All posts from
May 2005

A History of the GUI

Added on 8 May 2005 Peter Bogaards
“Why did computers come to adopt the GUI as their primary mode of interaction, and how did the GUI evolve to be the way it is today? In what follows, I’ll be presenting a brief introduction to the history of the GUI. The topic, as you might expect, is broad, and very deep. This article will touch on the high points, while giving an overview of GUI development.” (Jeremy Reimer – Ars Technica) – courtesy of lucdesk

Web 2.0 for Designers

Added on 5 May 2005 Peter Bogaards
“Enter Web 2.0, a vision of the Web in which information is broken up into ‘microcontent’ units that can be distributed over dozens of domains. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we’re looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways.” (Richard MacManus & Joshua Porter – Digital Web Magazine)

Up Against Reality: Blogging and the cost of content

Added on 4 May 2005 Peter Bogaards
“Blogging offers the enticing prospect of a new journalism which is more participatory, more responsive and essentially open to anyone who has something to say. Yet, the process of creating blogs that are rich with quality journalism is also a commercial challenge; one that will re-shape the blogosphere as we move out of an initial period of amateur enthusiasm to create a more mature and sustainable medium.” (Trevor Cook) – courtesy of mark bernstein

Personal, anticipated information need

Added on 2 May 2005 Peter Bogaards
“The role of personal information collections is a well known feature of personal information management. The World Wide Web has introduced to such collections ideas such as filing Web pages or noting their existence in ‘Bookmarks’ and ‘Favourites’. It is suggested that personal information collections are created in anticipation of some future need for that information-personal, anticipated information need, which also underlies the design of formal information systems.” (Harry Bruce – Information Research 10.3)

Context matters

Added on 2 May 2005 Peter Bogaards
“Context plays a more fundamental role for Asians than for westerners. Asians have a more difficult time thinking of an object as completely separate from its background. Americans, on the other hand, focus on objects… things and categories more than relationships. Asians think in verbs where we think in nouns. And these differences can have profound implications.” (Kathy Sierra – Creating Passionate Users)