May 2006

Communicating Complex Ideas

"The most successful sites are those that understand the experience range of their users. Some are veteran traders who know what to do, while others can’t tell a bid from an ask price. Accommodating the novice traders is crucial to the success of these markets, as well as moving them along as they gain experience." (Alex Kirtland - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on May 31, 2006 | Classification: UCD | Permalink

Dogmas Are Meant to be Broken: An Interview with Eric Reiss

"And standards are just standards, and they can change as technology changes. Best practices are guidelines; they're not rules. It’s best to keep two seconds worth of stopping distance between you and the car in front of you, for example. That’s just good common sense. As cars get faster, these distances change, and the best practices change. But they remain only guidelines." (Liz Danzico - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on May 31, 2006 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism

"The hive mind is for the most part stupid and boring. Why pay attention to it? The problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it's now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn't make it any less dangerous." (Jaron Lanier - Edge)

Posted by PJB on May 30, 2006 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

The Overlap Blog

"Overlap is an un-conference for anyone who wants to learn more about merging business practices with design-centric problem solving and customer understanding. (...) Overlap aims for an experience that is multidisciplinary, collaborative, pragmatic and ultimately human." (overlap.org)

Posted by PJB on May 30, 2006 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

B2B Usability

"User testing shows that business-to-business websites have substantially lower usability than mainstream consumer sites. If they want to convert more prospects into leads, B2B sites should follow more guidelines and make it easier for prospects to research their offerings." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on May 30, 2006 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Where should 'User Experience' be positioned in your company?

"Should User Experience stand alone? If standing alone, User Experience can still risk being treated as a resource. But, the above-referenced VP of Customer Experience Research & Design thinks his group should stand alone. And in some companies, it does stand alone." (Richard Anderson - riander)

Posted by PJB on May 28, 2006 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Exposing the Local InfoCloud

"The Local InfoCloud started as an idea of information that was physically close. What is stored or accessed by physical location (information that is physically close) as in an Intranet or location-based information accessed on your mobile device. The more I thought about it and chatted with others it became clear it was more than physical location, it is information resources that are familiar and easier to access than the whole of the web (Global InfoCloud) as a framing concept." (Thomas Vander Wall - Personal InfoCloud)

Posted by PJB on May 28, 2006 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

The Web is still a thrilling place

"When you get frustrated by the pressures of managing a website, look back five years. You've achieved a lot." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on May 28, 2006 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Websites as Graphs

"Everyday, we look at dozens of websites. The structure of these websites is defined in HTML, the lingua franca for publishing information on the web. Your browser's job is to render the HTML according to the specs (most of the time, at least). You can look at the code behind any website by selecting the 'View source' tab somewhere in your browser's menu. (...) I've written a little app that visualizes such a graph, and here are some screenshots of websites that I often look at." (WebasGraph app by Aharef) - courtesy of edwardtufte

Posted by PJB on May 27, 2006 | Classification: InfoViz | Permalink

Chinese Banks Homepage Usability

"This study assesses the usability of homepages of three leading Chinese retail banks from a user’s perspective. For comparison, three western banks are selected, one each a leading retail bank from Australia, the UK, and the USA." (Ming Zhao - Apogee) - courtesy of danielszuc

Posted by PJB on May 27, 2006 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

IA Summit 2006 Recordings

"After much procrastination, here are all my recordings from this year's Information Architecture Summit sessions. (...) I was sad to have to trash some of the recordings, but this year I sat with the trouble-making kids in the back, so the audio quality was not the best in many sessions." (Livia Labate) - Much appreciated.

Posted by PJB on May 26, 2006 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Collaborative Tagging Workshop @W3'06 Papers

"Collaborative tagging seems to address a real need on the Web as demonstrated by the growing popularity of tagging and annotation sites (see del.icio.us, flickr, technorati, RawSugar, Shadows, etc.). The most popular sites already have a combined user base of several millions. The philosophy of what is called Web 2.0, the social Web or also the two-way Web is that users can and should be content creators as well as consumers and it suggests that there is a great deal of untapped potential for tagging to improve how web content is organized, navigated and experienced. Yet it is not yet clear how it will evolve and how it will scale, when, if at all, its usage base will go beyond early adopters. The goal of this workshop is to bring researchers and practitioners together in order to explore both the social and technical issues and challenges involved in Web tagging. We plan to address not only the current state of collaborative tagging, and understand its attractiveness to early adopters but also discuss its future." (W3 Tagging Workshop)

Posted by PJB on May 25, 2006 | Classification: Metadata | Permalink

Expert Voices: Peter Morville on Why Information Architecture Matters

"So it's very difficult to isolate the information architecture from the other elements of the user experience. You could certainly do that in a research lab, but in the real world all of these factors work together. It's quite possible to do a beautiful information architecture redesign but completely destroy the experience by messing up the graphic side of things." (CIO Insight)

Posted by PJB on May 25, 2006 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

3rd International Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem Papers

"The weblogging community continues to evolve: weblogs are gaining more and more exposure, the number of bloggers continues to grow and the contribution of individual bloggers is becoming significant and compelling. The dynamics of the blogosphere, found in trackbacks, citation links, blog-rolls, comments, tags, shared topics and interests provides a facinating domain of study for researchers from all academic and commercial fields including text mining, social network analysis, computational linguistics, business and marketing intelligence, libarary sciences, taxonometrics, graph theory and data visualization." (WWE 2006 Blog)

Posted by PJB on May 25, 2006 | Classification: Weblogs | Permalink

Architecture and interaction design, via adaptation and hackability

"(...) drawing selectively from the riches of thousands of years of architectural development, both professional and vernacular, can only be a good thing in such a nascent field as interaction design." (Dan Hill - cityofsound)

Posted by PJB on May 25, 2006 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

WebPatterns and WebSemantics

"Can web design and development today rightly be called a discipline? Or is it, as I suspect, a practice in the process of becoming a discipline." (WebPatterns.org)

Posted by PJB on May 25, 2006 | Classification: Patterns | Permalink

Design Patterns: A Conversation

"(...) a conversation about defining and sharing user interface design languages." (LukeW - Functioning Form)

Posted by PJB on May 23, 2006 | Classification: Patterns | Permalink

Peter Merholz' IA Summit 2006 Closing Plenary

"Thanks to Livia Labate, you can listen to my closing plenary at the 2006 IA Summit. It will help you if you follow along with the PDF of my slides. I'm definitely proud of this talk, though I hate hearing all my uh's and 'um's. Definitely something to work on. If you want to avoid the aspects of IA history that I dwell on and hop to the thesis, start around the 12:00 mark." (peterme) - great talk peter!

Posted by PJB on May 22, 2006 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

DC IA Summit Redux 2006

"I had a great time hanging out with the DC-IA crowd this weekend talking about the sessions and experience of going to the IA Summit in Vancouver back in March. We unfortunately ran out of time and didn’t get to talk about all the topics we wanted to address, but there were very interesting and livelly conversations nonetheless. Here are a few recordings with our discussions; feel free to download and catch up." (Livia Labate)

Posted by PJB on May 22, 2006 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

The Web Standards Project: Education Task Force

"The WaSP Education Task Force was created in 2005 to work directly with institutions of higher education to help raise awareness of Web standards and accessibility among instructors, administrators, and Web development teams." (WaSP) - courtesy of 456breastreet

Posted by PJB on May 22, 2006 | Classification: Accessibility | Permalink

PERMID 2006: Papers and Slides

"Mobile devices have become a pervasive part of our everyday lives. People have mobile phones, smartphones and PDAs which they take with them almost everywhere. So far these mobile devices have been mostly used for phone calls, writing short messages and organizer functionalities. Today we see that the development of context-aware services for mobile phones which often take the user, her situation and location into account." (Enrico Rukzio et al.)

Posted by PJB on May 21, 2006 | Classification: Mobile design | Permalink

Usability Body of Knowledge

"The Usability Body of Knowledge (BoK) project is dedicated to creating a living reference that represents the collective knowledge of the usability profession. Preliminary work has started, but there is more to do. This website introduces the subject areas that will eventually be included in the Usability Body of Knowledge and a preview of what to come." (About Usability BoK)

Posted by PJB on May 19, 2006 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

What's Up With Knowledge?

"David Weinberger, Berkman fellow, author, and blogger, talks about some of the ideas he's exploring in a new book he's writing on knowledge." (AudioBerkman)

Posted by PJB on May 18, 2006 | Classification: Podcasts | Permalink

Adaptive Path Weblog

"It's taken a little over five years, but today we officially launched the Adaptive Path weblog. Enjoy!" (Adaptive Path) - congrats!

Posted by PJB on May 16, 2006 | Classification: Weblogs | Permalink

Communicating design concepts without getting skewered

"Communicating design does take time, no doubt about it. But it will save a lot more time by reducing the thrash that occurs when developers don't have a clear understanding about what it is they are supposed to build." (Steve Calde - Cooper Newsletter3.2)

Posted by PJB on May 15, 2006 | Classification: UCD | Permalink

Information Experience Labs

"It is an interesting mix of 'information' (information architecture, information science, ...) and ' experience' (user experience, experience design, ...). A few years ago I proposed the term as a way to describe an industry, but the idea did not stick." (Keith Instone)

Posted by PJB on May 14, 2006 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Convivio Network

"(...) the European Thematic Network for the human-centered design of interactive technologies. Convivio supports and promotes the development of 'convivial technologies', ICT products, systems and services that enhance the quality of everyday life and human interaction." (About Convivio) - congrats fabio!

Posted by PJB on May 12, 2006 | Classification: UCD | Permalink

Making User Representations More Usable 

Sample chapter from: John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin, The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers 2006 - (Book Profile)

Posted by PJB on May 11, 2006 | Classification: Personas | Permalink

Top 10 Sources for Blogging Librarians

"Librarians are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man.” — Michael Moore (Top Ten Sources)

Posted by PJB on May 11, 2006 | Classification: Weblogs | Permalink

Tufte Story: AnswerBook

"(...) we lured him into our usability lab to look at the user interface for Answerbook, of which were were very proud. (...) He played with our AnswerBook for about 90 seconds, turned around, and pronounced his review: 'Dr Spock's Baby Care is a best-selling owner's manual for the most complicated 'product' imaginable -- and it only has two levels of headings. You people have 8 levels of hierarchy and I haven't even stopped counting yet. No wonder you think it's complicated.'" (Sun.com Design, Usability & Other Stuff) - courtesy of jasonkottke

Posted by PJB on May 11, 2006 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

The Guided Wireframe Narrative for Rich Internet Applications

"It is true that RIAs make our jobs harder. But it is also true that they introduce some very exciting opportunities that can significantly improve user experience and flow. The Guided Wireframe Narrative technique allowed us to quickly and accurately articulate different design dimensions using familiar tools and techniques. If the job fits the technique, it's a win-win." (Andres Zapata - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on May 10, 2006 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

The Role of Emotion in Human-Computer Interaction

Position papers of the workshop - "On 6 September 2005 twenty participants from England, Scotland, Wales, Northen Ireland, the United States, Sweden, and Germany met to discuss about emotion and their role in HCI. We actually found that there are so many aspects of HCI related to emotion, and of emotion related to HCI, that we won't be able to discuss them all on one day (what surprise!)." (Emotion in HCI)

Posted by PJB on May 10, 2006 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Interview with Mimi Ito

"While designers often consider the different developments that emerge in both the east and the west, few scholars consider how technological design is connected to cultural practice. One exception is Mizuko (Mimi) Ito, an anthropologist who investigates new media use, particularly amongst young people in Japan and the United States. Her work ranges from mobile phone (keitai) practices to fandom, online game play to remix culture. Her edited volume 'Personal, Portable and Pedestrian' was just recently published, giving English-speaking scholars an opportunity to access Japanese media research. Because her cross-cultural work is of great value to designers, Ambidextrous decided to interview her to learn more." (Danah Boyd - Ambidextrous Preview issue 3)

Posted by PJB on May 10, 2006 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

Cross-Cultural User Experience Design 

"Modern technology and commerce permit global distribution of products and services; User diversity: Ever increasing variety of group demographics and individual needs/wants; Traditional user interface design and usability disciplines (to improve performance and productivity); User experience design issues: Even more complex and challenging; Cultural analysis offers a way to understand, even measure, differences and similarities of UX." (Aaron Marcus)

Posted by PJB on May 09, 2006 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

ASIS&T Euro IA 2006: Call for Papers

Deadline: June 15, 2006 - "The Second European Information Architecture (IA) Summit's focus is building our practice 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 specialisations like designing for mobile devices, and multilingual solutions. We are calling for papers that reflect those communities of practice, language and location." (Euro IA 2006)

Posted by PJB on May 09, 2006 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Calling All Designers: Learn to Write!

"It's time we designers stop thinking of ourselves as merely pixel people, and start thinking of ourselves as the creators of experiences. And when it comes to experience on the web, there’s no better way to create it than to write, and write well." (Derek Powazek - A List Apart)

Posted by PJB on May 09, 2006 | Classification: Writing | Permalink

Book Review: Paper Prototyping

"Carolyn Snyder’s Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces provides the only complete guide to paper prototyping. It teaches you everything you need to know to successfully do paper prototyping and offers many practical tips. However, only about a third of the book is actually about doing paper prototyping. The majority of the book’s content comprises a basic reference on usability testing. While some of the information on usability testing describes how to test paper prototypes, most of it is applicable to any type of usability testing. If you’re already an expert in usability testing, you may not find this information as useful, but Snyder has honed her approach to usability testing over her many years of experience as a usability professional and provides a wealth of practical information." (Pabini Gabriel-Petit - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on May 09, 2006 | Classification: UCD | Permalink

Developing the Invisible

"During my years as an interface designer, I've worked with lots of different development teams. From big companies to small startups, the interactions between me—the product designer—and developers have been pretty consistent. We work through what interactions and features are possible given our timeframe and resources. We discuss edge cases and clarify how specific interactions should work. We debate product strategy, information architecture, target audience, front-end technologies, and more. We also frequently encounter the same issue: the need to consider what's not there." (Luke Wroblewski - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on May 09, 2006 | Classification: Visual design | Permalink

Deconstructing the Mobile Web

"The mobile user experience does not fit into the browser-like box within which people are conceiving its potential capabilities today. The sooner we conceive of mobile-computing paradigms along their own continuum—detached from the original evolution of the World Wide Web—the sooner we will enjoy the potential of a mobile-computing world." (Dirk Knemeyer - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on May 09, 2006 | Classification: Mobile design | Permalink

The Webby Awards Winners 2006

"Reflecting the tremendous growth of the Internet as a tool for business and everyday lives, the 10th Annual Webby Awards expands the mission of the Webby by honoring excellence in over 65 consumer, business and culture categories." (Webby Awards)

Posted by PJB on May 09, 2006 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Towards a Sociological Theory of the Mobile Phone

"(...) history shows that communication technologies are typically highly polyvalent tools that can change their major functions completely during time." (Hans Geser - Sociology of the Mobile Phone)

Posted by PJB on May 08, 2006 | Classification: Mobile design | Permalink

Information architecture for high-fashion store

"In December 2001 the Italian haute couturier Prada opened its groundbreaking new "epicenter" store in New York City, designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. IDEO, working with Koolhaas and his architecture and research firm OMA/AMO, created the invisible technology that allows Prada staff members to choreograph the in-store sales experience. IDEO Human Factors specialists interviewed store staff and observed the technology currently in use. The results of this research were incorporated into the design of the store's information architecture, as well as the interactive dressing rooms and the in-store devices that allow the staff to focus completely on the customers, such as the Staff Device, the Recharging Trolley, the Staff Clip, and the Customer Card." (IDEO)

Posted by PJB on May 08, 2006 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Salary Trends for Usability Professionals

"Over the last several years, entry-level salaries have dropped, while pay for experienced usability staff has been more stable." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on May 08, 2006 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

State of the Blogosphere: On Language and Tagging

"Tagging, the act of categorizing posts with simple words or phrases, continues to grow, and the number of posts with tags or categories has grown past the 100 Million mark since Technorati began tracking tags in January of 2005." (David Sifry)

Posted by PJB on May 08, 2006 | Classification: Weblogs | Permalink

Common Visual Design Elements of Weblogs

"In this study, we apply content-analytic methods to a random sample of weblogs as a means of exploring current visual trends within the blogosphere. Detailed coding for the presence of common structural, visual features allows correlation of those trends with the demographics of content producers." (Lois Ann Scheidt and Elijah Wright - Into the Blogosphere)

Posted by PJB on May 05, 2006 | Classification: Weblogs | Permalink

Folksonomies: The Fall and Rise of Plain-text Tagging

"Today's 'hot topic' is collaborative tagging: the classification of items using free-text tags, unconstrained and arbitrary values. Tagging services are separated into two general classifications: 'broad', meaning that many different users can tag a single resource, or 'narrow', meaning that a resource is tagged by only one or a few users." (Emma Tonkin - Ariadne Issue 47) - courtesy of libraryclips

Posted by PJB on May 04, 2006 | Classification: Metadata | Permalink

Video of Jess McMullin's IA Summit 2006 Talk on Using Design Games

"(...) how can we create better shared references to reframe conversations? Design games is one option, but there are a lot of others." (Jess McMullin - bplusd)

Posted by PJB on May 03, 2006 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Sphere: Balancing Power and Simplicity

"Part of the challenge of this project was the relative universality of search. For many users, search has become so familiar that it's a de facto means of navigation. Meanwhile algorithms have become more advanced, and the number of indexed pages has grown exponentially. There's potential to do so much more with search, but there are relatively few standards for how to present users with more options." (Ryan Freitas - Adaptive Path)

Posted by PJB on May 03, 2006 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Understanding Experience in Interactive Systems 

In: DIS04 Conference Proceedings, Cambridge, MA, August 2004 - "Understanding experience is complex. Designing the user experience for interactive systems is even more complex, particularly when conducted by a team of multidisciplinary experts. (...) In this paper, we argue that an interaction-centered view is the most valuable for understanding how a user experiences a designed product." (Jodi Forlizzi and Katja Battarbee)

Posted by PJB on May 02, 2006 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

User experience: A research agenda 

"Over the last decade, 'user experience' (UX) became a buzzword in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design. As technology matured, interactive products became not only more useful and usable, but also fashionable, fascinating things to desire. Driven by the impression that a narrow focus on interactive products as tools does not capture the variety and emerging aspects of technology use, practitioners and researchers alike, seem to readily embrace the notion of UX as a viable alternative to traditional HCI. And, indeed, the term promises change and a fresh look, without being too specific about its definite meaning. The present introduction to the special issue on 'Empiral studies of the user experience' attempts to give a provisional answer to the question of what is meant by 'the user experience'. It provides a cursory sketch of UX and how we think UX research will look like in the future. It is not so much meant as a forecast of the future, but as a proposal - a stimulus for further UX research." (Marc Hassenzahl and Noam Tractinsky)

Posted by PJB on May 01, 2006 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

In The Making

Proceedings from the Nordic Design Research Conference (May 29-31 2005, Copenhagen Denmark) - "Design is a restless field positioned as a productive practice in between conceiving and making. Design research is no less volatile, as it explores, explains and challenges what we know in and through design." (About the conference)

Posted by PJB on May 01, 2006 | Classification: UCD | Permalink

Corporate Usability Maturity: Stages 5-8

"An organization that reaches the managed usability stage still has far to go to reach usability nirvana. Attaining these higher maturity levels requires many years of effort." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on May 01, 2006 | Classification: Usability | Permalink