August 2008

Four Essential Skills for Information Architects

An Interview with Donna (Maurer) Spencer - "Lots of information architects are really good at doing detail work and lots are really good at the strategy work. But it's a pretty amazing skill to accomplish both at once and to flip between them from second to second." (Jared Spool - User Interface Engineering) - courtesy of usernomics

Posted by PJB on August 28, 2008 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

Users Participation in Online Conversation

"In the past, user participation in editorial publications was limited to writing "letters to the editor." On the web, users take an active role in shaping the message through their comments and debates. Bond Art + Science looked at how traditional media and online publications invite, manage and benefit from user participation, and we identified some best practices and common pitfalls." (Bond Art + Science)

Posted by PJB on August 27, 2008 | Classification: Design research | Permalink

Mapping Memory: Web Designer as Information Cartographer

"Since at least Richard Saul Wurman's 1996 book Information Architects>, architecture has been the primary metaphor for how 'those who build websites' think about what we do. By adding a new metaphor to our theoretical toolboxes, we can gain a richer, more nuanced understanding of the way that we inhabit cyberspace. This enhanced apprehension of the medium should enable us to create websites that better serve our users." (Aaron Rester - A List Apart)

Posted by PJB on August 26, 2008 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

UX Week 2008 Session Slides

"Some of our presenters have posted slides for their main stage talks and/or their workshops. Here’s links to the slides that are currently available. All are in PDF format." (UX Week - Adaptive Path)

Posted by PJB on August 25, 2008 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

The Future of the Desktop

"Everything is moving to the cloud. As we enter the third decade of the Web we are seeing an increasing shift from native desktop applications towards Web-hosted clones that run in browsers." (Nova Spivack - ReadWriteWeb)

Posted by PJB on August 21, 2008 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

Work | Play | Experience

"The showbiz approach to customer experience design: What theatre, film and stand-up comedy can teach us about impressing customers." (Adam Lawrence)

Posted by PJB on August 19, 2008 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Creating a Digital World: Data As Design Material

"The common wisdom is that we now live in the age of information; the freedom and access we have to data is unprecedented in history; and the efficiency and convenience of online commerce, research, and communication has already transformed our lives for the better." (Jonathan Follett - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on August 18, 2008 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

When Information Architecture Can Fall Short

"Information Architecture involves the design of organization and navigation systems to help people find and manage information more successfully." - the conversation is the interesting part. (Jeff Sexton - Future Now's GrokDotCom) - courtesy of michelvuijlsteke

Posted by PJB on August 18, 2008 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Ten Futuristic User Interfaces

"Good user interfaces are crucial for good user experience. It doesn't matter how good a technology is — if we, designers, don’t manage to make user interface as intuitive and attractive as possible, the technology will hardly reach a breakthrough. To gain the interest in a new product or technology, users need to understand its advantages or find themselves impressed or involved." (Smashing Magazine)

Posted by PJB on August 18, 2008 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

The Story of the Ribbon

"(...) I presented a session at MIX. I talked a bit about the general design process we used to come up with the Office 2007 user interface, to iterate on it, and to evaluate it. As part of the discussion, I showed for the first time some of the early prototypes we worked on (and abandoned or refined) along the way. It's always fun to present substantially new content, and this was my first time giving large portions of this talk. The audience was great and, although you can't hear them on the video, they seemed to be into it and enjoying the presentation. It was a lot of fun!" (Jensen Harris)

Posted by PJB on August 15, 2008 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

Managing User Experience Teams

"(...) aims to tap the collective expertise of the user experience community to develop a guide on how to manage UX teams. Margaret Gould Stewart and Graham Jenkin - two seasoned user experience team managers - will be sharing their insights and facilitating the discussion as we create this guide."

Posted by PJB on August 15, 2008 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Rethinking the Progress Bar

"This paper describes an experiment that sought to identify patterns in user perception of progress bar behavior. The results are then analyzed to classify behaviors that perceptually speed up or slow down process execution. We conclude with several design suggestions, which can be applied to applications that employ progress bars and contribute to an overall more responsive, pleasant and human-centric computing experience." (Chris Harrison) - courtesy of annekevandelangkruis

Posted by PJB on August 15, 2008 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

Planning out a website

"This article is going to look at the early stages of planning out a web site, and a discipline that is commonly referred to as Information architecture, or IA. This involves thinking about who your target audience will be, what information and services they need from a web site, and how you should structure it to provide that for them. You’ll look at the entire body of information that needs to go on the site and think about how to break that down into chunks, and how those chunks should relate to one another." (Jonathan Lane- The Web Standards Curriculum)

Posted by PJB on August 14, 2008 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

IDEA 2008: An Interview with Bill DeRouchey

"Bill has over fifteen years experience as a writer, information architect, product manager and now senior interaction designer with Ziba Design in Portland, Oregon. With Ziba, he frames and details the experience, flow, and interaction on consumer and medical products. Bill also writes about the variety and history of interaction design in everyday experiences on his blog, Push Click Touch, and is a frequent speaker at industry events. He is determined to stretch how people think about interaction design, from beyond the pure digital to any interaction between humans and the artifacts they create. Bill is on the Board of Directors of IxDA, the Interaction Design Association, and serves as Treasurer." (Russ Unger - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on August 14, 2008 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

The Site Map: An Information Architecture Cop-Out

"These days, there are two predominate ways that users get to a web site. Either they type the URL into the address bar, bringing them to the site's home page, or they come to the site through an aggregator or referral, such as Google, often taking them to a specific page within the site. For some sites, the home page is the most popular route, but increasingly, users link deep into the site." (Jared Spool - User Interface Engineering)

Posted by PJB on August 12, 2008 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Top 10 Usability Highs Of Mac OS

"Although I've been a Windows power user for years, the transition to Mac couldn’t have been easier and more pleasant. I don’t want to turn this article into some endless rambling about how great Mac is, but as the user of both systems I can speak from my own experience quite objectively. Let's take a look at some of the spots where Apple really has done it better in terms of user interface and usability." (Juul Coolen - Smashing Magazine)

Posted by PJB on August 12, 2008 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

Ten Best Application UIs of 2008

"Many winners employ dashboards to give users a single overview of complex information and use lightboxes to ensure that users notice dialogs. Also, the Office 2007 ribbon showed surprisingly strong early adoption." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on August 12, 2008 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

Evaluating User Experiences in Games

Proceedings and papers of the CHI 2008 workshop on April 5, 2008 in Florenze (Italy)

Posted by PJB on August 11, 2008 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Is the Future of the Internet the Future of Knowledge?

"US-based panel speakers Lawrence M. Sanger, PhD and Andrew Keen discuss issues of legitimacy, credibility, regulation and censorship on the Internet. What role do truth, trust and expertise have to play in the creation and dissemination of knowledge and news through the Internet? What (or who) should we believe and why? Is the Internet's role in shaping knowledge creation and dissemination broadly a force for good? Doesn't participation educate? Doesn't such an array of easily accessible knowledge and information have a potentially democratising effect? Should knowledge and news production by non-professionals on the Internet be limited in any way? This panel discussion was part of the Weidenfeld Scholars' Speaker Series in Oxford, sponsored by the Weidenfeld Institute for Strategic Dialogue (London) and organized in collaboration with the OII." (Oxford Internet Institute)

Posted by PJB on August 11, 2008 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Tamara Adlin interviews Peter Morville

"(...) I wanted to push the awareness of the term and concept of findability as high as usability. Folks like Jakob have done an amazing job of getting that word usability into everybody's heads, and I've been on a campaign to do the same with findability." (UX Pioneers)

Posted by PJB on August 08, 2008 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

Nielsen Norman Group: The First Decade

"Started in 1998, the company is now 10 years old and has a long list of accomplishments. (...) Whatever the general outlook, I think the future is extremely bright for usability, for the simple reason that it works and has hugely profitable ROI for companies that embrace it." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on August 08, 2008 | Classification: Usability | Permalink

The SEO Guide to Information Architecture

"This article will explore the basic concepts of designing optimized site architectures for efficient spidering by search engines. Building an easily spidered site has ramifications in how pages, sections of a site, and entire domains are topically understood and categorized by bots, which influences indexing and rankings." (AudetteMedia) - courtesy of thehotstrudel

Posted by PJB on August 08, 2008 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Design for Emotion and Flow

"The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) has described focused attention as 'psychic energy'. Like energy in the traditional sense, no work can be done without it, and through work that energy is consumed. Most of us have experienced a mental/emotional state where all of our attention (or energy) is totally focused on an activity. Csikszentmihalyi (1990) named this state “flow,” based on how participants in his studies described the experience. In this state of consciousness, people often experience intense concentration and feelings of enjoyment, coupled with peak performance. Hours pass by in what seems like minutes. We tend to enter these states in environments with few interruptions, where our attention becomes focused by a challenge that we're confident we can handle with our existing skills. Feedback is instantaneous, so we can always judge how close we are to accomplishing our task and reaching our goal. The importance of the task influences our level of motivation and perceptions of how difficult the task will be." (Trevor van Gorp - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on August 07, 2008 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Exploratory Search in Different Information Architectures

"The ASIS&T 2008 IA Summit, Experiencing Information, emphasized users who want to know, do or share something. A user experiences information by creating, organizing, browsing and searching for information. These actions contribute to the notion of exploratory search that can be described as an information process in which the importance of a search system’s query-document matching power is diminished in favor of the user assuming a more assertive role in making decisions about the search results and the next steps toward fulfilling their information needs. A straightforward and common way to distinguish an exploratory search system is to examine the presentation of search results. Typically some browsing facilities to supplement or replace the popular list-based result pages are introduced and they feature grouping as a primary mechanism for search result display." (ASIS&T Bulletin 34.6)

Posted by PJB on August 07, 2008 | Classification: Search | Permalink

Sustainable Product Design: Terry Swack on the Importance of User Experience

"A 25-year veteran of the design and technology industries, Terry Swack hopped on the Internet bus a little earlier that most of us. As founder, in 1994, of web strategy firm TSDesign, and later Green Building Blocks and BlueEgg, she has witnessed firsthand consumers' enthusiasm for (and resistance to) adopting new green products and technologies. She now heads up Clean Culture, a customer experience research and strategy consultancy focused on making clean tech and sustainable products more understandable and desirable. We asked Terry how the concept of user experience has helped shape her approach to product design." (Sustainable Life Media)

Posted by PJB on August 06, 2008 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

How Buildings Learn TV series

"In 1997, the BBC aired a three-hour documentary based on Stewart Brand's book, 'How Buildings Learn'. Brand has posted the whole program on Google Video in six 30-minute parts." (via Jason Kottke)

Posted by PJB on August 05, 2008 | Classification: Information architecture | Permalink

Using Persona Advocates to develop user-centric intranets and portals

"Intranets and portals are all—or mostly—about serving and enabling users. What information do they need and what tasks must they accomplish? How will they look for information? How does it need to be organized and presented for them to understand and use it? Do users have expertise in different subject areas or varying levels of technical vocabularies? Do they need instant information gratification or will they patiently research until they explore all possibilities? Do users know what information they are seeking or do they need to be able to browse for something that will catch their eyes and provide the 'Aha!' experiences. Grasping complex information needs and uses can indeed be daunting. One powerful design tool, personas, can help make sense of these needs and provide a framework for building Intranets that will satisfy a variety of needs. Effectively developed and used, personas enable Intranet teams to hone in on user needs and build interfaces and user experiences that end-user audiences can and will use." (Howard McQueen) - courtesy of jamesrobertson

Posted by PJB on August 05, 2008 | Classification: Personas | Permalink

Adaptive Path explores the future of the browser

"Aurora is a concept video presenting one possible future user experience for the Web, created by Adaptive Path as part of the Mozilla Labs concept browser series. Aurora explores new ways people could interact with the Web in the future based on projected technological trends and real-world scenarios." (Mark Vanderbeeken - Experientia)

Posted by PJB on August 05, 2008 | Classification: Information design | Permalink

Cautious Cars and Cantankerous Kitchens

Video registration of Donald Normans presentation - "In his latest book, The Design of Future Things, Norman offers a consumer-oriented theory of natural human-machine interaction that can be put into practice by the engineers and industrial designers of tomorrow's thinking machines." (From Business to Buttons 2008 recorded sessions)

Posted by PJB on August 04, 2008 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

Service Design and Experience Design: Starbucks vs Le Pain Quotidien

"What is service design? Particularly those that is delivered through a digital interface or through a peer-to-peer network. It requires a very different approach from traditional operations management and the economics is very different. Service is becoming a key part of any customer experiences. Many still find the concept a little abstract. Little attention is paid to service innovation or seeing services as structure." (Idris Mootee - innovation playground)

Posted by PJB on August 04, 2008 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

Winning Considerations for Interactive Content

"User interface designers have more interactive options than ever for presenting content. So, we can make meaningful strides toward offering users the right content in the right place, at the right time, in the right amount. However, these rich options for interactively presenting content also come with a challenge." (Colleen Jones - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on August 04, 2008 | Classification: Writing | Permalink

Facial expressions: Reflections of user experience

"(...) Phillip Toledano, a photographer from New York who takes stunning portraits of real people playing video games. The immersive nature of videogames can engage users into user experiences which can almost be described as extreme. Toledano's portraits depict this rather clearly. He managed to capture the whole range of emotions: frustration, joy, fear, surprise, hatred..." (Pierre-Alexandre Lapointe - YuCentrik)

Posted by PJB on August 01, 2008 | Classification: User experience | Permalink