“The growing field of Technical Communication once primarily focused on the communication of technical information through manuals and help systems. In recent years the field has expanded to include a variety of specialized disciplines that utilize technology to communicate — and has adopted much more sophisticated theories of communication to accomodate these changes. The Orange Journal of Technical Communication and Information Design is a graduate student journal that strives to foster critical thinking and discussion on a wide variety of topics and issues important to technical communicators.” (About Orange)

“Amsterdam was not only centrally located for many of the participants, but it’s also small, walkable, dense, vital, complex, efficient, stylish, and civilized. All of which make it kind of perfect for a bunch of designers to wander around for three days taking thousands of pictures. I’ve felt that Amsterdam tends to embody naturally whatever theme Doors of Perception’s focussed on: from ‘lightness’ to ‘play’ to ‘flow’.” (Andrew Otwell)

Resources for Communication Forum for discussion, planning, and collaboration: Experience the conference via audio or video and summaries or papers via html or pdf (May 30-31, 2003, Institute of Design, IIT Chicago, IL). – (About the Expert Forum)

“In the literature you find a lot of hints concering web design and usability of web pages. But how do you compare web pages? Which ones are good or bad? What does a homepage say about your organization? This paper is based on research over the last couple of years and uses linguistic strategies to analyze electronic business communications – including newsletters and web sites. Unfortunately, linguistics is usually not used very often for electronic communication theories, but the variety of theories and tools are a good starting point to find synergies between computer science, marketing and webdesign.” (Michael Beer – UI4ALL: 8th ERCIM Workshop)

“An ongoing list of links to Design Engaged presentations.” (Andrew Otwell)

Presentation from Design Engaged 2004 in Amsterdam – “Just as Portable Media Players are getting ready to flood the market, bit-based video streams seep into the liquid crystal displays of our connected mobile devices. Scattered findings from a born-again viewer playing auto-ethnographer.” (Fabio Sergio)

“An important conversation at an important moment: The nature of business is changing… The nature of design is changing too… Let’s try to assess the new role of a switched design experience.” (Larry Keeley – AIGA Gain Conference 2004)

“The web design community thankfully seems to be wrapping up the ‘design vs. usability’ argument. In case you missed it, the conclusion was: ‘Not either/or but both, and it depends.’ Design leaders have proved that web sites can be both usable and beautiful, but we lack a vocabulary to talk about this new standard. The question now is not ‘Which is most important?’, but ‘How do we deliver what’s most important?’ This article introduces the ‘Sphere of Design’, which is a simple conceptual model that illustrates the relationship and trade-offs between ‘looks’ and ‘works’.” (Ben Hunt – Scratchmedia)

“Our results about the connection between Design Look and perceived credibility suggests that creating Web sites with quality information alone is not enough to win credibility in users’ minds.” (Consumer WebWatch)

“There are two types of people involved in websites today: those who see content as an asset, and those who see it as a commodity. The latter better start looking for a new career.” (Gerry McGovern)

“Place for participants in the November 2004 Design Engaged workshop to put photos” (flickr beta) – courtesy of thomas vander wall

“The most common web design mistake is to design for the exception, and to ignore the obvious. That’s because designing for the obvious is boring, while designing for the exception is fun.” (Gerry McGovern)

“We subscribe to the view (…) that a satisfying experience of understanding does not result from invoking objectivity, the truth, or a compelling argument, to achieve agreement by the force of reason, nor from a process of information exchange, but from some other qualities of the biological interaction itself.” (Lloyd Fell and David Russell – Radical Constructivism)

“Here is a long chapter from Beautiful Evidence. Comments appreciated. The chapter will be up on the board for a few weeks. Thanks, E.T.” (Edward Tufte)

“At the end of the article, he quotes a Florida elections supervisor, who makes a mean-spirited remark about ‘stupid people’ who vote — arguing that no matter how good the redesign, they (those stupid people) won’t mark it right. Cynical comments like these make me believe that every time one of us has the chance to articulate the needs of citizens, we should. There are too many of these public officials who pollute the air with their snide remarks and who blame the general public for not knowing what to do when confronted with their atrocious writing and design.” (Karen Schriver – InfoDesign-Cafe Oct. 2003)

“Research indicates that people have difficulty understanding and using public transport timetables when they are presented in the well-established genre of a two-dimensional matrix. In a project (…), we used a methodology which integrated user’s information needs with research into historical design solutions, legibility, and current technology. Our application of the methodology generated a design solution which our testing showed helped to enhance user’s effective understanding of the public transport system.” (Maureen MacKenzie – Communication Research Institute of Australia)

“The Institute of Network Cultures (INC), which was set up in June 2004, caters to research, meetings and (online) initiatives in the area of internet and new media. Not only will the INC facilitate, but also initiate and produce a range of projects. Its goal is to create an open organizational form with a strong focus on content, within which ideas (emanating from both individuals and institutions) can be given an institutional context at an early stage. Based on the fusion of old and new media, the INC aims to organize both public and internal meetings and to formulate new research.” (About INC)

“Not publishing is much better than publishing poor quality content. Most people come to websites to carry out tasks. Quality content will help them complete these tasks quickly and efficiently. Poor quality content hinders task completion, and frustrates and annoys people.” (Gerry McGovern)

“By keeping goals in mind and design simple, you can achieve elegant, easily understandable data presentations.” (Stephen Few – Intelligent enterprise Magazine) – courtesy of john rhodes

“Too lazy to leave my home in the middle of food preparation (…), I grabbed a clean bowl and my whisk to make some of my homemade mayo.” (Michael Chu – Cooking for Engineers) – courtesy of mark bernstein