All posts from
January 2005

Concept Cars

“But good design is a lot more than style. Good design includes substance: function, comfort, pleasure, safety, economy, environmental friendliness, and a lot more besides. A concept car should be an opportunity to explore all of these directions.” (Donald Norman) – courtesy of usability views

Art 491: Information Design Course

“(..) designed to give you experience in participating on an interdisciplinary project research, design and development team to produce solutions that address real-world issues and clients. Information design focuses on the communication of complex ideas with clarity, precision, and efficiency (usable). Methodologies and technologies for efficient and effective information transfer are changing rapidly and will play a fundamental, and continual, role in your future. Products of information design range from computer (and other machines) interfaces, forms and documents (online or paper), wayfinding systems in 3D space (real or virtual), to maps, charts, diagrams, graphs and business presentations. Whatever your content area of specialty, you will be involved with the design and transfer of information the rest of your life.” (Information Design Group – University of Idaho)

Modeling User Workflows for Rich Internet Applications

“As Rich Internet Applications become more advanced, the tasks, problems, and processes they address become increasingly complex, making it more important than ever to accurately model user workflows. Early Internet applications were often narrowly focused in scope, and the steps were relatively simple and sequential, for example, purchasing items through simple e-commerce, reserving hotel rooms, or renting cars. But as productivity applications move toward a web-based distribution model, the tasks become more complicated.” (David Hogue – Macromedia) – courtesy of jane wells

Investing in Usability: Testing versus Training

“(…) usability professionals use their budgets to run usability studies. That is, when given money, they immediately start setting up usability programs to solve particular problems. This shouldn’t surprise anyone because many usability professionals think the value of usability is derived entirely from the results produced through usability tests. Most people think usability is synonymous with usability testing. It isn’t, and this misconception frustrates me.” (John S. RhodesBoxes and Arrows)

IA Summit Program

“Information architecture is more widely applied than ever. Decisionmakers now accept IA as critical to well-designed electronic information spaces. Practitioners use IA approaches and methodologies, and routinely include IAs on cross-disciplinary teams. There is a growing demand for IAs and greater pressure on managers and non-IA practitioners to understand IA principles. To support these needs, this year’s Summit focuses on key topics, cutting-edge issues, and core competencies.” – Pre-Conference Program, Main Conference Program and Poster Sessions (ASIS&T 2005 Information Architecture Summit)

Towards collaboration between information seeking and information retrieval

“For many years researchers in library and information science have borrowed theory from other fields to provide insight into our research findings. We are moving from this borrowed theory approach to creating a conceptual framework that has been tested, refined and adapted specifically for application in our field. The conceptual framework has developed rapidly during the past ten years with early signs of application in other fields.” – Papers presented at the 5th Information Seeking in Context Conference, Dublin, Ireland, 1-3 September, 2004 (Carol C. Kuhlthau – Information Research, January 2005)

Fifth Annual Weblog Awards

“Bloggies are a set of 30 publicly-chosen awards given to weblog writers and those related to weblogs. This is the fifth ceremony, with previous winners listed on their respective sites: 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. Everyone’s invited to take part in the awarding process, so read below to find out how you can nominate and vote for your favorite blogs!”

Printing XML: Why CSS Is Better than XSL

“On the web, CSS is the style sheet language of choice. However, the usefulness of CSS is not limited to screens. If you want to transfer web content — be it XML or HTML — onto paper, there are good reasons to use CSS. The language is radically simpler than that of XSL, and it is suitable both on-screen and on paper. This means that you probably don’t have to write a stylesheet at all but can reuse an existing one.” (Håkon Wium Lie and Michael Day – xml.com)