Online Help Conference Europe 2003
June 1-3, London UK – The latest in software user assistance (WinWriters)
CHI 2003 Feature: Testing… 1 2 3 4 5 … Testing…
“Usability can sometimes be more about belief than about evidence or engineering, with usability testing heading the list as a central tenet of the dogma of modern practice. (…) Yet, precisely because of its leading role, it is important for the profession to question the dogma of usability testing and for professionals to keep abreast of new developments and changing perspectives.” (Larry Constantine – Usability News)
Best of CHIWEB & SIGIA-L (updated)
“Posted CHIWEB summaries in roughly chronological order (April 1996 – March 2003 )” (Scott Berkun – UIweb.com)
Visualogue
“What is a designer’s most important material? Information. What is the most important attribute of design work? The quality of information.” (Icograda Congress Nagoya Japan – Oct. 8-13, 2003)
Information Design Summer Academy Salzburg 2003
Touristic Information de Luxe for All: Creating inclusive information environments – Making visitors wish to come again (July 28 – August 8, 2003 – Salzburg Austria EU / International Institute for Information Design)
A Proposal for Evaluating Usability Testing Methods: The Practical Review System
“The purpose of this article is to explain the Practical Review System (PRS). The PRS is an outline of 28 characteristics that can be used to understand any usability method, thereby allowing any individual to decide between methods. This solves many of the problems associated with understanding and explaining usability methods.” (John S. Rhodes – WebWord)
Web Development and Business Goals
“Repeat it until you accept it: business goals, business goals, business goals.” (Dirk Knemeyer)
The Translation of Information Architecture Project
“The IA translation project (aka Tia) aims to provide tools and support for translation of materials related to information architecture.” (Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture)
Designers in Health Network + Information Design Plus
Presentation downloads (DIHNet)
Microsoft Research Seeks Better Search
“Scientists in the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant’s labs are experimenting with new types of search and user interface technology that will let individuals and businesses tap into the vast amounts of data on the Internet, or inside their own computers, that increasingly will be impractical or impossible to find.” (Michael Kanellos – News.Com) – courtesy of nooface
Why XML Doesn’t Suck
“Recently in this space I complained that XML is too hard for programmers. That article got Slashdotted and was subsequently read by over thirty thousand people; I got a lot of feedback, quite a bit of it intelligent and thought-provoking. This note will argue that XML doesn’t suck, and discuss some of the issues around the difficulties encountered by programmers.” (Tim Bray – Antartica Systems) – courtesy of mark bernstein
A Comments Pointer
“If you’re not the type to pay attention to the comments, I encourage you to make an exception. Dirk Knemeyer has provided two very interesting responses to my ‘What’s in a name?’ post of a few days ago and my subsequent response to him.” (Beth Mazur – IDblog)
Will Plain-Text Ads Continue to Rule?
“Text-only advertisements work far better than banners, but is this only due to their novelty? Search engine text ads will retain their superiority over time, but text ads on other sites will work only if they focus on directly meeting users’ needs.” (Jakob Nielsen – Alertbox)
Getting Confidence From Lincoln
“(…) when searching large web sites for information, there were some sites where users always seemed to know where to find the content. No matter what content they were seeking, every user somehow knew to make a bee-line for it. Not every site worked this way and we wanted to know what made these particular sites work so well.” (Jared Spool – User Interface Engineering)
Web Page Layout: A Comparison Between Left- and Right-Justified Site Navigation Menus
“The usability of two Web page layouts was directly compared: one with the main site navigation menu on the left of the page, and one with the main site navigation menu on the right. Sixty-four participants were divided equally into two groups and assigned to either the left- or the right-hand navigation test condition. Using a stopwatch, the time to complete each of five tasks was measured. The hypothesis that the left-hand navigation would perform significantly faster than the right-hand navigation was not supported. Instead, there was no significant difference in completion times between the two test conditions. This research questions the current leading Web design thought that the main navigation menu should be left justified” (James Kalbach and Tim Bosenick – Journal of Digital Information 4.1)
Croquet: A Collaboration Architecture
Alan Kay of HP Labs at the Human-Computer Interaction Seminar (Stanford Center for Professional Development) – courtesy of marcus denker
Perspectives on HCI Patterns: Concepts and Tools
“This workshop aims to map current understanding and use of HCI Patterns and determine how to make significant advances through two perspectives: 1) a view of the conceptual foundations of patterns and their relationship to other HCI models and approaches 2) a focus on tools and methodologies related to pattern creation and use.” – Position Papers (CHI 2003 Workshop)
Dirk Knemeyer Comments on ‘What’s In A Name?’
“(…) ID provides guidance to all of the ‘production disciplines’ (no condescension intended or implied) – IA, graphic design, variety of different programming approaches in application development, experience design as some of the more linear examples – without being a production discipline itself.” (Dirk Knemeyer)
CHI 2003: Opening Plenary Compares On and Off-line Media
“A key issue he identified in working with products that offered the same or similar content across different media was the recognisability of content in different contexts.” (Ann Light – Usability News)
Differences between Information Architecture and Information Design
“Both require different skills. Information architects come from a variety of backgrounds, but I sense that a majority of them display an orientation toward language. Information designers, on the other hand, tend to be oriented toward the visual arts. As a result, the majority of information designers come from exactly one discipline: graphic design.” (Clark MacLeod – Kelake)