All posts from
April 2006

Information Architecture and Findability

Added on 15 April 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Peter Morville, co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web with Lou Rosenfeld and author of Ambient Findability, presented a very informative day-long lecture on the subject of information architecture (IA). He discussed many basic concepts as well as best practices, so his presentation would appeal to both beginner and intermediate IAs.” (Russell Wilson – UXmatters)

IA Summit 2006: Gathering of the Tribe

Added on 15 April 2006 Peter Bogaards
“During March 23-28, 2006, over 500 people gathered in Vancouver, Canada, for the seventh Information Architecture Summit sponsored by ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science and Technology). The delightfully diverse attendees included not just people with the job title information architect, but also librarians, Web developers, business analysts, user experience designers, and others.” (Laurie Lamar – UXmatters)

My IA Summit 2006 Experience: Part 1/2/3

Added on 15 April 2006 Peter Bogaards
“The seventh annual ASIS&T Information Architecture Summit—IA Summit 2006 for short—was held at the Hyatt® Regency in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, shown in Figure 1, from March 23 through 27, 2006. Its theme was Learning • Doing • Selling. While I attended the IA Summit Redux in San Francisco at Adaptive Path last year, this was my first IA Summit.” (Pabini Gabriel-Petit – UXmatters)

Mathemagenic

Added on 14 April 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Mathemagenic means ‘giving birth to learning’. I use this site as my learning diary, so I think this name fits well. So far, this web-site includes only my blog, a reverse-order posting of insights, commentaries, links and a few longer stories. Later it may grow into bigger web-site, but I’m not in a hurry for that. Learning starts small. As a researcher I’m curious to see how blogs could be used for learning and knowledge sharing. So, my blog is an experiment as well. Most of my learning is around learning, e-learning and knowledge management (and weblogs of course).” (Lilia Efimova)

Videos in the CHI Video Retrospective Special Collection

Added on 13 April 2006 Peter Bogaards
“We’ve added 87 videos from the Assocation for Computing Machinery (ACM) annual Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) conference. These videos were digitized from the CHI conference VHS video proceedings for the years 1996 through 2002, with the exception of the video proceedings for the year 2000. We expect to add videos for the year 2000 and 2003 video proceedings soon.” (The Open Video Project)

Information and Knowledge Management: What Technical Communication Can Learn From Library Science

Added on 12 April 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Technical communication and librarianship share a common foundation in mediating information. Technical communicators traditionally have been concerned with the production of information while librarians have focused on the organization and management of information. However, as information and communications technologies have broadened the definition of technical communication and librarianship, they have expanded opportunities and career choices for practitioners in both fields. Technical communicators may now be employed in such fields as information architecture, web site design and development, information design, instructional design, and many more. Increasingly, information and knowledge management have become concepts required for effective technical communication, requiring an understanding of effective organization, storage, and management of information.” (Barbara J. D’Angelo – STC Information Design and Architecture SIG)

No boundaries: The challenge of ubiquitous design

Added on 12 April 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Sometimes a change in technology has implications that are so epochal that everyone must wrestle with them, accommodate them, or prepare for them. The revolution in information technologies known as ‘ubiquitous computing’ (or ubicomp) is the most recent such change, and it is beginning to impact the practice—and the business—of digital design.” (Adam Greenfield – Adobe Design Center) – courtesy of annegalloway

BLOG CHI Live!

Added on 10 April 2006 Peter Bogaards
“We’re looking for bloggers who will be coming to CHI to, well, blog CHI. We’re interested in seeing if adding this virtual layer to the physical presence of CHI will help make CHI a better experience for the community – especially since CHI is a broader conference beast this year, including many new community areas.” (CHI2006: Interact.Inform.Inspire)

Emanuel Goldberg, Electronic Document Retrieval, And Vannevar Bush’s Memex

Added on 10 April 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Vannevar Bush’s famous paper ‘As We May Think’ (1945) described an imaginary information retrieval machine, the Memex. The Memex is usually viewed, unhistorically, in relation to subsequent developments using digital computers. This paper attempts to reconstruct the little-known background of information retrieval in and before 1939 when ‘As We May Think’ was originally written. The Memex was based on Bush’s work during 1938-1940 developing an improved photoelectric microfilm selector, an electronic retrieval technology pioneered by Emanuel Goldberg of Zeiss Ikon, Dresden, in the 1920s. Visionary statements by Paul Otlet (1934) and Walter Schuermeyer (1935) and the development of electronic document retrieval technology before Bush are examined.” (Michael K. Buckland)

The Concept of Information

Added on 9 April 2006 Peter Bogaards
“The concept of information as we use it in everyday English in the sense knowledge communicated plays a central role in today’s society. The concept became particularly predominant since end of World War II with the widespread use of computer networks. The rise of information science in the middle fifties is a testimony of this. For a science like information science (IS) it is of course important how its fundamental terms are defined, and in IS as in other fields the problem of how to define information is often raised. This review is an attempt to overview the present status of the information concept in IS with a view also to interdisciplinary trends.” (Rafael Capurro and Birger Hjørland)

Document Engineering and Information Architecture

Added on 6 April 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Document Engineering helps us specify, design, and implement these documents and the processes that create and consume them. It synthesizes complementary ideas from information and systems analysis, electronic publishing, business process analysis, and business informatics to ensure that the documents and processes make sense to the people and applications that need them. A document-centric philosophy unifies these different analysis and modeling perspectives.” (Robert J. Glushko – Document Engineering)

In Google we trust: Information integrity in the digital age

Added on 4 April 2006 Peter Bogaards
“This paper considers information safety and accuracy in the digital age using Google as an entry point. In doing so, it explores the role media play in shaping the relationship of information, privacy, and trust between Google and the public. This inquiry is undertaken using framing theory to guide a content analysis of the way Google is presented in New York Times articles from a two–year period ending in November, 2005. Analysis of the extensive coverage of Google’s share price and earnings reports leads to the conclusion that trust in Google is fostered in part simply by reports of its fiscal success. To the extent that this is true, meaningful public debate about information policies is inhibited.” (Lee Shaker- First Monday 11.4)

Designing the Next Generation of Web Apps

Added on 4 April 2006 Peter Bogaards
“I had a great time moderating a panel at SXSW this year. The subject was web applications — specifically the changes we’ve seen recently in the new technologies, design directions, and economic factors of building stuff online. So I asked some really smart people to join me to discuss what’s been happening and what they’ve been thinking about. Thanks again to George Oates from Flickr, Mena Trott from SixApart, Eric Rodenbeck from Stamen Design, and Evan Williams from Odeo. Here are the notes I prepared before the panel. We didn’t get through it all; we could have kept going all afternoon.” (Jeffrey Veen)