Design Leads & Wireframes
“By popular request and with permission, Functioning Form is publishing some of Jim Leftwich’s writings on design.” – (Luke Wroblewski – Functioning Form)
Infographic 
“Think of the expression of an idea as a map to its meaning.” – (Alessandro Segalini)
Planning for User Research Success
“Planning is crucial if you want your user research efforts to be effective. You need to think about what information you need to gather, and why, before embarking on any research. Good planning, well communicated to the client or project, and followed by careful implementation will ensure your research is effective.” – (Daniel Szuc and Gerry Gaffney – Apogee)
Introduction to Web Accessibility
“Most people today can hardly conceive of life without the Internet. It provides access to information, news, email, shopping, and entertainment. The Internet, with its ability to serve out information at any hour of the day or night about practically any topic conceivable, has become a way of life for an impatient, information-hungry generation. Some have argued that no other single invention has been more revolutionary since that of Gutenberg’s original printing press in the mid 1400s. Now, at the click of a mouse, the world can be ‘at your fingertips’ – that is, if you can use a mouse… and if you can see the screen… and if you can hear the audio – in other words, if you don’t have a disability of any kind.” – (Paul Bohman – uiGarden.net)
Edification and Commutation: Canons for Experience Design
“Experience design is a transactive process. Commutation leads to edification, and edification makes possible commutation.” – (Bob Jakobson – Corante Total Experience)
Findability is ambient: Interview with Peter Morville
“Intelligence is moving to the edges, flowing through wireless devices, empowering individuals and distributed teams. Ideas spread like wildfire, and information is in the air, literally. And yet with this wealth of instantly accessible information, we still experience disorientation. We still wander off the map.” – (Liz Danzico – AIGA Voice)
Migrating from HTML to XHTML and XML
“This is the first part of a two-part article describing a detailed methodology for migrating HTML files to the structure and flexibility of XHTML and/or XML. By using XHTML to add structure and separate content from presentation, you’ll be better positioned for a move to XML. Even if you never move to XML, your XHTML files will be easier to create and maintain, and will be more accessible.” – (Char James-Tanny – WinWriterUA)
Rethinking Application Design
“(…) with more than a year of experience working in Silicon Valley and seeing inside various leading technology companies – both as a consultant/designer and through my speaking and networking activities – I’ve realized that the basic corporate design model for Web and application design is broken. This article will share some of the conclusions I’ve drawn and propose some better approaches for designing successful applications.” – (Dirk Knemeyer – Digital Web Magazine)
Enterprise Usability
“Usability goes beyond the level of individual users interacting with screens. It’s also a question of how easy or cumbersome it is for the entire organization to use a system.” – (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)
Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic
“(…) two contrasting visual approaches employed by Gates and Jobs in their presentations while keeping key aesthetic concepts found in Zen in mind. I believe we can use many of the concepts in Zen and Zen aesthetics to help us compare their presentation visuals as well as help us improve our own visuals. My point in comparing Jobs and Gates is not to poke fun but to learn.” – (Garr Reynolds – Presentation Zen)
Usability doesn’t have to be ugly
“There is a balance that needs to be struck between a website that is truly functional and one that is elegant and stylish.” – (Gerry McGovern)
UXmatters: Insights and inspiration for the user experience community
“We are very pleased to welcome you to UXmatters – a Web magazine created by and for UX professionals. Together we can create the premiere source of information and inspiration for UX professionals. (…) If you’re a business person who wants to learn what user experience professionals can do for your company or a consumer who wants to know how to choose products that are both useful and usable, we hope you’ll both enjoy and benefit from reading UXmatters.” – (Pabini Gabriel-Petit et al. – About UXmatters) – Congrats to all who made this possible.
The Memetic Web
“The memetic web uses meme IDs from a set of memespace taxonomies to tag web page content. Meme tags greatly improve the precision and recall of search engines. The memography wiki establishes a new social classification system. It provides taxonomies and pages that describe what each meme is about. Anyone can tag pages with memes from memography, or follow rules to create non-conflicting memes for corporate and personal use. Memelinks to aboutness pages are URIs that can be used as RDF properties for the semantic web.” – courtesy of petermorville
Folksonomy Definition and Wikipedia
“(…) I love Wikis and they are incredible tools, but one has to understand the boundaries. Wikis are emergent information tools and they are social tools. They are one of the best collaboration tools around, they even work very well for personal uses. But, like anything else it takes understanding on how to use them and use the information in them.” (Thomas Vander Wal)
The secret of making things work
“Consumers forever grumble about products and services making their life difficult, but there are some shining examples leading the way. As World Usability Day approaches, what are the best doing right?” (Max Gadney – BBC)
The Games People Play: A more intimate way to understand users
A presentation from About, With & For (Oct. 29, 2005) – “Games provide memorable and transcendent experiences, are changing the way people think and behave, and represent the future of education.” (Dirk Knemeyer)
Ambient Findability: Talking with Peter Morville
“Findability takes us beyond usability and information architecture into the realms of design, engineering and marketing. And it encompasses wayfinding and retrieval in physical and digital environments.” (Liz Danzico – Boxes and Arrows)
Louis Rosenfeld interviews Tony Byrne
“Content management, meet user-centered design. I’m glad to see this beginning to happen.” (Digital Web Magazine)
Why People Don’t Read Online and What to do About It
“It’s been proven that two things people will look at on the screen are bullet points and numbered lists. Knowing that, use them. It’s called content chunking, and, as you can see from many of our own pieces, it’s an effective way to pull the eye.” (Michelle Cameron – ACM Ubiquity)
Information Architecture 2.0
“The consequent explosion of content and functionality on the Web and the new ways in which we’re making use of Web content has recast the role of the information architect. This article explores the information architect’s evolving responsibilities in light of the changes we’re experiencing on the Web.” (Dan Brown – UXmatters Preview)