April 2005

Implementing a Pattern Library in the Real World: A Yahoo! Case Study

"The pattern library allowed our small, centralized group to tap into the broad expertise of the Yahoo! design staff. What would have been impossible to write (authoritatively) by a small team is now being contributed to and reviewed by an expert staff. We were able to achieve this by understanding and agreeing on the problem, building a workflow that fit with the existing design process, generating buy-in by creating incentives for contributors, and by carefully designing and building an application with attention to user feedback. We were then able to convert this library of patterns into a workable set of standards by agreeing on an appropriate rating scale and by assembling a representative group of reviewers who rate the content according to the same criteria." (Erin Malone et al. - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on April 30, 2005 | Classification: Patterns | Comments (0) | Permalink

Crossing Boundaries: 2005 IA Summit Wrapup

Saturday - Monday: "So were boundaries crossed, at the Summit, as the theme promised? I would say that the many boundaries of IA were discovered; it will be up to next year’s planning committee to decide if they should build walls on them, or erase the lines and let the next generation continue to move the edges of IA farther and farther out." (Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on April 30, 2005 | Classification: Events | Comments (0) | Permalink

Interview: Steve Krug

"In April 2004, Boxes and Arrows sent a set of questions to Steve Krug for an interview to be published in the June edition. What we didn’t know at the time was that Steve is a notoriously slow writer, and easily distracted. Eleven months later, this turned up." (Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on April 30, 2005 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

In Defense of PowerPoint

"I started this essay in January 2004 - over a year ago - but it lay hidden in my file of 'in progress' writings. I didn't finish the essay because I gave an interview with Cliff Atkinson on the topic, but the paper goes into the issues in much more depth than the interview. So, here it is: it may be late, but the lessons are just as relevant as ever." (Donald Norman)

Posted by PJB on April 29, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

<interactions>: Whose profession is it anyway?

"The May + June issue of <interactions> is a special issue on 'Whose profession is it anyway?' - in part a reaction to some of the collaboration and cooperation discussions UXnet has been encouraging. This issue should be arriving in your mailbox any day now - it is also available in the ACM digital library where subscribers can download articles and non-subscribers can purchase items." (UXnet) - my first pub in print.

Posted by PJB on April 28, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Historical Development of Information Infrastructures and the Dissemination of Knowledge: A Personal Reflection

"With the advent of the Internet and the Web, it has become clear how pioneering and important historically the work of Paul Otlet and his colleagues was. It seems yet even more relevant today with the recently announced agreement between Google and a number of research libraries to digitize and make their collections available through the Web." (W. Boyd Rayward - ASIS&T Bulletin April/May 2005)

Posted by PJB on April 28, 2005 | Classification: Classics | Comments (0) | Permalink

Card sorting: Analysis and reporting 3/3

"Card sorting won't always give you the answer - it may just give you more questions. This is where the analysis comes in." (Mark Boulton - Information Design) - courtesy of mark bernstein

Posted by PJB on April 28, 2005 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Thin Slicing in Information Space

"Perhaps even more worrying, evidence of poor usability gained by interacting with the design did not initially change the beliefs of these users about the application's quality." (Andrew Dillon - ASIS&T Bulletin April/May 2005)

Posted by PJB on April 28, 2005 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Folksonomies: A User-Driven Approach to Organizing Content

"One of the most promising features of folksonomies is that there is no disconnect between the user's words and the words on the site: the users words are the words on the site!" (Joshua Porter - User Interface Engineering)

Posted by PJB on April 27, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Social Computing Symposium 2005

"The goal for this event is to foster an awareness of research and innovation in social technologies, and create new lines of communication between research and industry. We have over 80 people from industry labs, new technology companies, and academic research coming this year. The symposium agenda is comprised of a mix of invited speakers and panelists, research presentations, discussion sessions, and demos, to encourage ongoing conversations about new directions in social technologies." (Microsoft Research) - courtesy of brightlycoloredfood

Posted by PJB on April 27, 2005 | Classification: Events | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Future of RoboHelp?

"This article and my prediction about the future of RoboHelp are not meant to be an attack in any way. RoboHelp is an important tool to thousands of developers throughout the world and they deserve to have as much information about the future of the product as possible." (Joe Welinske - WinWriters)

Posted by PJB on April 27, 2005 | Classification: TechCom | Comments (0) | Permalink

Les Blogs 2005

Coverage of the Les Blogs 2005 Event (LoicLeMeur Wiki - Socialtext) - courtesy of mark bernstein

Posted by PJB on April 26, 2005 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

Visual Communication & Web Application Design

"Visual Communication is a key component of interface design and unfortunately often under-represented in interaction design methodologies. This talk introduces the core principles of Visual Communication (with an emphasis on Visual Organization) and through many practical examples details how they can be put to use during the Web application interface design process." (Luke Wroblewski - Functioning Form)

Posted by PJB on April 25, 2005 | Classification: InfoViz | Comments (0) | Permalink

Formal Usability Reports vs. Quick Findings

"Formal reports are the most common way of documenting usability studies, but informal reports are faster to produce and are often a better choice." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on April 25, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

State is the Web

"State requires a lot of thought and consideration. If we are going to build the web for amateurization or personal information architectures that ease how people build and structure their use of the web, we must provide state." (Thomas VanderWal)

Posted by PJB on April 25, 2005 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

Number one skill for managing a website

"Having a deep understanding of the gut instinct of your customer is the number one skill of managing a website. That involves getting face to face with them." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on April 25, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

It's a Whole New Internet

"Something is happening right now, and the developer community has an electric gleam in its eye. Curious, inventive people are making cool stuff again. There’s been a notable shift, and it's incredibly exciting. (...) Watch closely, ladies and gentlemen. Things are about to change in a very big way." (Janice Fraser - Adaptive Path)

Posted by PJB on April 22, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

The State of User Experience

"It is a source of perpetual amazement to me that so much focus, attention, and energy are given to the opinions of critics and analysts, who sit detached, off to the side, choosing to criticize the efforts of others for seemingly no reason other than to make a bold statement." (Dirk Knemeyer)

Posted by PJB on April 21, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

User Experience is a Quality, Not A Discipline

"We should never talk about 'user experience design' -- there is no customer or user-facing design that doesn't involve a user's experience. But we can talk about how our methods, processes, approaches, mindsets, and understandings can contribute to improving the user experiences of the products and services people deal with." (Peter Merholz)

Posted by PJB on April 21, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Social Bookmarking Tools (I)

"We are here going to remind you of hyperlinks in all their glory, sell you on the idea of bookmarking hyperlinks, point you at other folks who are doing the same, and tell you why this is a good thing. Just as long as those hyperlinks (or let's call them plain old links) are managed, tagged, commented upon, and published onto the Web, they represent a user's own personal library placed on public record, which – when aggregated with other personal libraries – allows for rich, social networking opportunities." (Tony Hammond - D-Lib Magazine) - courtesy of lucdesk

Posted by PJB on April 21, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Metaphors We Surf The Web By 

"The way people think about the World-Wide Web (WWW) has implications for the way that they navigate it. In this paper, we discuss the nature of people's metaphorical conception of the WWW, as gathered from interviews with beginning and experienced web users. Based on linguistic data, we argue that people naturally think of the web as a kind of physical space in which they move, although information on the web is not physical, and web users do not actually move. Nevertheless, such metaphorical thought is motivated by the same basic image schemata that people rely on to mentally structure everyday life." (Paul P. Maglio and Teenie Matlock 1998) - courtesy of iai digilib

Posted by PJB on April 21, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

CHI 2005 Development Consortium

"This two-day meeting brought together people from many different user experience organizations to talk about how practitioners and organizations can work together." (UXnet) - courtesy of digitalwebmag

Posted by PJB on April 20, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Liquid Information

"(...) a research project at UCLiC in London in cooperation with Doug Engelbart in California. We are aiming to make text more interactive - turning words into hyperwords. Why? Most electronic communication has focused on the production of information, not the digestion of information. In order to make informed decisions in our work, it's not enough to rely on automated systems - we need to get the right information into our heads." (About Liquid Information) - courtesy of nooface

Posted by PJB on April 19, 2005 | Classification: Hypertext | Comments (0) | Permalink

Contingency Design White Paper

"Contingency design is design for when things go wrong. It's the error messaging, graphic design, instructive text, information architecture, backend system, and customer service that helps visitors get back on track after a problem occurs." (37signals) - courtesy of guuui

Posted by PJB on April 19, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web Application Continuums

"Many Web Application technologies are an attempt to bridge the gap between Thin (browser-based) and Thick (desktop-based) clients. As a result, it's useful to consider where they fall on a continuum between these two deployment and design options." (Luke Wroblewski - Functioning Form)

Posted by PJB on April 18, 2005 | Classification: Interaction design | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Semantic Web Community Portal (beta)

"If HTML and the Web made all the online documents look like one huge book, RDF, schema, and inference languages will make all the data in the world look like one huge database. - Tim Berners-Lee 1999" (Labs SemWeb)

Posted by PJB on April 17, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web editors have a great future

"Web editors are critical to website success. They have a combination of communications, marketing and technology skills. Most of all, they know their readers inside out." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on April 17, 2005 | Classification: Writing | Comments (0) | Permalink

Introducing User-Centered Design to an eGovernment Software Development Company

"When I started working for the company in December 2002, the user interface department was growing fast. Instead of a small number of generalist Web designers, it was becoming a large collection of specialists, with titles such as information architect, visual designer, art director and producer. These new employees, each with their own specific backgrounds, brought with them a surprisingly wide array of new words for what they did, their own jargon. The department's manager realized something had to be done before his team turned into a new Tower of Babel." (Peter Boersma - ASIS&T Bulletin Feb/Mar 2005)

Posted by PJB on April 17, 2005 | Classification: UCD | Comments (0) | Permalink

The (Poorbuthappy) State of European Information Architecture

"In France, IA will probably never take off, at least the current style of US-centered IA. In Belgium, there are a few companies doing interesting IA/UX work, mostly for large clients like J&J and such. But as a field it's pretty unknown. I blame Belgian's lack of self-promotion. In Holland, there is a bit more awareness (and historically more 'design' awareness) around IA, but also some confusion about what IA really is. There's another Dutch 'IA' organization with a very different take on what it means. I'll report back on Spain later, but I have noticed there is a bit of a UX scene there." (Peter van Dijck)

Posted by PJB on April 15, 2005 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

The State of Computer-Human Interaction

"You might say it's the toughest problem to solve in the modern world of computing; it's certainly the hardest to define. This month more than 1,800 designers, programmers, academics, professional researchers, industrial engineers, artists, and musicians gathered in Portland, Oregon, for another bash at the question, How do you make these monstrous electronics we've created easier and more pleasant to use? Welcome to CHI 2005, the annual meeting of the Association for Computer Machinery's special interest group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI)." (Quinn Norton - O'Reilly Network)

Posted by PJB on April 15, 2005 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink

Ten ways to improve the usability of your ecommerce site

"More and more money is being spent online as consumers switch to shopping on the web. Yet so many websites don't seem to have considered the usability of their ecommerce site and of their ordering process, resulting in users prematurely giving up and abandoning their shopping basket. Here are ten ways to improve the usability of your ecommerce site, so that you can maximise your conversion rate and help convert the contents of users' shopping baskets into orders." (Webcredible) - courtesy of guuui

Posted by PJB on April 15, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Put the 'card' back into card sorting: Computer-aided paper sorting (Caps)

"Card sorting is a powerful technique for assessing how users group related concepts together. In its simplest form, a researcher would write concepts - usually menu items for interaction design - on cards and ask users to group related items together. In a closed card sort, the number of groups and their names are fixed. In open card sorts, the number and names of groups are determined by the participants, although the researcher may specify limits (3 to 5 groups, for example)." (William Hudson - Syntagm) - courtesy of cityofbits

Posted by PJB on April 14, 2005 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Development of the Genre Concept

"The elements of this framework can be traced back in the theory of genre, as it has developed during the 20th century. The overview of this development below covers the dominant ideas and theories, that have given rise to the genre concept as summarized by Berkenkotter and Huckin. The first part is an outline of modern genre theory. It summarizes the historical background, necessary to understand the application of the genre concept to digital communication. The second part is a review of literature on digital genres (or cybergenres). This section is more detailed than the first part. The broader context is 'genre as framework for electronic publishing'. This point of view is inspired by the idea, that genre creates shared expectations about the form and content of communication. In this way, genre characteristics are relevant to the design of electronic documents and websites, and genre analysis can be incorporated in the broad field of content engineering (or information engineering, as it is named elsewhere). Leading questions are, in which way such an approach might help to increase the effectiveness of electronic documents, and how the engineering process itself could benefit from a detailed analysis of generic elements." (Leen Breure - University of Utrecht) - courtesy of peterme

Posted by PJB on April 13, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Future of Blogging

"The 'danger' is that corporations might not 'understand the culture of blogging' and produce content that contains carefully vetted material instead of spontaneous writings that appeal to blog fans." (CNet News)

Posted by PJB on April 13, 2005 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web Application Solutions: A Designer's Guide

"Web Application Solutions is a guide that helps designers, product managers, and business owners evaluate some of the most popular Web application presentation layer solutions available today. We compare each solution through consistent criteria (deployment & reach, user interactions, processing, interface components and customization, back-end integration, future proofing, staffing and cost, unique features) and provide an overview, set of examples, and references for each." (Luke Wroblewski - Functioning Form)

Posted by PJB on April 13, 2005 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

Medical Usability: How to Kill Patients Through Bad Design

"A field study identified twenty-two ways that automated hospital systems can result in the wrong medication being dispensed to patients. Most of these flaws are classic usability problems that have been understood for decades." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on April 13, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Annoyance, Irritation, and Frustration of The Mobile Phone: A Design Challenge

"We are in real danger of a consumer backlash against annoying technologies. We already have seen the growth of mobile-phone free zones, of prohibition against phone use, camera use, camera phones, in all sort of public and private places. The mobile phone has been shown to be a dangerous distraction to the driver of an automobile, whether hands-free or not. If we do nothing to overcome these problems, then the benefits these technologies bring may very well be denied us because the social costs are simply too great. There are many sources of frustration or potential liability." (Donald A. Norman) - courtesy of usabilityviews

Posted by PJB on April 10, 2005 | Classification: Mobile design | Comments (0) | Permalink

11 search engine optimization tips

"The title tag is critical. It's important not to overcomplicate your design and technical approach with things such as Flash, Java, frames and dynamically built websites." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on April 10, 2005 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Changing the Way People Search for Information, Through Algorithms and User Interfaces

"(...) in 10 years, we will look back on todays search interfaces and recognize them as a simple and limited way to interact with information. After all, she explains, a 5-inch-long rectangle with a long list of text results beneath it doesnt do much to help people make sense of the billions upon billions of unorganized bits of data in the world." (Susan Dumais - Microsoft Research) - courtesy of usability in the news

Posted by PJB on April 09, 2005 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Mobile and Open: A Manifesto

"Only a cockeyed optimist would forecast an open, user-driven, entrepreneurial future for the mobile Internet. This should not prevent us from trying, however. Sometimes, envisioning the way things ought to be can inspire people to work at making it that way. That's what manifestos are for." (Howard Rheingold - TheFeature)

Posted by PJB on April 07, 2005 | Classification: Mobile design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Advanced Handsets Need Advanced UIs

"As mobile phones become more capable, people are using them to store an increasingly wider variety and greater quantity of data. This raises a new problem for designers of handset user interfaces: how do you let owners find what they're looking for in a coherent and friendly manner?" (Tom Hume - TheFeature) - courtesy of lucdesk

Posted by PJB on April 07, 2005 | Classification: Mobile design | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Content Inventory: Roadmap to a Succesful CMS Implementation

"This article focuses on the nuts and bolts of identifying content and coralling it in such a way that you have what you need when it comes time to populate your CMS. The key to achieving this goal is a process called the Content Inventory." (Kassia Krozser - alt tags) - courtesy of columntwo

Posted by PJB on April 07, 2005 | Classification: Content management | Comments (0) | Permalink

In Defense of Cheating

"In this essay, I focus upon changes to curriculum and instruction that would change the emphasis in school systems from that of competition to cooperation, from arbitrary grading on the curve to mastery assessment of a student's accomplishments. But these changes are only part of the restructuring required of our educational systems. Many more changes are needed." (Donald A. Norman - ACM Ubiquity)

Posted by PJB on April 06, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Designing Intersection Flows

"Avoiding problems with forms where users have to choose between alternative ways to proceed. When forms give users the option to continue in two or more alternative directions, such as registering as a new customer or signing in as a returning one, unfortunate users will take the wrong turn if it isn't unmistakably obvious which way they should go. In this article, we'll take a look at a few intersection flows that have caused users problems." (Henrik Olsen - GUUUI) - courtesy of webword

Posted by PJB on April 06, 2005 | Classification: Interaction design | Comments (0) | Permalink

It's the content, stupid: search engine optimization

"In deciding to rank your website, search engines pay a lot of attention to the actual content they find on your webpages." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on April 05, 2005 | Classification: Writing | Comments (0) | Permalink

The world is ready for usability. Is usability ready for the world?

"Today we know that consumers evaluate and select both products and services based on the user-friendliness of an interface." (Kath Straub - Human Factors International Newsletter) - courtesy of usabilityviews

Posted by PJB on April 01, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink