October 2007

Blogging Practices: An Analytical Framework

"This article proposes a general model to analyze and compare different uses of the blog format. Based on ideas from sociological structuration theory, as well as on existing blog research, it argues that individual usage episodes are framed by three structural dimensions of rules, relations, and code, which in turn are constantly (re)produced in social action. As a result, 'communities of blogging practices' emerge—that is, groups of people who share certain routines and expectations about the use of blogs as a tool for information, identity, and relationship management. This analytical framework can be the basis for systematic comparative and longitudinal studies that will further understanding of similarities and differences in blogging practices." (Jan Schmidt - Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12.4)

Posted by PJB on October 31, 2007 | Classification: Weblogs | Permalink

Interaction 08 Program Announced

"Our exciting line-up includes industry legends as well as up and coming stars for a well-rounded, engaging two days of inspiration and learning." - (Interaction Design Association)

Posted by PJB on October 31, 2007 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

Generic Commands

"Applications can give users access to a richer feature set by using the same few commands to achieve many related functions." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on October 29, 2007 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

What if Jakob Nielsen had a blog?

The (unofficial) blog that Jakob Nielsen might have written if he actually had a blog (which he hasn't) - "Some have criticised Jakob Nielsen for having an ugly site and people have wondered if useit.com would benefit from a design makeover. Well I have got tired of waiting for Jakob to start a blog version of useit.com so I decided to build it myself." (Chris McEvoy)

Posted by PJB on October 29, 2007 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

The Limitations of Server Log Files for Usability Analysis

"Server log files are inappropriate for gathering usability data. They are meant to provide server administrators with data about the behavior of the server, not the behavior of the user." (Karl Groves - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on October 25, 2007 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Presence and the design of trust

"Designing presence in environments in which technology plays a crucial role is critical in the current era when social systems like law, education, health and business all face major challenges about how to guarantee trustworthy, safe, reliable and efficient services in which people interact with, and via, technology. The speed and scale of the collection and distribution of information that is facilitated by technology today demands a new formulation of basic concepts for our modern societies in terms of property, copyright, privacy, liability, responsibility and so forth. The research question assumes that presence is a phenomenon that we have to understand much better than we currently do." (Caroline Nevejan)

Posted by PJB on October 25, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Business Needs Design, Now!

"While I've spoken publicly on information architecture, interaction design, and interface related topics, behind the scenes I spend much more of my time focusing on design as it relates to business. Corner me for more than five minutes and the conversation will inevitably trend toward this larger, more strategic view of Design (...)" (Stephen P. Anderson - Poetpainter)

Posted by PJB on October 25, 2007 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Marketing Isn't a Dirty Word

"Think you're not into marketing? Think again. As UX professionals, we share much in common with our close cousins, the marketers. We all seek to understand customers—needs, preferences, behaviors, attitudes, and more. We all seek to create positive touchpoints with customers and, in turn, a positive affiliation with our product or company brand. We all know the importance of communicating effectively with customers and evaluating the performance of our work." (Colleen Jones - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on October 24, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

The Thrill of Discovery

"On Tuesday 18 September 2007, Ben Shneiderman gave a talk at HCID on the topic of information visualisation for high-dimensional spaces. Over 100 people from industry and academia attended the talk. (...) Interactive information visualization provide researchers with remarkable tools for discovery. By combining powerful data mining methods with user-controlled interfaces, users are beginning to benefit from these potent telescopes for high-dimensional spaces. They can begin with an overview, zoom in on areas of interest, filter out unwanted items, and then click for details-on-demand. With careful design and efficient algorithms, the dynamic queries approach to data exploration can provide 100msec updates even for million-record databases." (Center for HCI Design) - courtesy of usabilitynews

Posted by PJB on October 19, 2007 | Classification: InfoViz | Permalink

euro IA Summit 2007 Posters

The posters of the third European summit on Information Architecture (21-22 September, Barcelona) are available for download. (euroIA.org)

Posted by PJB on October 19, 2007 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Design engineering: The next step (1/2)

"The solution is elegantly simple in concept, if arduously difficult in implementation." (Alan Cooper - Cooper Journal of Design)

Posted by PJB on October 19, 2007 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

Intuition, pleasure, and gestures

"I wondered for a long time whether I was right to suspect that using gestural input like on my trackpad really would appeal to most people, or whether it just reflected an eccentricity of mine." (Jonathan Korman - Cooper Journal of Design)

Posted by PJB on October 19, 2007 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

What is browsing - really? A model drawing from behavioural science research

"It is argued that the actual elements of typical browsing episodes have not been well captured by common approaches to the concept to date. Empirical research results reported by previous researchers are presented and closely analysed. Based on the issues raised by the above research review, the components of browsing are closely analysed and developed. Browsing is seen to consist of a series of four steps, iterated indefinitely until the end of a browsing episode: (1) glimpsing a field of vision, (2) selecting or sampling a physical or informational object within the field of vision, (3) examining the object, and (4) acquiring the object (conceptually and/or physically) or abandoning it. Not all of these elements need be present in every browsing episode, though multiple glimpses are seen to be the minimum to constitute the act. This concept of browsing is then shown to have persuasive support in the psychological and anthropological literature, where research on visual search, curiosity and exploratory behaviour all find harmony with this perspective. It is argued that this conception of browsing is closer to real human behaviour than other approaches. Implications for better information system design are developed." (Marcia Bates - Information Research Vol. 12 No. 4, October 2006)

Posted by PJB on October 16, 2007 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

User Experience 101: How to create a great online experience

"Clothes cover you. Cars move you from place to place. Yet while we care that products have some basic features, all things being equal we choose the one that delivers, or at least appears, to deliver the user experience we desire." (Kevin Mireles)

Posted by PJB on October 16, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Top 100 User-Centered Blogs

"Web designers often concern themselves with optimizing sites for spiders from Google, Yahoo, and other search engines, but pay little attention to creating sites that real people can use. This problem has sparked a movement towards user-centered web design, a topic that covers accessibility, web standards, and interfacing. Check out these blogs for the latest and greatest in this people-centric field of design." (Jessica Hupp - Virtual Hosting)
 Download .OPML file

Posted by PJB on October 16, 2007 | Classification: UCD | Permalink

Bill Buxton on UX Designer Skills

"In the following video segment, Bill answers my questions: what takes to be a great User Experience Designer? What are the necessary skills or area of skills? Is it good to be a design generalist? And design opportunities at Microsoft for recent graduates. It's great to get a design guru like him's view on these things." (Canadian User Experience)

Posted by PJB on October 15, 2007 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

Take-away facts and quotes from the Euro IA Summit

"(...) I was in Barcelona for the Euro IA Summit, and I made a solemn vow to my wife and myself that I was actually going to concentrate on doing stuff rather than spending my time and energy blogging about doing stuff. However, it did seem rather churlish not to at the very least post my favourite take-away facts and quotes from the conference itself." (Martin Belam)

Posted by PJB on October 15, 2007 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Multiple-User Simultaneous Testing (MUST)

"Testing 5-10 users at once lets you conduct large-scale usability testing and still meet your deadlines." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on October 15, 2007 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Who includes user experiences in large companies?

"This poster presents a case study in which Marketing and R&D departments of a large company collaborated in a context mapping project. Emphasis was placed on exploring who the results should be communicated to and in which way this communication should be conveyed. The presented case study shows that user experiences fit the domain of R&D, and that an intensive process involving various stakeholders throughout the organisation is necessary." (Froukje Sleeswijk Visser and Pieter Jan Stappers - Include 2007 Papers, posters and workshops)

Posted by PJB on October 11, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

The information architect as change agent

&ot"In this article I argue, with a bit of logic and a bit of experience, that IAs can do their jobs better if they understand organizational change management, even if they don’t need to be change management specialists. I'll also suggest a variety of concepts and practices that can (hopefully) help IAs in their change agent role, and I promise to throw in something entertaining as well." (Matthew C. Clarke - Posted by PJB on October 11, 2007 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Well-formed data

"User Interface designer with a focus on information visualization in conjunction with statistical methods and machine learning. Theoretical background in cognitive sciences. Years of professional experience as a web producer, designer, team leader." (Moritz Stefaner) - courtesyofpetermorville

Posted by PJB on October 10, 2007 | Classification: InfoViz | Permalink

Folksonomies and Image Tagging: Seeing the Future?

"Folksonomies are one of today's hottest Internet trends. They are but one part of Web 2.0, which, in part, refers to the ability of Internet users to add, change and improve World Wide Web content. A folksonomy is created as users of a website add 'tags' (keywords) to describe items on a website. The users choose their own keywords; few or no restrictions are imposed on their choices. The terms are not chosen from a previously existing controlled vocabulary, a strict taxonomy or any other officially sanctioned method of bibliographic description." (Diane Neal - ASIS&T Bulletin Oct/Nov 2007)

Posted by PJB on October 09, 2007 | Classification: Metadata | Permalink

Scalable Design

"You've spent the last six months toiling away at a product design. The last few weeks were especially rough—tying up loose edge cases, closing out bugs, polishing up interaction and visual design details. And now your product has launched, so its time for some well deserved rest, right? (...) Your seemingly elegant design begins to bloat with features, tear under the pressure of localization, and nearly keel over under the weight of new content that pushes it to its breaking point. Before long you give up. It's time to redesign—again." (Luke Wroblewski - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on October 09, 2007 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Intranet Usability Shows Huge Advances

"Measured usability improved by 44% compared to our last large-scale intranet study. The new research identified 5 times the previous number of intranet design guidelines." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on October 09, 2007 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

The Hot Strudel interviews BEEP

"There are very, very few projects where an IA can do all of the work; we have to work together with other user experience practitioners!" (Jan Jursa)

Posted by PJB on October 08, 2007 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

3rd information design international conference (Oct. 10-13, 2007)

EXTRA - "We are pleased to announce The 3rd Information Design International Conference, which, is a joint event with The 2nd Brazilian Conference of Information Design and The 3rd Information Design Student Conference [CONGIC]. Consecutively to these events, we are also glad to announce The IVLA 2007 – The International Visual Literacy Association Annual Conference, which is in its 39th edition. For the first time the IVLA Conference takes place in Latin America, and it is promoted in association to SBDI- The Brazilian Society of Information Design. As to encourage participation in the Information Design and the IVLA events, joint subscriptions will receive fee discounts!"

Posted by PJB on October 05, 2007 | Classification: Events | Permalink

MIT's 'clutter detector' could cut confusion

"The danger of clutter - especially on a visual screen - is that it causes confusion that affects how well we perform tasks. To that end, visual clutter is a challenge for fighter pilots picking out a target, for people seeking important information in a user interface, and for web site and map designers, among others." (MIT news) - courtesy of maria acosta

Posted by PJB on October 05, 2007 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Interaction Experience: Pliability, Fluency and Other Experiential Qualities

"Everybody wants to design for good use experiences, but not many seem to know exactly what that means once we move beyond usability and usefulness. In this presentation, I introduce the notion of experiential qualities, which refers to attempts to characterize what 'good use' means for different genres of digital products and services. Two experiential qualities are introduced in more detail: (1) Pliability: the sense of captivating and malleable information in interactive visualizations, and (2) Fluency: a desirable characteristic in situations of multiple media streams fighting for the user's attention." (Jonas Löwgren - FromBusinessToButtons)

Posted by PJB on October 03, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

euro IA Summit 2007 Proceedings 

The proceedings of the third European summit on Information Architecture (21-22 September, Barcelona) are available for download. With its theme 'Translating Information Architecture' and under the great orchestration of Eric 'FatDUX' Reiss, 150 participants from 18 countries had two great days full of presentation, poster and panel sessions. See how they network at the Flickr picture impression 'euroIA2007'. Next year's euroIASummit (26-27 september 2008) will be in Amsterdam! - (euroIA.org)

Posted by PJB on October 01, 2007 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Blah-Blah Text: Keep, Cut, or Kill?

"Introductory text on Web pages is usually too long, so users skip it. But short intros can increase usability by explaining the remaining content's purpose." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on October 01, 2007 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

HCI in SciFi Movies

"Science Fiction movies have been a source for speculation about the future of technology and human computer interaction. This paper presents a survey of different kinds of interaction designs in movies during the past decades and relates the techniques of the films to existing technologies and prototypes where possible. The interactions will be categorized with respect to their domain of real-life applications and also evaluated in regard to results of current research in human computer interaction." (A. Butz, C. Endres, and W. Wahlster) - courtesy of michelvuijlsteke

Posted by PJB on October 01, 2007 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

iPhone Human Interface Guidelines

"Apple's iPhone presents a revolutionary user interface and interaction model. Users can view webpages, use web applications, and use built-in iPhone features, such as the email application, the iPod, and the digital camera, wherever they go. Safari on iPhone, a unique implementation of Safari, is the application users use to browse the web on both iPhone and iPod touch." (Apple Developer Connection) - courtesy of daringfireball

Posted by PJB on October 01, 2007 | Classification: Mobile design | Permalink