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Information design

Information design is the skill and practice of preparing information so people can use it with efficiency and effectiveness. (source: Wikipedia)

No knowledge but through information

Added on 6 September 2010 Peter Bogaards
“This article argues for the following: (1) Information is a thing to be handled and controlled; knowledge is not. (2) Knowledge can be managed only indirectly, through the management of information. (3) Personal knowledge management is, therefore, best regarded as a subset of personal information management — but a very useful subset addressing important issues that otherwise might be overlooked.” (William Jones ~ First Monday 15.9)

Why Great Ideas Can Fail

Added on 26 August 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Designers are proud of their ability to innovate, to think outside the box, to develop creative, powerful ideas for their clients. Sometimes these ideas win design prizes. However, the rate at which these ideas achieve commercial success is low. Many of the ideas die within the companies, never becoming a product. Among those that become products, a good number never reach commercial success.” (Donald A. Norman ~ Core77)

A theory of digital objects

Added on 8 June 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Digital objects are marked by a limited set of variable yet generic attributes such as editability, interactivity, openness and distributedness. As digital objects diffuse throughout the institutional fabric, these attributes and the information–based operations and procedures out of which they are sustained install themselves at the heart of social practice. The entities and processes that constitute the stuff of social practice are thereby rendered increasingly unstable and transfigurable, producing a context of experience in which the certainties of recurring and recognizable objects are on the wane. These claims are supported with reference to 1) the elusive identity of digital documents and the problems of authentication/preservation of records such an identity posits and 2) the operations of search engines and the effects digital search has on the content of the documents it retrieves.” (Jannis Kallinikos, Aleksi Aaltonen, and Attila Marton ~ First Monday Volume 15, Number 6)

Innovation at Google: The physics of data

Added on 31 May 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Today, we measure the size of the Web in exabytes and are uploading to it 15 times more data than we were 3 years ago. Technologies for sensing, storing, and sharing information are driving innovation in the tools available to help us understand our world in greater detail and accuracy than ever before. The implications of analyzing data on a massive scale transcend the tech industry, impacting the environmental sector, social justice issues, health and science research, and more. When coupled with astute technical insight, data is dynamic, accessible, and ultimately, creative.” (Marissa Mayer)

Don Norman at IIT Design Research Conference 2010

Added on 26 May 2010 Peter Bogaards
“There is a great gulf between the research community and practice. Moreover, there is often a great gull between what designers do and what industry needs. We believe we know how to do design, but this belief is based more on faith than on data, and this belief reinforces the gulf between the research community and practice. I find that the things we take most for granted are seldom examined or questioned. As a result, it is often our most fundamental beliefs that are apt to be wrong. In this talk, deliberately intended to be controversial, I examine some of our most cherished beliefs. Examples: design research helps create breakthrough products; complexity is bad and simplicity good; there is a natural chain from research to product.” (Videos of the IIT Institute of Design)

Tufte & Beautiful Evidence

Added on 25 May 2010 Peter Bogaards
“It was a breath of fresh air not to be surrounded by fellow ad folk. Maybe you were there, but I didn’t spot you or find your tweets. There were certainly some designers and UX people. I found the lecture a mixed bag – it was certainly a lecture rather than a presentation. During the introduction and the conclusion Tufte seemed rather uncomfortable whilst reading from notes. But the core of the content, around analytical design, was delivered away from the lectern and that was when Tufte and the lecture came to life. My take out from the evening was that information doesn’t care what it is; but how it is brought to life is critical for its interpretation and power as a communicator. ‘Whatever it takes’ was Tufte’s recurring theme about how to visualise data, avoiding being a slave to a particular methodology.” (MBA Blog)

Understand The Web

Added on 11 May 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Perceptions of the web are changing. People are advocating that we treat the web like another application framework. An open, cross-platform, multi-device rival to Flash and Cocoa and everything else. I’m all for making the web richer, and exposing new functionality, but I value what makes the web weblike much, much more.” (Ben Ward) courtesy of rogerjohansson

The Differences Between Good Designers and Great Designers

Added on 28 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Four years ago Cameron Moll gave a presentation on 9 skills that separate good designers and great designers. It’s a great talk and if you have the chance I suggest you at least check out the PDF slidedeck. I think the points he makes in the presentation are still relevant today and go a long way in educating us in how designers should be approaching their interactive designs.” (Drawar)

Designing For A Hierarchy Of Needs

Added on 26 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the idea of a design hierarchy of needs rests on the assumption that in order to be successful, a design must meet basic needs before it can satisfy higher-level needs. Before a design can ‘Wow’ us, it must work as intended. It must meet some minimal need or nothing else will really matter. Is this true? Or could a design that’s hard to use still succeed because it makes users more proficient or meets certain creative needs? Do you have to get all of the low-level needs exactly right before considering higher-level needs? To answer these questions, let’s start by looking at Maslow’s hierarchy.” (Steven Bradley – Smashing Magazine)

The Secret to Designing an Intuitive UX: Match the Mental Model to the Conceptual Model

Added on 15 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“A mental model represents a person’s thought process for how something works (i.e., a person’s understanding of the surrounding world). Mental models are based on incomplete facts, past experiences, and even intuitive perceptions. (…) A conceptual model is the actual model that is given to the user through the interface of the product.” (Susan Weinschenk – UX Magazine)

Defining the Designer of 2015

Added on 14 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“(…) it has been apparent that design studios and corporate departments have been looking for a new kind of designer, one that has traditional skills and yet a much broader perspective on problem solving. Because one of AIGA’s central responsibilities is to keep abreast of developments in the industry, we recognized that we needed to better understand the emerging role of designers and to enter into a deeper discussion with educators and design leaders on how to prepare designers for future changes.” (AIGA)

Design to Read

Added on 9 April 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Many people do not read easily. They may have a visual problem or dyslexia. They may have not have had opportunities to learn to read, or be reading in stressful conditions or poor light, or perhaps they are reading in a second language. Is it possible to provide one consistent set of guidelines or approaches that will allow designers to meet all the apparently diverse needs of these people? Or are there compromises to be made?” (About Design to Read)

Case study: Agile and UCD working together

Added on 31 March 2010 Peter Bogaards
“Large scale websites require groups of specialists to design and develop a product that will be a commercial success. To develop a completely new site requires several teams to collaborate and this can be difficult. Particularly as different teams may be working with different methods. This case study shows how the ComputerWeekly user experience team integrated with an agile development group. It’s important to note the methods we used do not guarantee getting the job done. People make or break any project. Finding and retaining good people is the most important ingredient for success.” (James Kelway – Boxes and Arrows)