January 2006

Euro IA Summit Wrap-Up

"This was an excellently organized and successful first European IA summit. It gave Europe a platform to show its unique accomplishments, raised awareness of how much IA is going on in Europe, and ultimately put European IA on the IA map without being a subset of the North America summit. (...) there was a definite need to recognize the European identity framed by what Europe can potentially do better than, say, the U.S., such as with mobile technology or with multilingual and multicultural issues. This awareness of a divide was perhaps the single negative aspect one could attribute to the summit, and it was also one of the most revealing. Europe needn't live in the shadow of North American summits, but will Europeans harness their unique competencies?" (Deborah Gover - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on January 31, 2006 | Classification: Events | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Lazy IA's Guide to Making Sitemaps

"Sitemaps can be useful tools and are a whole lot easier when you separate the data from the visualization. After you have done these steps a few times, you will be able to update a sitemap in under a minute." (Stephen Turbek - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on January 31, 2006 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Wildly Appropriate

Dan Klyn's blog on information architecture and such - "(...) I'm feeling the need to use a work-centered blog as the hub for the professional work I'm doing and as a tool to communicate within a more IA-centric space." (Dan Klyn)

Posted by PJB on January 29, 2006 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

Are websites judged in the blink of an eye?

"People can get a strong impression of your website within one twentieth of a second, according to a new study. But it may not be a lasting impression." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on January 29, 2006 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Improve the usability of search-results pages

"Product search is the cornerstone of many Web applications. A user's ability to select what he or she is looking for among millions of search results can make or break the user experience. A cluttered search-results page that is missing the essential filtering and sorting controls squanders customer loyalty and bankrupts sales revenue." (Greg Nudelman - JavaWorld) - courtesy of webword

Posted by PJB on January 27, 2006 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web Authoring Statistics

"In December 2005, we did an analysis of a sample of slightly over a billion documents, extracting information about popular class names, elements, attributes, and related metadata. (...) You will need a browser with SVG and CSS support to view the result graphs correctly. We recommend Firefox 1.5." (Google Code) - courtesy of justaddwater

Posted by PJB on January 27, 2006 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

7th IA Summit: Learning, Doing, Selling

Program available - "The 2006 Information Architecture (IA) Summit is the premier gathering place for information architects. Everyone who touches on IA is welcome to share and learn. Last year's IA Summit attracted over 400 attendees, including beginners, experienced IAs, and people in a range of related fields." (ASIS&T 2006 Information Architecture Summit)

Posted by PJB on January 25, 2006 | Classification: Events | Comments (0) | Permalink

A New Perspective on the Experience Economy

"The main questions we will discuss in the sections of this paper are: (1) What is the nature of human experience? (2) What is the process of creating meaning? (3) What are the characteristics of meaningful experiences? (4) What are the starting points in bringing about meaningful experiences? (5) What are the design principles of meaningful experiences (6) What are the stages in designing and developing meaningful experiences?" (Albert Boswijk et al. - European Centre for the Experience Economy)

Posted by PJB on January 25, 2006 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Color Theory for Digital Displays: A Quick Reference

Part I and II - "Computer monitors display information using the RGB (Red-Green-Blue) color model. An RGB monitor synthesizes colors additively by selectively illuminating each of its pixel’s red, green, and blue phosphor dots at varying levels of intensity. The light from a pixel’s three phosphor dots blends together to synthesize a single color. In additive color synthesis, all hues of the visible spectrum of light are mixtures of various proportions of one, two, or three of the primary colors of light: red, green, and blue. (...) Our perception of hues, values, and chroma levels depends upon their interaction with adjacent hues, values, and chromas, which can result in color-contrast, value-contrast, and chroma-contrast effects, respectively." (Pabini Gabriel-Petit - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on January 24, 2006 | Classification: Visual design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Sixth Annual Weblog Awards: Finalists

"It's now the sixth year of the world's most established weblog awards, the Bloggies. Personal Web publishing never stops growing, and that means this year the public will have more contenders than ever to select from when choosing the year's best weblogs. 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 have their champions; now it's time for you to do your part for 2006."

Posted by PJB on January 24, 2006 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

Ten Best Intranets of 2006

"This year, we saw increased use of multimedia, e-learning, internal blogs, and mobile access. Winning companies also encouraged consistent design by emphasizing training for content contributors." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on January 23, 2006 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

icon-o-last

"(...) a new downloadable audio program that discusses, explores and demystifies the world of design." (Lunar Design) - courtesy of totalexperience

Posted by PJB on January 23, 2006 | Classification: Podcasts | Comments (0) | Permalink

suggestusability

"Share, Suggest and showcase the usability Ideas and your views of the product displayed in this blog. Lots of experts are expected to view this blog and suggest the usability ideas instantaneously with their experience. Most often product will be showcased and share your thoughts and suggestion of user experience with the product." (Rajesh Anandakrishnan)

Posted by PJB on January 22, 2006 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Beauty of Simplicity

"Marissa Mayer, who keeps Google's home page pure, understands that less is more. Other tech companies are starting to get it, too. Here's why making things simple is the new competitive advantage." (Fast Company)

Posted by PJB on January 19, 2006 | Classification: Complexity | Comments (0) | Permalink

Visual Strategy

"Visual strategy, understood as the coordination of eye and head movements in order to perform a visual task when looking at our environment, turns out to be a feature as personal as the way we walk or write. Information visualisation enables the creation of a visual map that makes the way we see easily understandable." (Juan C. Dürsteler - Inf@Vis!)

Posted by PJB on January 18, 2006 | Classification: InfoViz | Comments (0) | Permalink

UX Magazine (beta)

"UX Magazine was created to deliver a central place to discuss the critical disciplines that all enhance user experience. Extraordinary user experiences should be the goal of every interaction you deliver to your users at any level. All too often, businesses (large and small) get it horribly wrong. It’s painful to watch and even worse when it happens to you." (About UXMag) - courtesy of nickfinck

Posted by PJB on January 18, 2006 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

From Sites to Flows: Designing for the Porous Web 

Presentation in .pdf - "Underskog: A work in progress." (Even Westvang) - courtesy of vuk

Posted by PJB on January 18, 2006 | Classification: Weblogs | Comments (0) | Permalink

Experientia interviews Richard Eisermann

"Richard Eisermann is Director of Design and Innovation at the UK Design Council. In this interview, he discusses how the Design Council is using a design approach to help business, public services and educational institutions develop new products, services and strategies or redevelop existing ones, and how Italy can use some of the same ideas in its own approach to innovation." (Mark Vanderbeeken - Experientia)

Posted by PJB on January 17, 2006 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

Folksonomies: Tidying up Tags?

"In this article we look at what makes folksonomies work. We agree with the premise that tags are no replacement for formal systems, but we see this as being the core quality that makes folksonomy tagging so useful. We begin by looking at the issue of 'sloppy tags', a problem to which critics of folksonomies are keen to allude, and ask if there are ways the folksonomy community could offset such problems and create systems that are conducive to searching, sorting and classifying. We then go on to question this 'tidying up' approach and its underlying assumptions, highlighting issues surrounding removal of low-quality, redundant or nonsense metadata, and the potential risks of tidying too neatly and thereby losing the very openness that has made folksonomies so popular." (Marieke Guy and Emma Tonkin - DLib Magazine 12.1)

Posted by PJB on January 17, 2006 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Web 3.0

"Web 2.0 is a fresh-faced starlet on the intertwingled longtail to the disruptive experience of tomorrow. Web 3.0 thinks you are so 2005. (...) my discomfort with the hype surrounding an emerging genre of web development turned into a full-blown hate-on." (Jeffrey Zeldman - A List Apart)

Posted by PJB on January 17, 2006 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Online Information Folksonomy Presentation

"The main focus of this presentation is not that folksonomies should be seen as a replacement to taxonomy, but as a means to augment taxonomies (if there is one in place). As was resoundingly echoed by others on the panel, taxonomies are hard work and expensive to build and maintain. The cost and effort are often reasons why taxonomies are not exhaustive nor emergent, as budgets and time constraints provide limits. Most often we follow the Pareto Principle (also know as the 80/20 rule) where we focus on 80 percent of the use with 20 percent of the resources (in reality we aim toward something more like a 90/40 rule), but we do have limitations. Taxonomies are also authoritative, but this is problematic for the people who have a vocabulary that is different than the authoritative vocabulary(or more correctly vocabularies). This means a taxonomy will most often have a limited view, which is not a reason to stop taxonomies, but a reason to augment them." (Thomas Vander Wal - Personal InfoCloud)

Posted by PJB on January 17, 2006 | Classification: Metadata | Comments (0) | Permalink

Baseball Visualization Tool

"The tool is built around the basic idea that a pie chart can represent a simple yes or no decision. In this case, the decision is one often faced by managers in a tight baseball game: Should the pitcher be pulled from the game?" (visual i|o) - courtesy of bokardo

Posted by PJB on January 17, 2006 | Classification: InfoViz | Comments (0) | Permalink

The Attention Economy and the Net

"If the Web and the Net can be viewed as spaces in which we will increasingly live our lives, the economic laws we will live under have to be natural to this new space. These laws turn out to be quite different from what the old economics teaches, or what rubrics such as "the information age" suggest. What counts most is what is most scarce now, namely attention. The attention economy brings with it its own kind of wealth, its own class divisions - stars vs. fans - and its own forms of property, all of which make it incompatible with the industrial-money-market based economy it bids fair to replace. Success will come to those who best accommodate to this new reality." (Michael H. Goldhaber - First Monday 2.4)

Posted by PJB on January 16, 2006 | Classification: Classics | Comments (0) | Permalink

Visio: The interaction designer's nail gun (2nd edition)

"The reason why Microsoft Visio is a popular prototyping tool is because of its interface widgets that you can drag and drop onto pages and its ability to link pages and view them as web pages. But what distinguishes Visio from other prototyping tools is its use of layered backgrounds." (Henrik Olsen - GUUUI)

Posted by PJB on January 16, 2006 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Lou Rosenfeld Eats his own Dog Food

"Louis Rosenfeld, one of the founding fathers of information architecture, has a new project up his sleeve. Growing restless after co-founding one of the most renowned information architecture firms of all time, co-authoring one of the best-known IA books, helping to start both the Information Architecture Institute and the User Experience Network, and running his own IA consulting practice, Lou is setting his sights on a new endeavor. He's using his knowledge of user experience methods to launch a UX publishing house." (Liz Danzico - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on January 16, 2006 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

Get smart about how you manage your content

"Bringing more science to content management is in no way dumbing down. Rather, it is about getting smart." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on January 16, 2006 | Classification: Content management | Comments (0) | Permalink

A Summary of My Ideas about National Culture Differences

"(...) there has been much discussion about cultural differences in the web design, especially in reference to animation and flashy elements. It looks right to offer Professor Hofstede's ideas to readers here. These ideas were first based on a large research project into national culture differences across subsidiaries of a multinational corporation (IBM) in 64 countries." (Geert Hofstede - uiGarden.net)

Posted by PJB on January 16, 2006 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Clear: IIID|AIGA Journal of Information Design

"Information design makes complex information easier to understand and to use, and Clear is dedicated to informing, inspiring, and defining the rapidly growing discipline and its participants. The journal is dedicated to stimulating thinking about information design through timely and thoughtful essays and articles from leaders in the field." (AIGA)

Posted by PJB on January 13, 2006 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Defining the User Experience

"The definition I came up with is that, in a nutshell, the user experience of a product is everything that's not human-computer interaction. It's everything that affects how someone interacts with a tool--whether it's software, hardware, a service, or whatever. To me, this meant that I had to deal with all of the squishy, abstract things that good cognitive psychology and computer science-trained designers like me try not to deal with: business goals, emotions, relationships, branding, etc." (Mike Kuniavsky - Orange Cone) - courtesy of vuk

Posted by PJB on January 12, 2006 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Migrating from HTML to XHTML and XML: Part 2/2

"(...) validating your XHTML files, migrating from XHTML to XML, possible XML standards, creating your own standard, validating your XML files, and creating an XML to HTML transform." (Char James-Tanny - WritersUA)

Posted by PJB on January 12, 2006 | Classification: Technology | Comments (0) | Permalink

MIT Libraries: DSpace Digital Repository Visualization

"The information age is now an electronic age. Books, magazines and newspapers, business and government records, music, movies, email — all are stored as electronic files that can only be read, played, or watched by people with the right hardware and software. Over time, changes in technology can make digital information simply incapable of being accessed. Furthermore, without separate authentication standards, digital information becomes untrustworthy. On both legal and historical grounds, people need to be able to verify a document's provenance and data integrity." (Dynamic Diagrams)

Posted by PJB on January 11, 2006 | Classification: InfoViz | Comments (0) | Permalink

Designing User Experiences for Applications Versus Information Resources on the Web

"The relatively recent adoption of user-focused design practices by the Web design and development community—including personas, participatory design, paper prototyping, and the like—highlights important distinctions between the user experiences of desktop applications and those of information spaces. With the growing desire for usable Web applications, these distinctions become more topical and important to understand. Though the process of designing and creating application and information space user experiences for the Web is virtually the same—even if the deliverable design documents may differ—their user experiences are fundamentally and profoundly different. For designers, business analysts, marketing consultants, and others who are sincerely interested in delivering the best user experiences online, understanding these distinctions can reduce the cost of design and improve the likelihood of user acceptance." (Leo Frishberg - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on January 10, 2006 | Classification: User experience | Comments (0) | Permalink

Evolutionary information seeking: A case study of personal development and Internet searching

"This article explores one question: what does Internet searching have to do with personal development? Personal development means that individuals improve their own abilities, skills, knowledge or other qualities by working on them. The paper reports on a qualitative case study, in which a single participant was interviewed and her Web searches observed. Information search strategies seemed to form a spectrum of developmental sophistication. Four major types of relationship were found: a) the Internet in the context of development; b) development in the context of the Internet; c) development affecting Internet use; and, d) Internet use affecting development. There were some informational phenomena which exhibited regression, the converse of development." (Jarkko Kari - First Monday 11.1)

Posted by PJB on January 09, 2006 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Search Engines as Leeches on the Web

"Engines extract too much of the Web's value, leaving too little for the websites that actually create the content. Liberation from search dependency is a strategic imperative for both websites and software vendors." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on January 09, 2006 | Classification: Usability | Comments (0) | Permalink

Co-creating unique value with customers

"The traditional system of company-centric value creation (that has served us so well over the past 100 years) is becoming obsolete. Leaders now need a new frame of reference for value creation. In the emergent economy, competition will center on personalized co-creation experiences, resulting in value that is truly unique to each individual. The authors see a new frontier in value creation emerging, replete with fresh opportunities. In this new frontier, the role of the consumer has changed from isolated to connected, from unaware to informed, from passive to active. As a result, companies can no longer act autonomously, designing products, developing production processes, crafting marketing messages, and controlling sales channels with little or no interference from consumers. Armed with new tools and dissatisfied with available choices, consumers want to interact with firms and thereby co-create value. The use of interaction as a basis for co-creation is at the crux of our emerging reality. The co-creation experience of the consumer becomes the very basis of value. The authors offer a DART model for managing co-creation of value processes." (C.K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy)

Posted by PJB on January 08, 2006 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Scientific Content Management

"Management is the pursuit of the best way. Content is an increasingly important resource and activity within organizations. It is time it was professionally managed." (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on January 08, 2006 | Classification: Content management | Comments (0) | Permalink

A gallery of onscreen help: Updated version

"The Gallery of Onscreen Help has received a long overdue update. I've just finished adding over 125 new screens, bringing the gallery to 333 sample onscreen help implementations. Drop by and take a peek at what your colleagues, and competitors, are up to." (Usable Help)

Posted by PJB on January 08, 2006 | Classification: TechCom | Comments (0) | Permalink

Information architecture as a means of assessing and creating organisational information coherence 

Paper from the Euro IA Summit 2005 - "This paper will explore how IA projects can be constructed and undertaken to achieve coherence. It will review how elements such as metadata creation, document creation flows, permissions, version control, change and update management and usage patterns can be used to create a global picture of an organisation’s information creation, distribution and use, and thereby to derive the optimum patterns." (Barry Mahon and Alan Gilchrist - TFPL)

Posted by PJB on January 07, 2006 | Classification: Information architecture | Comments (0) | Permalink

Evaluating the ROI of design

"The top two reasons executives usually cite when they decide to short-change the design process are a Shortage of Time and a Lack of Money. However, companies have much more time and money to lose by not investing in design. Several myths lead to the misperception that it's easier and cheaper to do without design." (Steve Calde - Cooper Newsletter)

Posted by PJB on January 04, 2006 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink

Ambient Findability Slashdotted

Read the Comments - "Read 'Ambient Findability' if: you are interested in expanding your business or nonprofit through its presence on the Internet; you are a librarian and want to grow into the nontraditional environment of the Web; you are a Web designer and want to optimize the findability of your sites on the Internet; you are a user and want to enhance your searching experience. Read this book if you are a teacher, a student, a writer, a parent... in short, if you use a computer or a handheld or a GPS or a smartphone or any type of technology that connects you to the world, then you should read this book. Peter Morville's 'Ambient Findability' will amaze and delight you. It will give you new insight into how ubiquitous computing is affecting how we find and use information and how we, as users, can and will shape the future of how data is stored and retrieved." (Slashdot.org)

Posted by PJB on January 03, 2006 | Classification: Search | Comments (0) | Permalink

Interview w/ Joi Ito

"Chaosradio Express episode 11 is an interview with 22C3's keynote speaker Joi Ito. The interview touches various topics including Chicago's club scene and Joi's affiliation with it, the early Internet days via X.25, Creative Commons licensing issues, the Open Source Initiative, political activism in general and what can and should be done, optimism vs. pessimism in the current situation of global political fighting, ICANN, living a super-public life and combining all kinds of modern communication tools, the influence of the Internet on political activism and democracy and of course the 22C3 and his personal experiences at the event." (Chaosradio)

Posted by PJB on January 03, 2006 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

Semantic Typography: Bridging the XHTML gap

"In the Web Standards community we hear the words 'Semantic Markup' thrown around a lot as a concept—the right thing to do— but I know a lot of designers who are trying to learn this stuff are being confused by the whole 'semantic thing'. It's a difficult task for a designer, who primarily thinks very visually, to relate to a concept like semantics in a document when all they want to do is create something. After doing a ton of research over the past couple of weeks I've begun to notice links and patterns between typographic theory and Web Standards." (Mark Boulton) - courtesy of webgraphics

Posted by PJB on January 02, 2006 | Classification: Typography | Comments (0) | Permalink

Design by Politics

An interview with John Maeda - "I'm not only interested in marketing simplicity, I'm interested in marketing creative thinking. I believe that creative thinking is rapidly disappearing, because business is so focused on measurable outcomes and the economy is known to improve if reading and mathematics are strong in society." (Sascha Pohflepp)

Posted by PJB on January 02, 2006 | Classification: Interviews | Comments (0) | Permalink

Learning increases resolution

"Learning music changes music. Learning about wine changes wine. Learning about Buddhism changes Buddhism. And learning Excel changes Excel. If we want passionate users, we might not have to change our products--we have to change how our users experience them. And that change does not necessarily come from product design, development, and especially marketing. It comes from helping users learn." (Kathy Sierra - Creating Passionate Users)

Posted by PJB on January 02, 2006 | Classification: Information design | Comments (0) | Permalink