Together with Edgar, I’ve submitted a proposal for the upcoming XTech 2007 in Paris, France. The talk we’re aiming for would basically be a largely war stories from our work designing and developing large scale websites that adhere to web standards and accessibility guidelines and are published and managed using an enterprise CMS‘s (such as Tridion, GX, IBM LWWCM or what have you). Not the sexiest of subjects, but one we’re well versed in and can give plenty of practical advice on. Feedback from the review committee is due February 2007. Wish us luck!
Month: December 2006
links for 2006-12-20
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Wireless: Can mobile phones give you ‘presence?’ – Technology & Media – International Herald TribuneA short piece on mobile social software such as Jaiku. The writer took the trouble to interview some knowledgeable people such as Jyri Engestrom and Danah Boyd.
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Roger Johansson looks at an alternative to WYSIWYG editors that allows content editors to mark up text with meaning in stead of styling. Might help in keeping sites with CMS’s behind them accessible.
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“[…] one of the design challenges for social software is in allowing groups to grow past the limitations of a single, densely interconnected community while preserving some possibility of shared purpose or participation […]”
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I’m reading lots of ‘old’ stuff on social software lately. Here’s one piece by Matt Webb that gives a taste of how cutting edge this stuff was in 2003.
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Entries for learning more on social software by Matt Webb.
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Matt Webb on classifying groups in push and pull, telic and atelic.
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“We can look at technologies that were successful without meaning to be, look at social environments that give results with being forced, and investigate what factors in the substrate made this possible. And then, hopefully, build some ourselves.”
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Post–social software seminar post.
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These descriptions of flow states sound familiar to me, mostly from practising martial arts.
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Jeffrey Veen gives some pointers on how to create a good portfolio.
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I’m rereading Shirky on social software. This piece describes how Clay’s thinking was influenced by a class he taught at NYU.
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On encoding software with political bargains and how that influences the groups and users that use it.
On presentations
One of the most enjoyable things about attending conferences is seeing a lot of people presenting in various ways. A while ago I challenged my own presenting skills by doing a Pecha Kucha. Today, I attended a class (part of a didactics course) on giving lectures. Two prominent lecturers (Giep Hagoort and Jeroen van Mastrigt) from within the Utrecht School of Arts gave us a taste of their own unique presentation format and the way they prepared for a talk.
This triggered some things in my head, such as stuff I’d seen before on the web and that could be helpful to the people attending the class. A lot of them didn’t seem to be too familiar with it, so I’ve decided to collect them here. Maybe they’ll come in handy to those who pass by here:
- Presentation Zen; a site on presentation design
- The Top 10 Best Presentations Ever; lots of links to classic presentations
- More at my del.icio.us links tagged ‘presentations’
links for 2006-12-07
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Presentations by Keith Instone on faceted browsing. Offer a wealth of examples and a lot of questions. Nice tool for thinking about your own faceted browsing interfaces (like the one I’m designing now).
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Finally got around to reading this Economist piece on Second Life. Surprisingly good description of the world’s history and current problems.
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This interview with the main designer and developer of the indie fighting game Rag Doll Kung Fu makes me want to become a game designer. It seems the internet is giving game designers the chance to be authors of their own games again.
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A brief for a graphic design class assignment by Jack Schulze. The assignment is to design a set of icons that explain the use of RFID. Interesting to me for the subject RFID and the fact that I’m preparing my own mobile game design class and need example
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Elaborate report summarizing and synthesizing trends in technologies that support cooperation. Best of all are the large number of examples and the short summaries of each cluster’s principles. I especially like the large poster…
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Discussie over welke teksten thuis horen in alt-attributen en in welke gevallen een leeg alt-attribuut volstaat. Voor de toegankelijkheidsfreaks.
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Interface designer Luke W gives a nice set of guidelines for designing web forms. I really like the amount of effort he put in the example screens. They clarify his points nicely.
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Collaborative site for sharing illustrated guides on how to make things; anything it seems: fashion, food, electronics, you name it. A Flickr for how-to’s.
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Post linking to PDF of short presentation on several wireframing techniques aiming to capture details in rich interfaces: storyboards, lo-fi prototypes and wireframs with keyframes.
X-Men 3 mini-review
After a nice weekend in Barcelona I sat down together with my better half to watch X-Men 3, which was finally released on DVD. My overall impression: another kick-ass superhero movie and a worthy series finale (I do hope they really stop). Some minor gripes: there were quite a few new characters (which is good) but they didn’t get enough time to build into full-fledged personalities. Most notably Archangel. I also felt the movie started to buckle under the weight of the huge epic action sequences by the end. I prefer smaller scale battles like we had in the first two movies, where you can clearly see the individual mutants use their powers (a huge part of the fun of these kinds of movies). All in all: recommended.
Off to Barcelona
Well, I’m off to Barcelona for a long weekend. It’s been quiet around here for a while (apart from the automated bookmark posts). Perhaps when I get back I’ll be able to get back into the habit of posting more frequently. Back in 4.
links for 2006-12-01
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“Comics are in everything.” — Jack Schulze compares a comic spread and two pages from an instruction manual. He says designers can learn much more from comics than they think. I went from comics to IxD. Not surprisingly, I agree!
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Short but sweet how-to on using sparklines in CakePHP.