April 2009

Navigating the blogosphere: Towards a genre-based typology of weblogs

"The personal weblog is a continuously evolving genre of online communication in which bloggers and readers create diverse social spaces for conversation and self–expression. This article addresses a conceptual gap in the literature, namely how to distinguish the personal weblog from other types of weblogs. The author develops a typological framework for classification of weblogs in three dimensions: content, directionality, and style, and uses the typological space to propose a working definition of the personal weblog and discuss it as a distinct sub–genre." - (Stine Lomborg - FirstMonday 14.5)

Posted by PJB on April 30, 2009 | Classification: Social Web - Weblogs | Permalink

Is Interaction Design a dead-end job?

"(...) interaction design has become pervasive, that anyone and everyone can be an interaction designer, and so the role of professional interaction designer is (or is becoming) unnecessary." - (Tim McCoy - Cooper Journal) courtesy of jjursa

Posted by PJB on April 30, 2009 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

Europe's Fifth Information Architecture Summit: Beyond Structure

"EuroIA invites your participation to this premier European event on Information Architecture. Join us in Copenhagen, Denmark, September 25-26, 2009, for two incredible days of presentations, panels, and networking with information architects from across Europe and around the world. This year we will explore the theme of 'Beyond Structure'. That's because websites have moved to a new level. Any random page can be accessed from Google. Pages themselves may consist of information from many sources. And event the concept of a 'page' is changing thanks to new backend technologies. In other words, we've moved beyond the traditional sitemap and into a new and exciting era of web development."

Posted by PJB on April 30, 2009 | Classification: Events - Information architecture | Permalink

Introducing the off-stage experience

"Imagine having a friendly chat while waiting in line at the local bakery store or sitting next to someone with a too loud iPod in the public transport. In both situation your service experience is influenced even though you don’t have any direct interaction with the company providing the service. Companies and Service designers alike are missing out on a opportunity to improve the service experience while it’s unfolding right before their eyes." - (Marc Fonteijn - 31Volts)

Posted by PJB on April 29, 2009 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras

"Today's social experience is disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they visit. A simple set of technologies that enable a portable identity will soon empower consumers to bring their identities with them — transforming marketing, eCommerce, CRM, and advertising. IDs are just the beginning of this transformation, in which the Web will evolve step by step from separate social sites into a shared social experience. Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and CRM systems; eventually this will result in empowered communities defining the next generation of products." - (Jeremiah Owyang)

Posted by PJB on April 29, 2009 | Classification: Social Web | Permalink

Designing for Faceted Search

"Faceted search lets users refine or navigate a collection of information by using a number of discrete attributes – the so-called facets. A facet represents a specific perspective on content that is typically clearly bounded and mutually exclusive. The values within a facet can be a flat list that allows only one choice (e.g. a list of possible shoe sizes) or a hierarchical list that allow you to drill-down through multiple levels (e.g. product types, Computers > Laptops). The combination of all facets and values are often called a faceted taxonomy. These faceted values can be added directly to content as metadata or extracted automatically using text mining software." - (Stephanie Lemieux - User Interface Engineering)

Posted by PJB on April 28, 2009 | Classification: Search | Permalink

Analysis, Plus Synthesis: Turning Data into Insights

"Conducting primary user research such as in-depth interviews or field studies can be fairly straightforward, when compared with what you face upon returning to the office with piles of notes, sketches, user journals, and audio and video recordings. You may ask, What should I do with all this data? and How do I turn it into something meaningful?" - (Lindsay Ellerby - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on April 28, 2009 | Classification: Design research | Permalink

User Research for Personas and Other Audience Models

"This is not going to be an article about personas or even what distinguishes a good persona from a bad one. Instead, this article is about the ingredients we can draw on when creating audience models and some alternative ways of communicating the results of an audience analysis." - (Steve Baty - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on April 28, 2009 | Classification: Personas | Permalink

World's Best Headlines: BBC News

"Precise communication in a handful of words? The editors at BBC News achieve it every day, offering remarkable headline usability." - (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on April 27, 2009 | Classification: Usability - Writing | Permalink

IA Summit 09 (Day 3 Podcasts)

"These sessions were recorded on the third day of the conference." - (Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on April 24, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture - Podcasts - User experience | Permalink

How to integrate interaction, visual and industrial design

"Interaction design, visual design, and industrial design are distinct disciplines for good reason: Each excels in different ways. Interaction designers must be good at imagining structure and flow, which requires strong analytical skills and a high degree of rigor, especially for complex systems. Visual designers and industrial designers are masters of visual and physical usability but are also masters of emotion: They know how to evoke caution, attract attention, and instill desire for a product at first glance. Users have just one experience of a product, though. All three aspects of the design must work in concert, or the product will fail to satisfy. Integration of the three disciplines is a central theme of Kim’s new book, Designing for the Digital Age." - (Kim Goodwin - Cooper Journal)

Posted by PJB on April 23, 2009 | Classification: Interaction design - Visual design | Permalink

Designing for Big Data

"This is a 20-minute talk I gave at the Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco a couple weeks ago. In it, I describe two trends: how we're shifting as a culture from consumers to participants, and how technology has enabled massive amounts of data to be recorded, stored, and analyzed. Putting those things together has resulted in some fascinating innovations that echo data visualization work that's been happening for centuries." - (Jeffrey Veen)

Posted by PJB on April 23, 2009 | Classification: InfoViz | Permalink

You're only a first-time user once

"Remember: a person is a first-time user exactly once (and in the case of the infusion pump, because of training and observation, nurses were actually never really first-time users), and in many cases a beginner for only a very short while." - (Steve Calde - Cooper Journal)

Posted by PJB on April 23, 2009 | Classification: UCD | Permalink

Usability testing ≠ a good user experience

"Strategic user experience planning yields a unified and consistent user experience. And strategic design leads to great user experiences, ones that are characterized by delight, loyalty and stickiness. So how do you attain these? By designing the user experience for now, for next year... and for the year after that. And by designing the entire experience, not just your web site’s user interface, or your email campaign's HTML." - (Paul Sherman - Apogee)

Posted by PJB on April 22, 2009 | Classification: Usability - User experience | Permalink

In Defense of Eye Candy

"We've all seen arguments in the design community that dismiss the role of beauty in visual interfaces, insisting that good designers base their choices strictly on matters of branding or basic design principles. Lost in these discussions is an understanding of the powerful role aesthetics play in shaping how we come to know, feel, and respond." - (Stephen P. Anderson - A List Apart)

Posted by PJB on April 22, 2009 | Classification: User experience - Visual design | Permalink

Interview with Richard Saul Wurman (Part 4)

"In this segment, RSW talks about his approach to creating websites (spoiler: it's how he approaches everything), extolls the 'mundane' aspects of IA, and expresses skepticism about the idea that architects' work might benefit from separating out the instructional and diagrammatic from the emotional and experiential." - (Dan Klyn - Wildly Appropriate)

Posted by PJB on April 22, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture - Interviews | Permalink

Move beyond function towards connection

"Most successful products create a sense of connectedness between the consumer and the designer and that this connection occurs when designers balance the pull towards the rational, functional, and expedient with the natural and emotional." - (David Malouf - Johnny Holland)

Posted by PJB on April 21, 2009 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

Website management: You can't automate everything

"The school of content management brought us such developments as portals, customization, personalization, and distributed publishing. These management-free, technology-driven solutions have led to public websites and intranets teeming with poor quality, badly organized, out-of-date content." - (Gerry McGovern)

Posted by PJB on April 20, 2009 | Classification: Content management | Permalink

Studying Social Tagging and Folksonomy: A Review and Framework

"This paper reviews research into social tagging and folksonomy (as reflected in about 180 sources published through December 2007). Methods of researching the contribution of social tagging and folksonomy are described, and outstanding research questions are presented. This is a new area of research, where theoretical perspectives and relevant research methods are only now being defined. This paper provides a framework for the study of folksonomy, tagging and social tagging systems. Three broad approaches are identified, focusing first, on the folksonomy itself (and the role of tags in indexing and retrieval); secondly, on tagging (and the behaviour of users); and thirdly, on the nature of social tagging systems (as socio-technical framework)." - (dList) - courtesy of jjursa

Posted by PJB on April 20, 2009 | Classification: Metadata | Permalink

Designing Service Design Principles

"Principles appear at different stages of a project and can be used in a variety of different ways. Being able to develop useful principles is, in my opinion, a core skill for all service designers." - (Choosenick!)

Posted by PJB on April 17, 2009 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

People don't want to search

"The premise is that people don't want to search. Instead, people want to get their tasks done and get straight to their answers. So how to we do this? We move from a web of pages to a web of objects. People, places, businesses, restaurants are all objects that have attributes such as noisy or expensive (in the case of restaurants.) Intents of searchers are satisfied by presenting objects and attributes. It's not exactly the semantic web but about finding implicit relations through web usage." - (Ricardo Baeza-Yates - The Next Web)

Posted by PJB on April 17, 2009 | Classification: Search | Permalink

IA Task Failures Remain Costly

"Task success is up substantially compared with usability statistics from 2004. Bad information architecture causes most of the remaining user failures." - (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on April 16, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture - Usability | Permalink

Seeing Tomorrows Services: A Panel on Service Design

"Whether it's healthcare, energy, tech, or even governmental, services are the way people experience, consume, and pay the output of most organizations. This diverse panel of experts will divulge the basics of new approaches to managing and improving services, plus share ideas that you can take home and make immediately applicable." - (Slideshare)

Posted by PJB on April 15, 2009 | Classification: Service design | Permalink

IA Summit 09 (Day 2 Podcasts)

"These sessions were recorded on the second day of the conference." - (Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on April 15, 2009 | Classification: Events - Information architecture - Podcasts | Permalink

The Stranger Side of CHI 2009

"At the Computer-Human Interaction 2009 conference last week, researchers showcased many new and innovative ways to interact with machines, from smarter Web browsers to new interactive tables. But the event is also an opportunity to demo more far-out ideas for computer interaction. Here are five of the more unusual projects on show at the event." - (Technology Review)

Posted by PJB on April 14, 2009 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

Interview with Richard Saul Wurman (Part 3)

"In the first part of this segment, RSW expands on the Kahnian design principle of 'dumbness', refuses to be included in or associated with anything called deliverables, talks about his favorite Kahn buildings, and the spiritualism in Kahn's charcoal drawings. (...) In the second part of this segment, I ask RSW about what architects might have that in their process or training or approach that allows them to do a better job with clients in the early schematic phase of a project." - (Dan Klyn - Wildly Appropriate)

Posted by PJB on April 14, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture - Interviews | Permalink

CHIstory

"If I have seen farther, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants...and then I looked down at those giants and saw the silly videos they made back in the day. CHI Video Showcase 2009."

Posted by PJB on April 14, 2009 | Classification: Classics - HCI | Permalink

Toward Content Quality

"How do we know whether content is any good? This simple question does not have a simple answer. Yet, I think having a good answer would help us show our employers and clients why their content needs to improve and how their content compares to the competition's. As a start toward an answer to this question, I offer a set of content quality checklists for seven different lenses through which we can view content. I see these checklists as the groundwork for content heuristics, which would enable us to do heuristic evaluations and competitive analyses efficiently. With good content heuristics, we could make a case for better content without painstakingly doing an analysis of all of the content up front. Imagine, making a case for better content quality in a few hours instead of a few weeks." - (Colleen Jones - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on April 14, 2009 | Classification: Content strategy | Permalink

Differentiating Your Design: A Visual Approach to Competitive Reviews

"A common activity at the outset of many design projects is a competitive review. As a designer, when you encounter a design problem, it's a natural instinct to try to understand what others are doing to solve the same or similar problems. However, like other design-related activities, if you start a competitive review without a clear purpose and strategy for the activity, doing the review may not be productive. One risk is that you may find you've wasted your time reviewing and auditing other sites, because you end up with findings that don’t help you design your own solution. Another risk is that the design and interactions of competitor offerings might influence your solution too heavily, whether you intend them to or not. Once you've seen how others have solved a particular problem, their solutions may subconsciously affect your own thinking." - (Michael Hawley - UXmatters)

Posted by PJB on April 14, 2009 | Classification: Visual design | Permalink

IA Summit 09 (Day 1 Podcasts)

"These sessions were recorded on the first day of the conference." - (Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on April 09, 2009 | Classification: Events - Information architecture - Podcasts | Permalink

The Study of Visual Aesthetics in Human-Computer Interaction

"This seminar intended to gather a group of about 25-30 participants who will exchange ideas, views, and case study results that address the seminar's themes. We aimed at discussing methodologies and measures in the study of visual aesthetics in HCI, to explore design antecedents of aesthetic interactive systems, as well as consequences of aesthetic design or aesthetic experience in HCI. We anticipated that the outcome of the seminar will contribute to clarifying the concept, provide an overview of existing practical resources such as measurement scales, solidify the body of knowledge in this area, and generally spark interest in aesthetics in the HCI community." - (Seminar)

Posted by PJB on April 08, 2009 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

The Best Computer Interfaces: Past, Present, and Future

"Computer scientists from around the world will gather in Boston this week at Computer-Human Interaction 2009 to discuss the latest developments in computer interfaces. To coincide with the event, we present a roundup of the coolest computer interfaces past, present, and future." - (Duncan Graham-Rowe - Technology Review)

Posted by PJB on April 08, 2009 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

Future Practice Interview: Kristina Halvorson

"I'd say that one of the biggest, hairiest questions I'm getting asked (ed. on content strategy) is how to plan for and govern user-generated content." - (Louis Rosenfeld - Rosenfeld Media)

Posted by PJB on April 08, 2009 | Classification: Content management - Content strategy - Information architecture | Permalink

Understanding, scoping and defining user experience: A survey approach

"Despite the growing interest in user experience (UX), it has been hard to gain a common agreement on the nature and scope of UX. In this paper, we report a survey that gathered the views on UX of 275 researchers and practitioners from academia and industry. Most respondents agree that UX is dynamic, context-dependent, and subjective. With respect to the more controversial issues, the authors propose to delineate UX as something individual (instead of social) that emerges from interacting with a product, system, service or an object. The draft ISO definition on UX seems to be in line with the survey findings, although the issues of experiencing anticipated use and the object of UX will require further explication. The outcome of this survey lays ground for understanding, scoping, and defining the concept of user experience." - (Effie Lai-Chong Law, Virpi Roto, Marc Hassenzahl, Arnold P.O.S. Vermeeren, and Joke Kort - ACM CHI 2009 Proceedings)

Posted by PJB on April 07, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink

Interview with Peter Morville at IA Summit 09

"I think we are at another of these interesting moments, (...) we are integrating with the last wave. We are still waiting to see what is going to come next. My prediction is that as we start to dig out of this recession or depression what have you, we will have a new wave of innovation with some really exciting things so perhaps IA Summit will have a whole new set of threats and opportunities to grapple with, but I don’t know what those are just yet." - (Think out loud)

Posted by PJB on April 07, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture - Interviews | Permalink

First 2 Words: A Signal for the Scanning Eye

"Testing how well people understand a link's first 11 characters shows whether sites write for users, who typically scan rather than read lists of items." - (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted by PJB on April 06, 2009 | Classification: TechCom - Usability | Permalink

IA Summit 09 - Keynote

"Michael Wesch opened the IA Summit this year with an inspired keynote that provides a fresh and ambitious direction for all designers. He points out that our 'audiences' aren't audiences at all, but rather creators, and our job is not to lecture but to enable. With this new approach comes not only design challenges but the joy of reconnecting people to each other, which he illustrated with a series of extraordinary video clips." - (Jeff Parks - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on April 06, 2009 | Classification: Design research - Events - Information architecture | Permalink

IA Summit 09 - Plenary

"Jesse James Garrett is a noted figure in the IA community, not only for his ground breaking book Elements of User Experience, but for the essay that galvanized the community in 2002, IA Recon. In this IA Summit Closing Plenary, given without slides while wandering amidst the audience, Jesse examines what he has learned at the conference, he thoughts on the nature of the discipline and the practitioner, and gives bold, perhaps even shocking advice for the future direction of information architecture." - (Jeff Parks - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted by PJB on April 06, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture - User experience | Permalink

Interview with Richard Saul Wurman (Part 2)

"[Kahn] said to me, after a pause, he said "Ricky," (...) because that's what he called me, he said "Ricky, even when I get a haircut I'm an Architect"; he said "(...) do whatever interests you." He gave me permission. And that was like a bag of sand off of my shoulders, and gave me permission to follow my interests." - (Dan Klyn - Wildly Appropriate)

Posted by PJB on April 05, 2009 | Classification: Interviews | Permalink

Where HCI came from

"Human-computer interaction (HCI) is an area of research and practice that emerged in the early 1980s, initially as a specialty area in computer science. HCI has expanded rapidly and steadily for three decades, attracting professionals from many other disciplines and incorporating diverse concepts and approaches. To a considerable extent, HCI now aggregates a collection of semi-distinct fields of research and practice in human-centered informatics. However, the continuing synthesis of disparate conceptions and approaches to science and practice in HCI has produced a dramatic example of how different epistemologies and paradigms can be reconciled and integrated." - (John M. Carroll)

Posted by PJB on April 05, 2009 | Classification: HCI | Permalink

Interview with Richard Saul Wurman (Part 1)

"Part one of my first interview with RSW. In this introductory segment, I asked him about the 1976 AIA Conference (I posted a PDF of the advance program from this milestone in the history of Information Architecture a few weeks ago), about the job-title 'information architect' and also about librarianship as it pertains (or not) to his concept of IA. Many more segments to follow!" - (Dan Klyn - Wildly Appropriate) courtesy of petermorville

Posted by PJB on April 03, 2009 | Classification: Information architecture - Interviews - Podcasts | Permalink

Scatter/Gather

"(...) a blog about the intersection of content strategy, pop culture and human behavior. Contributors are all practicing Content Strategists at the offices of Razorfish, an international digital design agency." - (About Content Strategy)

Posted by PJB on April 02, 2009 | Classification: TechCom - Weblogs | Permalink

Designing for Business as Unusual

Presentation at Interaction09 - "John Thackara shows the ways in which business as we know it are about to change for good, and then identifies how interaction designers can take these challenges on as design problems." - (John Thackara)

Posted by PJB on April 02, 2009 | Classification: Events - Interaction design | Permalink

Attention, Awareness, and Interaction Design 2009

"Here's a talk I gave at Interaction09 in February 2009 in Vancouver. It's mostly for interaction designers, but there’s some good quotes in here for these tough times, too. I hope you enjoy it." - (Dan Saffer - kickerstudio)

Posted by PJB on April 01, 2009 | Classification: Interaction design | Permalink

Why Designing Products and Services is a Team Sport

"Most of today's design products and services are so complex they require input across silos. This leads to scattered departments where efforts are stitched together by a product manager. What's worse, each department has different measures of success. Marketing works to increase leads and brand perception; product managers strive to be on time and on budget; engineers want to meet requirements; manufacturers focus on minimizing defects; designers aim for useful, usable, and desirable products." - (Peter Merholz - Harvard Business)

Posted by PJB on April 01, 2009 | Classification: User experience | Permalink