May 2003

Information Design: Transcend

"2by Two Conference (...) Not many conferences are four day affairs, but this multi-conference collaboration between the Institute of Design (Chicago) and the International Institute for Information Design is one such event." - (Dirk Knemeyer)

Posted by PJB on May 29, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability for Programmers

"There's this idea floating around that programmers, web developers, shouldn't need usability."

Posted by PJB on May 28, 2003 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Microsoft's Longhorn 3D UI

"(...) here are a few short videos showing some of the features of the Tier 2 UI." - (Extreme Tech) - courtesy of heyblog

Posted by PJB on May 28, 2003 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability Engineering Team

"The Usability Engineering Team provides consultation and support for software development teams to ensure that the software they create is easy to learn, easy to use and less costly to develop and maintain. We believe in following a User-Centered Design process that actively involves the users during all phases of the project. We are committed to providing highly effective interface designs that save time, save money and allow users to be more productive. We firmly believe in "making technology work for people." - (NASA) - courtesy of iaslash

Posted by PJB on May 28, 2003 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Computers That Speak Your Language

"Voice recognition that finally holds up its end of a conversation is revolutionizing customer service. Now the goal is to make natural language the way to find any type of information, anywhere." - (Wade Roush - MIT Technology Review) - courtesy of nooface

Posted by PJB on May 28, 2003 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Truth of Weblogs

"Everyone knows that there are serious problems with objectivity. At last we may have a corrective, a way of thinking that doesn't fall into the obvious traps. Oddly, it's little ol' weblogs that are leading the way." (David Weinberger - KMWorld) - courtesy of elearningpost

Posted by PJB on May 28, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Articles and Book Reviews

Bestsellers, Booklists, Visual Design and Information Design (Mantex)

Posted by PJB on May 27, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Interview with Steven Pemberton

"He has been at the center of the forces that have been guiding the Web for over a decade." - (Russell Dyer - XML.com)

Posted by PJB on May 27, 2003 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Interview with Louis Rosenfeld

Content Management and Information Architecture - (Tony Byrne - CMSWatch)

Posted by PJB on May 27, 2003 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Sociobiology of Information Architecture

"(...) the practice of information architecture remains primarily an institutional endeavor, driven by the needs of corporations, governments, and educational institutions. Today's information architects are the heirs of yesterday's scribes, clerks, and clerics: laboring to acquire, store, and disseminate knowledge for the sake of humanity, but ultimately in the service of institutions." - (Alex Wright - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on May 27, 2003 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

CSS Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design

"A demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design." - (Dave Shea)

Posted by PJB on May 26, 2003 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

PowerPoint Remix

"PowerPoint is standard ... but bad. Why?" - (Aaron Swartz) - courtesy of mark bernstein

Posted by PJB on May 26, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Spam is Tip of the Iceberg of Information Overload

"Spam reflects an information economy where content is extremely easy and cheap to publish. Spam is just the tip of the iceberg. For every page printed, there are 30.000 'pages' published on computers. Today, glut is a far greater problem than scarcity. We are slowly being drowned by vast quantities of useless content." - (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on May 26, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Information Design Approach to Web Development

"Think on an information design level, not a Web development level." - (Dirk Knemeyer - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted by PJB on May 23, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Design Rationale

"Even with advanced design tools, the design process typically produces a description of the desired artifact, but leaves little or no indication of the design rationale. We end up knowing what was designed, but often have no idea why it is the way it is, what motivated the particular design, what alternatives were considered and rejected, etc." - (MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab) - courtesy of purse lip square jaw

Posted by PJB on May 23, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Designers' Roles in Communicating with Users

"From the users' perspective, their experience is continuous. Your website, their browser, their computer, their immediate environment, and their life all interact and feed back on one another. What they understand affects not just what they can accomplish, but what attracts them to the product, and what attracts them to a product affects how willing they are to understand it. If a site is visually attractive, they may be more motivated to expend extra effort to understand and use it. If they feel it's easy to use, maybe they'll be motivated to use it more often." - (Ann Light - Usability News)

Posted by PJB on May 23, 2003 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Sharing Knowledge is Better than Having It

Presentation on "The Structure, Content, and Form in the Information Design and Architecture of Information Artifacts" - (Peter J. Bogaards - STC Belgium)

Posted by PJB on May 23, 2003 | Classification: Information architecture - Information design - Special | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Exploring Content Management

"For many, content management is a web-related term, referring primarily to the written content published on a website or stored within a related database. For others, content management is an extension of traditional document management services, the digital capturing of paper and virtual documents for standardized storage and retrieval." - (Dirk Knemeyer - Thread Inc.)

Posted by PJB on May 22, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Web Services - Semantic Web

"What are Web Servies? Program integration across application and organizational boundaries. (...) What is Semantic Web? Data integration across application, organizational boundaries." - (Tim Berners-Lee - The Twelfth International World Wide Web Conference)

Posted by PJB on May 21, 2003 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

CHI 2003: New Horizons, But What Are They?

"Yes, this was a 'business CHI' - despite, or perhaps because, of all the cross-cultural and emotional ballyhoo. The scientists were not at the front desk, but the designers - designers of enjoyable products, ranging from funny mobile phones and Alessi lemon squeezers to smart and 'intelligent' cars. Did they talk about computer programs? I can't remember..." - (Gerd Waloszek - SAP Design Guild)

Posted by PJB on May 21, 2003 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Narrative User Interfaces

"Narrative user interfaces are based on the storytelling paradigm and set out to revolutionize the way people interact with computers. They promise to ultimately make computers accessible for everyone. Today's graphical user interfaces, even though they have opened the computer to the masses, have reached their limits." - (Gerd Waloszek - SAP Design Guild)

Posted by PJB on May 21, 2003 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Affective Computing

"Affective computing is computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions. Our research focuses on creating personal computational systems endowed with the ability to sense, recognize and understand human emotions, together with the skills to respond in an intelligent, sensitive, and respectful manner toward the user and his/her emotions." - (MIT Media Laboratory)

Posted by PJB on May 21, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Google News on Information Design

"Google News presents information culled from approximately 4,500 news sources worldwide and automatically arranged to present the most relevant news first." - (Google News)

Posted by PJB on May 20, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Quiet Death of the Major Re-Launch

"(...) the best sites have replaced this process of revolution with a new process of subtle evolution. Entire redesigns have quietly faded away with continuous improvements taking their place." - (Jared Spool - User Interface Engineering)

Posted by PJB on May 20, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Are You in Control of Your Website?

A surprising number of websites are not being properly managed. A particular area of concern is content quality. Many managers have not put professional publishing procedures in place. They do not know what is being published on their websites. This is an unacceptable situation." - (Gerry McGovern)

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

Convincing Clients to Pay for Usability

"Professionally run design agencies user test their designs to increase the value they deliver to their clients. The challenge is getting clients to understand the benefits of a solid development methodology. " - (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on May 19, 2003 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Linking vs. Searching: Guidelines for Use

"(...) a quick survey of the available literature on linking and searching. We organized our findings into a series of observations and guidelines that may be helpful to designers dealing with similar issues." - (Bob Bailey - Web Usability) - courtesy of guuui

Posted by PJB on May 19, 2003 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

EuroAccessibility

"(...) to establish a European certification authority for Web Accessibility." - (EuroAccessibility.org) courtesy of logos

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

Operating Systems: Anatomy of a Poor Interface

"Interface utopia is either invisible or enhances the information or experience. After all, that is the purpose of the interface in the first place. The interface is simply a medium, one that should be as inconspicuous as possible. Due to the limitations of technology, we have become conditioned to believe that the interface is both something that we need to be aware of and a tangible part of an experience. That is simply not true." - (Dirk Knemeyer - Thread Inc.)

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

The Collaborative User Experience Research Group

"(...) conducts CSCW research with emphasis on the interaction between people and computer systems in support of collaboration." (IBM Watson Research Center) - courtesy of brightly colored food

Posted by PJB on May 16, 2003 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Crafting a User Research Plan

"Every piece of user research is part of an ongoing research program, even if that program is informal. However, making a program formal provides a number of advantages: It gives you a set of goals, a schedule that stretches limited user-research resources, and results when they're needed most. It also helps you avoid unnecessary, redundant, or hurried research." - (Mike Kuniavsky - Adaptive Path)

Posted by PJB on May 16, 2003 | Classification: UCD | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Instructional Design for Flow in Online Learning

"(...) how the instructional design of an online course can facilitate an optimal learning experience for the student." - (ACM eLearn Magazine) courtesy of elearningpost

Posted by PJB on May 15, 2003 | Classification: Instructional design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Information Architecture Meets Usability

"We spoke with both Lou and Steve about the advantages of their joint seminars, the common pitfalls of web usability and information architecture, and the state of the web industry today." - (Bruce Stewart - O'Reilly Network)

Posted by PJB on May 15, 2003 | Classification: Information architecture - Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Interview with Luke Wroblewski

"I focus on Web-based interfaces because the Web is much more of a communication medium than a tool (unlike many desktop applications). The interfaces tend to be more dynamic and there is always a message involved." - (LukeW Interface Designs)

Posted by PJB on May 15, 2003 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Making Web Links Meaningful

Conference on 'Semantic Web' at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (Mark Vanderbeeken - Interaction Design Institute Ivrea)

Posted by PJB on May 13, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Taxomita: Distributed Metadata for Information Geeks

"Taxomita is a tool for creating faceted taxonomies using PHP and MySQL." (Peter van Dijck)

Posted by PJB on May 13, 2003 | Classification: Metadata - Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Content Integration: Are You Ready for It? Is It Ready for You?

"You had to get a handle on your mushrooming content. First, you bought a document management (DM) system. Then you implemented Web content management (WCM). Finally, you invested in a digital asset management (DAM) system." (Tony Byrne - EContent) - courtesy of louis rosenfeld

Posted by PJB on May 13, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Web Usability

"Evidence-Based Information, Training and Tools for Optimizing the Usability of Computer Systems" (Robert W. Bailey - About Web Usability) - courtesy of ron's ramblings

Posted by PJB on May 13, 2003 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

What is a Library Anymore, Anyway?

"Libraries in the future will undertake local control, especially for long-term preservation and accessibility of digital as well as analog collections. Failure to embrace that role would cause libraries and librarians rapidly to lose relevance and value as Internet and other digital resources develop. Local control of collections is critical both to assure permanence and to provide a key degree of selectivity, which - contrary to the irrational exuberance of making everything available to everybody - is vital to providing service to communities of readers." (Michael A. Keller, Victoria A. Reich, and Andrew C. Herkovic - First Monday 8.5)

Posted by PJB on May 13, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Creating The Digital Future

"This paper is the keynote address given at the Web-Wise 2003 Conference on Thursday, February 27, 2003 in Washington, D.C." (Robert Coonrod - First Monday 8.5)

Posted by PJB on May 13, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Views and Forms: Principles of Task Flow for Web Applications (Part 1)

"Creating web applications that support the full and valid completion of specific tasks, operations, and database transactions, require some understanding of how to manipulate the medium to that purpose." (Bob Baxley - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on May 13, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Six Tips for Improving Your Design Documentation

"Writing effective design documentation (like design itself) is really all about making sure you serve the needs of your audience." (Ryan Olshavsky - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on May 13, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Lisa Rein's Tour Of Alan Kay's ETech 2003 Presentation

"Alan took us on a tour of some of the interface marvels of the last 40 years of programming. Using a series of demo films and several pieces of live software to illustrate his points, Kay made a convincing argument that there haven't been any major innovations in interface design or programming for the last 20 years." (On Lisa Rein's Radar) - courtesy of matt jones

Posted by PJB on May 13, 2003 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Persistence of Usability Myths

"Last year we researched the top 10 usability myths. A number of people, including technology pundits, had attacked usability. We thought the attacks were based on misconceptions. (...) We conducted an online survey to see whether web professionals agreed with the pundits." (John Knight and Marie Jefsioutine - Usability News)

Posted by PJB on May 09, 2003 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Gel Conference 2003 Recap

"Absolutely amazing in its inspiration, generation of new perspective, and sheer momentum of energy." (Good Experience Live) - courtesy of guuui

Posted by PJB on May 09, 2003 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Digging into the Web: XML, Meta Data and Other Paths to Unstructured Data

"While the Web is widely recognized as an amazing source of unstructured data, much of this data is rather difficult to search and navigate. In fact, the Web was organized along a model meant for human consumption, not for optimizing machine searches." (Robert Blumberg and Shaku Atre - DMReview) - courtesy of iaslash

Posted by PJB on May 09, 2003 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

An iYear with Mac OS X

"It was about a year ago that, after a decade or so of Windows on my client and Unix/Linux on my servers, I bought a TiBook and got into OS X. I am only rarely tempted to go back. It's worth it, I think, to look back over the past year and see what the take-aways are." (Tim Bray Ongoing) - courtesy of mark bernstein

Posted by PJB on May 09, 2003 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Doing The Right Thing: Apple UI History

"If you do this kind of work," says interaction designer Gitta Salomon, "everything bugs you. Your car, your cordless phone, your home entertainment system - you hate everything." (Andrew Orlowski - The Register) - courtesy of kelake

Posted by PJB on May 09, 2003 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Notes for Job Seekers in UI Design and Computer Science

"Job Searching takes time. Many of the things that need to happen to land a job are out of your control. This means that you might be doing everything right, and still not have any offers. Plan for this. Make sure you invest time in learning new skills, staying sharp with your old ones, and getting more experence regardless of whether you're paid or not. The world needs better designs for just about everything, so the long term future for you is bright - hang in there." (Scott Berkun - UIWeb.com)

Posted by PJB on May 09, 2003 | Classification: Interaction design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Image of Experience

"As information designers, we should place importance on the design process and not hyper-focus on the tools we use to achieve it." (Judy McFarland - Thread Inc.)

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

Visual Language

"Written language is just a particular case of visual language. In fact there are many visual languages that appear to share common rules. Thinking about the visual language can help us to convey our messages in a more effective way." (Juan C. Dürsteler - Inf@Vis!)

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

UX Bumpage

"User experience is too young to be clearly defined as a field, a movement, a community, a methodology, or a goal. But whatever it is, there is definitely a there there." (Louis Rosenfeld)

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

User Experience Themes, Part I: Craft and Engineering

"And while it's been important for sites to achieve that baseline of functionality and usability, we're reaching a point where it's imperative that we move beyond that. It's time to utilize insight to provide a unique engagement for our visitors. Not that we ought to abandon engineering methods. Far from it -- we need to figure out ways to merge craft and engineering to provide the greatest satisfaction." (Peter Merholz)

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

Fifteen Tips for Remote Collaboration

"It will always be easier to rally a group of people who work in the same building, but you can accomplish just as much (or more) with a motivated remote team. Getting team members motivated in the first place and holding their interest are your goals. Here are fifteen quick and useful tips to get you started." (Indy Young - Adaptive Path)

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