All posts from
November 2004

Topic Maps: The Inventor’s Perspective on Subject-based Access

Added on 11 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Starting in 1992, Michel Biezunski and Steven R. Newcomb created, named, standardized and pioneered the application of the Topic Maps paradigm. Biezunski and Newcomb serve as co-editors of the ISO 13250 Topic Maps standard. They also co-founded TopicMaps.Org, where they co-edited the XML syntax (the ‘XTM Specification’) that was added to the 2002 version of the standard.” (Luminary Lectures – Library of Congress) – courtesy of peter van dijck

Oops! They Forgot the Usability: Elections as a Case Study PDF Logo

Added on 9 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“An election is a perfect usability case study. It bring together large numbers of diverse voters, an unfamiliar interface and an outcome that shapes the future of our society. With such a seeming simple task, usability was not on the curriculum for elections officials. However, despite the focus on technology and security, it was poor information design and usability in the 2000 Palm Beach ballot that taught us all new words like ‘chad’ (hanging or pregnant).” (Whitney Quesenbery)

Design to Research: It Takes a Team, and Atoms are Better Than Bits

Added on 8 November 2004 Peter Bogaards

Presentation – “This show-and-tell session describes the results of combining three points of view: (1) It is useful to manage design projects as a collaborative work of “translating research into design. (2) It is useful to manage the design process not as a series of activities, but as a chain of milestone artifacts, each of which requires collaboration by the whole team to complete. (3) Collaboration is better, and therefore translation better accomplished, when the milestone documents are created in large-scale physical form using walls, paper, ink, tacks and glue, rather than digital form.” (Marc Rettig – about, with and for) – courtesy of louise ferguson

Personas: Empathetic Focus

Added on 8 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Do Personas have to be accurate? Do they require a large body of research? No, I conclude. The Personas must indeed reflect the target group for the design team, but that is about all. A Persona allows designers to bring their own life-long experience to bear on the problem, and because each Persona is a realistic individual person, the designers can focus upon features, behaviors, and expectations appropriate for this individual, allowing the designer to screen off from consideration all those other wonderful ideas they may have.” (Donald Norman) – courtesy of elearningpost

Make it simple

Added on 1 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The Next Big Thing is not a thing at all: it is simplicity. – In the 90s they [IT companies] operated under the principle, ‘build it and they will come’ – even if it was too complex and would never be implemented, they would build it! That has changed.” (Andreas Kluth – The Economist) – courtesy of ui designer