All posts from
December 2003

Creating patient-centered healthcare through ambient experience design

Added on 12 December 2003 Peter Bogaards
“Thanks to greater education and access to information, the Internet, and the growing awareness about well-being related issues, they know more and care more about their health than any generation before. So when they seek professional assistance and don’t find what they want, or feel it doesn’t meet their needs, they simply go elsewhere.” (Stefano Marzano – Philips Design) – courtesy of uxblog

Architecture of the World Wide Web, First edition

Added on 11 December 2003 Peter Bogaards
“The World Wide Web is a network-spanning information space of resources interconnected by links. This information space is the basis of, and is shared by, a number of information systems. Within each of these systems, agents (people and software) retrieve, create, display, analyze, and reason about resources. Web architecture includes the definition of the information space in terms of identification and representation of its contents, and of the protocols that support the interaction of agents in an information system making use of the space. Web architecture is influenced by social requirements and software engineering principles, leading to design choices that constrain the behavior of systems using the Web in order to achieve desired properties of the shared information space: efficiency, scalability, and the potential for indefinite growth across languages, cultures, and media. This document reflects the three bases of Web architecture: identification, interaction, and representation.” (W3C)

Buckets: Smart objects for digital libraries

Added on 11 December 2003 Peter Bogaards
“Buckets are an aggregative, intelligent construct for publishing in DLs allow the decoupling of information content from information storage and retrieval. Buckets exist within the Smart Objects and Dumb Archives model for DLs in that we ‘push down’ many of the functionalities and responsibilities traditionally associated with archives (making the archives ‘dumber’) into the buckets (making them ‘smarter’). Some of the responsibilities imbued to buckets are the enforcement of their terms and conditions, and maintenance and display of their contents.” (Michael L. Nelson) – courtesy of usablehelp

Usability and open-source software development

Added on 10 December 2003 Peter Bogaards
“Open-source is becoming an increasingly popular software development method. This paper reports a usability study of the open-source Greenstone Digital Library collection-building software. The problems highlighted by the study are analysed to identify their likely source within the social context of Greenstone’s development environment. We discuss how characteristics of open-source software development influence the usability of resulting software products. ” (David M. Nichols, Kirsten Thomson and Stuart A. Yeates – Department of Computer Science, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand)