THE WEB CAN BE A BETTER PLACE TO SURF AND DO BUSINESS !
Last Updated: October 30, 2004
[May 31, 2002]
OJR: Cut-and-Paste Can Be Sticky - "Does copying another site's ideas constitute copyright infringement?"
[May 29, 2002]
The Register: PDAs make easy pickings for data thieves - "PINs, passwords, customer details, bank accounts, credit card & social security details are just some of the confidential and personal pieces of information people are storing unprotected on their PDAs."
[May 27, 2002]
Gerry McGovern: The skills you need to manage your website - "The specific skills required to manage a website will change depending on the type of website. For example, an intranet will have different demands than an ecommerce website. However, there are some fundamental skills that are required regardless of the website. These skills revolve around an understanding of content."
Navigation elements for the Pierce College District Web site
The Idea Basket: The Commercial Feasibility of a Next-Generation User Interface - "Most importantly, however, try to figure out exactly what people will be doing with your software, and make anything they do require as few mouse clicks, configuration, and manual-reading as possible. Don't settle for 75%. Make the software 100% easy, so easy that it doesn't need a manual."
[May 25, 2002]
Cooper: Don't get burned by bad mapping
David Coursey: Netscape 7: Nice, but I'll stay with IE. Here's why - "At this point, Netscape needs to offer something earth-shattering if it's going to make up ground on IE. Netscape 7 ain't it."
Netscape 7.0 Preview Release (Netscape's announcement)
[May 24, 2002]
Info.Design: How we define information architecture - "Web sites-like instruction booklets, road signs, and telephone books- are communication products. They are performance tools that help people find and use information. Any time we build an internal or external web site, we are communicating information to a specific audience. But, unlike print, online media is interactive. We need to pay attention to how we structure processes, procedures and data in any situation where users are interacting with the system."
Intranet Journal: Using usability to direct KM systems - "Knowledge management is often strategic, while usability is always practical. ... No knowledge manager should be without an understanding of usability and user-centred design. These disciplines have much of value to offer KM projects, including tools, guidelines and processes. User-centred design may even be the master of KM system projects, providing a simple way of identifying needs and managing outcomes."
[May 20, 2002]
Usability News: Magazines still Preferred to Websites, claims PPA - "People find reading magazines more enjoyable than websites according to 'Absorbing Media', the new Periodical Publishers Association study of media usage and attitudes."
John S. Rhodes: Hyperlinks in Email - "Email usability can be dramatically increased or decreased by how URLs are designed and placed in messages."
Gerry McGovern: Time for communications to take charge of your website - "The natural home for your website is within the communications section of your organization. This is because the Web is first and foremost a communications medium. To fully own the website, communications managers need to stop being scared of technology. They also need to get to grips with information architecture design."
[May 19, 2002]
TopXML: What Is XML and Why Should I Care? - "In this presentation I walk through the key components, explaining each one and showing how they are relevant to us as developers and information application designers."
UsabilityNet: Usability Testing - Methods table
Martijn van Welie: Interaction Design Patterns
[May 18, 2002]
BBC: Mobile keypad reinvented - "A US company has redesigned the traditional 12-number keypad to give every letter and number its own key. Typing a text message with the novel keypad is twice as fast as other methods claims Digit Wireless, creator of the new layout."
Information & Design: What is Usability Testing? - "Usability testing is a technique for ensuring that the intended users of a system can carry out the intended tasks efficiently, effectively and satisfactorily."
[May 17, 2002]
ZDNet Australia: Design specifications: How much detail? - "When your team members develop an application, how do you know they are coding the functionality correctly? Without a complete, unambiguous design specification document, you could be setting yourself up for costly rewrites."
[May 16, 2002]
GrokDotCom: 83% of users revisit sites that keep them happy - "High on people's stress meter is the length of time it takes websites to appear, help buttons that do not offer any help and requests for personal details before being allowed into a site."
Ben Shneiderman (via cognitivearchitects.com): Designing Information-Abundant Websites: Issues and Recommendations (1997) - "The abundance of information on the World Wide Web has thrilled some, but frightened others. Improved website design may increase users' successful experiences and positive attitudes.This review of design issues identifies genres of websites, goals of designers, communities of users, and a spectrum of tasks. Then an Objects/Actions Interface Model is offered as a way to think about designing and evaluating websites. Finally, search and navigation improvements are described to bring consistency, comprehensibility, and user control."
[May 15, 2002]
Boxes and Arrows: Moving from Flatland to Hyperspace: The "Evolution of a Mindset" - "In general, we agree that information architecture is a process of structuring information to make it usable, improving the user experience. Indeed it seems that we information architects know who we are. I would like to note that the concept of complexity (and complex systems) resonates throughout any discussion of information architecture. In fact, this complexity is the core reason for having information architects-and the N-dimensional web is the reason such complexity exists."
NewScientist.com: Insect swarming inspires jazz software - "The Swarm Music program is the creation of computer scientists Tim Blackwell and Peter Bentley, who study how natural processes can be modelled in software."
[May 14, 2002]
Newsbytes - "Americans are far more likely to go online for help making major life choices in things like education and health care than to get romantic or legal advice, a new study has found."
[May 13, 2002]
Salon.com: Use the blog, Luke - "The true revolution promised by the rise of bloggerdom is not about journalism. It's about information management. The bloggers have the potential to do something far more original than offer up packaged opinions on the news of the day; they can actually help organize the Web in ways tailored to your minute-by-minute needs."
CyberAtlas: User Satisfaction Key to Viral Marketing - "The research shows that as user demands evolve, companies need to continually strive to understand exactly what satisfies their users, ensuring they regularly visit the site and personally recommend it to third parties."
Scott Berkun: Align usability goals with business goals
siteusability.com: Common usability mistakes
vanderwal.net: Information wants to be found. - "Information without a usable structure surrounding it wastes the time of the person (or worse, persons) who created the information, prepared the info for dissemination, and the person/persons/application looking for that information."
[May 7, 2002]
Builder.com: To Flash or not to Flash - "However, it's not just splash pages that have raised usability concerns with Flash. The way the browser handles Flash files means that designers and developers need to take extra care to ensure usability when creating a Flash-based interface. Here are a few areas where Flash can cause problems."
EContent Magazine (via ia/): Information Architecture and Usability - "To me, information architecture is the process of designing the access to information so that users can rely mainly on their intuition to navigate quickly and productively around the site."
[May 6, 2002]
SiliconValley.com: Tech gizmos torturing users - "Relatively simple devices that were once controlled by twisting a knob or pushing a button are now endowed with digital commands that can take hours to master."
Croc O' Lyle: Bloatware: Good or Evil? - "It then becomes our jobs as designers to figure out how to add new features without overloading new users with too much complexity or confusing existing users by moving legacy features around."
Panoram Technologies: Desktop visualization products are designed to enhance individual productivity or capability for demanding computing tasks.
[May 5, 2002]
Guardian Online: Is Yahoo losing the plot? - "The Yahoo brand has become confused over time. It was originally a facility that allowed you to easily find what you want. Now its status as a portal means a wealth of features but a lack of focus. Compare it to Google, which ultimately works best as a search engine. It's quick and it does exactly what it says on the tin. ... The more experienced will go direct to the site they want; they no longer require the middle man and its increasingly irritating advertising."
[May 4, 2002]
OSNews: Editorial: Where is the Progress? - "So here it is 2002, and we're still using operating systems based on 17 year old concepts (actually, the GUI, mouse, ethernet, etc. were developed at Xerox earlier yet). It seems like the computer industry has lost vision. Computers have become 'business machines' and status quo prevails. Where is the imagination and vision of the 1980s? The possibilities seemed endless."
Metafilter: 75% of dial-up users are satisfied with their current speeds.
[May 2, 2002]
Wired News: Site Barks About Deep Link - "The Dallas Morning News demands that BarkingDogs.org stop linking to individual stories from the newspaper's website and link to the front page only. The controversy over deep-linking deepens."
Gerry McGovern: How you can design for the scan reader - "As the volume of information rapidly expands, the time to read this information remains relatively static. There are only twenty-four hours in the day; only so much attention to go around. How are you going to get people to read your content? Understanding and planning for how people scan read on the Web is a good start."
Jakob Nielsen: Usability for Senior Citizens - "Websites tend to be produced by young designers, who often assume that all users have perfect vision and motor control, and know everything about the Web. These assumptions rarely hold, even when the users are not seniors."
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