September 2003

Soft Skills for Information Architecture

"While much of oneís success or failure depends on the skills specific to information architecture - like diagramming, documenting, organizing - an even greater indicator is soft skills: dealing with conflict, negotiating, and communicating. These soft skills are important in any profession or job role, but are of high importance in information architecture, which requires applying them in sometimes unconventional ways." (Jeff Lash - Digital Web Magazine)

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

Alertbox#200

"I've published 200 Alertbox columns on the Web since 1995; in addition to achieving key victories over multi-million-dollar special interests and enemies of usability, the column's readership statistics validate the practice of archiving content." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on September 29, 2003 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Websites require flexible not fixed design

"A website needs to be flexible. It needs to be able to change as the organization changes. The more change within the organization the more flexible the website needs to be. Too many websites are still being designed from a print perspective; as if they were some once-off brochure." (Gerry McGovern)

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

Going with the Flow: Interaction Design for Healthcare

"Focusing on the motivations and goals behind the behaviors in the workflows keep designers from getting bogged down in the complexity of the problem, paving the way for the delivery of solutions that enable practitioners to deliver the best care possible." (Cooper Newsletter)

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

Color Scheme Picker

Always handy for thinking about color usage on the Web (pixylophone) - courtesy of cityofsound

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

Enterprise IA Roadmap

"(...) that describes which aspects of the enterprise's architecture should be developed and when. My goal is to show that there are certain aspects of a site's architecture that are worth tackling right away for quick wins, others that you'll get around to later, and others that you might never reach in a distributed, highly politicized enterprise environment." (Louis Rosenfeld)

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

The Power and Future of the Web: Maximizing Opportunity - Part 2/2

"We all know that Web technology, the effects of web on business and the nature of applications will evolve. But the future of the web is far more about the power of people." (Dirk Knemeyer - Thread)

Posted by PJB on September 25, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

IDEO Method Cards

"Key to IDEO's success as a design and innovation firm are the insights we derive from understanding people and their experiences, behaviors, perceptions, and needs. IDEO Method Cards show 51 of the methods we use to inspire great design and keep people at the center of our design process. Each card describes one method and includes a brief story about how and when to use it. The cards are divided into the four categories listed below making it easy to reference, browse, sort and share the cards." (IDEO) - courtesy of elearningpost

Posted by PJB on September 24, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Origins of Writing

"This site was developed as an educational supplement for anthropology students (...)" (Utah State University) - courtesy of reloade

Posted by PJB on September 24, 2003 | Classification: Writing | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Future of the World Wide Web

"(...) by Professor Tim Berners Lee is now available as video-on-demand and presentation slides included." (The Royal Society)

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

Profiles in IT: Andrew Dillon

"The essence of information organization is not a computer science issue. It's a cognitive issue. Understanding how people think and reason, and organizing information in a user-centric way so that it provides real value to a human--these are the pillars of the classic library and information science approach." (IT@UT)

Posted by PJB on September 23, 2003 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Shape of Information

Spatial Semantics: How Users Derive Shape from Information Space (iawiki)

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

IA Tools

"(...) document templates, process map posters and other tools to help you in your practice. The documents, which have been donated by various people in the organization, have been found to be useful at one time or another. Items can be used in combination or alone as needed." (AIfIA) - courtesy of victor lombardi

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

The ZUI Demo

"Zooming is an important part of THE and this simple demo illustrates some of the ways that zooming solves the navigation problems posed by our present system of links, tabs, and other click-and-go-there interfaces." (Jef Raskin - THE) - courtesy of brad lauster

Posted by PJB on September 22, 2003 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

OWL Web Ontology Language Use Cases and Requirements

"This document specifies usage scenarios, goals and requirements for a web ontology language. An ontology formally defines a common set of terms that are used to describe and represent a domain. Ontologies can be used by automated tools to power advanced services such as more accurate Web search, intelligent software agents and knowledge management." (W3C)

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

Barbara Tversky: Some Ways Graphics Communicate

Lecture Notes: "Why do animations fail? Animations are conceived as a series of discrete steps. Studies show very few animations are better than static graphs." (Peter J. Bogaards)

Posted by PJB on September 19, 2003 | Classification: InfoViz - Information graphics - Special | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Business Value of Web Standards

"These aren't formulas for determining the ROI of migrating to standards, but they are some pretty good financial justifications. 'It's what all the cool sites are doing' shouldn't be your only point when arguing for a switch to XHTML and CSS. The economic benefits of standardization are tangible. Once we can quantify them, businesses will begin realize the true promise of the Web - interoperable content freely shared." (Jeffrey Veen - Adaptive Path) - courtesy of lawrence lee

Posted by PJB on September 19, 2003 | Classification: Technology - User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Putting it Together: Taxonomy, Classification & Search

"The more complex the enterprise, the greater the need to search among multiple sources, but the one- or two-word search used by most people 'doesn't give much complexity in the results (...)." (Jeff Morris - Transform Magazine) - courtesy of elearningpost

Posted by PJB on September 18, 2003 | Classification: Metadata - Search | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

A Taxonomy of User-Interface Metaphors 

"Although metaphor is a commonly used device in the design of user-interfaces, it is not rigorously understood, and most guidance stops at the recommendation of its use. In this paper, we seek to provide a systematic taxonomy of user-interface metaphors, based on and extending the framework of Lakoff and Johnson. We then suggest that some usability heuristics emerge directly from analysis of the taxonomy. We conclude that the taxonomy and heuristics may provide appreciable benefits in user-interface design and evaluation, and address some of the criticisms of metaphor use that have been made." (Pippin Barr, Robert Biddle & James Noble)

Posted by PJB on September 17, 2003 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Website Accessibility And The Private Sector: Disability Stakeholders Cannot Tolerate 2% Access!

"(...) various Federal laws and Regulations (e.g. Section 508) have placed considerable pressure on web designers of all government entities and firms seeking to do business with the Federal government to make their websites fully accessible. To minimize the possibility of being sued, all web designers for firms, large and small, private or public, for-profit or not-for-profit must deal with this issue of web accessibility." (Ronald E. Milliman) - courtesy of digital web magazine

Posted by PJB on September 17, 2003 | Classification: Accessibility | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

User Interface Design Patterns

"The collection does not primarily consist of GUI designs of common software, but tries to outline the recuring design problems faced when trying to create good design. Our method to produce good design is to use our Goal-Derived Design (GDD) method that is based on simulation of the userís goals. The pattern collection does not include all the characteristics of good design we know so far, but only the design knowledge that we have found appropriate to describe as design patterns." (Sari A. Laakso - University of Helsinki, Dept. of Computer Science)

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

Interacting with the Ubiquitous Computer

Keynote at MobileHCI '03 (Albrecht Schmidt)

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

Mobile HCI: Visions of the Future

"(...) here are my notes from the Visions of the Future panel earlier today. There's some paraphrasing here, so blame me, not the speakers, for any misrepresentation." (anti-mega) - courtesy of black belt jones

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

Understanding Healthcare

Some sample spreads from the new book by Richard Saul Wurman (2004) - "RSW has created this visual guide book to the most compelling issue of the 21st century." (R.S. Wurman)

Posted by PJB on September 15, 2003 | Classification: Information graphics | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Origin of the Phrase 'Information Architecture'

"The phrase 'information architecture' appears to have been coined, or at least brought to wide attention, by Richard Saul Wurman, a man trained as an architect but who has become also a skilled graphic designer and the author, editor, and/or publisher of numerous books that employ fine graphics in the presentation of information in a variety of fields." (R.E. Wyllys - Univ. of Texas: Grad. School of Library & Information Science)

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

Time to Make Tech Work

"The IT industry is maturing. Hopefully, this maturity will result in a slower introduction of new features, which in turn will let companies focus their attention and resources on making existing technology work better for users." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

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

Your Website Is For Your Customer, Not For You

"An organization is a form of group. Groups can be elitist. Groups are always trying to define who is in and who is out. To a great many organizations, the customer is on the outside. To be a success, a website must live on the outside." (Gerry McGovern)

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

The Power and Future of the Web: Maximizing Opportunity - Part 1/2

"The web has fundamentally changed the way many of us live our lives. It seems obvious to say, yet we do not typically step back and recognize the scope, ramifications and opportunity afforded by this operating dynamic. Here are only a few, select examples of how the power of the web has changed our lives (...)" (Dirk Knemeyer - Thread)

Posted by PJB on September 12, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

For Pioneers of Web Journalism, the Future Is Still Full of Surprises

"Roundtable panelists discuss the value of blogs, business strategies for pricing content and what professionals and consumers alike should look forward to." (Mark Glaser - USC Annenberg: Online Journalism Review) - courtesy of glenn fleish

Posted by PJB on September 12, 2003 | Classification: Writing | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

PoInter: Patterns of Interaction

"The project is concerned with investigating the appropriateness of patterns as a means of communicating information about how people interact with each other through and around technology. Ultimately, this is with a view to informing the design process for computer systems to support the work and activities that the people are engaged in (...)" (Cooperative Systems Engineering Group) - courtesy of todd r. warfel

Posted by PJB on September 11, 2003 | Classification: Interaction design - Patterns | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

TED Gallery

See what you missed at TED 2003 (Technology. Entertainment. Design.)

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

The P2P Revolution: Peer-to-peer networking & the entertainment industry

"Many people have predicted that peer-to-peer file-sharing will change the face of media, but this paper by Scott Jensen is the most thoroughgoing research I've seen into the commercial and artistic effects that peer-to-peer can potentially lead to. The paper is bold and futuristic, which means there are plenty of places the path it lays out could be sidetracked, but (...) it's important reading." (Andy Oram - O'Reilly Developer Weblogs)

Posted by PJB on September 10, 2003 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Searching for the center of design

"Putting the user at the center of the process and setting the metrics for project success implies that user-centered design is the 'right' approach. Assuming UCD is THE right approach suggests that there is a sort of moral imperative to pursue a user-centered methodology." (Jess McMullin - Boxes and Arrows)

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

Sitemaps and Site Indexes: What They Are and Why You Should Have Them

"Sitemaps and site indexes are forms of supplemental navigation. They give users a way to navigate a site without having to use the global navigation. By providing a way to visualize and understand the layout and structure of the site, a sitemap can help a lost or confused user find her way. Sitemaps are more widely implemented than site indexes, but both have their place and fulfill a unique information need." (Chiara Fox - Boxes and Arrows)

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

Natural Selections: Colors Found in Nature and Interface Design

"Perhaps no other design element has as much influence on how we feel in a space (a website, a home, etc.) as color." (Luke Wroblewski - Boxes and Arrows)

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

Interaction Designers

"We're here to create a home for interaction designers -- what type of home that will be, we do not yet know. Whether we find or build our home, though, it must address the issues and challenges that the many hundreds of us face in our jobs." (Challis Hodge et al.) - courtesy of xblog

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

Listamatic: One List, Many Options

"Can you take a simple list and use different Cascading Style Sheets to create radically different list options? The Listamatic shows the power of CSS when applied to one simple list using samples (...)" (Max Design) - courtesy of jeffrey zeldman

Posted by PJB on September 08, 2003 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Misconceptions About Usability

"Misconceptions about usability's expense, the time it involves, and its creative impact prevent companies from getting crucial user data, as does the erroneous belief that existing customer-feedback methods are a valid driver for interface design." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

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

Writing Skills and Better Visual Design

"Strong visual design is about balance. It requires an appropriate relationship between written content, information hierarchy and the use of visual elements such as graphics and photography." (Dirk Knemeyer - Thread)

Posted by PJB on September 08, 2003 | Classification: Visual design - Writing | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Websites: Think The Way Your Customers Think

"One of the biggest challenges an organization faces is to stop thinking it's the center of the universe. Customers think that they are the center of the universe. Customers come to your website to get their needs fulfilled. They will only think you are great if you meet their needs in an efficient and cost-effective manner." (Gerry McGovern)

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

Joining Strategy and Usability: The Customer Experience Methodology 

"The customer experience methodology is a business-oriented method for creating positive change to the customer experience of online technology." (Mark Hurst - Creative Good, Inc.)

Posted by PJB on September 04, 2003 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Strike A Balance: Users' Expertise on Interface Design

"Computers and users process information in distinct ways -- so do individual users. Although it's relatively easy to get a computer to understand input, what with fixed standards and universal APIs, usability with human users is not absolute. User interface usability is relative to the experience level of individual users. UI designer Mike Padilla provides an overview of UI design for Web-based productivity software with a focus on the broadest range of users, examining what makes an application UI usable and detailing concepts that can facilitate an efficient, broad-based UI design." (Mike Padilla - IBM developerWorks) - courtesy of webword

Posted by PJB on September 04, 2003 | Classification: Interaction design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Writing Photo Captions for the Web

"Photographs are rarely self-sufficient. They need captions. A caption tells us something about the person or thing photographed, also something about the photographer. In this article, we discuss how to write photo captions for the Web. We provide examples from adultsí and childrenís work." (Ruth Garner, Mark Gillingham, and Yong Zhao - First Monday 8.9)

Posted by PJB on September 04, 2003 | Classification: Writing | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Current Status and Potential Development of Online News Consumption: A Structural Approach

"In reviewing the current pattern of online news consumption across the globe and modelling major structural factors influencing this adoption, the author argues that the Internet, already a very important source of news, will become a major news medium in the years ahead." (An Nguyen - First Monday 8.9)

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

Interactive Narratives

"Interactive narratives are informational and storytelling experiences designed and produced for the web. They leverage great design, visual journalism and rich-media content." (About Interactive Narratives) - courtesy of elearningpost

Posted by PJB on September 04, 2003 | Classification: Information design - Information graphics - Interaction design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Conversation with Lucy Suchman

"The trick in designing information systems is to introduce bits of automation that will fit in to the work and do useful things, and then make it possible for people to work with those bits of automation embedded in the systems while leaving them the discretionary space to exercise the kind of judgment they need to exercise to really get the work done." (Dialog on Leadership) - courtesy of brightly colored food

Posted by PJB on September 03, 2003 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

User Experience and Human Learning: The underlying thinking of how people learn, acquire knowledge, and understand

"The field of instructional design and technology is also valuable to the UX community, providing theories and knowledge on important aspects of humans behaviour and the role technology plays influencing that behaviour." (Peter J. Bogaards - BogieLand)

Posted by PJB on September 01, 2003 | Classification: Instructional design - Special - User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Information Design: An Introduction

"Information design is concerned with transforming data into information, making the complex easier to understand and to use. It is a rapidly growing discipline that draws on typography, graphic design, applied linguistics, applied psychology, applied ergonomics, computing, and other fields. It emerged as a response to people's need to understand and use such things as forms, legal documents, computer interfaces and technical information." (Clark MacLeod - Kelake)

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

Controlling Interaction

"Interaction is a key element in learning and acquiring information. It is intrinsically dependent on time and on control. (...) By using judiciously time and control is how the majority of the best interaction systems have been built. This is an important aspect of any system since, in most cases, interaction is the key to productivity." (Juan C. Dürsteler - Inf@Vis!)

Posted by PJB on September 01, 2003 | Classification: InfoViz - Interaction design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Notes from Hypertext 03

"I'm at the Hypertext 03 conference in Nottingham this week, keeping rough notes online." (Matt Web - interconnected) - courtesy of ben hyde

Posted by PJB on September 01, 2003 | Classification: Hypertext | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Interactive Visual Explainers: A Simple Classification

"Visual representations have been used since the dawn of human civilization to communicate - to reveal the hidden, illustrate the intricate, explain the complex and illuminate the obscure." (Maish Nichani and Venkat Rajamanickam - elearningpost)

Posted by PJB on September 01, 2003 | Classification: InfoViz | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack