All posts from
August 2004

SVG-based User Interface Framework

Added on 20 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The purpose of the SPARK project is to create a flexible, interoperable SVG-based user interface framework. Using well established and standardized languages including SVG, XML, Java and IDL, we went about creating a framework that could easily be used by others to rapidly develop SVG based applications or prototypes.” (SVG Open 2003)

Profits First, Users Second

Added on 19 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The purpose of this article is to challenge a core belief in usability. An argument is made that profits are more important than users since organizations cannot survive without profits. Although the business value is high, usability is only one mechanism for driving profits and success.” (John S. Rhodes – Oristus)

Faceted Classification of Information

Added on 18 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Given the significant difficulties in categorizing books, papers, and articles using traditional library classification techniques, it would seem next to impossible for humans to classify the small chunks of rapidly changing information that characterize information-intensive business environments. But it’s not. Library and information science professionals have already provided the foundations of an alternative to traditional classification techniques: faceted classification.” (The Knowledge Management Connection) – courtesy of keith instone

Representing Content and Data in Wireframes

Added on 17 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Sample data can make or break a wireframe, whose purpose is typically to illustrate architecture and interaction. Poorly selected sample data can end up clouding the wireframe or distracting stakeholders from its purpose. By codifying the types of sample content they employ in their deliverables, information architects can create a coherent narrative to illustrate a website’s functionality.” (Dan Brown – Boxes and Arrows)

Visions of Xanadu: Paul Otlet (1868-1944) and Hypertext

Added on 15 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The paper discusses Otlet’s concept of the Office of Documentation and, as examples of an approach to actual hypertext systems, several special Offices of Documentation set up in the International Office of Bibliography. In his Traité de Documentation of 1934, one of the first systematic treatises on what today we would call information science, Otlet speculated imaginatively about online communications, text-voice conversion and what is needed in computer work stations, though of course he does not use this terminology.” (W. Boyd Rayward – The Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

The Case of Paul Otlet, Pioneer of Information Science, Internationalist, Visionary: Reflections On Biography

Added on 15 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The author takes as his point of departure his studies of Paul Otlet, co-founder of the present International Federation for Information and Documentation (FID) and The Union of International Associations, developer of the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), theorist of ‘Documentation’, and pioneer of information science. Drawing on these studies his purpose is to examine aspects of the art and scholarship of biography, of the processes of research and imagination that it involves, especially: recognising an appropriate subject and determining an approach to it, the problem of evidence and the frames of reference within which evidence is deployed, the personal involvement that develops between the subject and the biographer, and biography’s final goal of historical and personal understanding.” (W. Boyd Rayward – The Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Information Design Models and Processes: Introduction to a special issue

Added on 13 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“A crucial aspect of most (if not all) Web systems is the way in which information is utilised and managed. Recent work on areas as diverse as topic maps, information architectures, adaptation of the Unified Modeling Language, agile development methods such as extreme programming, and modelling for the semantic Web, have all contributed to an emerging understanding of how to design the information structures that underpin the Web (and of course much of this work has in turn been informed by research in areas like hypertext and HCI).” (David Lowe – Journal of Digital Information 5.2)

8 Quick Ways to Fix Your Search Engine

Added on 13 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Our finding (…) is that almost every site’s search engine could use improvement. We also found that most organizations’ Web teams couldn’t really affect the quality of their search results – they were stuck tweaking search technologies that had already been purchased and installed. Often, the most dramatic change they could make was in the design of the search and results interfaces. In some cases, as the old saying goes, this was like putting lipstick on a pig. But cleaning things up does help users find answers to their queries.” (Jeffrey Veen – Adaptive Path)