November 2007

The Web That Wasn't

"For most of us who work on the Internet, the Web is all we have ever really known. It's almost impossible to imagine a world without browsers, URLs and HTTP. But in the years leading up to Tim Berners-Lee's world-changing invention, a few visionary information scientists were exploring alternative systems that often bore little resemblance to the Web as we know it today. In this presentation, author and information architect Alex Wright will explore the heritage of these almost-forgotten systems in search of promising ideas left by the historical wayside." (YouTube)

Posted by PJB on November 30, 2007 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

IA Konferenz 2007 - Keynote

Audio files from the IA Conference in Germany - "Keynote Speech, Victor Lombardi, Smart Experience, New York (USA). Content: Tools - Background - Patterns of other fields (e.g. publishing) - Why tools? - What does this mean for designers? - Tools we can create now." (Deutsche IA Konferenz 2007 - iavoice) - courtesy of wolfnoeding

Posted by PJB on November 30, 2007 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

idX: Information Design eXchange 

"What information designers know and can do (...) Development of International Core Competencies and Student and Faculty Exchange in Information Design within the EU/US Cooperation Programme in Higher Education and Vocational Education and Training." (IIID)

Posted by PJB on November 28, 2007 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Building the UX Dreamteam

"Finding the right person to compliment your User Experience team is part art and part luck. Though good interviewing can limit the risk of a bad hire, you need to carefully analyze your current organizational context, before you can know what you need. Herein lies the art. Since you can't truly know a candidate from an interview, you gamble that their personality and skills are what they seem. Aimed at managers and those involved in the hiring decision process, this article looks at the facets of UX staff and offers ways to identify the skills and influence that will tune your team to deliver winning results." (Anthony Colfelt - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on November 28, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Burn Rate, Build2Flip, and Exit Strategy

"Adaptive Path, that rascally little South Park user experience studio at the center of all things web 2.0, celebrated it's sixth year in existence with a retro prom party. Last year, we had to find out what the meaning of Adaptive Path was? This year, we channel our inner VC and get the answers that any potential sugar daddy might ask." (Blip.tv)

Posted by PJB on November 27, 2007 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

Intranet Information Architecture

"In analyzing 56 intranets, we found many common top-level categories, labels, and navigation designs, but ultimately, the diversity was too great to recommend a single IA." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on November 26, 2007 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Make Tools

"In my keynote talk at the 2007 IA Konferenz in Stuttgart, Germany this month, I argued we need to create fewer artifacts and more tools. We're already doing this, but it's easy to get stuck in a make-more-web/mobile-sites rut and that could lead to irrelevance." (Victor Lombardi)

Posted by PJB on November 26, 2007 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

The Language of Graphics

"This study presents a framework for the analysis of the visual language of graphic representations. Diagrams, maps, charts and symbols, from ancient inscriptions to computer visualizations, are examined with respect to visual grammar and principles of interpretation. The issues explored include the different roles that a graphic constituent may play within a representation, the nesting of graphic structures and the nature of meaningful space." (Yuri Engelhardt)

Posted by PJB on November 26, 2007 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

A review of Edward Tufte's 'Beautiful Evidence'

"I have always been, and still am, a great fan of Edward Tufte's work, and I feel almost a bit embarrassed about some of the sections of Beautiful Evidence from which I have quoted above. Abducting Tufte's own words to express this feeling of embarrassment, few things are more appalling than listening to inept and specious arguments made by one’s allies." (Yuri Engelhardt)

Posted by PJB on November 26, 2007 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Tech design with thought

"If anyone knows a thing or two about designing for human-computer interaction, it's Don Norman, professor at Northwestern University, author of 'The Design of Future Things', and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group." (C|Net News)

Posted by PJB on November 26, 2007 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

Assessing the Quality of User Experience

"User Experience (UX) has become an increasingly important consideration in the design of technology. As part of a corporate wide strategic initiative focusing on creation of platforms, Intel has been steadily shifting toward a more holistic and user-centered approach to the design and development of technology. In essence, Intel's platform approach is about integration of technology, ingredients, infrastructure, and service or content to ensure the creation of new end-user value." (Beauregard, R. et al. - Intel Technology Journal)

Posted by PJB on November 23, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Web 2.0 How-To Design Style Guide

"In this tutorial, I describe various common graphic design elements in modern web ("2.0") design style. I then attempt to explain why they work (i.e. why they have become common), as well as how, when and where you might use each element in your designs. It follows on from my Current Style article, and analyses in greater depth the design features of the current Web 2.0 design style." (Web Design From Scratch)

Posted by PJB on November 23, 2007 | Classification: Visual design | Permalink

Understanding Web Design

"We get better design when we understand our medium. Yet even at this late cultural hour, many people don’t understand web design. Among them can be found some of our most distinguished business and cultural leaders, including a few who possess a profound grasp of design—except as it relates to the web. (....) Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity." (Jeffrey Zeldman - A List Apart)

Posted by PJB on November 22, 2007 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Personalized Museum Experience: The Rijksmuseum Use Case

"This paper describes ongoing work exploring aspects of personalized access to and presentation of virtual museum collections. The project demonstrator illustrates an interactive approach to collecting data about museum visitors in terms of their interests in and preferences about artefacts from the Rijksmuseum collection. This data is stored in user profiles used further to recommend routes through the museum and to guide the users towards artefacts related to their interests and preferences. The overall goal of the project is to explore different users' characteristics and personalize users' museum experiences within the Rijksmuseum virtual and physical collections." (Lora Aroyo - Museums and the Web 2007)

Posted by PJB on November 22, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

In Defense of Eye Candy

"Bottom line? Visual design is more than styling. It is function. And not only because it communicates, but also because it makes us feel. And between feeling and communication, people find things easier to use." (Stephen P. Anderson - PoetPainter)

Posted by PJB on November 22, 2007 | Classification: Visual design | Permalink

The DIY Future: What Happens When Everyone Is A Designer?

"Broad cultural, technological, and economic shifts are rapidly erasing the distinctions between those who create and those who use, consume, or participate. This is true in digital experiences and information environments of all types, as well as in the physical and conceptual realms. In all of these contexts, substantial expertise, costly tools, specialized materials, and large-scale channels for distribution are no longer required to execute design. (...)" (Joe Lamantia)

Posted by PJB on November 21, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Trust in the Little Things

"If this column's title sounds familiar to you, the bad news is you're getting old, but the good news is your memory hasn't gone yet. It was the title of a presentation I gave at the STC conference in Anaheim ten years ago. However, many of the points I made in that talk are still relevant to user assistance today, so I would like to update some of them and offer some new thoughts as well." (Steve Baty - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on November 21, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Procedures: The Sacred Cow Blocking the Road

"If this column's title sounds familiar to you, the bad news is you're getting old, but the good news is your memory hasn't gone yet. It was the title of a presentation I gave at the STC conference in Anaheim ten years ago. However, many of the points I made in that talk are still relevant to user assistance today, so I would like to update some of them and offer some new thoughts as well." (Mike Hughes - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on November 21, 2007 | Classification: TechCom | Permalink

Personas Suck

"(...) if you're building a site for a group of web designers, you probably don't need personas, whereas if you're building a site for a group of doctors, they could come in handy." (Andy Budd)

Posted by PJB on November 15, 2007 | Classification: Personas | Permalink

UXnet: The User Experience Network

"We have been working on a new site for UXnet and have a beta version available for you to check out. We have a new design, an automatic news feed from Putting People First, and a better calendar. We have more improvements to make, of course. We plan to switch over to the new site in a few weeks." (Keith Instone)

Posted by PJB on November 15, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Designing for Nonprofits

User Experience Professionals Can Make a Difference in Society - "We all find ourselves looking in the mirror at one time or another and asking ourselves if we're doing all we can for the good of society. What's it all for? Those of us in the user experience profession can actually do something about it. As information architects, interaction designers, usability consultants, and developers, we don't have to change our careers to do something good for society. All we have to do is connect with the right nonprofit: One that shares our goals and whose mission we support." (Olga Sanchez-Howard - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on November 15, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Building a Data-Backed Persona

"Incorporating the voice of the user into user experience design by using personas in the design process is no longer the latest and greatest new practice. Everyone is doing it these days, and with good reason. Using personas in the design process helps focus the design team's attention and efforts on the needs and challenges of realistic users, which in turn helps the team develop a more usable finished design. While completely imaginary personas will do, it seems only logical that personas based upon real user data will do better. Web analytics can provide a helpful starting point to generate data-backed personas; this article presents an informal 5-step process for building a 'persona of the people'." (Andrea Wiggins - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on November 15, 2007 | Classification: Personas | Permalink

Quack! Some thoughts on DUX07 and the State of User Experience

"After attending numerous design events this past year, I’ve realized that they’re all evolving to a similar place, free from the specifics of their particular domain, and towards a shared “big D design” understanding. The IDSA event, nominally for industrial designers, dealt with many of the same issues as the Information Architecture Summit, the AIGA annual, DUX07, and even Adaptive Path’s UX Week. And while all these design disciplines have distinctions in their details, what they all share is an emerging orientation to serving the user’s experience. And while DUX07 began to speak to that shared space, it’s interaction-design orientation left it falling short. There’s a huge opportunity to bridge practitioners from across all these design disciplines, to weave their various approaches and challenges into a larger experience design braid. The User Experience field is still crying out for leadership." - (Peter Merholz)

Posted by PJB on November 13, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Traité de documentation

For those of you proficient in French - "His 1934 masterpiece, the Traité de documentation, was reprinted in 1989 by the Centre de Lecture publique de la Communauté française in Belgium. The original edition has recently been digitized (...)" (Paul Otlet 1934)

Posted by PJB on November 12, 2007 | Classification: Classics | Permalink

Long vs. Short Articles as Content Strategy

"Information foraging shows how to calculate your content strategy's costs and benefits. A mixed diet that combines brief overviews and comprehensive coverage is often best." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on November 12, 2007 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

It Depends: ID – Principles and Guidelines  

"Information Design is a multi-disciplinary, multi-dimensional, and worldwide consideration. It is not possible to develop a number of firm message design rules telling the information designer exactly how to best design a message and develop information materials. However, based on research it is possible to formulate several ID-principles and then develop a number of guidelines for the design of effective and efficient messages and information materials." (Rune Pettersson - International Institute for Information Design)

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

Don't Click Here: The Art of Hyperlinking

"I suspect Wikipedia may be closer to Ted's vision of Xanadu: a self-contained constellation of highly interlinked information, with provisions for identity, versioning, and rights management. But enough about the history of the hyperlink. How can we use them effectively in the here and now? I thoroughly enjoyed Philipp Lenssen's recent link usability tips. I liked it so much, in fact, that I'm using it as a template for a visual compendium of link usability tips-- the art of hyperlinking." (Jeff Atwood - Coding Horror) - courtesy of lodewijkschutte

Posted by PJB on November 07, 2007 | Classification: Hypertext | Permalink

The Real Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet 

"32 years ago in 1975 I was one of several lucky Americans who were invited to Pisa to help celebrate 20 years of computer science in Italy. I presented a paper on the first fruits of our attempts to invent personal computing at Xerox PARC. Over the years I somehow lost that paper, but Porfessor Attardi, who was more organized than I, was able to locate his copy and it has been republished as part of our cderemonies today. It is tempting in this talk to go through that paper and see how this past work influenced today." (Alan Kay - VRI)

Posted by PJB on November 06, 2007 | Classification: Classics | Permalink

First Monday Podcasts

"First Monday Podcast, like its parent journal, features stories on all aspects of the Internet, including comments on trends and standards, technical issues, educational uses and political and social implications of the Internet. Its focus is simply on interesting and novel ideas related to the history, current use, and future of the Internet. Finally, First Monday Podcast takes you behind the scenes to meet the people behind the one of the first peer–reviewed journals on the Internet." (About FM Podcasts)

Posted by PJB on November 06, 2007 | Classification: Podcasts | Permalink

Rethinking Collections

Libraries and librarians in an open age - "Open access, one of the most important of the potentials unleashed by the combination of the electronic medium and the World Wide Web, is already much more substantial in extent that most of us realize. More than 10 percent of the world’s scholarly peer–reviewed journals are fully open access; this does not take into account the many journals offering hybrid open choice, free back access, or allowing authors to self–archive their works. Scientific Commons includes more than 16 million publications, nearly twice as much content as Science Direct. Meanwhile, even as we continue to focus on the scholarly peer–reviewed journal article, other potentials of the new technology are beginning to appear, such as open data and scholarly blogging. This paper examines the library collection of the near and medium future, suggests that libraries and librarians are in a key position to lead in the transition to an open age, and provides specific suggestions to aid in the transition." (Heather Morrison - First Monday 12.10)

Posted by PJB on November 06, 2007 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

DUX 2007: A great conference, but fundamentally off the mark

"Perhaps it's a function of the organizing process, but it appears to me that with only a few exceptions, most of the speakers and workshop leaders -- and I suppose, attendees -- appear to be shy of 40 years of age." (Bob Jakobson - Total Experience)

Posted by PJB on November 06, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

The Five Competencies of User Experience Design

"When attempting to answer the third question, I use a framework I discovered early in my career: The Five Competencies of User Experience Design. This framework comprises the competencies a UX professional or team requires. The following sections describe these five competencies, outline some questions each competency must answer, and show the groundwork and deliverables for which each competency is responsible." (Steve Psomas - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on November 05, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Customer Support on the Web: Don't Call Us, We'll Call You

"When customers arrive at a Web site, they have goals and tasks they want to complete—for example, buying a movie ticket, transferring money, signing up for a service, applying for a loan, asking for help, and so on. An important requirement for a Web site is the ability for customers to serve themselves, so they can generally complete their tasks without needing to contact Customer Support or ask a friend for help. However, understandably, there are times when customers do need help from Customer Support—by either speaking over the phone or using live chat—so they can solve more complex problems or complete tasks they cannot complete on their own. In such cases, customers need email addresses and phone numbers that let them contact Customer Support directly." (Daniel Szuc - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on November 05, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

From ID to Designing for XP

Keynote at 3rd International Conference on Information Design (ICID), Curitiba, Brazil, October 8-10, 2007 - "It sums up well my current thinking about information design, user experience design, designing for experience, and the composition of memorable experiences." (Bob Jakobson - Total Experience)

Posted by PJB on November 05, 2007 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

High-Cost Usability Sometimes Makes Sense

"Computing the net present value (NPV) lets you estimate the most profitable level of usability investment. For big projects, expensive usability can pay off." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on November 05, 2007 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Think from the Center – Design for the Edge 

"How will applications like Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Word exist five to ten years from now? Will internet appliances like the iPhone truly change the way everyones accesses the web? Will browser-based web applications truly look and behave more like their desktop counterparts in the near future? Will an eTicket kiosk ever completely replace the human being behind the counter? Are rich internet applications built using Adobe AIR simply a fad? What more will the cell phone be capable of in the near future?" (Andrei Michael Herasimchuk - Design by Fire Conference 2007)

Posted by PJB on November 02, 2007 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Workshop on Mobile Internet User Experience

Presentation slides on the workshop held September 9th, 2007 at the Singapore Polytechnic. (Nokia Research Center wiki)

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