Information Architecture (IA) is both the process and the product of organization of information to facilitate efficient access to that information by its intended audience.
This is my definition for IA which is also my entry for the the Explain IA contest.
Update: I won a copy of Peter Morville’s new book Search Patterns at ExplainIA. I am looking forward to receiving it since the sample chapter I read was promising.
(length: 3:30 minutes)
In this video, Dave Gray provides an introduction with 5 basic principles for making better napkin sketches.
Dave Gray is the Founder and Chairman of XPLANE, a leading consulting and design firm focused on information-driven communications. Dave’s researches and writes on visual business and speaks and coaches educators, corporate clients and the public. He is also a founding member of VizThink, an international community of Visual Thinkers.
He is author of the book (on consultative selling) called Selling to the VP and is currently working on a book for O’Reilly media Sunni Brown called The Visual Thinking Playbook, which is due out in January of 2010.
Xplane, VizThink
The book: Selling to the VP of NO
Dave Gray Info, Communication Nation, Visual Thinking School
10GUI is Calyton Mill’s concept for an input device that uses all fingers that expands the bandwidth of interaction that is otherwise restricted by the mouse. The video talks about how the mouse restricts interaction and how multi-touch monitors are stressful because the user has to stretch out to use it- (something I fully agree with and believe will lead to its failure). It goes on to illustrate a GUI that is better optimized for usage with the proposed input device.
Laika is a dynamic typeface. Via a custom designed control panel, kerning, italics, size and other properties of a typeface can be adjusted. Laika can be responsive to any possible input. The final project installation included type that which was responsive to passers-by.
Laika was done as a bachelor thesis project by Michael Flückiger and Nicholas Kunz.
Laika was created using Processing. In case you did not know, Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. I recommend you have a look at it if you have not.
If you are facing the issue of sIFR text wrapping in Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, just like I did while trying to implement it on my new website meant for the user experience community: UX Quotes , then you should find this post useful.
I am assuming this solution should work with all version 3 revisions though I have particularly tried it with sIFR 3.436.
Try one of the two arguments given below to fix the text wrap issue.
The forceSingleLine argument forces text to be displayed in a single line.
Values
True, false
Note
Note that if you have a very long line of text, then it will flow beyond the width of the container it is placed in. This argument is different from preventWrap. The preventWrap argument results in text getting clipped or cut off when it exceeds width. Think of singleLineWrap as overflow:visible and preventWrap as overflow:hidden declaration/ value pairs in CSS.
Example
sIFR.replace(test, {
selector: 'h1',
css: '.sIFR-root { color: #cccccc; width: 100%; text-align: left; letter-spacing:1;}',
wmode: 'transparent',
forceSingleLine: true;
});
The tuneWidth argument adjusts the width of the Flash movie for adjusting the space around the flash movie.
Values
Positive or negative number
Example
sIFR.replace(test, {
selector: 'h1',
css: '.sIFR-root { color: #cccccc; width: 100%; text-align: left; letter-spacing:1;}',
wmode: 'transparent',
tuneWidth: 1;
});
Code named Project Natal by Microsoft, this sensor device that will be able to be added to any XBOX 360 will allow for a controller-free gaming experience. Through Natal, the user will be interact with the Xbox 360 using gestures, spoken commands or presented objects and images instead of the regular game controller we use today.
To be released in late 2010, the Project Natal sensor is the world’s first to combine an RGB camera, depth sensor, multi-array microphone and custom processor running proprietary software all in one device. Unlike 2-D cameras and controllers, Project Natal tracks your full body movement in 3-D, while responding to commands, directions and even a shift of emotion in your voice.
In this video that demo’s project Natal’s capabilities, the user interacts with the video game character called Milo who is capable of recognizing the user’s face, voice and emotions and respond accordingly.
This is quite a feat as it significantly reduces the ‘amount’ of suspension of disbelief required to immerse one into the game than is required otherwise at current.
In the Google TechTalks video from 2006, Jen Fitzpatrick talks about the art and science behind Google’s design process and share examples of how design, usability and engineering come together at Google to create great products.
Jen Patricks is an Engineering Director at Google, who at least was then managing Google’s user experience team. A founding member of Google’s UI team, Jen has also led the UI design, testing and implementation of numerous features and changes to the Google.com site.
She joined Google in June 1999 as a software engineer and has also served as Engineering Director for Google Adwords and Google’s Internal Systems engineering group.
Jen is a graduate of Stanford University where she received a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and an M.S. in Computer Science.
Microsoft Visio has long been regarded as a good tool for wireframing, which I have found especially on large-sized projects where it is crucial to keeping wireframes updated at all times, regardless of constant changes being made to master elements. Used with Adobe Acrobat, Visio works great for documentation. The ability to draw free form with a stylus and thus use it to literally create paper prototypes that you can edit is an added bonus.
While one may think that Visio can not be used for creating interactive prototypes, this is not entirely true. You can create click-through prototypes with Visio very easily as a matter of fact.
Till a while ago, Visio was certainly not capable of creating high fidelity prototypes. Alternate applications like Axure and the ever powerful (nonetheless expensive) iRise fill the gap in this regard. However, interaction designers and information architects who work at organizations that have stuck to Visio will find the release of Visdynamica a much needed arrival.
With VisDynamica, one can easily use AJAX, Flash, JavaScript libraries or real web forms in a prototype. All means of rich interactions are generated directly from within the Visio drawing with use of the ‘Save as Web Page’ feature to generate the prototype.
Having been released (albeit in private beta) since nine months, this application deserves a lot more coverage than it is currently getting. The creator could have done more on his part by promoting the product through social media which he has not. None the less, being a much required tool, I hope it gets all the attention and mentions that it can and encourage you to spread the word about it.
Current features include ability to :
Register to download VisDynamica, after which you will receive account details. Once you log in, you will find a link to download the tool.
(Download associated slides, PDF, 4.9 mb)
Jon Kolko talks on Design Synthesis, offering two sense making methods to translate research into meaningful insights.
The methods he talks about are Insight Combination, a method of building on established design patterns in order to create initial design ideas and Reframing, a method of shifting semantic perspective in order to see things in a new way.
Jon Kolko talks about Design Synthesis because he feels interaction design research activities produce an enormous quantity of raw data, and while this must be systematically and rigorously analyzed in order to extract meaning and insight, these methods of analysis are poorly documented and rarely taught. And because of the pragmatic time constraints associated with shipping products, there is often no time dedicated in a project to a practice of formal synthesis. As a result, raw design research data is inappropriately positioned as insight, and the value of research activities is marginalized– in fact, stakeholders may lose faith in the entire research practice, as they don’t see direct return on the investment of research activities.
Jon Kolko is a Senior Design Analyst at frog design in Austin, Texas. His professional work deals with the manipulation of complicated business and technological constraints in order to best solve the problems of Fortune 500 clients. The work spans the boundaries of Information Architecture, Interaction Design, and Usability Engineering; the common underlying theme of these problems and projects is the creation of a solution that is useful, usable, and desirable.
Kolko is the author of the text Thoughts on Interaction Design; he is also the 2008-2011 Editor-in-Chief of Interactions Magazine, published by the ACM.
Jon Kolko’s website
Jon Kolko’s book- Thoughts on Interaction Design
Kim Goodwin talks about integration of the three distinct disciplines- interaction design, visual design, and industrial design. All three must work in concert, or the product that evolves from it will fail to satisfy. Integration of the three disciplines is a central theme of Kim’s new book, Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services.
Kim Goodwin is VP Design & Genral Manager at Cooper. Kim ensures that the company is planning for the future and that current operations are on track. Her design expertise and teaching skill have made her popular as a speaker at conferences around the world. Kim has led a wide range of design projects, from e-commerce sites to information appliances, IP telephony systems, and complex healthcare applications.
