June 2005

Seminar on Cognitive Modeling for UI Design

"This seminar presents the current state of the art of evaluating user interface designs using models of human performance that are based on cognitive architectures. Such models can yield usability results without the delay and expense of user testing of prototypes, but because they are new and still under development, whether and how to apply them is a challenge. This seminar will survey current theory and practice; no 'how-to' of actual model construction will be presented; rather the goal is to enable a good choice of whether a modeling approach will be useful, and which type of model would be best to pursue." (School of CS - CMU)

Posted by PJB on June 29, 2005 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink

Designer's Challenge 

Presentation from Spring 2005 Info Tech Conference - "The difference between a good website and a great website happens before you begin coding." (Keith Instone)

Posted by PJB on June 29, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Knowledge management: No such thing as knowledge worker

"For those who manage well, there is a bright and prosperous future. For those who are managed, the future - certainly the income prospects are not so bright." (Gerry McGovern)

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

Usability: Empiricism or Ideology?

"Usability's job is to research user behavior and find out what works. Usability should also defend users' rights and fight for simplicity. Both aspects have their place, and it's important to recognize the difference." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on June 27, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Folksonomies: Power to the people

"We have gone past a critical mass of connectivity between people that has introduced a new revolutionary ability to communicate, collaborate and share goods online." (Emanuele Quintarelli - ISKOI) - courtesy of langemarkscafe

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

Visual Communication Questions

"If any stakeholders complain about their visual prominence in the design, offer to revisit the ordering of the list and bring in the rest of the stakeholders that already agreed to the prioritization." (Luke Wroblewski - Functioning Form)

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

Is Jakob Nielsen evil, stupid or just plain lazy?

"I would like to propose the addition of 'Jakob Nielsen' to that list. By continuing to talk to web designers as if they are ignorant, lazy philistines only serves to undermine the role of usability specialists within organisations." (Chris McEvoy - Confusability) - courtesy of usabilityviews

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

Lazy, stupid and evil design

"Evil design is perpetrated by people who are deliberately doing the wrong thing, and this harms everyone. Nielsen cites pop-up windows as an example. Users now expect pop-ups to be unwanted ads, and close them without looking at them. As a result, good designers can no longer use pop-up windows even when they would be a good solution." (Jack Schofield - Guardian Unlimited)

Posted by PJB on June 26, 2005 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Relinquish Control

"Relinquishing control is a scary prospect because it diminishes certainty. With control comes predictable outcomes that you can bank on. But in this increasingly complex, messy, and option-filled world, we must acknowledge that our customers hold the reins. Attempts to control their experience will lead to abandonment for the less onerous alternative. What we can do is provide the best tools and content that they can fit into their lives, and their ways." (Peter Merholz - Adaptive Path)

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

The Meta Data Support Model: Part 1/Part 2

"Knowledge management, information architecture, content management, search engine technology and portalization are just a few of the evolutionary benefits of implementing meta data at the enterprise level. The meta data product line serves as the foundation from which processes and services can be built." (Metadata Portal) - courtesy of columntwo

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

Towards a Sociology of the Mobile Phone

"Use of the mobile phone is an immensely significant social and cultural phenomenon. However, market hype and utopian dreams greatly exaggerate its importance. The fundamental issue for sociology is the process of change. Bound up with contemporary issues of change, the mobile phone is a prime object for sociological attention both at the macro and micro levels of analysis. This article considers the strengths and weaknesses of four methods for studying the sociality of the mobile phone (social demography; political economy; conversation, discourse and text analysis; and ethnography), the different kinds of knowledge they produce, and the interests they represent." (Jim McGuigan - Human Technology) - courtesy of annegalloway

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

Return of Ideas

"Some time ago I wrote about the great conference in New Zealand, 'Better by Design', and recommended that people would go to their site and look at the slides. I suppose a lot of you did, and I would now like to give you some heads-up for reading even more informational stuff. Peter Zec's slideshow 'Return of Ideas' is now online and I really recommnd you go there and read the slides - it's killer stuff. Infact it's 110 pages of killer stuff. Free." (cph127)

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

The two fundamental skills of web writing

"Writing for how people search and writing quality links are the two fundamental skills of web writing. Think carefully about search behavior and make sure your links are always clear and logical." (Gerry McGovern)

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

You've got to find what you love

Audio included - "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." (Steve Jobs - Stanford Report) - courtesy of kottke

Posted by PJB on June 16, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

European IA Summit: Building Communities

"The first European Information Architecture (IA) Summit's focus is on building the IA community in Europe. The objective of the event is to bring together a number of disciplines and practitioner communities by providing a stimulating environment for debate and an opportunity for establishing cooperation. This community is not just limited to language or region, but all encompasses our specialization's like designing for mobile devices, and multilingual solutions. We are calling for papers that reflect those communities of practice, language and location." (ASIS&T) - Highly recommended.

Posted by PJB on June 16, 2005 | Classification: Events | Comments (0) | Permalink

Infomania at Summit '05

"(...) the number of first-time attendees was staggeringly high. From a show of hands on the opening day it appeared as if they were in the majority. Nothing wrong with this situation you might say, but the number of new attendees was high last year too, so it would appear that repeat attendance is not the norm." (Andrew Dillon - ASIS&T Bulletin 31.5) - courtesy of peterboersma

Posted by PJB on June 16, 2005 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Archiving Usability Reports

"Most usability practitioners don't derive full value from their user tests because they don't systematically archive the reports. An intranet-based usability archive offers four substantial benefits." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on June 14, 2005 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Turning knowledge into power

"We are in an era of knowledge abundance. Traditional management theory focuses on knowledge scarcity. We need new management strategies to deal with so much communication and so much knowledge." (Gerry McGovern)

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

Comments of Speaches

"Lots of people have taken notes on speeches. Here are some of them." (reboot7.0)

Posted by PJB on June 12, 2005 | Classification: Events | Comments (0) | Permalink

Frozen Pictures? Can Design Journalism be Reinvented?

Interview with Julie Lasky - Editor-In-Chief of I.D. Magazine "Names, please. I know it's discomfiting to supply them, but that's the only way you'll help me understand the dimension you find lacking." (GK VanPatter - NextD)

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

Stop your presentation before it kills again!

"I'll leave you with Tufte's fateful words, 'Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.' Be careful out there... someone could get hurt." (Kathy Sierra - Creating Passionate Users)

Posted by PJB on June 09, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Faceted Classification

Overview of relevant links by del.icio.us according to Michael Scudder (del.icio.us) - courtesy of marcel van mackelenbergh

Posted by PJB on June 09, 2005 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Getting IA Done: Part 1

"Document, Document, Document: I try to document my work as much as possible in order to have a running record of my day. This includes to-do lists, dates and times of meetings with key outcomes, design sketches… everythings." (Joshua Kaufman - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted by PJB on June 07, 2005 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Google vs. Yahoo! Interface Design

"As Google and Yahoo! continue their volley of product offerings, I thought it would be useful to compare the interface design solutions each company employed to solve similar user needs." (LukeW - Functioning Form)

Posted by PJB on June 06, 2005 | Classification: HCI | Comments (0) | Permalink

John Maeda at Cologne

Video download - "On January 12th, 2002 the students of the Design Department at the University of Applied Sciences awarded John Maeda the 'Cologne Thumper' (Kölner Klopfer). Recording of the award ceremony including Maeda's talk. It is 1 hour and 32 minutes long and contains the introduction and John Maeda's talk." (sendung.de)

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

Why it matters to focus on your reader

"Where are those who see websites as acts of creation separate from the people who will visit those websites. There are those who see people and create websites to meet these people’s needs." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on June 05, 2005 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

How to combine tags with facets

"The big advantage of adding metadata in the form of facets is that we know how to make an easy to use interface for facets." (Peter van Dijck)

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

Beyond the pixels: Consider the entire experience

"As a designer, I would love to be able to control more of the environment and experiences of my customers. Identically, as a business person, I would love to be able to control more of the environment and experiences of my customers. After all, the user experience is influenced by far more than the applications we are creating. And in order to best do our jobs, we must reach beyond our limited charge and traditional thinking to look at the problem in a more holistic way. It is what we get paid to do; it is part of what makes us designers." (Dirk Knemeyer)

Posted by PJB on June 05, 2005 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web Standards in the Real World: An Interview with Molly Holzschlag

"The learning curve to develop for standards is very high and demands that people constantly learn. The sheer volume of knowledge required to work this way is humbling, and I am challenged every single day by it. I think that's why it's so interesting for many developers." (Joshua Porter - User Interface 10 Conference)

Posted by PJB on June 01, 2005 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

Alertbox: Ten Years

"300,000 words of usability essays have had an impact: online user interfaces are considerably easier to use now than they were in 1995. Many predictions and recommendations have come true, though the full Alertbox vision is far from realized." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

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

A New Adventure

"(...) I'm going to experiment with something completely new in the next few days: Podcasting. Stay tuned." (Dirk Knemeyer)

Posted by PJB on June 01, 2005 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink