All posts from
April 2009

Navigating the blogosphere: Towards a genre-based typology of weblogs

Added on 30 April 2009 Peter Bogaards
“The personal weblog is a continuously evolving genre of online communication in which bloggers and readers create diverse social spaces for conversation and self–expression. This article addresses a conceptual gap in the literature, namely how to distinguish the personal weblog from other types of weblogs. The author develops a typological framework for classification of weblogs in three dimensions: content, directionality, and style, and uses the typological space to propose a working definition of the personal weblog and discuss it as a distinct sub–genre.” – (Stine Lomborg – FirstMonday 14.5)

Europe’s Fifth Information Architecture Summit: Beyond Structure

Added on 30 April 2009 Peter Bogaards
“EuroIA invites your participation to this premier European event on Information Architecture. Join us in Copenhagen, Denmark, September 25-26, 2009, for two incredible days of presentations, panels, and networking with information architects from across Europe and around the world. This year we will explore the theme of ‘Beyond Structure’. That’s because websites have moved to a new level. Any random page can be accessed from Google. Pages themselves may consist of information from many sources. And event the concept of a ‘page’ is changing thanks to new backend technologies. In other words, we’ve moved beyond the traditional sitemap and into a new and exciting era of web development.”

Introducing the off-stage experience

Added on 29 April 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Imagine having a friendly chat while waiting in line at the local bakery store or sitting next to someone with a too loud iPod in the public transport. In both situation your service experience is influenced even though you don’t have any direct interaction with the company providing the service. Companies and Service designers alike are missing out on a opportunity to improve the service experience while it’s unfolding right before their eyes.” – (Marc Fonteijn – 31Volts)

The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras

Added on 29 April 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Today’s social experience is disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they visit. A simple set of technologies that enable a portable identity will soon empower consumers to bring their identities with them — transforming marketing, eCommerce, CRM, and advertising. IDs are just the beginning of this transformation, in which the Web will evolve step by step from separate social sites into a shared social experience. Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and CRM systems; eventually this will result in empowered communities defining the next generation of products.” – (Jeremiah Owyang)

Designing for Faceted Search

Added on 28 April 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Faceted search lets users refine or navigate a collection of information by using a number of discrete attributes – the so-called facets. A facet represents a specific perspective on content that is typically clearly bounded and mutually exclusive. The values within a facet can be a flat list that allows only one choice (e.g. a list of possible shoe sizes) or a hierarchical list that allow you to drill-down through multiple levels (e.g. product types, Computers > Laptops). The combination of all facets and values are often called a faceted taxonomy. These faceted values can be added directly to content as metadata or extracted automatically using text mining software.” – (Stephanie Lemieux – User Interface Engineering)

How to integrate interaction, visual and industrial design

Added on 23 April 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Interaction design, visual design, and industrial design are distinct disciplines for good reason: Each excels in different ways. Interaction designers must be good at imagining structure and flow, which requires strong analytical skills and a high degree of rigor, especially for complex systems. Visual designers and industrial designers are masters of visual and physical usability but are also masters of emotion: They know how to evoke caution, attract attention, and instill desire for a product at first glance. Users have just one experience of a product, though. All three aspects of the design must work in concert, or the product will fail to satisfy. Integration of the three disciplines is a central theme of Kim’s new book, Designing for the Digital Age.” – (Kim Goodwin – Cooper Journal)

Designing for Big Data

Added on 23 April 2009 Peter Bogaards
“This is a 20-minute talk I gave at the Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco a couple weeks ago. In it, I describe two trends: how we’re shifting as a culture from consumers to participants, and how technology has enabled massive amounts of data to be recorded, stored, and analyzed. Putting those things together has resulted in some fascinating innovations that echo data visualization work that’s been happening for centuries.” – (Jeffrey Veen)

Usability testing ≠ a good user experience

Added on 22 April 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Strategic user experience planning yields a unified and consistent user experience. And strategic design leads to great user experiences, ones that are characterized by delight, loyalty and stickiness. So how do you attain these? By designing the user experience for now, for next year… and for the year after that. And by designing the entire experience, not just your web site’s user interface, or your email campaign’s HTML.” – (Paul Sherman – Apogee)

Studying Social Tagging and Folksonomy: A Review and Framework

Added on 20 April 2009 Peter Bogaards
“This paper reviews research into social tagging and folksonomy (as reflected in about 180 sources published through December 2007). Methods of researching the contribution of social tagging and folksonomy are described, and outstanding research questions are presented. This is a new area of research, where theoretical perspectives and relevant research methods are only now being defined. This paper provides a framework for the study of folksonomy, tagging and social tagging systems. Three broad approaches are identified, focusing first, on the folksonomy itself (and the role of tags in indexing and retrieval); secondly, on tagging (and the behaviour of users); and thirdly, on the nature of social tagging systems (as socio-technical framework).” – (dList) – courtesy of jjursa