Do Tags Work?
“Tag! You’re it! It seems that everywhere I go on the Web these days is tagged.” – (Cathy Marshall – TEKKA 10)
Approaching Design: Advice on how to really rock in UI/UX design
“The longer I do this job, the more I think that there are certain qualities, or attitudes that can make a real difference to ones ability to get better designs implemented, and generally enjoy the job more. Here’s my hopefully controversial list of qualities that will help you really rock.” – (Jason Furnell – The Architecture of Everything)
The Journey to the Interface
“The pamphlet argues that service design can offer policy makers and practitioners a vision for the transformation of public services, as well as a route to get there. It outlines an agenda for action which spells out how service design approaches can be applied systemically.” N.B. Working podcast link. – (Demos)
Attention and awareness in stage magic: Turning tricks into research
“Just as vision scientists study visual art and illusions to elucidate the workings of the visual system, so too can cognitive scientists study cognitive illusions to elucidate the underpinnings of cognition. Magic shows are a manifestation of accomplished magic performers’ deep intuition for and understanding of human attention and awareness. By studying magicians and their techniques, neuroscientists can learn powerful methods to manipulate attention and awareness in the laboratory. Such methods could be exploited to directly study the behavioural and neural basis of consciousness itself, for instance through the use of brain imaging and other neural recording techniques.” – (Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
The Wisdom of Community
“A defining element of any WOC system is that the more participants it has, the better it gets. Discussion systems and chat rooms fall apart when too many voices get involved. If your community feature gets worse the more people use it, it’s not a WOC system.” – (Derek Powazek – A List Apart 283)
Design Fiction
“Science fiction is a form of popular entertainment. The emotional payoff of the science fiction genre is the sense of wonder it conveys. Science fiction ‘design’ therefore demands some whiz-bang, whereas industrial design requires safety, utility, serviceability, cost constraints, appearance, and shelf appeal. To these old-school ID virtues nowadays we might add sustainability and a decent interface.” – (Bruce Sterling – ACM interactions XVI.3)
The poverty of user-centered design
“(…) the set of methods employed by most user-centered professionals fails to deliver truly user-centric insights. The so-called ‘science’ of usability which underlies user-centeredness leaves much to be desired. It rests too much on anecdote, assumed truths about human behavior and an emphasis on performance metrics that serve the perspective of people other than the user. – If we could de-couple user-centered design and usability then there might be some benefit but I don’t think this is as important as it might first appear. More important is the very conception we have of users and uses for which we wish to derive technologies and information resources. Designing for augmentation is a very real problem and a great challenge for our field theoretically and practically.” – (Andrew Dillon – InfoMatters)
Play in social and tangible interactions
“Many of the interactions seen in tangible and social computing are essentially playful. Play can take on many forms, but they all involve people exploring a conceptual space of possibilities. When designing these ’embodied’ interactions, it is therefore helpful to have a good understanding of play – this session aims to do just that. We’ll compare the role of interaction designers to that of game designers, who concern themselves primarily with the creation of rule-sets. By using rules, designers have unique opportunities for conveying messages. We’ll discuss the emergent behaviour of many social and tangible systems and propose that gardening might be a helpful metaphor. This requires designers to sketch in code and hardware, build prototypes, and observe their use ‘in the wild’. Ultimately, we hope to encourage designers to put themselves on equal footing with the people using their systems, so that they can playfully grow meaningful interactions together.” – (Kars Alfrink – IxDA Library)
Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design?
“As design work shifts to infrastructure and problem solving, sexy infographics are part of the new skill set.” – (Michael Cannell – Fast Company) via markvanderbeeken
Shall We Dance? 
“It is with great pride that I welcome you to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Information Architecture. The Journal of Information Architecture is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, and its aim is to facilitate the systematic development of the scientific body of knowledge in the field of information architecture. The journal will focus on information architecture research and development in all types of shared information environments, such as for example social networks, web sites, intranets, mobile and Rich Internet Applications, from various perspectives such as technical, cultural, social, and communicational.” – (Dorte Madsen – Journal of Information Architecture 1.1)
The Content Strategy Land Rush
“I don’t have the answers. I’m sorry if that’s disappointing news and I have lead you this far to learn it. In fact, this is what we are all watching to see. Such things as the social web explosion and the recent economy crash will undoubtedly shape content strategy considerations. The semantic web, and web as a platform, are increasingly becoming a part of that picture too.” – (Wion)
Information Architecture: Synthesis Techniques for the Muddy middle of the Design Process
“Information Architecture has arisen as a field related to interaction design. It is commonly found embedded within the profession of computer science, and is associated with the creation of complicated software. This relatively new field exists to make meaning out of data, and can be applied to disciplines that have little to do with computing or even technology. This paper provides an overview of established Information Architecture modeling techniques, and discusses how they can be applied to the industrial design process during the synthesis phase of design. The text reflects on the nature of this messy and critical period in the design process, and offers methods of quickly making information and even knowledge out of data. Finally, the text briefly describes the changing nature of professional demands on students entering industry, indicating that Information Architect may be a lucrative alternative job title for students graduating from Industrial Design programs.” – (Jon Kolko)
Content Typology: Getting a Handle on Your Content Types
“Content types are among the least understood, and yet most potent, aspects of user experience and web design. Most people encounter them for the first time when implementing a grand-scale content management system (CMS) because you have to define content types before building templates for each kind of content you’re going to publish.” – (The Content Strategy Noob)
Information Architecture and Design Strategy: The Importance of Synthesis during the Process of Design
“During the process of design, Designers attempt to draw connections between seemingly disparate ideas; they examine quantitative data provided from marketing and qualitative data gathered from end users, and before they can begin designing, they must make order out of the chaotic mess of research. The connections that can be formed during this synthesis phase frequently hold the keys to ‘innovation’. Designers visually explore large quantities of data in an effort to find and understand hidden relationships. These visualizations can then be used to communicate to other members of a design team, or can be used as platforms for the creation of generative sketching or model making. Frequently, the action of diagramming is a form of synthesis, and is a way to actively produce knowledge and meaning. (…) This paper investigates the elements of Design Synthesis that are common to both Information Architecture and Design Strategy.” – (Jon Kolko)
Designing for experience: Arousing boredom to evoke predefined user behaviour
“In the light of Cultural Computing, this study influences user affect and behaviour by touching upon core values of Western culture. We created an augmented reality environment in which users experience a predefined sequence of emotional states and events. This study concerns two typically Western drives: boredom and curiosity. We specifically address the arousal of boredom, a mental state characterized by a heightened drive for exploration, making it easier to guide people in their decision making. Based on psychology literature, we introduce general design guidelines for arousing boredom. We report on the design of the augmented reality environment, the experiment effectively arousing boredom and on the redesign of the environment based on the experimental results.” – (Matthias Rautenberg et al.)
Navigating the blogosphere: Towards a genre-based typology of weblogs
“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)
Is Interaction Design a dead-end job?
“(…) interaction design has become pervasive, that anyone and everyone can be an interaction designer, and so the role of professional interaction designer is (or is becoming) unnecessary.” – (Tim McCoy – Cooper Journal) courtesy of jjursa
Europe’s Fifth Information Architecture Summit: Beyond Structure
“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
“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
“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)