May 2004

Website Indexing: Enhancing access to information within websites

"We are primarily back-of-book indexers, but have also worked on journal, database, website and online help indexing, as well as metadata and thesaurus construction for intranets and websites." (Glenda Browne and Jon Jermey)

Posted by PJB on May 31, 2004 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Apple Software Design Guidelines

"These guidelines are intended to help guide you through the obstacles that confront Mac OS X developers. They cover different aspects of the design process and offers tips on how you can use Mac OS X features effectively in your design." (Apple Developer) - courtesy of vanderwal

Posted by PJB on May 31, 2004 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink

Be a web editor, not administrator

"There are two roles in web content management that matter: editors and writers. Editors decide what should get published. Writers create the content. Most websites started off with administrators—webmasters—who had lots of responsibility and little authority. Today, we see the emergence of the web editor, a position that will become increasingly important." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on May 30, 2004 | Classification: Writing | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Next Big Thing: Adaptive Web-Based Systems

"The paper defends the position that personalization, and in particular automatic personalization or adaptation, is the key to reach the goal of offering each individual user (or user group) the information they need." (Paul De Bra et al. - Journal of Digital Information 5.1)

Posted by PJB on May 28, 2004 | Classification: Adaptation | Comments (0) | Permalink

Writing the Web

"The main thesis of this paper is that it is desirable to make the creation of Web content an integral and natural part of the daily chores of an intellectual worker, integrated with the normal production and management of data and information, making the Web not just a publishing medium but fundamentally a collector and organizer of personal data and documents." (Angelo di Iorio and Fabio Vitali - Journal of Digital Information 5.1)

Posted by PJB on May 28, 2004 | Classification: Hypertext | Comments (0) | Permalink

Experience-Enabling Design: An approach to elearning design

"This paper draws inspiration from diverse media to understand what constitutes experience. In doing so, it seeks directions for building experience into design of elearning products." (L. Ravi Krishnan and Venkatesh Rajamanickam - elearningpost)

Posted by PJB on May 28, 2004 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Metadata: The Art of Adding Signposts 

"Metadata have 4 quality aspects: Show what the information is about, point to useful information only, describe the relevance of information, and are clear." (Marcel van Mackelenbergh)

Posted by PJB on May 27, 2004 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

LanguaL: The International Framework for Food Description

"LanguaL is a multilingual thesaural system using facetted classification. Each food is described by a set of standard, controlled terms chosen from facets characteristic of the nutritional and/or hygienic quality of a food, as for example the biological origin, the methods of cooking and conservation, and technological treatments." (About LanguaL) - courtesy of peter vandijck

Posted by PJB on May 27, 2004 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Information Design Journal + Document Design

General Editors: Jan Renkema, Wilbert Spooren, Paul Stiff and Sue Walker (University of Tilburg, NL / Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, NL / University of Reading, UK) - "Please note that as of 2004 volume 12, the Information Design Journal has joined forces with Document Design." (John Benjamins Publishing Company)

Posted by PJB on May 26, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Doceo + mentum - a ground for a new discipline

"The aim of Documentation is rapidly and easily to provide all researchers, whatever their level of knowledge or culture, both with the materials of study which represent the totality of human experience and with detailed information on particular points. In scientific, technical, historical, social and industrial matters, it is the systematically organised intermediary between the public and documents, between those who read and those who write. It provides recorded information, that is, the distribution of information by the book, periodical, newspaper, and photographic image." (Niels Windfeld Lund - DOCAM'03 Conference)

Posted by PJB on May 26, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Syntactic Knowledge and Visual Knowledge

"The traditional way of interacting with a computer needed what Ben Shneiderman calls 'syntactic' knowledge. The graphical user interface has substituted syntactic for visual knowledge. Each one has its own advantages and drawbacks." (Juan C. Dürsteler - Inf@Vis!)

Posted by PJB on May 26, 2004 | Classification: InfoViz | Comments (0) | Permalink

Trumping Google? Metasearching's Promise

"Metasearch promises to give patrons one-stop access to the many and various resources at the heart of the library digital collection." (Judy Luther - Library Journal) - courtesy of urlgreyhot

Posted by PJB on May 26, 2004 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Simplicity

"(...) an experimental research program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab focused on developing technologies for design - designs that are simpler to understand, easier to use, and, ultimately, more enjoyable." (John Maeda)

Posted by PJB on May 25, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Microsoft User-Centered Design Principles

"An important principle of user interface design is that the user should always feel in control of the software rather than feeling controlled by the software." (MSDN) - courtesy of column two

Posted by PJB on May 25, 2004 | Classification: UCD | Comments (0) | Permalink

Developing and Creatively Leveraging Hierarchical Metadata and Taxonomy

"(...) a brief introduction on taxonomy and metadata (what I call content classification requirements), this article will focus on finding and utilizing such relationships in hierarchies." (Christian Ricci - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on May 25, 2004 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Ted Nelson

"After taking a computer course at Harvard in 1960, Ted Nelson began a mystical journey. He started exploring the possibility of liberating text from paper, of developing a means whereby writers could harness text in a manner closer to human cognitive patterns: i.e., the way words flowed through our minds. In 1965 Nelson coined the term hypertext. Ultimately, in his brilliant 1974 book, 'Computer Lib/Dream Machines', he laid down the foundation for a communications theory transcending text. Hypertext became hypermedia. Imagery and sound played roles equal to text. Nelson realized that personal computers with multimedia capabilities must burst the boundaries of artistically rendering internal reflection." (Peter Schmideg)

Posted by PJB on May 25, 2004 | Classification: Hypertext | Comments (0) | Permalink

Content management: design for rule, not exception

"If your website tries to be all things to all people, it will fail. It’s very easy on the Web to try to do too much. You need to relentlessly focus on what most of your readers do most of the time. Don’t let anything else get in the way." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on May 24, 2004 | Classification: Content management | Comments (0) | Permalink

Berners-Lee Keeps WWW 2004 Focused on Semantic Web

Posted by PJB on May 23, 2004 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Thirty Years With Computers

The rule on staying alive as a forcaster is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once. -- Jane Bryant Quinn Poker Party http://www.party-poker-x.com

Posted by PJB on May 23, 2004 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Truth About Federated Searching

"Federated searching is a hot topic that seems to be gaining traction in libraries everywhere. As with many technologies that are rapidly adopted,there are some misconceptions about what it can do." (Information Today)

Posted by PJB on May 23, 2004 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Findability.Org

"Ambient findability describes a world in which we can find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime." (Peter Morville - FAQ Findability)

Posted by PJB on May 22, 2004 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Aaron Marcus: The InfoDesign interview

"Aaron Marcus is a visionary thinker, designer, and writer, well-respected in international professional communities associated with Web, user interface, human factors, graphic design, publishing, and desktop software application development." (Dirk Knemeyer - InfoDesign: Understanding by Design)

Posted by PJB on May 19, 2004 | Classification: Special | Comments (0) | Permalink

Lorem Ipsum Generator

"116 words of the original 16th century Lipsum plus 384 additional words, carefully chosen from Cicero's very own 'De Finibus', bonded by superior scripting and utmost linguistic accuracy guarantee for the web's most random ... ah, randomness - 500 times sheer bliss for the typographically inclined. Ipso facto." (Lorem Ipsum) - courtesy of marek moehling

Posted by PJB on May 19, 2004 | Classification: Typography | Comments (0) | Permalink

Serious Games Summit 2004

"The Serious Games Initiative is focused on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector. Part of its overall charter is to help forge productive links between the electronic game industry and projects involving the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy. (...) This is the page to add your notes and slides from the 2004 Serious Games Summit 2004." (Serious Games Initiative) - courtesy of jeroen van mastrigt

Posted by PJB on May 18, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

STC 51st Annual Conference 2004

Uploaded Session Materials - "This page contains links to materials provided by the conference presenters." (Society for Technical Communication) - courtesy of beth mazur

Posted by PJB on May 18, 2004 | Classification: TechCom | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Power of Design

"IDEO redefined good design by creating experiences, not just products. Now it's changing the way companies innovate." (Business Week)

Posted by PJB on May 18, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Navigating Innovation: Understanding the KaosPilots

"Organizations today are the people and all the relationships and emotions between people. Projects are living networks of people. That's a huge change from times past when you looked at organizations as machines." (Garry VanPatter - NextD Journal 4.1)

Posted by PJB on May 17, 2004 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

Separation: The Web Designer's Dilemma

"With all the discussion about separating presentation from content (and structure), it's easy to lose track of the goal. So let's step back, define our terms, and take a look at why it matters." (Michael Cohen - A List Apart)

Posted by PJB on May 17, 2004 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

Learn how to implement an effective web style guide

"A style guide helps you quickly and cost-effectively publish content that is of a consistent quality. It is particularly important when there are lots of editors and authors involved in the publishing process. A good style guide takes a lot of time and effort to create. Unless its implementation is policed, it will not achieve its objectives." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on May 17, 2004 | Classification: Writing | Comments (0) | Permalink

Designing products for offshore development

"One of the most significant realities about offshore developers is that they will build exactly what you tell them to build. This is both good and bad news." (Dave Cronin - Cooper Newsletter)

Posted by PJB on May 16, 2004 | Classification: Interaction design | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Transformation of an Industry

"We started out as a Web publication focused strictly on the front-end design aspects of Web sites. Over the years that focus has shifted, not because our readership had changed, but because the Web had changed. Building Web sites was no longer just about presentation and cool GUIs, it was about good usability, solid architecture, convenient accessibility and compliant code, as well as transparent design." - congrats to Nick and the team with the new transformation. (Nick Finck, Paul Scrivens & D. Keith Robinson - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted by PJB on May 14, 2004 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

SVG and Typography: Characters

"(...) we explore some time-honored practices of typographic excellence." (Fabio Arciniegas A. - XML.com)

Posted by PJB on May 13, 2004 | Classification: Typography | Comments (0) | Permalink

Ten questions for Nick Finck

"Structure is the foundation in which good design is built. Just like a house, you wouldn't build it without blueprints and laying the foundation first. Structure is perhaps the most important thing that goes into a web site. Without structure the site is just a pile of broken 2x4s and sealed off doorways. In technical terms, structure is everything from the conceptual wireframes, to the tangible markup and coding." (Web Standards Group)

Posted by PJB on May 13, 2004 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

Using Section 508 to Improve Internet Access to Information for Everybody

Society of Technical Communication's 51st Annual Conference - "The presentation is for a short format progressive session, where I gave the presentation three times in an hour and a half to three different groups." (Thomas Vander Wal)

Posted by PJB on May 13, 2004 | Classification: Accessibility | Comments (0) | Permalink

Flexing Paper's Muscles

"Paul Curzon of the Interaction Design Centre at Middlesex University looks at what paper is still good for and the blend of technologies useful for the writing process." (Usability News)

Posted by PJB on May 12, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

In search of better search results

"Clearly, the rate of improvement in delivering high quality search results isn't keeping up with Moore's Law in terms of doubling every couple of years. In fact, the 'law of search results' could be expressed as an inverse to the growth in the size and complexity of the data." (Dan Farber - ZDNet)

Posted by PJB on May 12, 2004 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

What they didn't teach me in Design & Usability school - Part 2/2

"If you write usability reports, how much do you understand about whom you are designing usability reports for? Have you ever applied user centered design principles to usability reports themselves? Why or why not? My guess is that you haven't, and if you did, the results would surprise you. What you're providing is probably not quite what your team (aka your second set of users) needs from you. What they are looking for is probably at odds with what you want them to look for, and the usability report becomes some kind of philosophical battleground. Generally, the authors of the reports lose." (Scott Berkun) - courtesy of columntwo

Posted by PJB on May 11, 2004 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web-User Satisfaction on the Upswing

"Site visitors are more likely to finish Web tasks successfully, but site searches are still troublesome, according to a recent survey." (Dennis O'Reilly - PC World) - courtesy of lawrence lee

Posted by PJB on May 11, 2004 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

The new frontier of search

"If you want to find information fast, you need search and retrieval technology. That is not news to people who have been interfacing with IT tools for the last decade. Even laypeople are familiar with recreational search engines, like AltaVista, used for exploring the Internet. Early on in its development, search made inroads into vertical markets like financial services and as an adjunct functionality embedded in KM and document management products." (John Harney - KMWorld) - courtesy of elearningpost

Posted by PJB on May 10, 2004 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web content management a process, not a project

"Then something is new, we need to approach it in an exploratory manner. We need to experiment and try things out. And so it has been with the Web. That period is now over. We need to move from seeing our websites as a series of projects, to managing them as a well-planned process." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on May 10, 2004 | Classification: Content management | Comments (0) | Permalink

Guidelines for Visualizing Links

"Textual links should be colored and underlined to achieve the best perceived affordance of clickability, though there are a few exceptions to these guidelines." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on May 10, 2004 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

'Aristotle' (The Knowledge Web)

"With the knowledge web, humanity's accumulated store of information will become more accessible, more manageable, and more useful. Anyone who wants to learn will be able to find the best and the most meaningful explanations of what they want to know. Anyone with something to teach will have a way to reach those who what to learn. Teachers will move beyond their present role as dispensers of information and become guides, mentors, facilitators, and authors. The knowledge web will make us all smarter. The knowledge web is an idea whose time has come." (W. Daniel Hillis - Edge The Third Culture)

Posted by PJB on May 07, 2004 | Classification: Adaptation | Comments (0) | Permalink

AH2003: Workshop on Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-Based Systems

"The research area of adaptive hypermedia originates from the coming together of the areas of hypertext and hypermedia, user modeling and Web-based information systems, all of which have embraced the topic of adaptation." (Adaptive Hypertext and Hypermedia)

Posted by PJB on May 07, 2004 | Classification: Adaptation | Comments (0) | Permalink

Focus on the Student: How to Use Learning Objectives to Improve Learning

"If information architecture is a fairly new field, then the practice of teaching information architecture is even newer. Often instructors are experienced information architects who have little to no teacher training, and they must teach students with a wide range of experience and learning goals. Learning objectives are one tool that can make information architecture courses easier for teachers and more rewarding for students." (Wendy Cown - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on May 07, 2004 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Understanding Organizational Stakeholders for Design Success

"User-centered design professionals pay special emphasis to one type of stakeholder—the users of the system-arguing that user experience needs to be carefully crafted to satisfy user needs. While understanding user needs and goals is certainly necessary, it is often not sufficient for producing a successful design. Apart from an understanding of user needs and perspective, design needs to incorporate the goals and perspective of other stakeholders in order to get their buy-in and be considered a success in the corporate workplace." (Jonathan Boutelie - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on May 07, 2004 | Classification: UCD | Comments (0) | Permalink

How Much Interaction is Too Much?

"I've been doing usability testing for almost 20 years. Although I haven't been exposed to that many other facilitators, the ones I had seen facilitated very much like I did, which also seemed to be very much 'by the book'. Here, was someone with a very different approach." (Clifford Anderson - STC Usability SIG Newsletter)

Posted by PJB on May 06, 2004 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Enterprise Information Architecture: Don't Do ECM Without It

"Two questions resound throughout the content industry: Why do Enterprise Content Management (ECM) projects take so long to implement? And why do they fail with such alarming frequency? While all enterprise-level IT projects prove to be difficult and risky undertakings, a deeper examination of the ECM challenge in particular will reveal an endemic inattention to - or at best belated appreciation of - its critical corollary: the need for Enterprise Information Architecture (EIA)." (Tony Byrne - EContentMag) - courtesy of stig andersen

Posted by PJB on May 06, 2004 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Intranets and knowledge sharing

"Much has been made of the emphasis on people and process in knowledge management. While it is certainly true that knowledge management is not a technology issue, effort must still be spent in providing a suitable environment to facilitate knowledge capture and sharing." (James Robertson - KM Column)

Posted by PJB on May 06, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Digital Convergence: Insight into the future of Web design

"As digital products continue to converge, the Web will increasingly become just one component of more complicated products." (Dirk Knemeyer - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted by PJB on May 06, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Muriel Cooper's Visible Wisdom

"(...) a designer and educator who charted new territory for design in the changing landscape of electronic communication." (Janet Abrams - AIGA) - courtesy of william drenttel

Posted by PJB on May 06, 2004 | Classification: | Comments (0) | Permalink

IA in the WSJ

"The article starts off by citing Greg Storey's work to redesign the infamous Bin Laden President's Daily Brief. It then moves on to describe what Information Architecture/Design is and how it can make a difference in understanding information and in the bottom-line for a business. IA/ID also is mentioned in the decision-making process for the Columbia disaster, and Tufte gets to rail a bit against Powerpoint. Tufte also dismisses Mr. Storey's redesign of the PDB (way to exhibit solidarity, Ed). The article then moves onto another favorite pundit, Nielsen, and he gets to quote his $71B in lost productvity sound-bite." (every breath death defying) - courtesy of victor lombardi

Posted by PJB on May 05, 2004 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Sharing Digital Resources: Web-Wise 2004

"Selected papers from the Fifth Annual Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World, sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services and the university of Illinois at Chicago, 3-5 March 2004, Chicago." (First Monday) - courtesy of beth mazur

Posted by PJB on May 05, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

An Information Architecture Perspective on Personalization 

Chapter from 'Designing Personalized User Experiences in eCommerce'
"The framework laid out here for understanding the design implications of personalization does not answer any questions, however - it just raises awareness of how little we already know about users' expectations from personalization. In fact, the web and its early navigation metaphor are still young and we do not understand it well enough yet." (Keith Instone)

Posted by PJB on May 04, 2004 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

GEL Conference Write-ups

"Some of the sessions at Good Experience Live 2004 were difficult to transcribe because of the mode of presentation. The following sessions, while not fully documented, were still worthwhile, communicating useful ideas and advice." (Heath Row - Fast Company) - courtesy of vanderwal

Posted by PJB on May 04, 2004 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Here is a How to Topic Maps, Sir!

"There is a great deal of philosophy involved in working with Topic Maps. Not in the sense of arguing for extentionalism or purport a theory of when cats die in boxes, but in the sense of epistemology, the philosophy of learning. It is about how we perceive things, how human cognition works, about how we label things, how we categorise and find our way in the vast information layer between our brains and our tools." (Alexander Johannesen) - courtesy of column two

Posted by PJB on May 04, 2004 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Planning: The Key to Successful CMS Implementation

"The Semantic Web is an on-going large-scale effort to improve the current architecture of the World Wide Web by adding a semantic infrastructure to web resources that can be used for sophisticated data-oriented applications. As its basis, we identify metadata, or information about information, that unambiguously specify machine-understandable facts about web resources." (Judy Glick-Smith - The Rockley Report)

Posted by PJB on May 04, 2004 | Classification: Content management | Comments (0) | Permalink

Metadata on the Web: On the integration of RDF and TopicMaps

"The Semantic Web is an on-going large-scale effort to improve the current architecture of the World Wide Web by adding a semantic infrastructure to web resources that can be used for sophisticated data-oriented applications. As its basis, we identify metadata, or information about information, that unambiguously specify machine-understandable facts about web resources." (Paolo Ciancarini et al. - Extreme Markup Languages 2003)

Posted by PJB on May 03, 2004 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Change the Color of Visited Links

"People get lost and move in circles when websites use the same link color for visited and new destinations. To reduce navigational confusion, select different colors for the two types of links." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on May 03, 2004 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web content management: a lot of great progress

"Every day there is tremendous work being done on the Web. Talented, dedicated people are working with limited resources and support to achieve brilliant results. If you're one of those people struggling to achieve the recognition you need, take a moment to take a bow." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on May 02, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Peter Morville: The InfoDesign profile

"Each month, InfoDesign profiles a thought leader in the design industry, focusing on people who are identified with or show strong sensibilities to the design of information and experiences. This month, Peter Morville is our 'victim'." (InfoDesign: Understanding by Design)

Posted by PJB on May 01, 2004 | Classification: Special | Comments (0) | Permalink