October 2004

What is Usability?

"This article provides an overview of what usability is (and what it is not). It provides ideas on how to include more usability activities in projects and the types of activities that are needed in order to create more usable systems." (Donna Maurer - KM Column)

Posted by PJB on October 31, 2004 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Scary Messages and Content Creep: It's All in a Daily Digest

"As a 'big-IA' advocate, I have always believed usability was part of IA anyhow. 'Little IA' is just too small to justify the use of the A-word in my world." (Andrew Dillon - ASIS&T Bulletin 31.1)

Posted by PJB on October 31, 2004 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Secrets of great web headings and summaries

"Your website success will increase the better you write headings and summaries. People are very impatient, so the heading and summary really needs to be compelling. Here are some key tips for writing better headings and summaries." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on October 31, 2004 | Classification: Writing | Comments (0) | Permalink

Stupid Voters

"At the end of the article, he quotes a Florida elections supervisor, who makes a mean-spirited remark about 'stupid people' who vote -- arguing that no matter how good the redesign, they (those stupid people) won't mark it right. Cynical comments like these make me believe that every time one of us has the chance to articulate the needs of citizens, we should. There are too many of these public officials who pollute the air with their snide remarks and who blame the general public for not knowing what to do when confronted with their atrocious writing and design." (Karen Schriver - InfoDesign-Cafe Oct. 2003)

Posted by PJB on October 29, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Jonathan Ive speaks on design

"Apple and Ive are known for their attention to detail. 'Simplicity speaks of the care of how our products are developed', he said, 'it's not obvious how hard it was'." (Jonny Evans - MacWorld UK)

Posted by PJB on October 29, 2004 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

Mr. Vignelli's Map

"This week marks the 100th anniversary of the New York subway system, and what better time to recognize the beautiful achievement represented by Massimo Vignelli's subway map of 1972." (Michael Bierut - Design Observer)

Posted by PJB on October 29, 2004 | Classification: Information graphics | Comments (0) | Permalink

All watched over by machines of loving grace

"Ubiquitous computing is coming. It is coming because there are too many too powerful institutions vested in its coming; it is coming because it is a 'technically sweet' challenge; it is coming because it represents the eventual convergence of devices, tools and services that became inevitable the moment they each began to be expressed in ones and zeroes." (Adam Greenfield - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on October 29, 2004 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Use of Narrative in Interactive Design

"By making a conscious effort to integrate narrative into our work, we are better able to support creative learning, problem solving, and task completion by the people who use the things we build." (Nancy Broden, Marisa Gallagher, and Jonathan Woyte - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on October 29, 2004 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Wireframe Annotations in Visio : Special Deliverable #11

"This article introduces several techniques in the context of wireframe annotations. At the conclusion, you will have learned to create an annotation widget, and you will also have learned several facets of Visio you may not have been aware of." (Dan Brown - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on October 29, 2004 | Classification: Wireframes | Comments (0) | Permalink

[BEEP]

"I am Peter Boersma, male, 34, living in an apartment from 1670 in the centre of Amsterdam. I studied computer science and ergonomics, and have been working in the field since 1995." - Welcome to the blogosphere! (Peter Boersma)

Posted by PJB on October 28, 2004 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

Stick Figure Warning Signs

"For the longest time, whenever I saw one of those 'don't stick your head into the rotating blade' warning signs with an illustration of a stick-figure person doing exactly that, I've wanted to make a web gallery of them. (...) they're a visual form of anticryptography, the science of conveying information without assuming any prior knowledge." - (Toren K. Smith) - courtesy of antenna

Posted by PJB on October 28, 2004 | Classification: Information graphics | Comments (0) | Permalink

Why categorize?

"The human brain is a wonderful information processor. We take in innumerable details with every glance, sound or touch. Yet we are seldom overwhelmed with the magnitude of the information we are processing. One reason that we are able to cope with so much input is that we categorize it all. We look for what is new, what is different, what has changed. Then we try to match the new information to the categories that already exist in our minds." - (Susan Feldman - KMWorld Magazine) - courtesy of elearningpost

Posted by PJB on October 28, 2004 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

A Comparison of Hyperstructures: Zzstructures, mSpaces, and Polyarchies

"Hypermedia applications tend to use simple representations for navigation: most commonly, nodes are organized within an unconstrained graph, and users are presented with embedded links or lists of links. Recently, new data structures have emerged which may serve as alternative models for both the organization, and presentation, of hypertextual nodes and links. In this paper, we consider zzstructures, mSpaces, and polyarchies from the perspective of graph theory, and compare these models formally." - (Michael J. McGuffin and M.C. Schraefel) - courtesy of ui designer

Posted by PJB on October 27, 2004 | Classification: Hypertext | Comments (0) | Permalink

Introducing the Customer-Centric Worldview

"(1) Business revolves around the customer. - (2) Companies that focus on creating a good customer experience will succeed far above those that do not. - (3) This is the primary determinant of business success over the next several decades." - (Mark Hurst - Good Experience) - courtesy of asterisk

Posted by PJB on October 27, 2004 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

A quick and dirty introduction to accessibility

"Accessibility is about building web pages that can be navigated and read by everyone, regardless of disability, location, experience or technology." - (Max Design)

Posted by PJB on October 26, 2004 | Classification: Accessibility | Comments (0) | Permalink

User Education Is Not the Answer to Security Problems

"Internet scams cannot be thwarted by placing the burden on users to defend themselves at all times. Beleaguered users need protection, and the technology must change to provide this." - (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on October 25, 2004 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web content management depends on trust

"You must be able to stand over everything that is published on your website and say that it is all accurate and up-to-date. Trust is a fundamental building block of professional web content management." - (Gerry McGovern)

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

Overview of the Open Source Development and Documentation Project: Overview

"The main purpose of OSDDP is to provide a place where everyone can learn project development from each other through open source development as well as develop skills for producing professional and technical documents." - (OSDDP)

Posted by PJB on October 24, 2004 | Classification: TechCom | Comments (0) | Permalink

Eating Architecture

"The contributors to this highly original collection of essays explore the relationship between food and architecture, asking what can be learned by examining the (often metaphorical) intersection of the preparation of meals and the production of space." - Table of Content & Sample chapters (MIT Press)

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

Microsoft Typography

From Lewis Blackwell's 20th-Century Type: "Microsoft has arguably the largest, most expert typographic unit in the world. With repsonsibility for the functionality and output of the great majority of type-generating devices, it is no surprise that they should have that, but it is not a fact that is celebrated or much investigated. That the Apple Macintosh platform is more celebrated and widely supported by creative designers obscures the prevelance of Microsoft technology in generating the typography that the world sees -- even if many of its smartest ideas came from elsewhere." (...) "Microsoft's Typography group researches and develops fonts and font technologies, and supports the development of TrueType and OpenType fonts by independent type vendors." (Microsoft) - courtesy of jamie divine

Posted by PJB on October 21, 2004 | Classification: Typography | Comments (0) | Permalink

Apple Fonts

"As a company that arguably did more to jump-start the desktop publishing industry than any other in the mid-1980s, Apple Computer has always paid great attention to the typefaces used in its marketing, operating systems and industrial design. It has also been a leading player in font technology development, and controls several patents important to the implementation of high-quality typeface rendering on computers." - (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Posted by PJB on October 21, 2004 | Classification: Typography | Comments (0) | Permalink

Patterns in Motion: Examining Design's Reconstruction

"Harold G. Nelson and Garry K. VanPatter discuss ups and downs, ins and outs, challenges and opportunities, related to the reconstruction of design leadership. Not for the faint hearted." - (About NextD Leadership Institute)

Posted by PJB on October 21, 2004 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

Using Personas to Create User Documentation

"Personas and other user-modeling techniques are often solely discussed as tools for product definition and design, but they are useful tools in other arenas, as well. Technical writers responsible for creating user documentation can benefit greatly from a well-defined persona set, too." (Steve Calde - Cooper Newsletter)

Posted by PJB on October 21, 2004 | Classification: Personas | Comments (0) | Permalink

Devising a new paradigm for usable, maintainable Web applications

"Why does usability tend to lag behind as Web applications become increasingly complex? Much of this lag can be attributed to the fact that the languages we use to create Web pages are not optimized for usability engineering." - (Ka Wai Cheung - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted by PJB on October 21, 2004 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Metadata for the Masses

"Many classification systems suffer from an inflexible top-down approach, forcing users to view the world in potentially unfamiliar ways." (Peter Merholz - Adaptive Path)

Posted by PJB on October 20, 2004 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

The users' voice in the timetable dialogue

"Research indicates that people have difficulty understanding and using public transport timetables when they are presented in the well-established genre of a two-dimensional matrix. In a project (...), we used a methodology which integrated user's information needs with research into historical design solutions, legibility, and current technology. Our application of the methodology generated a design solution which our testing showed helped to enhance user’s effective understanding of the public transport system." (Maureen MacKenzie - Communication Research Institute of Australia)

Posted by PJB on October 20, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Institute of Network Cultures

"The Institute of Network Cultures (INC), which was set up in June 2004, caters to research, meetings and (online) initiatives in the area of internet and new media. Not only will the INC facilitate, but also initiate and produce a range of projects. Its goal is to create an open organizational form with a strong focus on content, within which ideas (emanating from both individuals and institutions) can be given an institutional context at an early stage. Based on the fusion of old and new media, the INC aims to organize both public and internal meetings and to formulate new research." (About INC)

Posted by PJB on October 20, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Information seeking research needs extension towards tasks and technology

"This paper discusses the research into information seeking and its directions at a general level. We approach this topic by analysis and argumentation based on past research in the domain. We begin by presenting a general model of information seeking and retrieval which is used to derive nine broad dimensions that are needed to analyze information seeking and retrieval. Past research is then contrasted with the dimensions and shown not to cover the dimensions sufficiently. Based on an analysis of the goals of information seeking research, and a view on human task performance augmentation, it is then shown that information seeking is intimately associated with, and dependent on, other aspects of work; tasks and technology included. This leads to a discussion on design and evaluation frameworks for information seeking and retrieval, based on which two action lines are proposed: information retrieval research needs extension toward more context and information seeking research needs extension towards tasks and technology." (Kalervo Järvelin and Peter Ingwersen - Information Research, Vol. 10 No. 1, October 2004)

Posted by PJB on October 19, 2004 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Search is Not All There

"With a theoretical limit on the amount of information we can possibly consume, finding the information both on the internet and on your own computers can be a daunting task. Recently, there's been a lot of attention on search." (Kevin Cheng - OK/Cancel)

Posted by PJB on October 19, 2004 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Review of 'User Experience: Why Do So Many Organizations Believe They Own It?'

"One consequence of bringing together all of the design groups was that experience design could appear as a kaleidoscope, twirling wildly, or a mosaic, cementing every one in his or her place. It remains to be seen whether synergy or separation is the result, and the ultimate outcome for experience design as a unified practice." (Bob Jakobson - Corante Total Experience)

Posted by PJB on October 18, 2004 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

eGovernment: No website is better than a bad one

"Not publishing is much better than publishing poor quality content. Most people come to websites to carry out tasks. Quality content will help them complete these tasks quickly and efficiently. Poor quality content hinders task completion, and frustrates and annoys people." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on October 17, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

IA Trends Survey Results and Analysis

"Future trend: The numbers of both in-house and agency IAs will decline; this drop will be partially countered by growth in self-employed consultants." (Louis Rosenfeld)

Posted by PJB on October 17, 2004 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Elegance Through Simplicity

"By keeping goals in mind and design simple, you can achieve elegant, easily understandable data presentations." (Stephen Few - Intelligent enterprise Magazine) - courtesy of john rhodes

Posted by PJB on October 17, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Interaction Design Meets Agility: Handouts and Presentation

"Handouts and Powerpoint presentation for tutorial presented at UPA 2004." (Abstractics) - courtesy of mark felcan smith

Posted by PJB on October 15, 2004 | Classification: Interaction design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Fault-tolerant Fulltext Search for Large Multilingual Scientific Text Corpora

"In the work reported here, we present a new way of performing fault-tolerant fulltext retrieval on large text corpora, such as scientific encyclopedias." (Wolfram M. Esser - Journal of Digital Information 6.1)

Posted by PJB on October 15, 2004 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Data Presentation: Tapping the Power of Visual Perception

"Why do people respond to some forms of presentation better than others? This installment of our series sheds light on how physical aspects of vision influence the way we process information -- and ultimately, decision-making itself." (Stephen Few - Intelligent Enterprise Magazine)

Posted by PJB on October 13, 2004 | Classification: Information graphics | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Croquet Project

"(...) the project seeks to define and develop a system is focused on the simulation and communication of complex ideas. We call this 'communication enhancement' - the direct extension of the abilities of humans to develop, understand, and describe even the most complex simulations." (About Croquet)

Posted by PJB on October 12, 2004 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

Checking in with Ben Bederson

"By focusing on the user experience, the University of Maryland's Human-Computer Interaction Lab aims to improve lives through projects such as the International Children's Digital Library." (ACM Ubiquity)

Posted by PJB on October 12, 2004 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

Card sorting tools: A short summary

"(...) a summary of the current tools in no particuar order. I have put card details into those that work, but haven't put any results in yet." (DonnaM)

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

Mobile Research Methods

"A comparison of methods for understanding mobile behavior to inform technology design." (Mobile Community Design) - courtesy of john rhodes

Posted by PJB on October 12, 2004 | Classification: UCD | Comments (0) | Permalink

Newsletter Usability: Can a Professional Publisher Do Better?

"The Washington Post's email newsletter earns a high usability score. It's particularly good at setting users' expectations before they subscribe, though the unsubscribe interface has some problems." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

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

Homemade Mayonnaise

"Too lazy to leave my home in the middle of food preparation (...), I grabbed a clean bowl and my whisk to make some of my homemade mayo." (Michael Chu - Cooking for Engineers) - courtesy of mark bernstein

Posted by PJB on October 11, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Renewing my driving license online: a Kafkaesque experience: Part 2

"Action is what matters on the Web. Someone comes to your website in order to do something. The only measure of success that counts is whether they have been able to do what they came to your website to do." (Gerry McGovern)

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

Search: The Current and Next Big Thing

"Search is not restricted to entering a text field and getting back a collection of links" (Daniel H. Steinberg - Web 2.0)

Posted by PJB on October 09, 2004 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Getting Lost in Cyberspace

"The separation of navigational components can greatly reduce the number of choices that need to be considered at anyone time. This can make it easier for people with cognitive or learning difficulties to use the site, and can also be helpful to people who are unable to use the mouse." (Roger Hudson - Web Essentials 04)

Posted by PJB on October 08, 2004 | Classification: Accessibility | Comments (0) | Permalink

Rock & Roll Timeline

"(...) the Visual Timeline - an interactive, animated compendium of rock and popular music history. Discover unexpected connections between artists. Track the growth of a musical movement. Zoom in on the day the Beatles invaded America, or out to a bird's-eye view of the blues' sweeping influence. It's all here." (Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum) - courtesy of thom quine

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

New Europe, New Spirit

"In central Europe, design is at a crossroads. It is 15 years since the collapse of communism and the arrival of democracy and the free market and a great deal has happened in the design communities of countries such as the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovenia, Poland and Hungary. Design is at different stages of development, reflecting national economic conditions and the relationship of designers with their own local traditions of design, but certain factors are shared, and it is these opportunities and dilemmas that I want to explore." (Rick Poynor - Design Observer)

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

An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design

"The biggest challenge for web designers is the unthinkably huge number of possible ways to solve any given problem. We usually don't think of this because we have our habits and traditions to fall back on, but there are literally billions of possible pixel combinations for each page we make." (Ryan Singer - 37signals) - courtesy of uidesigner

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

Gnowsis

"(...) the Semantic Desktop environment published by the Knowledge Management Lab of the DFKI. Gnowsis can be used in research projects or by interested individuals to benefit from Semantic Web technologies." (DFKI Knowledge Management Lab) - courtesy of nooface

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

Information Design Journal + Document Design 12:1

"(...) a forum for both practitioners and researchers. It aims to enhance design knowledge and practice so that informed design can support people's interactions with printed and electronic materials, whether using verbal text, numbers, pictures, diagrams or other forms of representation. IDJ+DD brings together the variety of ways of investigating and thinking about the effective design of information in various genres." (John Benjamins Publishing Company)

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

Information Hunters

"The behaviour of human beings when searching for information intensively resembles that of the hunter-gatherers of our past and that of the foraging of animals. Information Visualisation tries to take advantage of this finding." (Juan C. Dürsteler - Inf@Vis!)

Posted by PJB on October 04, 2004 | Classification: InfoViz | Comments (0) | Permalink

Making A Better Open Source CMS

"Open source content management software sucks. It sucks really badly. The only things worse is every commercial CMS I've used. But it really doesn't have to be that way." (Jeffrey Veen)

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

Why simplicity?

<marketese>"The digital revolution is supposed to have made our lives easier, but studies have shown that’s not the case. (...) Our research showed that we had a unique opportunity to answer your need for simplicity, while strengthening our brand in the minds of consumers and customers everywhere."</marketese> (Royal Philips Electronics)

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

Renewing my driving license online in 50 tortuous steps

"The best websites make our lives easier, while the worst ones make our lives more difficult. After trying to renew my driving license online, I was stunned by how awful some websites still are. Much of the Web is a quagmire of appalling design and even worse management." (Gerry McGovern)

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

The beauty and business of CSS

Doug Bowman Presentation at Web Essentials 04 - "Building designs with CSS is no longer a fringe activity practiced by standards geeks and early-adopters. Creative pioneers and highly skilled designers are bringing CSS to the mainstream. The explosion in popularity is ushering in a new wave of possibilities for web design. CSS provides greater design control, allows more flexibility, and enables sites to become attractive, accessible, and faster-loading, all at the same time." (Stopdesign) - courtesy of elearningpost

Posted by PJB on October 01, 2004 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

Server side usability: How to make web servers behave

"Most usability professionals don't have a driver's licence to web servers and are not aware of the steps that can be taken to make servers behave in a user-friendly way. In this article, we'll take a look at how to avoid that server technology becomes an obstacle to usability." (Henrik Olsen - guuui.com)

Posted by PJB on October 01, 2004 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink