All posts from
September 2006

A Discussion with Danah Boyd

Added on 28 September 2006 Peter Bogaards
“(…) Boyd is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Information, explores how young people negotiate the presentation of self in online mediated contexts. Her research focuses on how this young audience engages with ‘digital publics’ – connected social spaces such as MySpace, LiveJournal, Xanga and YouTube.” (Ibiblio’s Speaker Series) – courtesy of boingboing

PICNIC ’06 Cross Media Week Weblog

Added on 27 September 2006 Peter Bogaards
“The Cross Media Week Foundation is mandated to bring top creative professionals from around the world together in Amsterdam to create new partnerships and opportunities, as well as to establish international networks. The Foundation supports the City of Amsterdam’s TopStad programme which aims to establish Amsterdam as one of Europe’s most creative cities. PICNIC ’06 Cross Media Week is the Foundation’s first major initiative.” (PICNIC ’06)

Roadmap for Accessible Rich Internet Applications

Added on 26 September 2006 Peter Bogaards
“The Roadmap for Accessible Rich Internet Applications addresses the accessibility of dynamic Web content for people with disabilities. The roadmap outlines the technologies to map controls, AJAX live regions, and events to accessibility APIs, including custom controls used for Rich Internet Applications. The roadmap also outlines new navigation techniques to mark common Web structures as menus, primary content, secondary content, banner information and other types of Web structures. These new technologies can be used to improve the accessibility and usability of Web resources by people with disabilities, without extensive modification to existing libraries of Web resources.” (W3C WAI-ARIA)

Strategy06: A UX Professional’s Experience of the Conference

Added on 26 September 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Strategy06, the second annual IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) Institute of Design Strategy Conference, took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (MCA), Illinois, on May 17 and 18, 2006. The organizers characterized this conference as ‘an international executive forum addressing how businesses can use design to explore emerging opportunities, solve complex problems, and achieve lasting strategic advantage’.” (Pabini Gabriel-Petit – UXmatters)

Applied Empathy: A Design Framework for Meeting Human Needs and Desires

Added on 26 September 2006 Peter Bogaards
“The design community keeps making a lot of noise about designing for people/users/customers. However, while this notion is well-intentioned and even conceptually correct, I find much of it boils down to empty rhetoric. What exactly are we doing? More user research? More usability testing? Certainly these are valid approaches to finding out about people’s needs, but they’re only a small part of an optimal solution. Are we using hollow tasks and tools like personas and scenarios? Those approaches typically take design farther away from the people for whom we are designing products rather than closer. How about focusing on usability and the user experience? That gets at only part of the issue and tends to come from the perspective of the product—as opposed to the more universal needs and desires of actual people” (Dirk Knemeyer – UXmatters)

Masters of Design: Is design a craft, a tool, or an obsession?

Added on 25 September 2006 Peter Bogaards
“These days, it’s a bit of all three. But it’s also starting to look a lot like a business fad: Declare you’re a design-centric organization and – voila! – you’re the next Apple. We know it isn’t that simple. So here’s our annual roundup of the creative businesspeople dialing in to the power of design. The final cut: the CEO who rescued Puma, the architect who imagined Google ‘s stunning new offices, the graphic artist behind some of America’s best-known brands, and the product designer who predicts our appetites – and satisfies them. You’ll also meet five talents on the fast track to bigger things, hear sage advice on what design can (and can’t) do for your bottom line, and get an eyeful of some amazing examples of the craft. Tool. Obsession. You get the idea.” (Fast Company) – courtesy of puttingpeoplefirst

Understanding Your Content

Added on 24 September 2006 Peter Bogaards
“What are content audits and content maps, and why should they matter to companies who publish information on the Web? Chiara Fox, a senior information architect for Adaptive Path, defines the art of Content Analysis in the scope of web application design and migration. She identifies several milestones and key deliverables that most companies can use on their next (re)design project.” (IT Conversations)

engageID with Mark Vanderbeeken

Added on 22 September 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Experience design is based on the idea of giving people a role in the design of the products and services that matter to them. Both in the US and in Europe, it is believed that this approach will lead to better products and services and therefore to better economic returns. However, in Europe there is perhaps a more explicit social or ethical drive: by giving people this co-creative role we can establish to a more socially inclusive society. A lot of innovation in Europe comes from public institutions, from the European Commission on down. (…) Design and participatory co-creation for social renewal is a complex challenge, but one that fits very well with the European way of doing things.” (Enric Gili Fort – engageID) – great interview Mark!

Polar Bear Book (3rd ed.): Survey results

Added on 21 September 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld are working on a third edition of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, the ‘polar bear book’. In order to make sure they include the best ideas and examples, they are conducting a series of community surveys. Five surveys have been completed. Many thanks to those of you who took the time to share your thoughts and insights.” (Information Architecture Institute)

Real Wireframes Get Real Results

Added on 20 September 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Wireframes are in fact the first design iteration, and this overlap of visual design can be uncomfortable for teams. However, denial is not the way to fix this issue. Good collaborative relationships should make this overlap an opportunity to reduce work, not fight over ownership. Concern that wireframe might be mistaken for a visual design, or worse, be criticized for lacking design, may be holding the entire project back. It is much easier to communicate within the project team than the outside audience. Consider ways to make the transition as smooth as possible, for example having the wireframe be designed to import into the designer tool without retyping all the text.” (Stephen Turbek – Boxes and Arrows)

Multilingual website: A different approach

Added on 19 September 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Before you can launch a successful multilingual website, certain issues need to be addressed, including how the webserver chooses what language to present to the specific end user and how to handle pages that need be launched but have not yet been (fully) translated. In the year 1517 Martin Luther needed no less than ninety five statements to cause a reformation. I will do my best to address all of the issues mentioned before in the next eight statements.” (Cornelis Kolbach – cornae.org)

Blogs and Community: Launching a new paradigm for online community?

Added on 18 September 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Online community has been an important part of the Internet, mainly forming around email lists, bulletin boards and forums. In recent years, the ascendancy of blogs has introduced a new platform for communities. This article looks at some of the emerging patterns of blog based communities and raises some questions for their strategic application.” (Nancy White – The Knowledge Tree) – courtesy of mathemagenic

Classifying Web Search Results

Added on 18 September 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Search is a subject that I’ve always been interested in. Especially internal or enterprise search, within a site. Not web search like Google or Yahoo!. Sure there’s lots of search engine optimization (SEO) or marketing (SEM) tricks you can do to improve your ranking in the web search engines. But that’s never really held any fascination for me.” (Chiara Fox – Adaptive Path)

On the Meta-Usability of User Interface Standards

Added on 17 September 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Interface standards provide context-specific guidance for implementing a system based on the task goals and functions within it. A solid standard provides guidance at two levels. At the level of look and feel, it ensures consistency throughout the application or site. To be meaningful in usability terms, the standard also must provide guidance to support a consistent experience at the functional level.” (Kath Straub – uiGarden.net)