID)
The New Frontier of Experience Innovation
Abstract: “The intent of experience innovation is not to improve a product or service, per se, but to enable the co-creation of an environment in which personalized, evolvable experiences are the goal, and products and services are a means to that end. Profitable company growth will then result from individual consumers co-creating their own unique value, supported by a network of companies and consumer communities.” (C.K. Prahalad and Venkatram Ramaswamy – MIT Sloan Management Review) – courtesy of shiv singh
Toward the Evocation of Meaning
“From Greek and Roman times to the modern period, architecture has been created in a search of the answer to the question ‘What is architecture?’ Not only architecture but the epistemological question of what being is, of what the existence of the world is, has been the central issue of Western metaphysics from the time of Aristotle, through Plato, Descartes, Hegel, and the thinkers of the modern age. The presupposition of this epistemological search has been that there is a single and true notion of existence that can be fully described based in terms of logos, or reason. The epistemology of architecture has been that there is a sole, universal, true phenomenon ‘architecture’, which can be comprehended logically by people of every nationality and culture. This epistemology is identical with the epistemology of the Modern Architecture of the modern age.” (Kisho Kurokawa) – courtesy of kelake
Usability 101
“Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word ‘usability’ also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)
The Origin of Personas
“Personas, like all powerful tools, can be grasped in an instant but can take months or years to master.” (Alan Cooper – Cooper)
Yuri Web: Explanatory Graphics, Information Visualization, New Media
“As soon as I have some time off from teaching, I’ll build a website here. For the time being, here is just a short selection from my bookmarks (…)” (Yuri Engelhardt – Dept. of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam)
AIfIA Annual Report 2002-2003
“In March of 2002, Louis Rosenfeld and Christina Wodtke invited a group of people to discuss how to advance the field of information architecture (IA). One previous effort, ACIA, provided valuable information but was too closely paired to a commercial company to be sustainable. Another, Info-Arch.org, generated many grass-roots ideas but few concrete results. The new group was large enough to represent diverse opinions yet small enough to stay focused on the task. After eight months of online discussions, phone calls, and a meeting at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in California, the idea of the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture (AIfIA) was born.” (Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture)
Content? Or Dis-content? A Content Requirements Plan helps Web designers take a leadership role
“The most effective way to start researching and documenting your content design strategy is to begin with a solid Content Requirements Plan (CRP). This enables you to develop a content design strategy so that your Web design efforts are driven by content requirements and supported by your business leaders or clients. A CRP is a project management-style foundational document to guide every aspect of content, design, development, and measurement for Internet projects.” (GA. Buchholz – Digital Web Magazine)
Emergent Architecture
“This document itself has an emergent nature. There is no essay plan, there is no marking guide, there is no expectation of word count or of completion deadline. This process is already instructive: I noticed that I’ve planted a thousand seeds, which I already know not all will flower.” (Eric Scheid – IAwiki)
Are You Looking in All the Wrong Places?
“This close look at design firm IDEO can tell you how to uncover your hidden breakthrough assets and come up with great new ideas.” (Andrew Hargadon – darwin) – courtesy of challis hodge
Setting Expectation: Don’t forget the little things
“There is a level of expectation that is set with most every interaction that we have. Brand interaction is no different. Whether with an established brand that has been a trusted friend throughout the years or an upstart concept that catches our interest, expectations are continually challenged and anchor our every interaction.” (Stephen Bury – Thread Inc.)
A Thesaurus Interchange Format for the Semantic Web
“(…) the Thesaurus Interchange Format (TIF) enables the development, integration and deployment of thesauri on the semantic web. The TIF is an RDF schema, based on the concept-oriented thesaurus model.” (SWAD-Europe)
Hypertext ’03 Conference List of Papers & Poster Presentations
The Language of Graphics: The Lecture
Summary by Rubén Hinojosa Chapel – “Designers make graphics for transmitting some kind of information, which is interpreted by another persons so, it is reasonable to think about the existence of a language behind those graphics. Graphic representations can be regarded as expressions of visual languages. Like any language, a particular visual language involves a particular visual vocabulary and a particular visual grammar. Certain common notational habits, such as the drawing of lines between entities that have some kind of relationship, the arrangement of entities on a time line, or the use of different colors in order to indicate categories of some kind, are shared by many of these visual languages.” (Yuri Engelhardt) – courtesy of elearning
PowerPoint is Evil. Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely
“Imagine a widely used and expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn’t. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: It induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication. These side effects would rightly lead to a worldwide product recall.” (Edward Tufte – Wired) – courtesy of beth mazur
The Design of Sites: Patterns, Principles, and Processes for Crafting a Customer-Centered Web Experience
Douglas K. van Duyne, James A. Landay, and Jason I. Hong: “Design patterns are a way of communicating common design problems that web designers face, as well as solutions that work in practice.” (Antonio Volpon – Evolt)
Information Architecture for Designers: Structuring Websites for Business Success
“(…) low on theory, high on practice. It contains practical examples, how-toís, doís and doníts and ready-to-use templates, illustrating concepts, tools and deliverables that can be used immediately in real life by anyone responsible for designing web sites. Practical explanations and tips are illustrated with case studies from industry leaders like IBM and Microsoft, and clear explanations of the latest cutting-edge research from the academic world.” (Peter van Dijck)
