What the Hell is the Fibonacci Series?
“In the 12th century, Leonardo Fibonacci discovered a simple numerical series that is the foundation for an incredible mathematical relationship behind phi.” (Textism) – courtesy of antenna
All posts from
December 2004
The History of Memory Techniques Leading to Mind Maps
“Mind Maps are an incredibly powerful memory tool that have been compared to having a ‘Swiss army knife for the brain’. I am going to take you on a voyage of discovery that will take you, step by step, through the experiences, frustrations and explorations of one brain who found memory becoming his life’s passion and work.” (Tony Buzan – Map it!) – courtesy of xblog
Pulling sense out of today’s informational chaos
“The informational overload currently facing Western society is changing the way we understand the world as well as rendering obsolete our current ways of managing information and creating knowledge. With these changes in mind, I will examine the blogging service LiveJournal as a new and more applicable way of managing information and creating knowledge in today’s society.” (Kate Raynes–Goldie – First Monday December 2004)
InterMedia: Designing design
Interface and interaction: Social software – Thursday, 9 December 2004 (Seminar Series) – courtesy of heyblog
The Future of Digital Product Design 
Dirks presentation from BayDUX on December 8, 2004 – “The term ‘user’ is outdated and dehumanizing, but it is understood and accepted by most organizations in our industry. (…) Every member of a UX Design team should be involved in different types and levels of research. It should be hard-coded into every function. Research is the most important part of good design.” (Dirk Knemeyer – Involution Studios LLC)
Information Design Watch Dec. 2004
“(…) an insightful monthly briefing on information design issues and ideas.” (Subscribe Dynamic Diagrams Newsletter)
Funding Enterprise Design Functions
“(…) I encourage placing enterprise design functions in the hands of a central, stand-alone team or business unit. Such a group has a broad perspective that counterbalances the localized goals of autonomous business units. But our new team will be a cost center; how do we pay for it?” (Louis Rosenfeld)
Three Important Benefits of Personas
“Personas are becoming a regular staple in many of the development teams we talk to. The method helps teams make a smooth translation between requirements and design, resulting with much cleaner designs. The benefits of preventing grounding, encouraging story telling, and enhancing role playing are rarely discussed, yet very present when you see the method in full force. It’s these benefits that guide our belief that personas will be a trusted method for many years to come.” (Jared Spool)
Fine Tuning Your Enterprise Search: How To Get The Best Results To Your Users
“It is increasingly recognised in the modern enterprise that getting the processes of searching for and retrieving information right in a business can deliver a vital competitive edge. In a knowledge based economy employees who can’t find vital internal information about their jobs are less productive, and with the advent of the web, potential customers who can’t get straight to the information they need are only a click away from a competitor’s site.” (Martin Belam – currybetdotnet)
Design Engaged: The final programme
“Design Engaged really was a smashing success, and I’d hate to think my encapsulation has failed to convey the intellectual contact high I experienced and in some ways am still riding. At least, maybe you can infer something useful from the shape these thoughts have assumed as they’ve filtered through my own vocabulary and prejudices.” (Adam Greenfield – v-2 Organization)
The Most Hated Advertising Techniques
“Studies of how people react to online advertisements have identified several design techniques that impact the user experience very negatively.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)
Ten ways to continuously improve your intranet
“The amount of work involved in designing a new intranet or redesigning an existing intranet is minor compared to the time needed to maintain an effective intranet over the longer term. In fact, it is common for the initial excitement of a new intranet to fade away as the reality of day-to-day maintenance and the challenges of improving the intranet become apparent.” (Donna Maurer and Tina Calabria – KM Column)
Why it makes sense to do both Expert Review and Usability Testing
“(…) doing both ER followed by UT optimizes the return on the usability investment. ER identifies fundamental or generic challenges within the user experience. Usability Testing highlights contextually specific gaps between the user model and the site model. Executed together, UT builds on the ER, providing complimentary feedback supporting focused and actionable design recommendations. Thus, the power of combined usability review techniques is significantly enhances the power of the review.” (Kathleen Straub – The UPA Voice) – courtesy of step two design
Technology not answer to every problem
“Understanding where technology is strong and where people are strong is an essential skill of the modern manager. Too often today, technology is doing things that would be better done by people.” (Gerry McGovern)
W3C Tenth Anniversary
“Hypertext ’91 Conference in San Antonio, Texas (USA). TBL paper on Web only accepted as poster session.” (Anniversary Conference)
On User Experience: Part I
“Here I’ll discuss my theories on user interaction, ergonomics, communication systems, and other fun stuff just cause I find it difficult to find good information on these topics.” (Mike Rundle)
Activity-Centered Design: An Ecological Approach to Designing Smart Tools and Usable Symbols
Review – “The book is clearly intended as the beginning of an on-going dialogue. It ends a bit like a Star Wars movie, with the promise of a sequel. There is clearly opportunity for additional work in data representation, as well as deeper study into each of the areas described in these six chapters. However, the book provides an excellent incentive for system designers to pursue activity-centered design, and a good initial set of tools to start them on their way.” (Carl Bedingfield – ACM Ubiquity)
Search Smarter, Not Harder
“Databases and search engines provide instantaneous access to endless information about anyone or anything, but the search results often include as many misses as hits. To generate more-relevant answers, organizations including the federal government are using topic maps to index their data.” (Wired) – courtesy of elearningpost