InfoDesign: Hand-picked since 1997

Why machines should fear

Added on 1 January 2004 Peter Bogaards

“Once a curmudgeonly champion of ‘usable’ design, cognitive scientist Donald A. Norman argues that future machines will need emotions to be truly dependable.” (W. Wayt Gibbs – Scientific American) – courtesy of lucdesk

Usability

Multimedia Web Forms

Added on 1 January 2004 Peter Bogaards

“Multipage tax input forms with calculations and validations; Web shop order forms (…) anything that needs user interaction within Web document formats.” (Kari Pihkala, Mikko Honkala, and Petri Vuorimaa – SMIL Europe 2003)

Technology

Educational curriculum survey 2003

Added on 1 January 2004 Peter Bogaards

“This survey was conducted in November and December 2003. Instructors listed on our list of IA programs were invited to participate. A total of 19 responses were collected.” (Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture) – courtesy of victor lombardi

Information architecture

Widgetopia

Added on 1 January 2004 Peter Bogaards

“Collection of widgets and UI elements from various websites, with notation of their sterling or plate metal qualities.” (Christina Wodtke – Elegant Hack)

IA Summit 2004 program at a glance

Added on 1 January 2004 Peter Bogaards

“As always, the IA Summit focuses on connecting with peers. You can take advantage of frequent opportunities to catch up with colleagues and meet others in the field. And if you are new to IA, the Summit is the best way to begin your involvement in the exciting discipline of Information Architecture.” (IA Summit 2004) – courtesy of victor lombardi

Information architecture

Guild of Accessible Web Designers

Added on 1 January 2004 Peter Bogaards

“The Guild of Accessible Web Designers will promote a vision of the future that assumes accessible web design to be, relevant, obtainable, and not at odds with successful business practice, or good visual and usable design.” (About the GAWDS) – courtesy of lucdesk

Accessibility

A steady dose of realtime interruptions is toxic to anyone’s health

Added on 1 January 2004 Peter Bogaards

“Respected technology commentators say that they now prefer instant messaging (IM) over e-mail as their medium of choice for computer-mediated communication. The main reasons are that e-mail has become an overloaded channel for readers and that you can’t be sure to get a timely response from the recipients of your e-mail.” (Jakob Nielsen – ACM Queue)

Usability

Top ten web design mistakes of 2003

Added on 22 December 2003 Peter Bogaards

“Sites are getting better at using minimalist design, maintaining archives, and offering comprehensive services. However, these advances entail their own usability problems, as several prominent mistakes from 2003 show.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)

Usability

Information Design Journal 11:1

Added on 19 December 2003 Peter Bogaards

Theme: Information design for air transport (Karel van der Waarde & Piet Westendorp eds. – John Benjamin Publishing Company)

Information design

Spit-not-so, or What’s in the Layout?

Added on 19 December 2003 Peter Bogaards

“Many tasks involve the processing of information from different sources. Some information needed resides in the memory of the person. Other information is in physical things: dials, screens even the position of objects. Physical (and similarly virtual) objects act as memory aids.” (Paul Curzon – Usability News)

Information design

On search, the series

Added on 18 December 2003 Peter Bogaards

“This series of essays on the construction, deployment and use of search technology (by which I mean primarily ‘full-text’ search) was written between June and December of 2003. It has fifteen installments not including this table of contents.” (Tim Bray – Ongoing)

Typographica: A journal of typography

Added on 18 December 2003 Peter Bogaards

“Typographica is a daily journal of typography featuring news, observations, and open commentary on fonts and typographic design.” (Stephen Coles and Joshua Lurie-Terrell )

Typography

The search for search’s next generation

Added on 18 December 2003 Peter Bogaards

“The burn-out of the dot-com era left a smoldering envy of those few dot-commers that managed to stay alive. Google is foremost among these. If they can continue pulling in dynamic data from more and more sites, their dominance may well continue — for access to dynamic data is indeed the key to the next big improvement in search.” (Andy Oram – O’Reilly Developer Weblogs)

OWL: Web Ontology Language – Overview

Added on 17 December 2003 Peter Bogaards

“The OWL Web Ontology Language is designed for use by applications that need to process the content of information instead of just presenting information to humans.” (W3C)

Technology

CSS, accessibility and standard links

Added on 16 December 2003 Peter Bogaards

“Here you’ll find a whole bunch of links to some of the vast resources out there. These are places I’ve have gone to and still visit for help and to learn. As new resources are constantly popping up, watch this space for changes. I’ve tried to order stuff as logically as possible.” (Andrew Fernandez – deswozhere) – courtesy of lucdesk

Accessibility

Information Design: the Popular Communication experience

Added on 16 December 2003 Peter Bogaards

“From this point of view, I suggest that in figuring out ‘where Information Design has come from’, we can usefully look beyond the usual suspects: it’s not only self-identified ID ‘believers’ who have contributed good ideas about how to communicate clearly, effectively and appropriately.” (Conrad Taylor – Ideography) – courtesy of beth mazur

Information design

Avoid Santa Claus approach to content management

Added on 15 December 2003 Peter Bogaards

“The Santa Claus approach to content management creates a content management software wish list. It believes in the magic of technology to sweep away any and every problem. Typically, those who believe in Santa don’t believe in defining their processes, or figuring out just why they need a website in the first place.” (Gerry McGovern)

Information design

Q+A – Edward Tufte

Added on 14 December 2003 Peter Bogaards

“Ten questions for Edward Tufte – The information-design guru offers a few choice words about PowerPoint.” (Dan Nadel – The International Design Magazine) – courtesy of william drenttel

Interviews

The visual vocabulary three years later: An interview with Jesse James Garrett

Added on 12 December 2003 Peter Bogaards

“It hasn’t changed as much as I expected. When I released the vocabulary in 2000, it still seemed to be in flux – some of the elements were fairly new additions, and I figured it was likely that there would be more in short order. But, in retrospect, the vocabulary was actually more mature than I realized at the time.” (Dan Brown – Boxes and Arrows)

Interviews

Building a vision of design success

Added on 12 December 2003 Peter Bogaards

“A redesign has some built-in advantages over everyday maintenance; the most useful being focus. And focus is the loam that allows a shared vision to grow.” (Christina Wodtke – Boxes and Arrows)

Information architecture