InfoDesign: Hand-picked since 1997

“In this contest, you are invited to explain information architecture. What is it? Why is it important? What does it mean to you? Some folks may offer a definition in 140 characters or less, while others will use this opportunity to tell a story (using text, pictures, audio, and/or video) about their relationship to IA.” (Peter Morville)

“Life online is not solitary. It’s social. When I tag and bookmark a Website, a video, an image, I make my decisions visible to others. I take advantage of similar knowledge curation undertaken by others when I start learning a topic by exploring bookmarks, find an image to communicate an idea by searching for a tag. Knowledge sharing and collective action involve collaborative literacies.” (Howard Rheingold – EDGE)

“What is Web 2.0 storytelling? As the phrase suggests, it is the telling of stories using Web 2.0 tools, technologies, and strategies. Since the name is fairly recent (and not yet widely used), it may not bear out as the best term for this trend. Another name may emerge, one better suited to describing this narrative domain. However, the term seems to have met with quiet acknowledgment to date, so it may serve as a useful one going forward. To further define the term, we should begin by explaining what we mean by its first part: Web 2.0. Tim O’Reilly coined Web 2.0 in 2004,1 but the label remains difficult to acceptably define. For our present discussion, we will identify two essential features that are useful in distinguishing Web 2.0 projects and platforms from the rest of the web: microcontent and social media.” (Bryan Alexander and Alan Levine – EDUCAUSE) – courtesy of wolfnoeding

“The constraints that recessions impose; on budgets and on time can help us focus more sharply on what matters most, and sharpen our methods and skills to make us more competitive and better at what we do.” (Erin Malone – Boxes and Arrows)

“I would like to draw attention to the scientific models of the Belgian information pioneer Paul Otlet who albeit that they are standing in positivist and Modernist tradition can still be relevant for mechanical and manual modelling of science within the Semantic Web and Web 2.0.” (Charles van den Heuvel – Modelling Science)

“As of late, we’ve been talking a lot about content streams, streams of information. This metaphor is powerful. The idea is that you’re living inside the stream: adding to it, consuming it, redirecting it. The stream metaphor is about reaching flow. It’s also about restructuring the ways in which information flows in modern society. (…) If we’re not careful, we’re going to develop the psychological equivalent of obesity.” (Danah Boyd)

“Working together in a group to produce a creative outcome is difficult – don’t let anyone tell you it’s not. Let me share a memory with you – from my Performance Theatre and Community class.” (Traci Lepore – UXmatters)

“IDEA2009 had the world’s foremost thinkers and practitioners converge on Toronto’s MaRS Convention Center to share the big ideas that inspire, along with practical solutions for the ways people’s lives and systems are converging to affect society. Listen and learn from experts in a variety of fields as we all continue the exploration of Social Experience Design.” (Jeff Parks – Boxes and Arrows) – courtesy of jjursa

“Co-creation is not just the next new thing in marketing. It is an alternative way of seeing and being in the world. Existing and thriving in the emerging co-creative landscapes will require the creation and application of new tools, methods and methodologies for connecting, innovating, making, telling and sharing. These generative tools must be useful and usable for all types of people. Generative design thinking provides a design language for all of us, designers as well as non-designers, to use in provoking the imagination, stimulating ideation, stirring the emotions, discovering unmet needs and facilitating embodiments of future possibilities. Examples of this generative design language in action, from projects ranging from consumer product and service development to the planning and architecture of new healthcare campuses, will be shared.” (Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders – IASDR09)

By Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone – “This book presents a family of social web design principles and interaction patterns that we have observed and codified, thus capturing user-experience best practices and emerging social web customs for web 2.0 practitioners.” (About the authors)

“Over the past several years, we’ve watched as a very wide variety of objects and surfaces familiar from everyday life have been reimagined as networked information-gathering, -processing, -storage and -display resources. Why should cities be any different? What happens to urban form and metropolitan experience under such circumstances? What are the implications for us, as designers, consumers and as citizens?” (Adam Greenfield – dConstruct)

“This past year social media, and social network sites in particular, have reached new heights of popularity and adoption. It is no longer unusual for clients to request that designers “add Facebook” to their respective sites, mainly for the purpose of increased engagement and community building for their brand as a part of a greater social marketing strategy.” (Alla Zollers – Johnny Holland Magazine)

Integrating the Agile and Experience Design Practices – “Our goal is to explore, evolve, and empower the emergent discipline that fuses Agile Software Development with User Experience Design.” – courtesy of puttingpeoplefirst

“In this presentation we share a family of social web design principles and interaction patterns to help user experience designers and strategists grapple with the social dimensions of their products and services. The family of patterns, principles, and practices provides a framework and starting point for the conceptual modeling of any interactive digital social experience.” (Erin Malone & Christian Crumlish)

“As I’ve read more about the history of PD it seems to be focused almost exclusively on the development of digital computing systems. I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising given the time period; in some ways it seems more akin to HCI than service design. But while the techniques don’t always seem to be a match for the problems service designers encounter many of the principles still seem to resonate.” (Design for Service)

“Hosting a company’s content and services on 3rd-party social networking sites involves both tactical risks (lower usability) and strategic risks (less user loyalty).” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“UX professionals must now take up a new design challenge. We must address the changing needs for social media and facilitate users’ taking better advantage of everything social media has to offer.” (Junaid Asad – UXmatters)

“We made a timeline message more punchy, credible, and viral through 5 rounds of redesign.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

“Here is the slide deck from a talk I gave last week at Delve, a two-day masterclass held in Brooklyn, NY. The talk is in three parts, with each part focusing on a specific problem in software. Each problem is a major hurdle in what I call the usage lifecycle, or the stages people go through as they use and adopt software over time. These three hurdles come directly out of the work I do with clients…I’ve been focusing almost exclusively on these specific problems…I hope the slides help you focus on them as well.” (Joshua Porter – Bokardo)

“Community features are spreading from ‘Web 2.0’ to ‘Enterprise 2.0’. Research across 14 companies found that many are making productive use of social intranet features.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)