What’s Happening to Knowledge?

Added on 6 August 2006 Peter Bogaards
“The old principles for the organization of knowledge turn out to be based on principles for organizing physical objects; in the digital age we’re creating new principles free of the old limitations. This is changing the basic shape of knowledge, from (typically) trees to miscellanized piles. This has consequences for the nature of topics, the role of metadata, and, crucially, the authority of knowledge. In short, the change in the shape of knowledge is also changing its place. Despite the hysteria too often heard, knowledge is not being threatened. We are way too good at generating knowledge, and it is way too important to us as a species. But, much of what we’re doing together on the Web is about increasing meaning, not knowledge. That re-frames knowledge — traditional and Wikipedian — in ways that are hard to predict but important.” (David Weinberger – Wikimania 2006 Proceedings)

A Crash Course in User Interfaces

Added on 3 August 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Whenever the topic of interface development comes up, I’m always surprised to see most software engineers cringe as if they’re being told they need a root canal. Almost all modern applications require some sort of graphical user interface, and yet the UI is commonly the last consideration of development. Worse yet (particularly when it comes to web development) the user interface is often created by a graphic designer who isn’t familiar with software development. The resulting separation that occurs between the application’s internals and its interface can cause serious problems with the project.” (Nate Kohari)

Conversation with Michael Bierut – Part 3/3

Added on 2 August 2006 Peter Bogaards
Peter Merholz interviews Michael Bierut – “Making room for the real world is even harder today than it was 30 years ago. The amount of technical skills a young designer needs is vast, and the degree of professional specialization is staggering. All of this helps to foster an atmosphere that seems to reward tunnel vision. But in the end, the designers who are doing the most exciting work — and in some cases it coincidentally happens to be the most beautiful work — are the ones who don’t hesitate to claim the whole world as their subject matter.” (Adaptive Path)

A Conversation with Steven Johnson, Part 2

Added on 2 August 2006 Peter Bogaards
Jesse James Garrett interviews Steven Johnson- “Clearly interfaces are tools for understanding the world. So many of the most interesting debates in the ‘new media’ space revolve precisely around the question of how specific interfaces will shape the user’s view of the world. And those debates play back into the design decisions that shape the next generation of software.” (Adaptive Path)

Interaction Design: An Introduction

Added on 2 August 2006 Peter Bogaards
Liz Danzico interviews Dan Saffer on his new book – “Genius design is when the designer relies on his or her own experience and skill to design, without any input from users. It’s done by designers who either don’t have the resources or the inclination or temperament to do research. Too often, it is practiced by inexperienced designers with little skill, but it can and has been used by many designers to create impressive things. Reportedly, the iPod was made with no user research, for example.” (BusinessWeek.com)

AJAX Seminar

Added on 1 August 2006 Peter Bogaards
“By now there isn’t a software developer on earth who isn’t aware of the collection of programming technologies known as AJAX. But you can’t bank awareness. So, how in concrete terms can you take advantage in your own projects of this newly popular way of delivering online content to users without reloading an entire page? How soon can you be monetizing AJAX?” – including a webcast by JJG. (SYS-CON Media)

The Library 2.0 Folksonomy Gang

Added on 31 July 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Listen to conversations with thought-leaders at the interface between Web 2.0, Libraries, and the Semantic Web (…) In this Library 2.0 Gang discussion, members talk about folksonomies and the role of user-generated tagging alongside more formal methods of classification such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings and Dewey.” (Talking with Talis)

Findability with tags: Facets, clusters, and pivot browsing

Added on 28 July 2006 Peter Bogaards
“For a while I have been thinking of different ways of supporting finding information with tags that go beyond tag-clouds. There are three trends that are worth pointing out. The first is faceted browse interfaces, the second is algorithm driven approaches like clustering and recommendations (often driven by collaborative filtering), and the third possibility is one that is native to tag based systems – and can be termed ‘pivot browsing’.” (Rashmi Sinha)

What is RDF?

Added on 28 July 2006 Peter Bogaards
“The SemWeb enables computers to seek out knowledge distributed throughout the Web, mesh it, and then take action based on it. Take an analogy: the current web is a decentralized platform for distributed presentations, while the SemWeb is a decentralized platform for distributed knowledge. Resource Description Framework (RDF) is the W3C standard for encoding knowledge.” (Joshua Tauberer – O’Reilly XML.com)

Brand Experience in User Experience Design

Added on 25 July 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Much has been written in the past decade about the importance of usability and the user experience to customers’ perception of an organization’s brand. Jared Spool’s 1996 article ‘Branding and Usability’ correctly identifies the importance of Web site usability to brand experience and provides evidence that a positive user experience has a direct correlation to positive brand perception. More recently, authors such as Dirk Knemeyer have expanded on this theme.” (Steve Baty – UXmatters)

International Usability Evaluation: Issues and Strategies

Added on 25 July 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Like many UX practitioners, I’m often involved in designing products that will be sold across the globe. Half of the challenge is acknowledging there is no one-size-fits-all set of design criteria. The other half is knowing the tradeoffs when choosing between usability methods for requirements gathering and evaluation. What many may find surprising is that our tried-and-true methods themselves can have limitations, depending on the context in which we apply them.” (Michele Marut – UXmatters)

The Transformation of the Web: How Emerging Communities Shape the Information we Consume

Added on 24 July 2006 Peter Bogaards
“To date, one of the main aims of the World Wide Web has been to provide users with information. In addition to private homepages, large professional information providers, including news services, companies, and other organisations have set up web-sites. With the development and advance of recent technologies such as wikis, blogs, podcasting and file sharing this model is challenged and community-driven services are gaining influence rapidly. These new paradigms obliterate the clear distinction between information providers and consumers.” (Josef Kolbitsch and Hermann Maurer – Journal of Universal Computer Science 12.2)