OpenUsability.org

Added on 25 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“(…) a project that brings open source developers and usability experts together. The idea behind is simple: There are many usability experts who want to contribute to software projects. And there are many developers who want to make their software more usable, and – as a consequence – more successful.” (Open Usability Projects) – courtesy of slash dot org

Design patterns for information architecture with DITA map domains

Added on 25 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) provides maps for assembling topics into deliverables. By specializing the map elements, you can define a formal information architecture for your deliverables. This architecture provides guidance to authors on how to organize topics and lets processes recognize your organizing principles, resulting in a consistent, clear experience for your users.” (Erik Hennum et al. – IBM developerWorks XML DITA)

An XML Architecture for Technical Documentation: The Darwin Information Typing Architecture

Added on 25 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“So what does media-neutral content look like? It focuses on tasks and concepts, not on chapters and appendixes. It follows the same basic information design principles that have informed good manual design and good online design for decades: task orientation, minimalism, and scenario-based development. If you author tasks and concepts, rather than sections and paragraphs, you have the makings of a topic collection that can be reordered for different needs, supporting different task flows for different users, and supporting different reading paths for different media. ” (Don Day, Erik Hennum, John Hunt, Michael Priestley, David Schell, Nancy Harrison – WritersUA)

Design Engaged retrospect

Added on 24 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Amsterdam was not only centrally located for many of the participants, but it’s also small, walkable, dense, vital, complex, efficient, stylish, and civilized. All of which make it kind of perfect for a bunch of designers to wander around for three days taking thousands of pictures. I’ve felt that Amsterdam tends to embody naturally whatever theme Doors of Perception’s focussed on: from ‘lightness’ to ‘play’ to ‘flow’.” (Andrew Otwell)

The Future of Digital Product Design

Added on 23 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Dirk Knemeyer will speak about the present and future of digital product design. Following Dirk’s presentation, Dirk, Neil Day, Pabini Gabriel-Petit, James Leftwich, and Luke Wroblewski will participate in what should be a lively panel discussion on this topic. Frank Ramirez will moderate. In addition, every attendee will receive a free copy of the newly published book ‘The Dictionary of Brand’ from the AIGA Center for Brand Experience.” (Luke Wroblewski – Functioning Form)

Kano Analysis: A Little Something Extra Can Have Big Results

Added on 22 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Our experience illustrates how the simple, but powerful Kano Model is useful in helping teams understand the difference between Basic, Performance, and Delighter features. By designing in and focusing improvement efforts on those features that create customer delight, there is a much greater chance of keeping your current customers and gaining new ones.” (Kathy Parker – i Six Sigma) – courtesy of brett lider

Corporate Identity and the Web: What your homepage tells about your organization PDF Logo

Added on 21 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“In the literature you find a lot of hints concering web design and usability of web pages. But how do you compare web pages? Which ones are good or bad? What does a homepage say about your organization? This paper is based on research over the last couple of years and uses linguistic strategies to analyze electronic business communications – including newsletters and web sites. Unfortunately, linguistics is usually not used very often for electronic communication theories, but the variety of theories and tools are a good starting point to find synergies between computer science, marketing and webdesign.” (Michael Beer – UI4ALL: 8th ERCIM Workshop)

Using Language to Improve Usability PDF Logo

Added on 18 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Usability: The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use. Document design: The field concerned with creating texts (broadly defined) that integrate words and pictures in ways that help people to achieve their specific goals for using texts at home, school or work.” (Whitney Quesenbery)

Metadata and XML: Improving the Findability of Information PDF Logo

Added on 17 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The proliferation of the XML standard wihin the Technical Communication community of practice is gaining momentum. Many documents are produced on the basis of this markup language. The findability of these documents can be enhanced with the application of metadata. Applying metadata creates new possiblities to improve XML-documents. Concepts and techniques like (faceted) classification, thesauri, taxonomies, and topic maps can all be based on XML. This presentation outlines various metadata applications for XML-documents and identifies the added value of metadata for large document spaces.” (Peter J. Bogaards – Tekom European Information Development Conference 2004) – select ‘Downloads’

Design as Communication

Added on 17 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Each placement of an object, the choice of materials, the addition of hooks, handles, knobs, and switches, is both for utility and for communication. The physical placement and the perceptual appearance, sound, and touch all talk to the users, suggesting actions to be taken. Sometimes this conversation is accidental, but in the hands of good designers, the communication is intentional. Design is a conversation between designer and user, one that can go both ways, even though the designer is no longer present once the user enters the scene.” (Donald Norman) courtesy of ui designer

Web Applications 1.0

Added on 16 November 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The World Wide Web’s markup language has always been HTML. HTML was primarily designed as a language for semantically describing scientific documents, although its general design and adaptations over the years has enabled it to be used to describe a number of other types of documents. The main area that has not been adequately addressed by HTML is a vague subject referred to as Web Applications. This specification attempts to rectify this.” (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group)