August 2004

Build Sales Intelligence with Passive Customer Profiling 

"Companies understand that their customers want to do business with companies that understand their needs. Detailed user profiles are crucial to helping companies to make customers feel understood. Without knowing the customer, a company cannot engage the customer in the conversation that leads to personalized transactions and long business relationships." (Brett Lider - Avenue A | Razorfish White Papers)

Posted by PJB on August 31, 2004 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Links and Causal Arrows: Ambiguity in Action

"Here is a complete draft of a chapter on linking lines and causal arrows from my Beautiful Evidence. This chapter suggests methods for showing linking lines and causal arrows, and also demonstrates ideas for assessing the credibility of various links. That is, the links themselves are taken as explanatory evidence. Note the typographic design of the organization chart which replaces the conventional design of bureaucrats-in-boxes." (Edward Tufte)

Posted by PJB on August 30, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Mastery, Mystery, and Misery: The Ideologies of Web Design

"Simple, unobtrusive designs that support users are successful because they abide by the Web's nature -- and they make people feel good." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on August 30, 2004 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Websites: Easy to start, hard to manage

"One of the biggest problems websites face is that they lack proper planning in the design and development phase. Generally, the design of the website tends to overreach, in that what is built requires more staff to professionally manage than are available." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on August 30, 2004 | Classification: Content management | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Assemble Me

An Information Science and Visualization Blog. (Julis Schorzman)

Posted by PJB on August 27, 2004 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

An Interdisciplinary Perspective of Classificatory Structures

"In this essay, I will examine the purposes served by classificatory structures and discuss how classifying information from an interdisciplinary perspective can be relevant, valuable, and useful." (Claire McInerney - SCILS Rutgers)

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

Innovation by Design: Understanding IDEO Now!

A conversation with Tim Brown (CEO of IDEO) - "The majority of companies today realizes that the world is changing faster than they can change, and therefore existing assumptions about markets, business models, and products and services will not necessarily hold true. The consequence of this is that the kind of questions asked by companies as they embark on design and innovation projects is different." (Garry K. VanPatter - NextD)

Posted by PJB on August 26, 2004 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Information Architecture and User Experience in Belgium

"(...) Belgium IA beer hour was a great success." (Peter Van Dijck)

Posted by PJB on August 26, 2004 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Ambient Intelligence: Changing Forms of Human-Computer Interaction and their Social Implications

"The paper describes developments to date in ambient intelligence and its closely related counterpart, ubiquitous computing and communication. It discusses the driving forces behind this digital information technology, describes the equipment and devices involved, the obstacles to implementing ambient intelligence on a large scale in real-world scenarios, and considers the future outlook. The authors believe that the introduction of this digital information technology will have wide-ranging implications, which will for the most part be beneficial and valuable." (Mahesh S. Raisinghani et al. - Journal of Digital Information 5.4)

Posted by PJB on August 26, 2004 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Emerging Content Requirements for News Products

"The premise in this article is that there are unexplored opportunities for news providers when consideration is given to the full range of variables that impact readability. The fact that typical readers do not take advantage of news content as it is currently packaged and delivered is, in fact, only part of the rationale for this statement." (Howard Williams - ASIS&T Bulletin Aug/Sep 2004)

Posted by PJB on August 26, 2004 | Classification: Writing | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Usability and Accessibility Working Group

"(...) a collaborative group of accessibility and usability experts, industry leaders and academics who have come together to encourage the spread of inclusive design within the digital economy." (About UA-WG) - courtesy of usability news

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

It's Not Just About Searching - It's About Findability

"The current emphasis on content management is not about content management at all but rather about content publishing - and there is a difference. Organizations are aware of the problems in getting current, reliable information into an intranet but feel that their responsibility stops with building the repository and providing some templates for page display. Far too little attention is paid to the fact that unless people can find the information, the effort to add it to the repository and to make the look consistent is wasted." (Martin White - EContent) - courtesy of uidesigner

Posted by PJB on August 24, 2004 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Architecture of Knowledge: The Mundaneum and European Antecedents of the World Wide Web

"Various European scholars and scientists considered at the end of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th Century new ways to unite science and art of the world. They sought for new ways to store and retrieve knowledge on a global level. They wanted to find ways of representing our knowledge of the world, of simplifying and visualizing it, of ordering it in new ways for universal access to it. They developed new comprehensive classification systems, new standards to store and organize data. They explored what were the new technologies of their time to try to overcome the inefficiencies of the book and to find substitutes for it. (...) Buildings and user are considered both transmitters and receivers of information that shapes continuously the architectural form. Architecture and knowledge are interrelated." (The Project - Maastricht McLuhan Institute)

Posted by PJB on August 23, 2004 | Classification: Classics | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Interactive Experience Group

"The goal of the Interactive Experience research group is to radically rethink the human-machine interactive experience. By designing interfaces that are more immersive, more intelligent, and more interactive we are changing the human-machine relationship and creating systems that are more responsive to people's needs and actions, and that become true 'accessories' for expanding our minds." (MIT Media Laboratory)

Posted by PJB on August 23, 2004 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Cognitive Cost of Classification

"The mental effort required to consistently assign keywords outweighs the benefits for most frontline contributors to content, document, and knowledge management systems. Contrary to this lovely summary, faceted classification can actually compound the problem. Facets are oversold in situations where info-civilians have to classify content that they have created themselves. Expecting facets to solve the metacrap problem is naive." (Jess McMullin - interactionary) - courtesy of victor lombardi

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

Informational Articles Must Ask For the Order

"Unless you have explicit links to product pages from article content, users who visit articles directly from search engines might never realize that you sell related products." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

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

Architecture of the World Wide Web, First Edition

"The World Wide Web is an information space of interrelated resources. This information space is the basis of, and is shared by, a number of information systems. Within each of these systems, people and software retrieve, create, display, analyze, relate, and reason about resources. Web architecture defines the information space in terms of identification of resources, representation of resource state, and the protocols that support the interaction between agents and resources in the space." (W3C)

Posted by PJB on August 22, 2004 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Blogs and blogging: advantages and disadvantages

"Isn't it interesting that some of the most significant 'revolutions' of the last twenty years have all had to do with writing? How retro is that? First we had email, then webpages, then mobile phone texting, and now blogs. All this reflects a trend whereby the world is becoming more formal in how it communicates. Instead of body language and endless conversations, communication has shifted towards endless words on a screen." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on August 22, 2004 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Enterprise IA summary

A collection of references regarding Enterprise Information Architecture. (Gene Smith - Atomiq) - courtesy of iaslash

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

Facilitating the Evolution of our Collective IQ: What Universities and Professional Societies Can Do 

From Hypertext '04 : Douglas Engelbart keynote presentation slides. - "Human capabilities depend upon their augmentation systems" (Hypertext '04)

Posted by PJB on August 20, 2004 | Classification: Hypertext | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

SVG-based User Interface Framework

"The purpose of the SPARK project is to create a flexible, interoperable SVG-based user interface framework. Using well established and standardized languages including SVG, XML, Java and IDL, we went about creating a framework that could easily be used by others to rapidly develop SVG based applications or prototypes." (SVG Open 2003)

Posted by PJB on August 20, 2004 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Profits First, Users Second

"The purpose of this article is to challenge a core belief in usability. An argument is made that profits are more important than users since organizations cannot survive without profits. Although the business value is high, usability is only one mechanism for driving profits and success." (John S. Rhodes - Oristus)

Posted by PJB on August 19, 2004 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Faceted Classification of Information

"Given the significant difficulties in categorizing books, papers, and articles using traditional library classification techniques, it would seem next to impossible for humans to classify the small chunks of rapidly changing information that characterize information-intensive business environments. But it's not. Library and information science professionals have already provided the foundations of an alternative to traditional classification techniques: faceted classification." (The Knowledge Management Connection) - courtesy of keith instone

Posted by PJB on August 18, 2004 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Information Architecture Heuristics

"Every information architect should always have a set of favorite questions in their back pocket; they really do come in handy." (Louis Rosenfeld)

Posted by PJB on August 18, 2004 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The World Wide Blog

"Joichi Ito, founder of Neoteny and other Internet companies, finds that cyberspace is embracing it roots — collaboration, community, and personal communications — with bloggers leading the way." (ACM Ubiquity)

Posted by PJB on August 17, 2004 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Representing Content and Data in Wireframes

"Sample data can make or break a wireframe, whose purpose is typically to illustrate architecture and interaction. Poorly selected sample data can end up clouding the wireframe or distracting stakeholders from its purpose. By codifying the types of sample content they employ in their deliverables, information architects can create a coherent narrative to illustrate a website's functionality." (Dan Brown - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on August 17, 2004 | Classification: Wireframes | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

How to apply for IA jobs

"(...) I'm posting a bit of our conversation about applying and interviewing for IA jobs here. These ideas apply mainly to people who are sending a resumé out blindly. That is to say, without a word of mouth recommendation." (Michael Angeles - urlgreyhot)

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

When Search Engines Become Answer Engines

"The website is becoming a less prominent locus of experience as people use search engines to bring up answers to their current questions. How can sites cope with masses of freeloaders?" (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on August 16, 2004 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Visions of Xanadu: Paul Otlet (1868-1944) and Hypertext

"The paper discusses Otlet's concept of the Office of Documentation and, as examples of an approach to actual hypertext systems, several special Offices of Documentation set up in the International Office of Bibliography. In his Traité de Documentation of 1934, one of the first systematic treatises on what today we would call information science, Otlet speculated imaginatively about online communications, text-voice conversion and what is needed in computer work stations, though of course he does not use this terminology." (W. Boyd Rayward - The Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Posted by PJB on August 15, 2004 | Classification: Hypertext | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Case of Paul Otlet, Pioneer of Information Science, Internationalist, Visionary: Reflections On Biography

"The author takes as his point of departure his studies of Paul Otlet, co-founder of the present International Federation for Information and Documentation (FID) and The Union of International Associations, developer of the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), theorist of 'Documentation', and pioneer of information science. Drawing on these studies his purpose is to examine aspects of the art and scholarship of biography, of the processes of research and imagination that it involves, especially: recognising an appropriate subject and determining an approach to it, the problem of evidence and the frames of reference within which evidence is deployed, the personal involvement that develops between the subject and the biographer, and biography's final goal of historical and personal understanding." (W. Boyd Rayward - The Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Posted by PJB on August 15, 2004 | Classification: Hypertext | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Information Design Models and Processes: Introduction to a special issue

"A crucial aspect of most (if not all) Web systems is the way in which information is utilised and managed. Recent work on areas as diverse as topic maps, information architectures, adaptation of the Unified Modeling Language, agile development methods such as extreme programming, and modelling for the semantic Web, have all contributed to an emerging understanding of how to design the information structures that underpin the Web (and of course much of this work has in turn been informed by research in areas like hypertext and HCI)." (David Lowe - Journal of Digital Information 5.2)

Posted by PJB on August 13, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

8 Quick Ways to Fix Your Search Engine

"Our finding (...) is that almost every site's search engine could use improvement. We also found that most organizations' Web teams couldn't really affect the quality of their search results - they were stuck tweaking search technologies that had already been purchased and installed. Often, the most dramatic change they could make was in the design of the search and results interfaces. In some cases, as the old saying goes, this was like putting lipstick on a pig. But cleaning things up does help users find answers to their queries." (Jeffrey Veen - Adaptive Path)

Posted by PJB on August 13, 2004 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Site Content Search

"Your search engine can make or break your site. This report with give you the tools you need to get search working." (Adaptive Path)

Posted by PJB on August 13, 2004 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

CHI 2004: Tangible Interface for Collaborative Information Retrieval

"Combining collaboration, tangibility and calmness, researchers at the University of Cambridge have harnessed the future to produce a search interface with a difference." (Ann Light - Usability News)

Posted by PJB on August 13, 2004 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The corporate taxonomy: Creating a new order

"Taxonomies are an important tool in balancing the contradictory forces of information overload and the need for instant access to the right information." (Eric Woods - KMWorld) - courtesy of elearningpost

Posted by PJB on August 12, 2004 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Usability Test Data Logger

"This spreadsheet allows you to measure task completion rates, analyse questionnaire data, and summarise participant comments. It even includes a timer so you can measure time-on-task." (Userfocus) - courtesy of column two

Posted by PJB on August 12, 2004 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

User interfaces: The next generation

"Keyboards and mice will face competition from motion-sensing, gesture recognition and haptic technologies." (Computerworld) - courtesy of lawrence lee

Posted by PJB on August 12, 2004 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Bad metadata is killing music

"(...) this is also about how generally incomplete the content object models that most digital music experiences are based around." (City of Sound)

Posted by PJB on August 11, 2004 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Enhance Usability by Highlighting Search Terms

"We've written a script in PHP that you can add to individual pages or entire websites that will automatically highlight words in your page if the user has followed a link from a search engine results page." (Brian Suda and Matt Riggott - A List Apart)

Posted by PJB on August 11, 2004 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Information: The New Currency

"I = VT/AP: I = perceived cost of information to owner of information; V = validity of the information; T = time and effort to enter the information; A = availability of the information elsewhere; P - potential value to the owner of the information." (Kevin Cheng - OK/Cancel)

Posted by PJB on August 10, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

e-Learning and language change: Observations, tendencies and reflections

"This paper discusses the globalization of e–learning, changes in languages as an effect of distance technologies and the lingua franca of modern times, English, and its effects on other languages. Hybrid languages such as Spanglish (Spanish English) and Swenglish (Swedish English) emerges as an effect of the increasing interaction between non–English languages and the dominant English language. The need for speed and efficiency in communication and the adaptation to new technology changes language dramatically as is observed in chat and SMS–mediated communication. The complexity of modern human communication is discussed with a historical perspective - the old modes of communication can now be used via Internet but this transfer changes their characteristics." (First Monday 9.8)

Posted by PJB on August 07, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Planet HCI: Computers Serve Users

"Planet HCI is a web aggregator of feeds from HCI-related blogs, i.e., of those who care about how computers can serve users better." (About HCI)

Posted by PJB on August 07, 2004 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

The Bill Gates speech from the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2004 in Redmond

"One of the things that's really been a big deal to us over the last several years is connecting up with the user experience, seeing exactly when the user is having a problem, when does the system crash or hang, when is it not giving them what they want." (Bill Gates - Microsoft) - courtesy of reloade

Posted by PJB on August 06, 2004 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Attract and Keep Customers: Site Design Tips to Improve Your Sales

"Research has long shown that the leading factor in persuading shoppers to buy from an e-commerce Web site is ease of navigation -- findings that were supported in a recent survey by Jupiter Research. In other words, customers are saying make your site easy-to-use, and you'll earn our sale." (James Maguire - eCommerce Guide)

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

How Google beat Amazon and eBay to the Semantic Web

"A work of fiction. A Semantic Web scenario. A short feature from a business magazine published in 2009." (Paul Ford) - courtesy of thomas vander wal

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

How not to get a job in usability

"So, for anyone out there who feels like failing to get a job in usability, here's a brief checklist of steps." (Caroline Jarrett)

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

New pages from Beautiful Evidence: Causal arrows and linking lines—Feynman diagrams, epidemiological diagrams

"Here is a draft of what might well be the 4 concluding pages to the chapter in 'Beautiful Evidence' on causal arrows and linking lines. A few other parts of the chapter were posted earlier (on the Barr art chart, on evolutionary trees and cladistic diagrams). After this new material is reviewed by Kindly Contributors, then perhaps the full 16-page chapter will at last be ready to post." (Edward Tufte) - courtesy of xblog

Posted by PJB on August 05, 2004 | Classification: Information graphics | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

We The Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People

"Grassroots journalists are dismantling Big Media's monopoly on the news, transforming it from a lecture to a conversation. Not content to accept the news as reported, these readers-turned-reporters are publishing in real time to a worldwide audience via the Internet. The impact of their work is just beginning to be felt by professional journalists and the newsmakers they cover. In 'We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People', nationally known business and technology columnist Dan Gillmor tells the story of this emerging phenomenon, and sheds light on this deep shift in how we make and consume the news." (O'Reilly)

Posted by PJB on August 04, 2004 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack

Embracing Information Architecture and Information Design

"Information architecture (IA) and information design (ID) are two fields that are taking the Web experience to a new level. They form the foundations of what is now widely known as user experience design (UXD). In this article, I argue that e-learning teams too have to embrace UXD practices in addition to learning design practices to take the learning experience to a higher level." (Australian Flexible Learning Community)

Posted by PJB on August 03, 2004 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink | TrackBack