January 2005

Cognitive bandwidth is like dial-up

"When someone has trouble applying knowledge, it's usually because they really never had knowledge. They had information, and that's not the same thing. You can get information just through listening or reading, but knowledge requires thinking... thinking about the RIGHT things." (Kathy Sierra - Creating Passionate Users)

Posted by PJB on January 31, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Concept Cars

"But good design is a lot more than style. Good design includes substance: function, comfort, pleasure, safety, economy, environmental friendliness, and a lot more besides. A concept car should be an opportunity to explore all of these directions." (Donald Norman) - courtesy of usability views

Posted by PJB on January 31, 2005 | Classification: UCD | Comments (0) | Permalink

Usability of Websites for Teenagers

"When using websites, teenagers have a lower success rate than adults and they're also easily bored. To work for teens, websites must be simple -- but not childish -- and supply plenty of interactive features." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on January 31, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Designing Documents That Work 

"Documents must work for the people who send them, the people who produce them and the people that receive them." (Cheryl Kay - The Financial Communications Forum 2004)

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

Do you make the most common mistake in content management?

"The biggest mistake in content management is writing for the organization and not for the reader. It is one of the hardest mistakes to correct, but there are ways to ensure that you don’t make it." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on January 30, 2005 | Classification: Content management | Comments (0) | Permalink

Information Visualization

"Undoubtedly, music is one of the most engaging and emotionally powerful stimuli. Listening to music can have strong effects on people’s mood, thinking and even their physiology. I think it’s mainly because of the latter that certain songs remind us so vividly of a specific memory." (Didier Hilhorst - nundroo)

Posted by PJB on January 28, 2005 | Classification: InfoViz | Comments (0) | Permalink

Art 491: Information Design Course

"(..) designed to give you experience in participating on an interdisciplinary project research, design and development team to produce solutions that address real-world issues and clients. Information design focuses on the communication of complex ideas with clarity, precision, and efficiency (usable). Methodologies and technologies for efficient and effective information transfer are changing rapidly and will play a fundamental, and continual, role in your future. Products of information design range from computer (and other machines) interfaces, forms and documents (online or paper), wayfinding systems in 3D space (real or virtual), to maps, charts, diagrams, graphs and business presentations. Whatever your content area of specialty, you will be involved with the design and transfer of information the rest of your life." (Information Design Group - University of Idaho)

Posted by PJB on January 27, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Modeling User Workflows for Rich Internet Applications

"As Rich Internet Applications become more advanced, the tasks, problems, and processes they address become increasingly complex, making it more important than ever to accurately model user workflows. Early Internet applications were often narrowly focused in scope, and the steps were relatively simple and sequential, for example, purchasing items through simple e-commerce, reserving hotel rooms, or renting cars. But as productivity applications move toward a web-based distribution model, the tasks become more complicated." (David Hogue - Macromedia) - courtesy of jane wells

Posted by PJB on January 27, 2005 | Classification: Interaction design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Creating Playful Users

"Brains love play. Find a way to bring more play (or at least a sense of playfulness) into someone's life, and you might just end up with a fan. (...) Brains evolved to play, and apparently the bigger the brain, the more likely it is to play. Play turns the brain on." (Kathy Sierra - Creating Passionate Users) - courtesy of theotherblog

Posted by PJB on January 27, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Patterns in Unstructured Data: Discovery, Aggregation, and Visualization

A Presentation to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation - "As of early 2002, there were just over two billion web pages listed in the Google search engine index, widely taken to be the most comprehensive. No one knows how many more web pages there are on the Internet, or the total number of documents available over the public network, but there is no question that the number is enormous and growing quickly. Every one of those web pages has come into existence within the past ten years. There are web sites covering every conceivable topic at every level of detail and expertise, and information ranging from numerical tables to personal diaries to public discussions. Never before have so many people had access to so much diverse information." (Clara Yu et al. - US National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education) - courtesy of frank cronk

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

Formal Taxonomies for the U.S. Government

"For federal agencies trying to learn how to implement taxonomies, most examples in portals and on public websites are informal taxonomies where neither the nodes nor the associations between them are formally defined. Examples of such taxonomies can be found on yahoo.com, froogle.com, and dmoz.org. Such informal taxonomies are only useful for browsing and not for automated techniques like query expansion, rule execution, taxonomy integration, faceted classification, and inference. This article will examine the requirements of formal taxonomies and provide examples of each construct." (Michael Daconta - xml.com)

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

Taxonomies and classification schemas within the BBC

Martin Belam presentation at IP Lezing in Amsterdam - "The conference was very well attended, with around 350 delegates - and I enjoyed meeting some really nice people, both before and after the event. The presentation is available to download - PowerPoint presentation, 3.8M - but it is a very large file. As usual much of the worth is in the notes, not the pictures in the slides themselves." (Martin Belam - currybetdotnet)

Posted by PJB on January 26, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

What's the Problem?

"(...) web developers seem reluctant to adopt methods and approaches from other disciplines that could reduce their problems. Particularly during the crucial initial phase of projects, we can benefit from emulating certain software engineering practices." (Norm Carr and Tim Meehan - A List Apart) - courtesy of ui designer

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

Investing in Usability: Testing versus Training

"(...) usability professionals use their budgets to run usability studies. That is, when given money, they immediately start setting up usability programs to solve particular problems. This shouldn’t surprise anyone because many usability professionals think the value of usability is derived entirely from the results produced through usability tests. Most people think usability is synonymous with usability testing. It isn’t, and this misconception frustrates me." (John S. Rhodes - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on January 26, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

IA Summit Program

"Information architecture is more widely applied than ever. Decisionmakers now accept IA as critical to well-designed electronic information spaces. Practitioners use IA approaches and methodologies, and routinely include IAs on cross-disciplinary teams. There is a growing demand for IAs and greater pressure on managers and non-IA practitioners to understand IA principles. To support these needs, this year's Summit focuses on key topics, cutting-edge issues, and core competencies." - Pre-Conference Program, Main Conference Program and Poster Sessions (ASIS&T 2005 Information Architecture Summit)

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

Seeking Better Web Searches

"Deluged with superfluous responses to online queries, users will soon benefit from improved search engines that deliver customized results." (Scientific American) - courtesy of ui designer

Posted by PJB on January 25, 2005 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Towards collaboration between information seeking and information retrieval

"For many years researchers in library and information science have borrowed theory from other fields to provide insight into our research findings. We are moving from this borrowed theory approach to creating a conceptual framework that has been tested, refined and adapted specifically for application in our field. The conceptual framework has developed rapidly during the past ten years with early signs of application in other fields." - Papers presented at the 5th Information Seeking in Context Conference, Dublin, Ireland, 1-3 September, 2004 (Carol C. Kuhlthau - Information Research, January 2005)

Posted by PJB on January 24, 2005 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Fifth Annual Weblog Awards

"Bloggies are a set of 30 publicly-chosen awards given to weblog writers and those related to weblogs. This is the fifth ceremony, with previous winners listed on their respective sites: 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. Everyone's invited to take part in the awarding process, so read below to find out how you can nominate and vote for your favorite blogs!"

Posted by PJB on January 24, 2005 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

How to measure the value of your web content

"The way to make web content more valued is to make it more measured. The more ways you can measure the value your content delivers, the more your career will be valued." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on January 23, 2005 | Classification: Writing | Comments (0) | Permalink

Printing XML: Why CSS Is Better than XSL

"On the web, CSS is the style sheet language of choice. However, the usefulness of CSS is not limited to screens. If you want to transfer web content -- be it XML or HTML -- onto paper, there are good reasons to use CSS. The language is radically simpler than that of XSL, and it is suitable both on-screen and on paper. This means that you probably don't have to write a stylesheet at all but can reuse an existing one." (Håkon Wium Lie and Michael Day - xml.com)

Posted by PJB on January 20, 2005 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

What Do Tags Mean?

"I'm almost convinced that this new Technorati Tags thing is important, but I'm 100% convinced that I don't understand where it's going or what the implications are. Which is OK, because I suspect nobody else does either. (...) I've spent a lot of time thinking about metadata and have written on the subject; the most important conclusion was: There is no cheap metadata. I haven’t seen anything to make me change my mind." (Tim Bray - ongoing)

Posted by PJB on January 20, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Stairway to Experts: Show me, coach me, test me, let me, congratulate

"Back in the last century, people learned to operate computer software by reading thick manuals laden with obscure text and scant pictures. Or they attended training classes where they squinted at the instructor breezily demonstrating barely recognizable procedures. Or they clickety-click-clicked their way through the Help file, gleaning snippets of information but never weaving them into a coherent tapestry. Today, computer users can learn from a personal tutor who demonstrates the program, guides them through their initial efforts, monitors their growing skills, and certifies their mastery. Tools like Captivate, Camtasia, and TurboDemo make it possible for teachers and communicators to create effective software simulations–without programming. Even simple presentation tools, such as PowerPoint can create truly interactive simulations." (William Horton - WritersUA)

Posted by PJB on January 20, 2005 | Classification: TechCom | Comments (0) | Permalink

Report: Aesthetic Approaches to HCI

"This is a report of the NordiCHI 2004 Workshop on Aesthetic Approaches to Human-Computer Interaction, which took place in October at the University of Tampere." (John Knight - Usability News)

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

The Science of Word Recognition

"Evidence from the last 20 years of work in cognitive psychology indicate that we use the letters within a word to recognize a word. Many typographers and other text enthusiasts I've met insist that words are recognized by the outline made around the word shape. Some have used the term bouma as a synonym for word shape (...). This paper is written from the perspective of a reading psychologist." (Kevin Larson - Advanced Reading Technology, Microsoft Corporation) - courtesy of karel van der waarde

Posted by PJB on January 19, 2005 | Classification: Typography | Comments (0) | Permalink

Czerwinski on Vizualization: Displays to the Right, Displays to the Left, Displays Everywhere

"I think the sky's the limit. That's the beauty of working at Microsoft Research. We have a generous budget to create or purchase the kinds of equipment we need, and the beauty of working here is that we have some of the best minds in the business. (...) Well, I'll tell you that information is going to follow you around and have some understanding of your context — that's going to be there in the not-so-distant future." (Mary Czerwinski - ACM Ubiquity)

Posted by PJB on January 18, 2005 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

Thinking Differently About Site Mapping and Navigation

"Thoughts about sitemaps, navigation, IA deliverables and the root problems with organization and content on the Web." (D. Keith Robinson)

Posted by PJB on January 18, 2005 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Guidelines for Accessible and Usable Web Sites: Observing Users Who Work With Screen Readers

"Our focus has been understanding how blind users work with Web sites and what that means for designers and developers. Our focus therefore is users rather than specific Web sites." (Mary Frances Theofanos and Janice (Ginny) Redish) - courtesy of guuui

Posted by PJB on January 18, 2005 | Classification: Accessibility | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Role of Design in Software Product Development

Video Lecture - "ePresence Interactive Media is a research project of the Knowledge Media Design Institute at the University of Toronto." (Bill Buxton - KMDI)

Posted by PJB on January 17, 2005 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink

Durability of Usability Guidelines

"About 90% of usability guidelines from 1986 are still valid, though several guidelines are less important because they relate to design elements that are rarely used today." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on January 17, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web content is a hidden asset

"Most people within most organizations don’t value content. In a typical organization, the higher up you go the less appreciation there is. That's all about to change because content is a 'hidden' asset of great value." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on January 16, 2005 | Classification: Writing | Comments (0) | Permalink

User Experience: the Google Way

"Google has found that competing sites have a hard time maintaining the level of feature restraint that Google adheres to. (...) it is quite difficult to remove something once you have added it. This is especially true in large organizations with pronounced vertical structures and vertically based incentive systems." (LukeW - Functioning Form)

Posted by PJB on January 14, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Apple's Tipping Point: Macs For The Masses

"The graphic illustrates extreme patience and foresight from Apple to bring users to the platform by innovating increasingly towards the mass market over time without sacrificing the middle or high-end markets. In the end, the iPod continues to be the vehicle that drives Apple's ultimate goal: Switching. In many cases the biggest hesitation to switch was price. With the Mac mini this concern is now moot. We could very well be witnessing the early fruits of a five to ten year business strategy from Apple that has been in the works since the first iPod. If it works -- Apple will go down in history as a company that patiently built its brand equity through high-quality products and design -- and then, when the time was right and audience the largest, brought their superior computing experience to the masses." (Paul Nixon - Nixlog)

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

Web Design for All the Senses

"Experience design requires that we design for all five senses. It is safe to say that over 99% of what is happening on the Web relates only to our sense of sight. On the surface, this might seem a logical and obvious state of affairs. In reality, it is a reflection of some mental laziness and of not thinking outside the computer screen." (Dirk Knemeyer - Digital Web Magazine)

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

uigarden

"(...) a bilingual online magazine that provides an opportunity for researchers and practitioners who work in the user interface design (including user experience, information architecture, GUI, and usability) field in the Chinese and the English speaking worlds to publish their thinking and exchange views with each other." (Site Mission) - courtesy of webword

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

knemeyer.com: where dk goes to explore, share, and play

"To some degree, this website is an experiment, an attempt to synthesize a large promotional site with an active, ongoing personal journal. More than articles and tidbits, my intention is for each the professional and personal sections to be uniquely deep and rich. To provide as much insight and interest to your heart as to your head." (Dirk Knemeyer)

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

2004 Salary Survey for User Experience Design and Usability Professionals

"In the Spring of 2004, Spirit Softworks and Peak Usability conducted an international online survey of salaries for user experience design and usability professionals. World wide, 821 respondents completed the survey. This report documents the results of that survey, breaking down salaries by type of employer, geographical region, role, project focus, education, years of experience, and gender." (Spirit Softworks & Peak Usability)

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

What Makes a Design Seem 'Intuitive'?

"An intuitive interface doesn't happen by accident. It happens when one of two specific conditions are met. In this article, Jared describes the critical relationship between current knowledge (what the user knows when they encounter the design) and target knowledge (what the user needs to know to accomplish their goal), showing the two conditions that lead to an interface users will perceive as intuitive." (Jared Spool - User Interface Engineering)

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

Understanding Taxonomies & Search for Corporate Applications

"The content management software industry has discovered that promoting taxonomy delivers significant visibility. It has the desired effect of letting the market know that a vendor is a serious player in the content management market, while also driving prospects to their consulting practices. Taxonomy is one of those words that is so bandied about that everyone is sure to feel the need for one – whatever it is, whatever it does. Like many good ideas, useful business tools, or enabling components, taxonomy, when affiliated with a product, is given impossible hype." (Lynda Moulton - Gilbane Reports) - courtesy of columntwo

Posted by PJB on January 11, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 2.0) - W3C Recommendation

"SMIL 2.0 has the following two design goals: (1) Define an XML-based language that allows authors to write interactive multimedia presentations. Using SMIL 2.0, an author can describe the temporal behavior of a multimedia presentation, associate hyperlinks with media objects and describe the layout of the presentation on a screen. (2) Allow reusing of SMIL 2.0 syntax and semantics in other XML-based languages, in particular those who need to represent timing and synchronization. For example, SMIL 2.0 components are used for integrating timing into XHTML and into SVG." (W3C)

Posted by PJB on January 11, 2005 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

Designing Emotions

"In 2002 the dissertation 'Designing Emotions' was published. This book, in which five years of research is reported and discussed, should appeal designers and researchers who are interested in the emotional responses evoked by products. In the book it is discussed what an emotion is, how products evoke emotions, an how these emotions can be measured and influenced. On this page you can view the table of contents and download the introduction and summary." (Pieter Desmet - ID Studio Lab)

Posted by PJB on January 10, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Designing the Future: Exploring China's Design Transformation

GK VanPatter interviews Lorraine Justice - "I was also frustrated with the universities and the corporations in the US. I worked in both for many years and the structure and atmosphere was not inclusive for design. People were protecting their own turf on all accounts and didn't have room for the new guy (design). Many of us in the design profession spent every day promoting design through our work and other venues, but people are loathe to give up what little power and security they perceived they would lose if they made design important. I did see improvement over the last twenty years, but what alarmed and amazed me is that the Chinese government understood design and all its implications." (NextD Journal 5.2)

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

Web content management: Top 10 predictions for 2005

"Web content management will continue its shift away from a technology focus towards a content one. 2005 will be the year when the professional editor will be given more responsibility in running the website." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on January 10, 2005 | Classification: Content management | Comments (0) | Permalink

Information Visualization and the Challenge of Universal Usability

"Information Visualization aims to provide compact graphical presentations and user interfaces for interactively manipulating large numbers of items. We present a simple 'data by tasks taxonomy' then discuss the challenges of providing universal usability, with example applications using geo-referenced data. Information Visualization has been shown to be a powerful visual thinking or decision tool but it is becoming important for services to reach and empower every citizen. Technological advances are needed to deal with user diversity (...) but also with the variety of technology used (...) and the gaps in user's knowledge (general knowledge, knowledge of the application domain, of the interface syntax or semantic). We present examples that illustrate how those challenges can be addressed." (Catherine Plaisant - Univ. of Maryland - HCIL) - courtesy of usabilityviews

Posted by PJB on January 09, 2005 | Classification: InfoViz | Comments (0) | Permalink

Folksonomies? How about Metadata Ecologies?

"(...) though I'm not certain that the product of folksonomy development will have much long term value on their own, I'll bet dollars to donuts that the process of introducing a broader public to the act of developing and applying metadata will be incredibly invaluable." (Louis Rosenfeld)

Posted by PJB on January 07, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

web essentials 04 - zeldman keynote captioned with quicktime SMIL

"As an experiment in the use of SMIL, a captioned version of Jeffrey Zeldman's Web Essentials 04 video keynote, using Quicktime SMIL 1.0." (splintered)

Posted by PJB on January 06, 2005 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

Why There's No Escaping the Blog

"Freewheeling bloggers can boost your product - or destroy it. Either way, they've become a force business can't afford to ignore." (David Kirkpatrick and Daniel Roth - Fortune)

Posted by PJB on January 05, 2005 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

Putting Context Into Context

"Design happens at the intersection of the user, the interface, and their context. It's essential for interface designers to understand the gamut of contexts that can occur, thereby ensuring they create designs that are usable no matter what's happening around the user." (Jared M. Spool - User Interface Engineering)

Posted by PJB on January 04, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Navigation blindness: How to deal with the fact that people tend to ignore navigation

"Most web development projects put a lot of effort into the design of navigation tools. But fact is that people tend to ignore these tools. They are fixated on getting what they came for and simply click on links or hit the back button to get there." (Henrik Olsen - guuui)

Posted by PJB on January 04, 2005 | Classification: Navigation | Comments (0) | Permalink

Can many agents answer questions better than one?

"The paper addresses the issue of how online natural language question answering, based on deep semantic analysis, may compete with currently popular keyword search, open domain information retrieval systems, covering a horizontal domain. We suggest the multiagent question answering approach, where each domain is represented by an agent which tries to answer questions taking into account its specific knowledge. The meta–agent controls the cooperation between question answering agents and chooses the most relevant answer(s). We argue that multiagent question answering is optimal in terms of access to business and financial knowledge, flexibility in query phrasing, and efficiency and usability of advice. The knowledge and advice encoded in the system are initially prepared by domain experts." (Boris Galitsky - First Monday January 2005)

Posted by PJB on January 04, 2005 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Reviving Advanced Hypertext

"To manage a huge, worldwide information space, users need proven features like fat links, typed links, integrated search and browsing, overview maps, big-screen designs, and physical hypertext." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on January 03, 2005 | Classification: Hypertext | Comments (0) | Permalink

Crafting a User Experience Curriculum

"What user experience information is most essential? What core user experience concepts and skills should be conveyed to every member of a web development team? As I pondered these questions, it occurred to me that I was missing something important. I was forgetting that user experience is not just about concepts and skills, it is also about perspective. I needed to teach the students to think like user experience professionals. In fact, I needed to do that first, because this would make it easier for the students to acquire the necessary concepts and skills." (Jason Withrow - Boxes and Arrows)

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

Folksonomies: Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata

"This paper examines user-generated metadata as implemented and applied in two web services designed to share and organize digital media to better understand grassroots classification. Metadata allows systems to collocate related information, and helps users find relevant information. The creation of metadata has generally been approached in two ways: professional creation and author creation. In libraries and other organizations, creating metadata, primarily in the form of catalog records, has traditionally been the domain of dedicated professionals working with complex, detailed rule sets and vocabularies. The primary problem with this approach is scalability and its impracticality for the vast amounts of content being produced and used, especially on the World Wide Web. The apparatus and tools built around professional cataloging systems are generally too complicated for anyone without specialized training and knowledge. A second approach is for metadata to be created by authors. The movement towards creator described documents was heralded by SGML, the WWW, and the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. There are problems with this approach as well - often due to inadequate or inaccurate description, or outright deception. This paper examines a third approach: user-created metadata, where users of the documents and media create metadata for their own individual use that is also shared throughout a community." (Adam Mathes - Graduate School of LIS, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) - courtesy of joe tennis

Posted by PJB on January 02, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink