Right-Justified Navigation Menus Impede Scannability
“Users scan lists by moving their eyes rapidly down the left edge. Menu items that are right-aligned make scanning more difficult.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)
All posts from
April 2008
Interview with Alex Wright
“Alex Wright, New York Times information architect and author of the book Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages, takes questions from Namahn on what we can learn from the Web’s precursors about globally accessible information repositories, taxonomies, hierarchies and the evolving dance between oral and literate cultures.” (Joannes Vandermeulen – Namahn Interviews)
What is Design?
“Since the word ‘design’ means many things to many people, let’s define design as seen from a usability consultant’s perspective.” (Frank Spiller – Demystifying Usability)
Recycle These Pixels: Sustainability and the User Experience
“Whether we’re designing the user experience for a digital product or a physical one, as UX professionals, we are uniquely positioned to influence the behavior of other people, for good or ill. Our employers or clients charge us with responsibility for not only defining a design problem from multiple perspectives, but also finding solutions that are better than the ones that came before.” (Jonathan Follett – UXmatters)
So You Want to Be a UX Manager—Seriously?
“This is my first column on the management of UX. In my column, I’ll articulate what I’ve learned from my experience as a manager, senior manager, and director and three years in intensive senior leadership development programs. Have you ever known a manager you felt shouldn’t manage people? Maybe you’ve worked for one. Most of us have at one point or another. On the other hand, most of us have also had great managers. What sets great managers apart from bad ones? That’s one of the questions I’ll explore in this article.” (Jim Nieters – UXmatters)
Data Visualisation Blogs You Might Not Know About
“I tried to add a comment there with some blogs I subscribe to (some already mentioned, some not) but I suspect the spam filter thought I was nuts to try posting 20 links. So here are a few other blogs/feeds you might like, if you like Flowing Data (…)” (Random Etc.)
Information Design = Complexity + Interdisciplinarity + Experiment
“Information design is the transfer of complex data to, for the most part, two-dimensional visual representations that aim at communicating, documenting and preserving knowledge. It deals with making entire sets of facts and their interrelations comprehensible, with the objective of creating transparency and eliminating uncertainty.” (Gerlinde Schuller – AIGA)
25 years in usability
“Since I started in 1983, the usability field has grown by 5,000%. It’s a wonderful job — and still a promising career choice for new people.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)
inspireUX
“(…) a blog that posts quotes relating to user experience (UX). Every quote on inspireUX focuses on the impact that user experience has on people, business, or the world.” (Catriona Cornett – About inspireUX)
TagPipe: IA Summit 2008 
This TagPipe covers all found and uploaded user-generated content tagged as ‘IASummit2008‘ on Google BlogSearch (blogposts), Flickr (pictures), Technorati (links), Del.icio.us (pages) and SlideShare (presentations). Just download the OPML-file and import the file into your RSS Reader. Enjoy!
TagPipe: CHI 2008
This TagPipe covers all found and uploaded user-generated content tagged as ‘CHI2008‘ on Google BlogSearch (blogposts), Flickr (pictures), Technorati (links), Del.icio.us (pages) and SlideShare (presentations). Just download the OPML-file and import the file into your RSS Reader. Enjoy!
Swimlanes for the Win!
“Swimlanes are a great tool for helping clients understand users, business needs and technology all at once. They help bridge the differences between multiple stakeholders by showing all the ‘moving parts’ of an experience in one document.” (Gene Smith – nForm)
Linkosophy
“Giving this talk at the IA Summit was a blast; I’m so grateful for the positive response, and the patience with these still-forming ideas. I’m looking forward to seeing where the conversation goes from here! NOTE: You need to view this in ‘Full Screen’ mode, which you can only do from the SlideShare page itself. Otherwise, the narrative text isn’t readable.” (Andrew Hinton – inkblurt)
IA Summit 2008 Tagged Pix at Flickr
A growing number of pictures from the Information Architecture Summit 2008 (April 10-14, 2008 – Miami Florida)
IA Summit 2008 Tagged Slides at SlideShare
A growing number of presentations from the Information Architecture Summit 2008 (April 10-14, 2008 – Miami Florida)
The Interaction Museum
“(…) an on-line resource aimed at HCI practitioners, teachers and researchers that will collect a wide variety of interaction techniques and systems and make them available to the HCI community.” (About The iMuseum)
The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe
“In this companion to last year’s EMC-sponsored white paper, IDC again calibrates the size (bigger than first thought) and the growth (faster than expected) of the digital universe through 2011. IDC also explores new dimensions of the digital universe (e.g., the impact of specific industries on the digital universe; your digital shadow) and discusses the implications for individuals, organizations, and society. The tools are in place – from Web 2.0 technologies and terabyte drives to unstructured data search software and the Semantic Web – to tame the digital universe and turn information growth into economic growth.” (EMC)
The Super Bowl and Information Design?
“The truth is, really effective design should leave people wondering what the big deal is. Here’s the irony, clients expect things that cost lots of money and take lots of time to seem like they did. To look complex or shiny. But the really great designs, the ones that break through and solve the real problems, will often be the most underwhelming. If there are lots of fancy bells and whistles and animations, be very concerned. That’s probably novelty. Not good design. Look at the iPod, basic box, right? However, the simplest designs are often the most difficult to design. How many sites get the basic things wrong?” (Stephen P. Anderson – poetpainter)
Inspiration From The Edge
IA Summit presentation by Stephen Anderson – “I’ve often believed that the best designers don’t get their ideas and inspiration from the place they work. As a designer that works in the social web space, I do look at a large number of new sites that come through the pipeline for inspiration. However, I also am a big advocate of experimenting with things that are seemingly unrelated and trying to connect those experiences to my work on the web.” (kev/null)
Bill Buxton’s Bad Ass CHI 2008 Keynote
“In 1997 you yelled out that you would never come to CHI again because they just didn’t get it. What changed your mind to come back? Ultimately I can’t figure out a better community to work on these problems. It surprised people that I went to IBM, and that I came back here I guess. I had some time to think. I’m glad I came back. I was younger and wilder then and not so calm and cool and collected. I also stopped blaming you and CHI for not getting what I need. Instead, it’s my fault. I can say what can I do to get fulfilled.” (Bolt|Peters User Experience)
