It’s the journey and the destination: Shape and the emergent property of genre in evaluating digital documents

Added on 4 March 2006 Peter Bogaards
“(…) this paper will extend the analysis of ‘user navigation’ to the evaluation of user behaviour in web environments. In so doing, the present authors will attempt to unify work in the area of structural representation of content with models of navigation based on physical movement.” (Andrew Dillon and Misha W. Vaughan 1997) – courtesy of petermorville

Developing a Participation Economy

Added on 3 March 2006 Peter Bogaards
“I think it’d be safe to say that the IAI has been successful. It has over 800 members in about 40 countries. It has provided the IA community with a few excellent services, like a mentoring program, a job board, and a high-quality moderated discussion list. And it’s had a hand in a number of successful events around the planet.” (Louis Rosenfeld – bloug)

Wayshowing: A Guide to Environmental Signage Principles & Practices PDF Logo

Added on 2 March 2006 Peter Bogaards
By Dr. Per Mollerup (Director of Mollerup Designlab) – “Thus wayshowing relates to wayfinding as writing relates to reading and as speaking relates to hearing. The purpose of wayshowing is to facilitate wayfinding. Wayshowing is the means. Wayfinding is the end. The introduction of the term wayshowing is an important contribution to information design.” (Reviewed by Rune Pettersson)

What is Documentation?

Added on 1 March 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Suzanne Briet (‘Madame Documentation’) was an important French Documentalist just before and following the Second World War. Though others preceded her, Briet was unique in so strongly attributing to documentation and to documentary signs a cultural origin and function. In this she followed the founder of European Documentation, Paul Otlet, but she differed from Otlet in that she understood ‘science’, ‘culture’, and thus documentation more in the context of military-industrial post-war capitalist economies and in terms of the global ‘development’ of the time than in terms of the harmonious world of global ‘knowledge’ that Otlet had envisioned. In this way, Briet stands between Otlet’s information utopia (reminiscent of the world industrial exhibitions of the 19th and early 20th centuries) and information theory and cybernetics in the United States which saw human culture and language as troublesome mediums for successful communication and information transmission.” (Translated by Ron Day and Laurent Martinet)

Interface in Form: Paper and Product Prototyping for Feedback and Fun

Added on 1 March 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Sketching and modeling are integral features of the design process, critical for both the generation of ideas, and the communication of concepts to others for discussion and evaluation, particularly in the context of human-centered design. While these methods are a natural component of the designer’s education and professional tool kit, there is immense value in exposing other professions involved in the development of products and interfaces to at least a limited set of these same basic tools.” (Bruce Hanington – uiGarden.net)

Keith Instone of UXnet

Added on 28 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Live from Internet User Experience 2006, Tim & Tom interview friend and fellow usability professional Keith Instone about his work with User Experience Network. What is UXnet, and what do they want from us? How about this: ‘UXnet was formed to help make connections between the people and organizations that represent User Experience disciplines, and to encourage interchange and cooperation.’ Sounds good to us. In a field so widely interdisciplinary, we could use a big tent like UXnet to convene under. Attend the tale of UXnet!” (Design Critique)

Ladder of Fire

Added on 28 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
A conversation with Peter Merholz – “(…) I never said design is not a field of knowledge. You asked if design was a field of “vast, deep, broad, and nuanced” field of knowledge like anthropology, and I said, ‘No’. We never discussed whether design is another kind of field of knowledge, which I think it is. But it is fractured, rootless, and without a core. It doesn’t have anywhere near the depth or nuance of anthropology.” (GK VanPatter – NextD Journal) – Recommended reading

Hiding in Plain Sight

Added on 27 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Boxes and Arrows caught up with Adam Greenfield on the heels of finishing his first book, Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, due out in March 2006. Greenfield talks to us about how computing has moved away from the desktop into every part of our lives—from soda cans to the family pet. In this interview, he allows us to imagine what our new normal might look like. (…) Everyone who will be affected by this class of technologies should have a voice in shaping its emergence.” (Boxes and Arrows)

Beautiful Evidence

Added on 27 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Edward Tufte’s new book, Beautiful Evidence, is now at the printer and should be available in May 2006. The book is 214 pages, full color, hard cover, and at the usual elegant standards of Graphics Press. Beautiful Evidence may be ordered now; the book will be sent immediately from the bindery when completed. The introduction and table of contents are shown (…).” (Edward Tufte)

User Experience: The next step for IA’s?

Added on 27 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
“IA’s have always wondered how to define information architecture in relation to other fields. Starting with the early days of library science, through the ‘discovery’ of other fields and the times when experienced IA’s called themselves Big IA’s, to modern days of business design and experience design, the borders have been fuzzy. I hope to show that, despite the fact that most of us are proud to wear the label Information Architect, we are all User Experience practitioners who practice IA from time to time. Finally, I would like to show the next steps for IA’s, which includes a call for international networks, and national events (…).” (Peter Boersma – Italian IA Summit)

How architects lost the wayfinding mojo…

Added on 27 February 2006 Peter Bogaards
“Wayfinding as a discipline: In your experience do you see wayfinding as a discipline becoming more integrated with design in architecture, urban, planning, landscape and retail? If so, in what areas has theories and practices towards wayfinding taken root? What barrier have you seen among designers in integrating wayfinding, egd and identity principals and practices in projects? What success stories have you seen, and what should designers do to communicate design process?” (The Wayfinding Place)