December 2003

Top ten web design mistakes of 2003

"Sites are getting better at using minimalist design, maintaining archives, and offering comprehensive services. However, these advances entail their own usability problems, as several prominent mistakes from 2003 show." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on December 22, 2003 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Information Design Journal 11:1

Theme: Information design for air transport (Karel van der Waarde & Piet Westendorp eds. - John Benjamin Publishing Company)

Posted by PJB on December 19, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Spit-not-so, or What's in the Layout?

"Many tasks involve the processing of information from different sources. Some information needed resides in the memory of the person. Other information is in physical things: dials, screens even the position of objects. Physical (and similarly virtual) objects act as memory aids." (Paul Curzon - Usability News)

Posted by PJB on December 19, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

On search, the series

"This series of essays on the construction, deployment and use of search technology (by which I mean primarily 'full-text' search) was written between June and December of 2003. It has fifteen installments not including this table of contents." (Tim Bray - Ongoing)

Posted by PJB on December 18, 2003 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Typographica: A journal of typography

"Typographica is a daily journal of typography featuring news, observations, and open commentary on fonts and typographic design." (Stephen Coles and Joshua Lurie-Terrell )

Posted by PJB on December 18, 2003 | Classification: Typography | Comments (0) | Permalink

The search for search's next generation

"The burn-out of the dot-com era left a smoldering envy of those few dot-commers that managed to stay alive. Google is foremost among these. If they can continue pulling in dynamic data from more and more sites, their dominance may well continue -- for access to dynamic data is indeed the key to the next big improvement in search." (Andy Oram - O'Reilly Developer Weblogs)

Posted by PJB on December 18, 2003 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

OWL: Web Ontology Language - Overview

"The OWL Web Ontology Language is designed for use by applications that need to process the content of information instead of just presenting information to humans." (W3C)

Posted by PJB on December 17, 2003 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

CSS, accessibility and standard links

"Here you'll find a whole bunch of links to some of the vast resources out there. These are places I've have gone to and still visit for help and to learn. As new resources are constantly popping up, watch this space for changes. I've tried to order stuff as logically as possible." (Andrew Fernandez - deswozhere) - courtesy of lucdesk

Posted by PJB on December 16, 2003 | Classification: Accessibility | Comments (0) | Permalink

Information Design: the Popular Communication experience

"From this point of view, I suggest that in figuring out 'where Information Design has come from', we can usefully look beyond the usual suspects: it's not only self-identified ID 'believers' who have contributed good ideas about how to communicate clearly, effectively and appropriately." (Conrad Taylor - Ideography) - courtesy of beth mazur

Posted by PJB on December 16, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Avoid Santa Claus approach to content management

"The Santa Claus approach to content management creates a content management software wish list. It believes in the magic of technology to sweep away any and every problem. Typically, those who believe in Santa don't believe in defining their processes, or figuring out just why they need a website in the first place." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on December 15, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Q+A - Edward Tufte

"Ten questions for Edward Tufte - The information-design guru offers a few choice words about PowerPoint." (Dan Nadel - The International Design Magazine) - courtesy of william drenttel

Posted by PJB on December 14, 2003 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

The visual vocabulary three years later: An interview with Jesse James Garrett

"It hasn't changed as much as I expected. When I released the vocabulary in 2000, it still seemed to be in flux - some of the elements were fairly new additions, and I figured it was likely that there would be more in short order. But, in retrospect, the vocabulary was actually more mature than I realized at the time." (Dan Brown - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on December 12, 2003 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

Building a vision of design success

"A redesign has some built-in advantages over everyday maintenance; the most useful being focus. And focus is the loam that allows a shared vision to grow." (Christina Wodtke - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on December 12, 2003 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Creating patient-centered healthcare through ambient experience design

"Thanks to greater education and access to information, the Internet, and the growing awareness about well-being related issues, they know more and care more about their health than any generation before. So when they seek professional assistance and don't find what they want, or feel it doesn't meet their needs, they simply go elsewhere." (Stefano Marzano - Philips Design) - courtesy of uxblog

Posted by PJB on December 12, 2003 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Quality control: The importance of website testing

"A website needs to be as close to perfect as possible before it is presented to the intended audience, and the adherence to a formal test plan and test procedures will assist in making sure that all bases are covered before the site is launched." (Julie Price - Thread Inc.)

Posted by PJB on December 12, 2003 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Understanding brand experience 

Presentation given at AIGA Houston (Dirk Knemeyer - Thread Archive)

Posted by PJB on December 11, 2003 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Architecture of the World Wide Web, First edition

"The World Wide Web is a network-spanning information space of resources interconnected by links. This information space is the basis of, and is shared by, a number of information systems. Within each of these systems, agents (people and software) retrieve, create, display, analyze, and reason about resources. Web architecture includes the definition of the information space in terms of identification and representation of its contents, and of the protocols that support the interaction of agents in an information system making use of the space. Web architecture is influenced by social requirements and software engineering principles, leading to design choices that constrain the behavior of systems using the Web in order to achieve desired properties of the shared information space: efficiency, scalability, and the potential for indefinite growth across languages, cultures, and media. This document reflects the three bases of Web architecture: identification, interaction, and representation." (W3C)

Posted by PJB on December 11, 2003 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

Buckets: Smart objects for digital libraries

"Buckets are an aggregative, intelligent construct for publishing in DLs allow the decoupling of information content from information storage and retrieval. Buckets exist within the Smart Objects and Dumb Archives model for DLs in that we 'push down' many of the functionalities and responsibilities traditionally associated with archives (making the archives 'dumber') into the buckets (making them 'smarter'). Some of the responsibilities imbued to buckets are the enforcement of their terms and conditions, and maintenance and display of their contents." (Michael L. Nelson) - courtesy of usablehelp

Posted by PJB on December 11, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Book review: Spinning the semantic web

"Are you looking for a method for managing Web data in a useful and orderly format? Your search is over. This handbook is both a good introduction for the metadata neophyte and a useful reference for the semantically hip." (Carl Bedingfield - ACM Ubiquity)

Posted by PJB on December 10, 2003 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Usability and open-source software development

"Open-source is becoming an increasingly popular software development method. This paper reports a usability study of the open-source Greenstone Digital Library collection-building software. The problems highlighted by the study are analysed to identify their likely source within the social context of Greenstone's development environment. We discuss how characteristics of open-source software development influence the usability of resulting software products. " (David M. Nichols, Kirsten Thomson and Stuart A. Yeates - Department of Computer Science, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand)

Posted by PJB on December 10, 2003 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

The humanism of media ecology: Keynote address delivered at the inaugural media ecology association convention

"As far as I can tell, the new media have made us into a nation of information junkies; that is to say, our 170-year efforts have turned information into a form of garbage. My own answer to the question concerning access to information is that, at least for now, the speed, volume, and variety of available information serve as a distraction and a moral deficit; we are deluded into thinking that the serious social problems of our time would be solved if only we had more information, and still more information." (Neil Postman - Media Ecology Association) - courtesy of vanderwal

Posted by PJB on December 09, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Stuart Weibel interviews Tim Berners-Lee

"The benefit of the Web is proportional to the number of connections - links - to related information. Just as the Web evolved rapidly as people recognized this and acted independently to launch Web servers, this same network effect will bring people together around common semantic standards as they come to realize the enhanced value of their data and information in the context of a truly Semantic Web." (Online Computer Literacy Center) - courtesy of peter van dijck

Posted by PJB on December 09, 2003 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

There are only four things that people do on the web

"Begin thinking of your website as the means to meet the needs and desires of people. Understand the motivations that bring people to the web. Help them learn and feel and connect and trade. Plan your site to successfully provide all four of those things for the people you want to move." (Dirk Knemeyer - Thread Inc.)

Posted by PJB on December 08, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Automated email from websites to customers

"Transactional email can be a website's customer service ambassador, but messages must first survive a ruthless selection process in the user's in-box. Differentiating your message from spam is thus the first duty of email design." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on December 08, 2003 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

The intranet gets serious: If you can't measure it, you can't manage it - Part 4/4

"Intranets don't self-organize. Without planned, centralized information architectures and clearly defined published processes, they become unproductive. Intranets often have applications that either don't work properly, are too difficult to learn, or have no clear business benefit. Applications, like content, must be able to establish a clear return on investment." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on December 07, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

The total user experience: How to make it positive in future wireless systems and services

"In this paper, we focus on the total user experience that extends the goal of good usability to cover all the factors summarized by a user in her/his user experience." (Mikko Kerttula & Timo Tokkonen - Nokia Research Projects) - courtesy of reloade

Posted by PJB on December 07, 2003 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Humanity will survive information deluge

Q&A with Sir Arthur C. Clarke: "The Information Age offers much to mankind, and I would like to think that we will rise to the challenges it presents. But it is vital to remember that information ñ in the sense of raw data ñ is not knowledge; that knowledge is not wisdom; and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these." (Nalaka Gunawardene - OneWorld South Asia)

Posted by PJB on December 07, 2003 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

Expert forum for knowledge presentation: Resources for communication & Forum for discussion, planning, and collaboration

"Our goal is to provide a structured forum to define common goals, formulate strategies, and develop collaborative action leading to improving the performance of communications and developing an agreed upon knowledge base that serves and defines the field." (International Institute for Information Design) - courtesy of karel van der waarde

Posted by PJB on December 04, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

XML: One input - many outputs: A response to Hillesund

"There are problems, mostly editorial in nature, for which there are no technical solutions. As such, XML as a technology does not solve them. However, I think it does provide a platform on which to build solutions." (Norman Walsh - Journal of Digital Information / Theme: Information management)

Posted by PJB on December 04, 2003 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

When good design => bad product

"When you come up with improved designs, take it upon yourself to test how they work. Formulate your own test plan and try them out under a variety of conditions. If the engineering process is so badly broken that changing the old designs will almost certainly make things worse, back off on how much you want to change in each release and work with your engineers to do more informal QA testing before the release is assembled." (Bruce Tognazzini - AskTog) - courtesy of vanderwal

Posted by PJB on December 03, 2003 | Classification: Interaction design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Skip this rant and read Shirky

"If this all sounds like the Mother of all Migraines, you're spot on. Probably too challenging for most of us, even if our content management systems suddenly sprouted new code to adequately support metadata management. And even if we could get everyone in our organizations - or, in the case of the Semantic Web, every web publisher on the planet - to share the same 'world views' as expressed by metadata." (Louis Rosenfeld)

Posted by PJB on December 03, 2003 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

News page designer

"(...) there aren't many places to see news design happening throughout the world. Many areas of the country don't have easy access to newspapers from around the world or even the United States. Consequently many of us are working in somewhat of a vacuum. Your participation helps create a community for all news designers from all geographic areas and from all levels of experience." (About NPD)

Posted by PJB on December 03, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Diemen repository of interaction design patterns

"Patterns help us solve design problems - problems that occur time and time again, and are being solved time and time again by designers. Patterns describe practical solutions to these problems and how to apply them in different situations." (Arthur Clemens)

Posted by PJB on December 02, 2003 | Classification: Patterns | Comments (0) | Permalink

The intranet gets serious: Publish what you can manage - Part 3/4

"There is a view in some organizations that an intranet is only for staff, so you can publish what you want. Quality content matters as much on an intranet as on a public website. Get your content right to begin with. Keep it right by removing out-of-date content." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on December 01, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

The principles of universal design

"The intent of universal design is to simplify life for everyone by making products, communications, and the built environment more usable by as many people as possible at little or no extra cost. Universal design benefits people of all ages and abilities." (The center for universal design) - courtesy of concent inc.

Posted by PJB on December 01, 2003 | Classification: Accessibility | Comments (0) | Permalink

FAQ Digital Object Identifier

"(...) a digital identifier for any object of intellectual property. A DOI provides a means of persistently identifying a piece of intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with related current data in a structured extensible way." (The Digital Object Identifier) - courtesy of leo robert klein

Posted by PJB on December 01, 2003 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

Patterns in unstructured data: Discovery, aggregation, and visualization

"In talking about search engines and how to improve them, it helps to remember what distinguishes a useful search from a fruitless one." (Clara Yu et al.) - courtesy of the other blog

Posted by PJB on December 01, 2003 | Classification: Patterns | Comments (0) | Permalink

Themes and metaphors in the semantic web discussion

"My apologies in advance for being simplistic in this write-up - despite having developed a language that has some semantics in it, I am far from an expert on the semantic web. " (Peter Van Dijck) - courtesy of the other blog

Posted by PJB on December 01, 2003 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

AIfIA sponsors first scandinavian conference on information architecture

"AIfIA will be an official sponsor of the Danish Research Library Association's Forum for Information Architecture (DF-IA) conference. The conference will be held March 9th - 10th, 2004 in Korsoer, Denmark. While it will be the first information architecture (IA) conference held in Scandinavia, DF-IA is drawing international participation." (AIfIA) - courtesy of peter morville

Posted by PJB on December 01, 2003 | Classification: Events | Comments (0) | Permalink

ODLIS: Online dictionary of library and information science

"(...) designed to be a hypertext reference resource for library and information science professionals, university students and faculty, and users of all types of libraries. The primary criterion for including a new term is whether a librarian or other information professional might reasonably be expected to encounter it at some point in his (or her) career, or be required to know its meaning in the course of executing his or her responsibilities as a librarian. The vocabulary of publishing, printing, book history, literature, and computer science has been included when, in the author's judgment, a definition might prove helpful, not only to library and information professionals, but also to laypersons." (Joan M. Reitz - Western Connecticut State University)

Posted by PJB on December 01, 2003 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink