May 2005

Think Sexy

"If you want to create passionate users, you need to understand passion. We do it in the geekiest of ways on this blog by reverse-engineering. But we can't just study it; we have to feel it." (Kathy Sierra - Creating Passionate Users)

Posted by PJB on May 31, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Business & Design

"As the number of designers interested in owning a seat at the corporate decision-making 'table' grows, the number of business strategies advocating design solutions expands as well. Designers keep asking: 'How can we convince business owners that investments in design processes are money well spent?'
Simultaneously, a number of business publications (most notably Fast Company) are telling corporate decision makers that 'design matters'. It's useful for both sides to view the discussion from each other's perspective." (Luke Wroblewski - Functioning Form)

Posted by PJB on May 30, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Institute of Design Strategy Conference

Presentation slides available - "(...) an international executive forum addressing how businesses can use design to explore emerging opportunities, solve complex problems, and achieve lasting strategic advantage." (Institute of Design Strategy Conference) - courtesy of victor lombardi

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

Blogs & Wikis: Technologies for Enterprise Applications?

"Blogs and wikis are flexible practices and technologies that are increasingly being used within companies and organizations to ease the creation and dissemination of information, as well as making it easier for companies to communicate effectively with customers, partners, and the public. This article discusses some of the salient features of blogs and wikis, and give examples of companies who already have implemented one or more of these systems." (Lauren Wood - Gilbane Report)

Posted by PJB on May 29, 2005 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

Make sure your intranet is well perceived by staff

"Many intranets are only now beginning to show their true potential. However, many staff, having had unsatisfactory previous experiences of the intranet, may need quite some convincing that the intranet is now genuinely useful." (Gerry McGovern)

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

Give up Control or You'll Lose it Forever

"Whether you know it or not, we're shifting control away from our own interface to the interface of others.(...) For the most part, designers can't control experiences because experiences are subject to the user." (Joshua Porter - Bokardo)

Posted by PJB on May 26, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

IA Summit 2006 Key Topics

The Survey Results: "This summary (based on data from 129 respondents) presents the key topics in ranked order from most important to least important.
1. Information Design (...) 34. Transformational Living" (ASIS&T 2006 Information Architecture Summit) - courtesy of eleganthack

Posted by PJB on May 26, 2005 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Task-Based Audience Segmentation

"Most importantly, task-based segmentation puts your team in the right frame of mind for insightful design research that very probably will uncover that 'killer product idea'." (Indy Young - Adaptive Path)

Posted by PJB on May 26, 2005 | Classification: UCD | Comments (0) | Permalink

Thoughts on the Institute of Design Strategy Conference

"The phrase most on the rise is 'design thinking'. Any number of presenters mentioned it, usually in reference to how business needs more 'design thinking' in order to stay competitive in this modern world (in the face of globalization, commodification, complexity, etc.)" (Peterme)

Posted by PJB on May 24, 2005 | Classification: Events | Comments (0) | Permalink

Gel Conference 2005 Recap

Attendee blog posts, photos and attendee comments from Gel Conference 2005 (April 28-29, 2005 - New York City) (Gel 2005 - Good Experience)

Posted by PJB on May 24, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web content management is not data management

"Web content management and data/document management require very different approaches. Data management is about storage; web content management is about using content to make the sale, deliver the service, and build the brand." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on May 23, 2005 | Classification: Content management | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Canonical Intranet Homepage

"In recent years, intranet homepages have become very similar in their basic layout. Intranets that look the same can nonetheless differ drastically in usability due to different features and content." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on May 22, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Taxonomies and Tags: From Trees to Piles of Leaves

"The narrative that tells of the first man and woman encountering the tree of knowledge focuses on its tempting fruit. But after we took the bite, we apparently looked up and got the idea that knowledge is shaped like the tree's branching structure: Big concepts contain smaller ones that contain smaller ones yet. Over the millennia, we have fashioned the structures of knowledge in just such tree-like ways, from the departmental organization of universities (liberal arts contains history and history contains ancient Chinese history) to the hierarchy of species. The idea that knowledge is shaped like a tree is perhaps our oldest knowledge about knowledge." (David Weinberger - JOHO)

Posted by PJB on May 22, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Enterprise Weblogging: Using weblogs for communication & information management

"This was a presentation on enterprise weblogging given at the American Society for Information Science & Technology, New Jersey Chapter, May 20, 2005." (Michael Angeles - urlgreyhot)

Posted by PJB on May 22, 2005 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

Human Technology

An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments - "Human Technology presents innovative, peer-reviewed articles that explore the issues and challenges surrounding the human role in all areas of our ICT-infused societies. The journal seeks to draw research from multiple scientific disciplines with an eye toward how applied technology can affect human existence or how it can, for instance, foster personal development and enhance research and development in industry, education, communication and other fields." (Agora Center - University of Jyväskylä) - courtesy of usabilitynews

Posted by PJB on May 20, 2005 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Culture of Mobility

"(...) a place where everyone can come to share their thoughts and make some sense of an increasingly mobile society. It aims to address the notion of mobility in the context of everyday life, calling on the experience of pioneers in various industries, and evaluating the past, present and future of connectivity." (nokia.com)

Posted by PJB on May 19, 2005 | Classification: Mobile design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Completely Rethinking the Web

"The Web is broken. Sites are clumsy and not optimized for each customer. Interface devices are woefully inadequate. Despite the power of the Web and the potential of ever-evolving technology, our execution is collectively dreadful. For all of the good things we've done and the gains we’ve made, the Web in general remains a very poor experience." (Dirk Knemeyer - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted by PJB on May 19, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Enterprise Content Management in Context

"I created this graphic to give everyone a starting point, a point of common understanding. The graphic depicts how enterprise information architecture (EIA) relates to enterprise content management (ECM). I originally envisioned the two things as being part of the same overall process, but I came to a realization that they are better understood as two separate activities." (James Melzer) - courtesy of bloug

Posted by PJB on May 18, 2005 | Classification: Content management | Comments (0) | Permalink

Connotea Beta

"(...) a place to keep links to the articles you read and the websites you use, and a place to find them again. It is also a place where you can discover new articles and websites through sharing your links with other users. By saving your links and references to Connotea they are instantly on the web, which means that they are available to you from any computer and that you can point your friends and colleagues to them. In Connotea, every user's links are visible both to visitors and to every other user, and different users' libraries are linked together through the use of common tags or common bookmarks." (About Connotea)

Posted by PJB on May 18, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

IxDG Resource Library

"The IxDG Resource Library is an annotated collection of content on all aspects of interaction design. The items in the library are organized (...)" (Interaction Design Group)

Posted by PJB on May 17, 2005 | Classification: Interaction design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Social Bookmarking Tools (I)/(II)

"This paper reviews some current initiatives, as of early 2005, in providing public link management applications on the Web – utilities that are often referred to under the general moniker of 'social bookmarking tools'. There are a couple of things going on here: 1) server-side software aimed specifically at managing links with, crucially, a strong, social networking flavour, and 2) an unabashedly open and unstructured approach to tagging, or user classification, of those links." (Tony Hammond et al. - D-Lib Magazine April 2005)

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

Designs on less complex mobiles

"What the industry should be coming up with are more innovative ways to get at these functions (...) in ways that understand the kinds of experiences people want. It is about simplicity through design." (BBC News Technology) - courtesy of lawrencelee

Posted by PJB on May 17, 2005 | Classification: Mobile design | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Future of Indexing?

"A recent article in the Society for Technical Communications' Intercom magazine proclaimed that indexing is on the rise (Seth Maislin, "The Indexing Revival," February, 2005), and that there is a renaissance of work in the field. But at the WritersUA March Conference, Microsoft's Longhorn features session declared that Longhorn's Help system will not contain an index, because 'no one uses it'. Then, to add to the discussion, at that same conference Apple revealed that their next help engine will include synonym rings and will add a form of indexing back into their display. Who's right? Who's correctly predicting the trends?" (Jan Wright - WinWriters UA) - courtesy of usablehelp

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

Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags

"Today I want to talk about categorization, and I want to convince you that a lot of what we think we know about categorization is wrong. In particular, I want to convince you that many of the ways we're attempting to apply categorization to the electronic world are actually a bad fit, because we've adopted habits of mind that are left over from earlier strategies." (Clay Shirky's Writings About the Internet)

Posted by PJB on May 16, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

"Throughout thirteen succinct but thought-provoking chapters, Kuhn argues that science is not a steady, cumulative acquisition of knowledge. Instead, science is 'a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions' [Nicholas Wade, writing for Science], which he described as 'the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science.' After such revolutions, 'one conceptual world view is replaced by another.'" (Thomas Kuhn) - courtesy of anne galloway

Posted by PJB on May 16, 2005 | Classification: Classics | Comments (0) | Permalink

Explaining and Showing Broad and Narrow Folksonomies

"We benefit from folksonomies as the both the personal vocabulary and the social aspects help people to find and retain a tether to objects on the web that are an interest to them. Who is doing the tagging is important to understand and how the tags are consumed is an important factor." (Thomas Vanderwal - Personal InfoCloud)

Posted by PJB on May 16, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

AJAX & Interface Design

"As AJAX applications become more widespread and users begin to expect more of the rich interactions they enable, some of the over-communicating happening today may not be necessary. Until then, however, it's necessary to consider the expectations users have and meet them accordingly." (Luke Wroblewski - Functioning Form)

Posted by PJB on May 16, 2005 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

Your website needs a call to action

"The Web is task-focused. The best websites get to the point. They ruthlessly eliminate waffle and happy talk. They focus on helping people complete key tasks as quickly as possible." (Gerry McGovern)

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

The Vision of Good User Experience

"There has been much discussion among organizations and practitioners lately about the ownership of the user experience. So, who owns it? Or to put it another way, who is responsible for the user experience and who makes it work? (...)" - (David Hawdale)

Posted by PJB on May 13, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Blogpoly

"It is just a name. It is just a game. It is fun to use the board to lay out the Blogosphere Ecosystem. It helps me to think and learn about blogging culture by transforming the original game into this version. I had to think about which company and enterprise to choose and set up first on the board. The space is limited, so I picked well known names in blogging industry. Besides the private properties, there are two public utilities -- the water works and the electric company. (...) There is not much difference for me transforming the game than writing a poem, using similes, metaphors and symbols." - (littleoslo) courtesy of thomas garrood

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

O'Reilly and Adaptive Path Team Up for Ajax Summit

"Ajax breaks the interaction model of the Web. It faces the unique user interface problem of blending the expectations users have of a website with the behavior of a desktop application. This is the consequence of giving the user desktop app powers within their trusty browser." - (Quinn Norton - O'Reilly Network)

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

Thinking and Making

"Information architecture, user experience design, and the new architecture of business." (Austin Govella)

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

The Role of Metaphor in Interaction Design

"In this paper, I will explore how designers can use metaphors in their work: first in the process of interaction design and secondly within interactive products." - (Dan Shaffer) - courtesy of elearningpost

Posted by PJB on May 12, 2005 | Classification: Interaction design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Mobile Web Initiative

Making Web access from a mobile device as simple, easy and convenient as Web access from a desktop device - "World Wide Web technologies have become the key enablers for access to the Internet through desktop and notebook computing platforms. Web technologies have the potential to play the same role for Internet access from mobile devices. However, today, mobile Web access suffers from interoperability and usability problems that make the Web difficult to use for most mobile phone subscribers. W3C's 'Mobile Web Initiative' (W3C MWI) proposes to address these issues through a concerted effort of key players in the mobile production chain, including authoring tool vendors, content providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators." (W3C)

Posted by PJB on May 11, 2005 | Classification: Mobile design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Sailing to the Future: Infographics in the Internet Era

"This 50-pages document was created for the Multimedia Bootcamp 2005 in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It contains a brief introduction to infographics, its history and rules, and a discussion of several real cases of elmundo.es online special and breaking-news presentations." (Alberto Cairo) - courtesy of elearningpost

Posted by PJB on May 11, 2005 | Classification: Information graphics | Comments (0) | Permalink

Dirk Knemeyer Presentations

Dirk's presentation slides from User Experience and Usability 2005 (March 3, 2005), SXSW Interactive 2005 (March 14, 2005), DevGroup NW (April 1, 2005), and Blurred Boundaries/Focused Solutions (May 10, 2005) - (Dirk Knemeyer)

Posted by PJB on May 11, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Remote from Reality: The Out-of-Box Home Experience

"The challenges are considerable and daunting." (Aaron Marcus - ACM Ubiquity)

Posted by PJB on May 10, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

An Interview with Edward R. Tufte

"Although many may refer to this field as 'information design', Tufte, (...) has come to prefer the name 'analytic design'. That name reflects Tufte's focus on visual displays that serve as evidence." (Mark Zachry and Charlotte Thralls - Technical Communication Quaterly) - courtesy of kottke

Posted by PJB on May 10, 2005 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

Publish the website you can manage

"Your job as a web manager must be about a relentless focus on quality. Always put quality first and you will create a website that delivers real and sustainable value." (Gerry McGovern)

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

Mental Models For Search Are Getting Firmer

"Users now have precise expectations for the behavior of search. Designs that invoke this mental model but work differently are confusing." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on May 08, 2005 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

A History of the GUI

"Why did computers come to adopt the GUI as their primary mode of interaction, and how did the GUI evolve to be the way it is today? In what follows, I'll be presenting a brief introduction to the history of the GUI. The topic, as you might expect, is broad, and very deep. This article will touch on the high points, while giving an overview of GUI development." (Jeremy Reimer - Ars Technica) - courtesy of lucdesk

Posted by PJB on May 08, 2005 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web 2.0 for Designers

"Enter Web 2.0, a vision of the Web in which information is broken up into 'microcontent' units that can be distributed over dozens of domains. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we're looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways." (Richard MacManus & Joshua Porter - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted by PJB on May 05, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Up Against Reality: Blogging and the cost of content

"Blogging offers the enticing prospect of a new journalism which is more participatory, more responsive and essentially open to anyone who has something to say. Yet, the process of creating blogs that are rich with quality journalism is also a commercial challenge; one that will re-shape the blogosphere as we move out of an initial period of amateur enthusiasm to create a more mature and sustainable medium." (Trevor Cook) - courtesy of mark bernstein

Posted by PJB on May 04, 2005 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

Updated Enterprise IA Roadmap

"A diagram that helps information architects and other designers make their enterprise's content easier to find regardless of which department maintains it. The goal is to integrate content from across departmental 'silos' in ways that make sense to users." (Louis Rosenfeld)

Posted by PJB on May 04, 2005 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

You're It! Tagsonomy: A Blog on Tagging

"The advantage of folksonomies isn't that they’re better than controlled vocabularies, it's that they're better than nothing, because controlled vocabularies are not extensible to the majority of cases where tagging is needed." (Clay Shirky et al.)

Posted by PJB on May 03, 2005 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

IA in Spain

"IA in Europe (and Germany) in general isn’t doing that well. People are frustrated with clients who don't know what IA is, and there doesn't seem to be much innovation. Imagine my surprise when I visited Spain and found a small but thriving IA community!" (Peter van Dijck)

Posted by PJB on May 03, 2005 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Sun.com Usability, Design & Other Stuff

"If you frequent our web sites, you've probably noticed the change: There's a fresh new look, and we've also updated things to make it easier to navigate. Rather than explain everything, which I will do in coming weeks, I thought I would show some before and after pictures." (Sun Bloggers)

Posted by PJB on May 03, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Personal, anticipated information need

"The role of personal information collections is a well known feature of personal information management. The World Wide Web has introduced to such collections ideas such as filing Web pages or noting their existence in 'Bookmarks' and 'Favourites'. It is suggested that personal information collections are created in anticipation of some future need for that information-personal, anticipated information need, which also underlies the design of formal information systems." (Harry Bruce - Information Research 10.3)

Posted by PJB on May 02, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

What is information architecture?

"This article provides an introduction to information architecture, discusses the evolution of the discipline and provides a 9-step guide for how to create an effective information architecture." (Iain Barker - Step Two Designs)

Posted by PJB on May 02, 2005 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Context matters

"Context plays a more fundamental role for Asians than for westerners. Asians have a more difficult time thinking of an object as completely separate from its background. Americans, on the other hand, focus on objects... things and categories more than relationships. Asians think in verbs where we think in nouns. And these differences can have profound implications." (Kathy Sierra - Creating Passionate Users)

Posted by PJB on May 02, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Global-ia

Discussion list on the similarities and differences of information architectures in the context of global, regional and local cultures, languages, and value systems. (Global-ia Archives)

Posted by PJB on May 02, 2005 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Why web managers need to get out on the road

"The better the web manager the more time they will spend out of the office; the more time they will spend in front of the reader." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on May 01, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink