Category: Links

Merholz posts his prelimenary ideas on IA co-created with users: “The spectrum goes from implicit, meaning derived from user behavior but not consciously created by the user, to explicit, meaning consciously created by the user.”

Gene Smith “on social information architecture […] the different ways users can add structural value to websites”.

Veen looks back at more than ten years of Hotwired. A nice way to consider the history of the web; how far have we really come?

MacManus uses the freshly launched PeopleAggregator to briefly talk about what an open social network system should be.

Another golden oldie, thought I should save this one. Peter discusses his interests that have broadened from IA to UX and at the same time focussed on findability. The UX honeycomb is a nice thinking-tool.

Ziade notes that users are slow to adopt new services. This has to do with their reluctance to learn a new interface, satisficing on existing features and non-interest in new tech.

D. Keith Robinson bemoans the current state of web design. He thinks we should focus less on tech (agreed), that designers should continuously educate themselves (agreed), design cannot succeed without a proper understanding of what should be communicated

Maeda wonders what matters most: the process of creating an artwork, or just the artwork alone?

Nice example of a dissatisfied user coming up with his own new interface to iTunes. The coolest thing is someone actually built this (it’s called CoverFlow).

Old but good piece that looks at how the IxD and HCI fields overlap and differ. Includes some good attempts at defining IxD and design in general. Didn’t come across my favorite “design as problem-solving” definition though.

Matt Webb and Tom Stafford describe how they think wikis can be used best. Contains some good tips, such as the gardening-ritual.

A review of sorts of the book Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster. Doctorow compares it to Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics.

Chris Crawford lashes out in typical fashion at the current state of affairs in the games industry. He particularly bemoans the lack of innovation and blames the industry for not having a structure in place to foster it.

Edward Vielmetti wonders whether there’s any significant work done on the crossover of physical and virtual communities. Thomas Vander Wal replies that his work on the local infocloud touches on this.

Vander Wal describes his concept of the local infocloud as “information resources that are familiar and easier to access than the whole of the web”. Most importantly he includes real-world resources.

Blue Flavor bashes the recently launched People Aggregator for its bad design. Rightly so, I guess. Perhaps PA should solely focus on delivering an infrastructure and leave the design of apps to others?

Huge amount of persona-related resources.

“Lovemarks are a new way of thinking about the things we love. Lovemarks are better than brands, because they are about Love and Respect: they speak to us as thinking and feeling human beings. Lovemarks embody Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy.”

Excellent description of a Backpack setup for use with the GTD system. Inspirational (if you’re a GTD-cultist).

A good case study of bringing a wiki into the corporate arena. Doesn’t cover much that I didn’t already know (all the wiki virtues are described) but of interest because of the real-world success-story.

Short but sweet piece by Anderson on the wisdom of crowds, co-creation and user-generated content (or “authentic media”, as Powazek would have it.)

“design is communication! […] Design encompasses much more than you think. If you are still clinging to the idea that design is merely decoration, or that something has to be visually appealing to be successful, you are as thick as the mud you’ve been

A neat app that visualizes your iTunes library. Probably too heavy to run on my poor iBook, but cool none the less.

Macromedia mocks up a RIA that writes to RSS-like file formats and calls it a marriage of the read/write web and Flex 2. I don’t know – it comes across as a custom browser to me.

Vander Wal would prefer to be called a technosocial architect and believes we should be focussing on the role information plays in people’s lives, not on the applications through which they get that information. I wonder how this compares to the designe

The first in an excellent two-part interview with game design god Warren Spector: he’s firmly entrenched in the Peter Moulineaux school of design, where a game should be a series of interesting choices.

The latest AP newsletter contains an interview with Michael Bierut, mostly on the role of visual design in UX, politics and design and being a conscious designer.

Well known, but somehow I’d never bookmarked this one. Tog’s first principles should be observed by all IxDs.

Google’s PayPal-killer prohibits you from using its services for selling occult goods. The question is of course, will they enforce it?

Shallow piece on upcoming Mobile Web Best Practices recommendation of the W3C-MWI.

Emerce once again proves they’re clueless by including talk about Flash Lite in a piece that’s supposedly on mobile web standards & best practices.

Zeldman has a nasty experience with Flickr. He seems to have missed the notifications Flickr sends out before your account expires, but I do agree that hiding all but the most recent 200 photos is a bit silly. It always annoyed me.

Automattic offers WordPress support and customization to enterprise users. Interesting construction. I’ve been involved in setting up a few WordPress blogs in an enterprise context and customization was one of the main issues we came up against.

Excellent tool for getting organized.

A report on the state of electronic play. Via Peter.

This post resonates with my recent experiences with booking flights to and from Italy. None of the websites (Transavia and Ryanair) were user-friendly at all. The variable pricing model Veen mentions baffles and frustrates me as well. Would love to get my

Not a very practical solution to file management IMHO, but the demo sure looks cool.

Eight pretty cool WordPress plugins. I wasn’t familiar with all of them.