December 2002

The Psychology of Navigation

"That's why I don't often use the phrase 'information architect' among the uninitiated. It causes too much trouble." (Jesse James Garrett - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted by PJB on December 18, 2002 | Classification: Navigation | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Persuasive Navigation

"Persuasive navigation is navigation that persuades a user to do something." (Jeff Last - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted by PJB on December 18, 2002 | Classification: Navigation | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Navigation Complex

"(...) six forms of navigation - three main types and three subtypes." (Peter Paul Koch - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted by PJB on December 18, 2002 | Classification: Navigation | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Bottoms Up: Designing Complex, Adaptive Systems

"(...) the complexity of our sites overwhelmed us." (Peter Morville - New Architect)

Posted by PJB on December 17, 2002 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

What Is A Controlled Vocabulary?

"A controlled vocabulary is a way to insert an interpretive layer of semantics between the term entered by the user and the underlying database to better represent the original intention of the terms of the user." (Karl Fast et al. - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on December 17, 2002 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Handheld for Doctors

"A massive 28% of a UK doctor's time is spent dealing with paper. This book will show you why and how handheld computers can help you reduce this time, and how to use the technology without waiting for the IT department." (Mohammad Al-Ubaydli)

Posted by PJB on December 16, 2002 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Beyond 'Couch Potatoes': From Consumers to Designers and Active Contributors

"The fundamental challenge for computational media is to contribute to the invention and design of cultures in which humans can express themselves and engage in personally meaningful activities." (Gerhard Fisher - First Monday 7.12)

Posted by PJB on December 15, 2002 | Classification: UCD | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

iHotelier: Demonstrating the Potential of Flash for Web App Design

"Flash's real potential to get past some hard problems makes it something we should seriously investigate for future application development." (Christine Perfetti - User Interface Engineering)

Posted by PJB on December 13, 2002 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Personas Used as Means of Motivating Design Teams

"Lovely personas with a full back story are dropped in cupboard and ignored." (Ann Light - Usability News)

Posted by PJB on December 13, 2002 | Classification: Personas | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Human Environment Mission Statement

"To make computer technology available to a wider audience than has been possible by radically and rationally improving its usability." (Jeff Raskin)

Posted by PJB on December 13, 2002 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Proposal for an IA Curriculum

"The AIfIA Education Curriculum Initiative will create a framework which instructors will use to create information architecture programs, courses, and syllabi for courses." (Victor Lombardi - Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture)

Posted by PJB on December 13, 2002 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

UsabilityNet

A project funded by the European Union to promote usability and user-centered design (About UsabilityNet)

Posted by PJB on December 12, 2002 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Cognitive Models for Web Design: Information Foraging Theory Applied

"Information foraging theory gives those researching user interaction with Web sites a way to examine user goals, their decision making processes and adaptations to the information access system environment." (Tanya Rabourn - Pixelcharmer)

Posted by PJB on December 11, 2002 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Steve Krug Interview

"If you know people are going to be coming to your site who you can't sell or ship to, why wouldn't you let them know that as soon as possible--at the very least, when they put something in a shopping cart." (Marc A. Garrett - since1968)

Posted by PJB on December 11, 2002 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

An interview with Peter Morville and Lou Rosenfeld, Information Architects

"An information architect must learn about business goals and context, content and services, and user needs and behavior; and then work with colleagues to transform this balanced understanding of the information ecology into the design of organization, labeling, and navigation systems that provide a solid but flexible foundation for the user experience." (Meryl K. Evans - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted by PJB on December 11, 2002 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Eat Me, Drink Me, Push Me (...)

An excerpt from 'Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web' (Christina Wodtke - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted by PJB on December 11, 2002 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Web Design Guru Sees Flash Challenges

"Nielsen credited Macromedia (...) for taking usability seriously and paying attention to such issues while Flash is still relatively young." (David Becker - C|Net News)

Posted by PJB on December 10, 2002 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Can You Purchase Wisdom?

"The problem was one of design -- learning how to use this system was quite difficult, and often ran contrary to how people currently worked." (Peter Merholz)

Posted by PJB on December 10, 2002 | Classification: UCD | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

All About Facets & Controlled Vocabularies

"Information architects are fascinated with faceted classification and its application to information architecture problems. However, facets remain difficult to understand and there are few options for learning about them." (Karl Fast et al. - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on December 10, 2002 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Ramana Rao's Information Flow

"Ranganathan's objection to the prevailing classification systems, such as Dewey Decimal Classification and Library of Congress Classification, was that they tried to enumerate all possible subjects and provide preconceived pigeonholes to accommodate all documents." (Ramana Rao)

Posted by PJB on December 09, 2002 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Thinking Should Become Before Communication

"Communication has become the great fashion and addiction of our age. (...) Communication, without thought, is in fact an unproductive activity." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on December 09, 2002 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Explorations in Learning & Instruction: The Theory Into Practice Database

"The Theory Into Practice (TIP) database contains descriptions of 50 theories relevant to human learning and instruction." (Greg Kearsley)

Posted by PJB on December 09, 2002 | Classification: Instructional design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

In the Future, We'll All Be Harry Potter

"The world of magic is a world where inanimate objects come alive; it's as if they had computational power, sensors, awareness, and connectivity." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on December 09, 2002 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability is Next to Profitability

"Software companies have finally grasped the value of easy-to-fathom programs, and they're pouring resources into the task." (Jane Black - Business Week)

Posted by PJB on December 06, 2002 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Professional Usability Testing and Return On Investment

"This paper discusses the return on investment (ROI) implications of integrating formal usability testing methods into web development projects." (Charles L. Mauro - TaskZ)

Posted by PJB on December 06, 2002 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Ten Taxonomy Myths

"Taxonomies have recently emerged from the quiet backwaters of biology, book indexing, and library science into the corporate limelight." (Montague Institute Review)

Posted by PJB on December 06, 2002 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability and Open Source Software

"In this paper, we review the existing evidence of the usability of open source software and discuss how the characteristics of open source development influence usability." (Dave M. Nichols and Michael B. Twidale)

Posted by PJB on December 06, 2002 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Palm OS User Interface Guidelines

"This book describes how to design applications for Palm Powered handhelds so that they conform to Palm, Inc.'s user interface guidelines." (Palm)

Posted by PJB on December 06, 2002 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Userati

Names and connections (Chris McEvoy - Usability Views)

Posted by PJB on December 05, 2002 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The 1968 Demo of Demos

"(...) the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated (...) including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface." (Douglas Carl Engelbart - MouseSite)

Posted by PJB on December 05, 2002 | Classification: Classics | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Best IA Tool You Never Heard Of

"A good IA tool should work like your brain. Is there one? Yes. It's called Tinderbox." (Sean Carton - ClickZ)

Posted by PJB on December 04, 2002 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Information Needs Analysis

"Each user has a different type of information need depending on what he's trying to find and why he's trying to find it." (Louis Rosenfeld - Bloug)

Posted by PJB on December 04, 2002 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Our Favorite Books: Recommendations from the staff of Boxes and Arrows

"These are the books we can't live without or have learned great lessons from over the years." (Boxes and Arrows Staff)

Posted by PJB on December 04, 2002 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Intelligent Interfaces for Local Communities

"With pervasive internetworking, computers have become an extremely effective and economic means by which people communicate." (K. Stathis and P. Purcell - Usability News)

Posted by PJB on December 03, 2002 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

ROI for Usable User-Interface Design: Examples and Statistics 

"Usability increases customer satisfaction and productivity, leads to customer trust and loyalty, and inevitably results in tangible cost savings and profitability." (Aaron Marcus and Associates)

Posted by PJB on December 03, 2002 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Text, Tables, and Graphics

"A graphic is not always the most illustrative element. Written sentences, tables and graphics occupy their own place in the discourse of building clarity and insight." (Juan C. Dürsteler - Inf@Vis!)

Posted by PJB on December 03, 2002 | Classification: InfoViz | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Extended Faceted Taxonomies for Web Catalogs

"Which would be easier to remember: one thousand individual terms or three facets of ten terms each?" (Yannis Tzitzikas - ERCIM News: Semantic Web Special)

Posted by PJB on December 02, 2002 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Navigating Information Spaces

"New HCI challenges arise from the emergence of information spaces and the related concept of navigation." (David Benyon - ERCIM News: Human Computer Interaction Special)

Posted by PJB on December 02, 2002 | Classification: Navigation | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Nathan Shedroff: The V-2 Interview 2/2

"And, by the way, very few IAs I've met even understand 'users', let alone 'user agency'. Most design for themselves, as much as any other design field." (Adam Greenfield - V-2)

Posted by PJB on December 02, 2002 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Understanding Web Typography

"In this article, I attempt to cut a swathe through the complexities of Web typography; explain the possible pitfalls; and provide some guidelines for creating accessible and easy to read web pages." (Jim Byrne)

Posted by PJB on December 01, 2002 | Classification: Typography | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Navigation Bars for Hierarchical Web Sites

"The goal of our study was to determine the effectiveness of the selection list navigation bar, an innovation to the standard navigation bar." (David Bowler et al. - SHORE 2001)

Posted by PJB on December 01, 2002 | Classification: Navigation | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack