Ambient Intelligence: Changing Forms of Human-Computer Interaction and their Social Implications

Added on 26 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The paper describes developments to date in ambient intelligence and its closely related counterpart, ubiquitous computing and communication. It discusses the driving forces behind this digital information technology, describes the equipment and devices involved, the obstacles to implementing ambient intelligence on a large scale in real-world scenarios, and considers the future outlook. The authors believe that the introduction of this digital information technology will have wide-ranging implications, which will for the most part be beneficial and valuable.” (Mahesh S. Raisinghani et al. – Journal of Digital Information 5.4)

It’s Not Just About Searching – It’s About Findability

Added on 24 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The current emphasis on content management is not about content management at all but rather about content publishing – and there is a difference. Organizations are aware of the problems in getting current, reliable information into an intranet but feel that their responsibility stops with building the repository and providing some templates for page display. Far too little attention is paid to the fact that unless people can find the information, the effort to add it to the repository and to make the look consistent is wasted.” (Martin White – EContent) – courtesy of uidesigner

Architecture of Knowledge: The Mundaneum and European Antecedents of the World Wide Web

Added on 23 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Various European scholars and scientists considered at the end of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th Century new ways to unite science and art of the world. They sought for new ways to store and retrieve knowledge on a global level. They wanted to find ways of representing our knowledge of the world, of simplifying and visualizing it, of ordering it in new ways for universal access to it. They developed new comprehensive classification systems, new standards to store and organize data. They explored what were the new technologies of their time to try to overcome the inefficiencies of the book and to find substitutes for it. (…) Buildings and user are considered both transmitters and receivers of information that shapes continuously the architectural form. Architecture and knowledge are interrelated.” (The Project – Maastricht McLuhan Institute)

Interactive Experience Group

Added on 23 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The goal of the Interactive Experience research group is to radically rethink the human-machine interactive experience. By designing interfaces that are more immersive, more intelligent, and more interactive we are changing the human-machine relationship and creating systems that are more responsive to people’s needs and actions, and that become true ‘accessories’ for expanding our minds.” (MIT Media Laboratory)

The Cognitive Cost of Classification

Added on 23 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The mental effort required to consistently assign keywords outweighs the benefits for most frontline contributors to content, document, and knowledge management systems. Contrary to this lovely summary, faceted classification can actually compound the problem. Facets are oversold in situations where info-civilians have to classify content that they have created themselves. Expecting facets to solve the metacrap problem is naive.” (Jess McMullin – interactionary) – courtesy of victor lombardi

Architecture of the World Wide Web, First Edition

Added on 22 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The World Wide Web is an information space of interrelated resources. This information space is the basis of, and is shared by, a number of information systems. Within each of these systems, people and software retrieve, create, display, analyze, relate, and reason about resources. Web architecture defines the information space in terms of identification of resources, representation of resource state, and the protocols that support the interaction between agents and resources in the space.” (W3C)

Blogs and blogging: advantages and disadvantages

Added on 22 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Isn’t it interesting that some of the most significant ‘revolutions’ of the last twenty years have all had to do with writing? How retro is that? First we had email, then webpages, then mobile phone texting, and now blogs. All this reflects a trend whereby the world is becoming more formal in how it communicates. Instead of body language and endless conversations, communication has shifted towards endless words on a screen.” (Gerry McGovern)

SVG-based User Interface Framework

Added on 20 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The purpose of the SPARK project is to create a flexible, interoperable SVG-based user interface framework. Using well established and standardized languages including SVG, XML, Java and IDL, we went about creating a framework that could easily be used by others to rapidly develop SVG based applications or prototypes.” (SVG Open 2003)

Profits First, Users Second

Added on 19 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“The purpose of this article is to challenge a core belief in usability. An argument is made that profits are more important than users since organizations cannot survive without profits. Although the business value is high, usability is only one mechanism for driving profits and success.” (John S. Rhodes – Oristus)

Faceted Classification of Information

Added on 18 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Given the significant difficulties in categorizing books, papers, and articles using traditional library classification techniques, it would seem next to impossible for humans to classify the small chunks of rapidly changing information that characterize information-intensive business environments. But it’s not. Library and information science professionals have already provided the foundations of an alternative to traditional classification techniques: faceted classification.” (The Knowledge Management Connection) – courtesy of keith instone

Representing Content and Data in Wireframes

Added on 17 August 2004 Peter Bogaards
“Sample data can make or break a wireframe, whose purpose is typically to illustrate architecture and interaction. Poorly selected sample data can end up clouding the wireframe or distracting stakeholders from its purpose. By codifying the types of sample content they employ in their deliverables, information architects can create a coherent narrative to illustrate a website’s functionality.” (Dan Brown – Boxes and Arrows)