August 2005

Cognatrix

"(...) a native Mac OS X ('Cocoa/Aqua') application for thesaurus construction." (LGOSystems) - courtesy of theotherblog

Posted by PJB on August 30, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Open New Windows for PDF and other Non-Web Documents

"When using PC-native file formats such as PDF or spreadsheets, users feel like they're interacting with a PC application. Because users are no longer browsing a website, they shouldn't be given a browser UI." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on August 29, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Psychology of Search: Chapter Three

"You often search because you have poor memory. But, it isn't so poor that you are a blank slate, tabula rasa. No, instead, you have a clue and you are buying more clues with every search you do. Let’s cut to the core of this." (John Rhodes - WebWord)

Posted by PJB on August 28, 2005 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Adaptive Path || User Experience Week Wiki

"Welcome to the UX Week Wiki - Feel free to change any page, that's the point of a wiki." (SocialText) - courtesy of jeffveen and peterme

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

Metrics make the case for quality content

"The essential business case of a website is self-service. To maximize value from self-service, you want a limited menu, a fast transaction and a significant volume of people." (Gerry McGovern)

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

Online Communities: Design, Theory, and Practice

"This special thematic section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings together nine articles that provide a rich composite of the current research in online communities. The articles cover a range of topics, methodologies, theories and practices. Indirectly they all speak to design since they aim to extend our understanding of the field. The variety shown in these articles illustrates how broad the definition is of this rapidly growing field known as 'online communities.'" (Jenny Preece and Diane Maloney-Krichmar - JCMC 10.4) - courtesy of elearningpost

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

Getting IA Done, Part II

"When you start a site map, even as a paper sketch, take that opportunity to immediately start putting ID numbers on pages. Don’t wait until later. Having the IDs then gives you a baseline vocabulary to use in any subsequent docs, and you’re free to decide on 'friendly" names later. It can help you avoid a lot of confusion later." (Joshua Kaufman - Digital Web Magazine)

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

Designing medicine information for people

"This paper introduces you to the methods for designing usable medicine information by showing you how medicine information design has grown out of the traditional crafts, and more recently, out of the design professions. It is an introduction to your training in medicine information design." (David Sless and Ruth Shrensky - CRIA)

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

Quality, not quantity: Delivering value from web content

"Maintaining the quality of your content is critical to the long term success of your website. That involves establishing rigorous pre and post publication editorial processes." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on August 21, 2005 | Classification: Writing | Comments (0) | Permalink

IA in Academia

"Who in the academic community is doing the leading research and inquiry into IA issues? Who are the big thinkers?" (IAwiki)

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

xSort

"(...) a card sorting application for Mac OS X. It allows you to easily define a new card sorting problem, perform several sessions with multiple participants, and finally analyze the results (using multiple criteria) and generate printable reports." (iPragma) - courtesy of theotherblog

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

Persona Non Grata

"Solid personas can be incredibly helpful. Several years ago, Schwab redesigned its site based on three primary personas: the learner, the active trader, and the serious investor. Apple has had some great successes designing for an aesthete persona who demands that things look clean and work smoothly." (Dan Shaffer - Adaptive Path)

Posted by PJB on August 19, 2005 | Classification: Personas | Comments (0) | Permalink

How firms can co-create knowledge with their customers

"The paper defines the 'story of co-creation', explores his research question, presents a conceptual framework for market-learning capabilities (before and after co-creation) and suggests some of the challenges to be resolved when conducting the research." (Putting people first) - courtesy of cph127

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

Putting A/B Testing in Its Place

"Measuring the live impact of design changes on key business metrics is valuable, but often creates a focus on short-term improvements. This near-term view neglects bigger issues that only qualitative studies can find." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on August 16, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web 2.0: Data, Metadata and Interface

"One key takeaway from the Web 2.0 panel was that data, interface and metadata no longer need to go hand in hand. When working on an application/website, one thinks of the overall picture including the data, the metadata, and the interface. With Web 2.0 apps, the data might be from one place, the metadata from another, and the interface from a third party or a remix. The diagram below shows the move towards Web 2.0 along with examples." (Rashmi Sinha)

Posted by PJB on August 14, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Methods to the Madness

This is the second article in the four-part series. - “Neither praying nor cursing is likely to do a mobile site any good, especially if done in tandem." (Authentic Boredom) - courtesy of nickfinck

Posted by PJB on August 14, 2005 | Classification: Mobile design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Simplicity is hard work

"I'm sure that within Philips there is a genuine belief that it is important to make their products as simple as possible to use. However, there is a big difference between marketing your products as simple to use and making them genuinely simple." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on August 14, 2005 | Classification: Complexity | Comments (0) | Permalink

Podcast of BayCHI Events

"Audio and visual recordings of BayCHI events are available here for the benefit of the HCI community." (The San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of ACM SIGCHI)

Posted by PJB on August 11, 2005 | Classification: Podcasts | Comments (0) | Permalink

Tutorial Review: Creating Passionate Users

"An industry that Kathy believes that we can learn from is the gaming industry. Game designers use two key techniques to keep players engaged in a game. First, they produce a state of flow. (...) flow is defined as the feeling of complete and energized focus in an activity, with a high level of enjoyment and fulfillment. One situation that demonstrates flow is when we become so engrossed with something we are doing, we loose track of time. Secondly, game designers provide an experience spiral. Basically this involves using a compelling benefit to motivate players to complete the loop (the level)." (Kevin Shockey - ONLamp.com)

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

Keith Instone's Weblog

"This is my new site. It will slowly include these other sites of mine (...). If you are looking for something specific, chances are it is still at one of those other sites." (Keith Instone)

Posted by PJB on August 08, 2005 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

International Sites: Minimum Requirements

"Users from other countries have special needs related to entry fields for names and addresses, measurements and dates, and information about regional product standards." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on August 08, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Usability Testing for e-Learning

"Usability testing has long been a part of the software and product design world. Jakob Nielsen brought the concept of usability to the Web, making Web pages simple to navigate and intuitively organized so that users can easily find the information they're looking for. While this definition may be considered sufficient in the world of software, the definition of usability in the e-learning world should encompass a few more components than simply good user interface design." (Shailesh Shilwant and Amy Haggarty - CLO) - courtesy of usernomics

Posted by PJB on August 08, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

State of the Mobile Web

This is the first article in the four-part series on Mobile Web Design. - "(...) if we learned only one thing from the 'desktop web' standards movement in recent years, it's that even the most behemoth organizations listen if the wheel squeaks loudly enough. And where listening ears are found, there lies also the potential for change." (Authentic Boredom)

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

Making Meaning: The Business of Experience Design

by Steve Diller, Nathan Shedroff, and Darrel Rhea - "A book about how people make meaning in their lives and how companies can use this understanding to create more meaningful and successful products and services. (...) The biggest driver for experience is innovation." (Making Meaning) - courtesy of cph127

Posted by PJB on August 06, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Digital Information Design Camp

"Many traditionally trained, professional designers wonder what the next generation of computing technologies might bring to their field. At the same time, many digitally trained, professional designers feel that they have missed out on some of the cornerstones of a traditional design education. To work towards a common ground between the digital and traditional design sensibilities, during the summer of 2005 Professor John Maeda organized the first 'Digital Information Design Camp', a three-week-long exploration, completely in cyberspace." (John Maeda - AIGA)

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

Designing user interfaces with gestures and sound: Towards the performance and appeal of voice mail browsing

"In the current paper, three dimensions of multimodal access to content are explored: tangible media, use of gestures and sound. To this extent, the current study considers the role of sound feedback in support of user-product communication and gestures towards accessing voice mail via a tangible interface. In the case of voice mail representations, information can be directly represented by the recorded media, whereas the use of abstract sound representations creates a higher level overview of content." (Marco C. Rozendaal and David V. Keyson - The Journal of Design Research)

Posted by PJB on August 04, 2005 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web Accessibility: A Broader View

"In this paper, we take a broader view, discussing an approach that costs developers less and provides greater advantages to a larger community of users. While we have quite specific aims in our technical work, we hope it can also serve as an example of how the technical conversation regarding Web accessibility can move beyond the narrow confines of limited adaptations for small populations." (John T. Richards and Vicki L. Hanson - IBM Accessibility Center) - courtesy of joeclark

Posted by PJB on August 04, 2005 | Classification: Accessibility | Comments (0) | Permalink

Designing From the User’s Experience

"Innovation emerges from truly understanding the fit between product and person. The understanding of real experience with a product and its fit to a lifestyle, affords insight into product and interaction design, feature priorities, and adoption cycles." (Peter H. Jones - DMI) - courtesy of uxnet

Posted by PJB on August 03, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

IA in Germany: Chances and Perspectives

"Andrew Dillon declared in his closing keynote speech at the Montreal IA Summit (2005) that IA was entering its second phase. IAs are seeing more and more job opportunities as well as more professional recognition, and the field itself seems to be progressing. Not so in Germany. Here, IA is barely on the map." (James Kalbach - Boxes and Arrows)

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

Users, activities, practices etc.

"(...) activity theory is always already part of user-centred design, and vice versa. They are part of the same tree: a mental or cybernetic species. Whether modelling users or activities, the models are systemic, relatively stable, quantifiable, hierarchical, discrete, and often predictive. More importantly, they make it difficult to imagine other ways of understanding." (Anne Galloway - purselipsquarejaw)

Posted by PJB on August 03, 2005 | Classification: UCD | Comments (0) | Permalink

We Are the Web

"Cartography has gone from spectator art to participatory democracy. (...) In part because of the ease of creation and dissemination, online culture is the culture. (...) Our Machine is born. It's on." (Kevin Kelly - Wired Magazine)

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

Visualizing the Organization and Dissemination of Knowledge

"A pen and ink sketch of 1943, the year before Otlet died, brings together his ideas on a global networked world." (Envisioning a Path to the Future)

Posted by PJB on August 01, 2005 | Classification: Classics | Comments (0) | Permalink

Designing for the Personal InfoCloud

"Presented to Vera Rhoads User Interaction with Information Systems class in the Master of Information Managment program at University of Maryland. This was presented to the class on July 26, 2005 and included elements from previous folksonomy presentations." (Thomas Vander Wal)

Posted by PJB on August 01, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

User Experience Strategy

"A design-focused approach to product strategy (...) employs direct customer observation, cross-disciplinary perspectives, and a willingness to rapidly build, iterate on and tear-down prototypes. One could argue it is the essence of trial and error problem solving." (LukeW - Functioning Form)

Posted by PJB on August 01, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Hierarchy versus Facets versus Tags

"Because hierarchies has been the designated one size fits all solution to all our organizational needs, we break our semantically pure hierarchies by overstretching their bounds. As a result, we end up with messy hierarchies that are unusable and unmaintainable." (OSAF Projects wiki)

Posted by PJB on August 01, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink