I was just trolling through slideshare recent crop of social media themed slideshows, and I was amazed at how well the themes of good presentation have permeated people's minds. Pictures, one point per slide, simplicity: here is an example
But you know what? These slides are completely useless to me unless I want examples of good design. An old, ugly, 20 bullet points a slide would be more valuable. I think two things are going to have to happen if PPT has any hope of even slightly standing alone
Mics for ipods are very very cheap, it seems to me this second path is the right one. even if the place you are presenting at doesn't have their sh*t together enough to podcast, you can at least place a miced ipod on the podium and capture your own voice.
Anyhow, I'll be interested in where this trend goes; I suspect a solution is critical at least to slideshare's life. Pictures are nice, but they aren't that useful without the story that accompanies them.
Example of the wrong kind of slides for a presentation, yet so very right (and so very viewed) on slideshare.
The problem with having a genuinely brilliant partner is that he'll say something, and you'll think "ah yes, that sounds smart"; but it takes years before you realize how smart. So two years ago when John said the most valuable thing we have to offer is a point of view, I thought, "okay, sure" and moved on thinking about skillsets and attention and mental nimbleness.
Lakoff's work in framing was the first time I started to see exactly how important point of view was. If you could encapsulate your point of view in a frame, and then change others' point of view with that frame, you could essentially control their behavior.
Now Malcolm Gladwell, of Blink and Tipping Point fame, has written an article in last week's New Yorker that illuminates finally why the American health care system has taken such a weird, illogical and unfortunate turn. And guess what: it comes down to point of view.
Policy is driven by more than politics, however. It is equally driven by ideas, and in the past few decades a particular idea has taken hold among prominent American economists which has also been a powerful impediment to the expansion of health insurance. The idea is known as "moral hazard." ... "Moral hazard" is the term economists use to describe the fact that insurance can change the behavior of the person being insured. If your office gives you and your co-workers all the free Pepsi you want-- if your employer, in effect, offers universal Pepsi insurance -- you'll drink more Pepsi than you would have otherwise. If you have a no-deductible fire-insurance policy, you may be a little less diligent in clearing the brush away from your house. The savings-and-loan crisis of the nineteen-eighties was created, in large part, by the fact that the federal government insured savings deposits of up to a hundred thousand dollars, and so the newly deregulated S. & L.s made far riskier investments than they would have otherwise. Insurance can have the paradoxical effect of producing risky and wasteful behavior. Economists spend a great deal of time thinking about such moral hazard for good reason. Insurance is an attempt to make human life safer and more secure. But, if those efforts can backfire and produce riskier behavior, providing insurance becomes a much more complicated and problematic endeavor."
So rather than picturing a whitehouse full of rich folks not caring about poor folks getting sick, which is a common view from the left, we can now see the white house full of rich folks afraid poor folks will suddenly start running with scissors. Or perhaps acting like Logan on Gilmore Girls, enjoying rich man's privileges like jumping off buildings with umbrellas and stealing yachts.
Okay, I may be exaggerating here, but the power of point of view and frames is more clearly demonstrated here than in almost anything I have read. If your interest is more than academic, the frame of Moral Hazard is also nicely refuted in the article as well.
I've naughtily cut and pasted this article below (click "more") which I'll remove once Gladwell posts it to his site (he seems to run a month or two behind the New Yorker). For now, I recommend reading it; and if it affects you as it affected me, forwarding with vigor usually reserved for jokes and juggling videos.
FYI: I had a sudden affect/effect freakout while writing this, and stopped to search for the difference, finding this useful article.
From Michael Time Magazine article on Michael Moore
"Fahrenheit 9/11 may be the watershed event that demonstrates whether the empire of poli-tainment can have decisive influence on a presidential campaign. If it does, we may come to look back on its hugely successful first week the way we now think of the televised presidential debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, as a moment when we grasped for the first time the potential of a mass medium--in this case, movies--to affect American politics in new ways."
I cannot argue. Philippe and I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. No matter what side you are on, left or right, or what you believe or don't believe, you have to see the film. It's deeply flawed and magnificently crafted. You can watch it as a meta-exercise for awhile, thinking this is a remarkable piece of counter-propaganda, but as Moore leaves his conspiracy theories behind and moves into the realm of simple events surrounding the war the film takes a new life. Everyone is talking about the first half-- how true is it about the Saudis, the FBI, etc. But the second half is where the moment of great filmmaking occurs.
Moore first follows the path of death and its price on Iraq, with American soldiers portrayed as rock&roll killers listening to metal while mowing down children. We see Iraqui women crying, screaming, cursing and begging god and americans alike to explain why their families are taken away. But just when you think he's making one kind of film, he flips it. He reveals the soldiers are the poorest Americans, with no future, willing to serve their country whether or not they agree with how it's run. The same soldiers who pipe rock into their helmets are also the ones who ache over the bodies they roll by in the tanks, who die and lose their souls to the killing. Who refuse to go back "to kill other poor people."
In this second half, politics fall away briefly against the spectacle of war: Iraqi children and American soldiers alike missing limbs. Iraqi and Americans alike asking why. War makes victems of both sides. It's impossible to paint one side or the other evil. Moore's sense of rhythm is impeccable: each time my eyes filled with tears, he would return to the business-as-usual capitol hill or a bit of humor. It was as if he wanted you to keep your eyes clear enough to see it all. No matter how biased the film is politically, it is startling evenhanded when looking at the battlefield.
So I say it again: right or left, you have to see the movie. I disagree with some of it; some of the heavy handed political rhetoric is off-putting. But the quilt of the last year sewn out of patchwork facts we all know, revealed via the eyes of those who pay the price (as well as those who don't, as shown through the famous accosting senators to enlist their children scene) make you shudder and wake up and question.
It's not the new information that gets you: it's the information we've seen every day for the last year compressed into two hours that makes you pause-- wait, what happened to Osama? Why did we go after Iraq again? Why are we talking about liberating a dictator as if that is why we went in-- I almost forget we're in a war on terror.
Our short memories and lack of planes crashing anywhere recently make it easy to forget why we went from peaceful-surplus to warful deficit.
Fahrenheit 9/11 a testament to the power of film, it's a testament to Moore's growing eloquence of a filmmaker, but more than all that it's a affecting reminder that we have short memories and we as a people need to try harder to keep the big picture in our mind. I'm grateful that Moore helped.
Note: I rarely write about anything political so this is a reminder to keep comments civil, or I will delete them.
Disagree, but be nice.
from The Talent Myth
"What if smart people are overrated?"
Everyone quotes this:
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"
But Self-Reliance is full of gems...
"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. "
"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion"
"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. "
"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. "
"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. "
"For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. "
and the words around the famous quote...
"The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.
But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? ...
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. "
"Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. "
and of course these days I don't post, or if i post its not about usability or ia-- i feel inconsitant and inconstant-- though not particularly great. i feel perhaps the revolt of usability is almost over, it's becoming part of everyday quality work, and perhaps it's time to consider design.
and perhaps roses.
I'm finishing a lazy weekend with a very lazy sunday morning. I'm on the couch, with a cup of medium strong coffee (Philippe chided me for letting it get too strong again yesterday-- and if a Frenchman says your coffee is too strong you must take him seriously if you hope to keep your teeth into old age). And I'm thinking about my great passion, food.
I'm reading With Bold Knife and Fork by that great lady of food writing, M.F.K. Fisher. Her first essay, Anatomy of a Recipe strikes me as perfect introductory reading for any information design class. In it, she follows the development of the recipe from early primitive descriptive passages, such as this one from Athenaeus, an ancient greek writer:
"Take some nuts and some almonds, and also a poppy. Roast this last with great care, and then take the seed and pound it in a clean mortar; then, adding fruits, beat them up with boiled honey, putting in plenty of black pepper, and make the whole into a soft mass..."
Next Fisher follows the gradual improvements made to recipe writing to arrive at their current form: explicitly stating assumptions (such as including the fact one requires a crust for herring pie), listing exact amounts (teaspoons, not pinches and shakes), temperature and cooking time (how hot is a hot oven, and when does "done" occur?), and most subtle but perhaps most important, suggesting an efficient order for the cooking process (a delicate sauce might be ruined as one suddenly realized mid-recipe one had to stop and chop half a pound of nuts or separate ten eggs.)
Fisher insists on key elements of a recipe:
She then finishes the essay with a rewrite of a recipe for a bit of witchcraft into a modern format:
"Name> To drive a woman crazy
Ingredients> 1 or more nutmegs, ground
1 left shoe, of a woman
Method> Sprinkle a small amount of nutmeg on left shoe every night at midnight, until desired results are obtained with woman."
I understand her frustration with the tomes left to her by grandmothers-- women who often left out the secret ingredient for their "famous casserole surprise", who assumed you would never use flour without sifting it, who knew when a cake was done, and who knew exactly what clarified butter was (and how to clarify it!) They knew, but they did not tell.
I certainly can understand the pain she might have felt as she cracked open Escoffier to refine her art, only to read "Poach the fillets of sole, folded, in the oyster liquor strained through cheesecloth, and a piece of butter as large as a walnut." How many fillets? Folded how? where does the butter come in? (and do I shape the butter into a walnut ball? Escoffier clearly wasn't dealing with rectangles of butter).
Thirty-plus years after she wrote the essay, we see her preferred recipe format used regularly: look at the recipe Fresh Tomato Gazpacho as found on Epicurious. It includes ingrediants precisely measured, a good method for preparation and even how many people it will serve (a blessed addition!). Her dream format is now the standard.
I admit that in my personal life, I rarely follow this format: compare my recipe for gazpacho on my personal foodblog. Mine is done in what I suppose could be considered a grandmotherly way and requires you know a puree from purina, while Epicurious's version is bullet proof. But my blog is for me to store recipes and share with family and friends, not for posterity.
Are these two forms the only ones? Is the Epicurious format vastly superior to the grandmother format? I wonder.
My gazpacho recipe was written for my friend Landy, who cooks extremely well. I imagined him skimming through the description, mentally adding in and removing ingredients then walking into the kitchen and reinventing the entire thing. My husband does this, and so now do I. If I want to make tomato soup, I look up about five recipes to get a feeling for the core rules, then head to the kitchen to improvise.
Almost all cookbooks treat the chef as an incompetent idiot or a rocket scientist dealing with delicate flammables-- precision is considered critical in both the art of cooking as well as the science of baking. A stew is utterly forgiving of almost any sort of carelessness you give the recipe as long as you cook it long enough, while bread is likely to betray you if you live in the wrong climate or at the wrong altitude. Still, cookbooks typically treat them both as holy rituals. A modern cook, unless taught by a mother or father how to wing it, is stuck following the instructions. And then is helpless when it's seven at night and all she has in the house is can of tomatoes, some mushrooms and a frozen fillet of sole and she can't find a recipe matching these ingredients. My father was an excellent cook and I grew up watching him measure with a cupped palm, as his mother had done before him, but most of my friend's parents fed them with KFC and TV dinners. And they are stuck now as they look for alternatives.
Pre-made meals are full of mysterious chemicals that bloat the country's children like party balloons. But recipes in the sunday paper by local restaurant chefs requires hours of cooking and exotic ingredients. A home cook facing a scarcity of harissa or turbot at the local grocery store may not know that chili flakes and sole will get him through. Can you blame him if he throws up his hands and sticks a Stouffer's in the oven?
No wonder we eat regularly at McDonald's, and treat cooking as a formal (and potentially dying) art, to be done only when menaced by a potluck dinner.
So to Fisher's insistence on a formal recipe format, I'd like to request the consideration of what I think is the critical last section of a recipe for the unknown audience: variations. Epicurious gets this from the user comments.
From the gazpacho recipe:
"I used to make this dish but added sliced black olives. This is a favorite summer dish."
"My only adjustments have been to use 1/2 yellow and 1/2 red tomatoes, increase the cucumber to 2 regular (not english, but from the farmer's market), and cut down on the bread. Yum!"
Since a cookbook is not as interactive as a website, it is on the author's shoulders to make sure the reader knows what is sacrosanct and what is not. Julia Child is the master of this. The Way to Cook teaches the reader key base recipes, then includes several variations. Having mastered sautéing chicken, I've since made Sautéed Chicken Piperade, Provençal and Chicken Marengo, and the other night boldly invented a sesame chicken risotto based on this same base recipe.
I'm also saddened by another aspect of the rational recipe. Its soulessness. A recipe with humanity allows the cook to bond with the writer. Asides, hints even anecdotes can help a novice cook find a chef with whom she is simpatico. A chef whose taste matches the novice's, who provide a guide to the delights of the kitchen. It's not enough to learn to cook; one must learn to delight in cooking or McDonald's siren call of convenience will win.
A good recipe should be precise, but also let the cook know when precision is not necessary. It should not only be a set of instructions, but also a source of inspiration. The recipe should consider its audience, both past and present. And finally a great recipe should also give you a feeling for the chef who wrote it.
And so I stopped and put down my coffee. I got hungry, with all this food reading. And I made a simple tartine (means toast, or toast with something or another on it.) With easter providing a surfeit of boiled eggs, perhaps some of you may find it useful.
Breakfast Tartine
2-3 boiled eggs
2 pieces of bread
butter
Grated cheese (I use Trader Joe's Mediterranean blend, which is a mix of provolone, fontina and kasseri, but I'm guessing jack, mozzarella, or parmesan would be good)
Herb de Provence (or dried basil and thyme), salt, pepper
Turn on oven to "broil." Toast bread lightly, either in the oven or in a toaster. Put the toast on a cookie sheet, and butter toast lightly. Sprinkle toast with salt and pepper. Take about a half teaspoon of your dried herbs, and rub them between your palms to break and release their flavor. Sprinkle generously on the buttered toast.
Find the sharpest knife in your kitchen, and slice eggs, starting with the fat end and moving toward the tip. Wipe blade every few cuts to remove yolk, or you won't get clean slices (this is why an egg slicer is useful, I imagine.) Arrange in a single layer on the toasts. Sprinkle very generously with grated cheese. Put in broiler until cheese on top is brown and bubbly.
Eat.
"Oh man.. if ye are not always decent, at least you are consistant..."
from Wired News: NASA: No Debris Sales on EBay
"NASA warned members of the public Sunday against trying to sell purported Columbia debris on eBay... Hours after the shuttle broke up Saturday over Texas, raining smoking debris over the countryside, listings for pieces began appearing on the Internet auction site. "
Kite Aerial Photography by Scott Haefner: Panoramas is pretty amazing.
Checking out HallHTML.com :: Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web I realized the reviews are Amazon reviews. But no name is attached. Same for wordboost and anybook4less. Do people know their words will be out there without their names attached? I assume Amazon leases the reviews, and makes a bit of money off it. We sign those releases too quickly... not sure why I am disturbed so much, yet I am... "customer reviews" ... whose customers?
Nothing to do with nothing, but after looking up monocline (see previous entry) and discovering it was (variously) "an oblique geologic fold" "Double flexure connecting strata at one level with same strata at another level." or "a local steepening in an otherwise uniform gentle dip." I decided that Alan Cooper had seen more monoclines than he had defined, and decided to use that word becauase of he had gotten a contextual definition (does Alan Cooper hike? what does our vocabulary reveal about our personal habits? Or am I merely looking in the wrong dictionaries?).
Suddenly I heard in my head the famous line from The Princess Bride "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
And then I had to go look for the quote, since I hate misquoting. Which took me to thinking about what makes a good movie quote. Personally I think it should both remind you of the scene in the movie and stand alone as just good writing.
Thus, this site has acceptible quotes from Princess Bride, including "Thank you so much for bringing up such a painful subject. While you're at it, why don't you give me a nice papercut and pour lemon juice on it? "
and this site is less effective with quotes like "As you wish" and "That's inconcievable!" -- moving if you've seen the movie, but meaningless if you haven't.
Or maybe it's just the art of knowing how much context to provide. "Inigo: "You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you."
Dread Pirate Roberts: "You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die." "
(you kow this was just an excuse to read and quote a buch of Princess Bride, doncha..)
Chris MacGregor's inspired response to Don Norman's intellegent explaination of the flash turn around issue should be required reading for anyone in web development. Especially consultants.
(reread Flash 99% bad, if you don't know what I'm talking about. esp. the ammendment)
My little site often goes after usability blunders like a dog on a hambone, and I know as I've begun job hunting I've been restraining myself-- slightly.
But is this a good idea? On one hand, I'm not a professional critic and I don't get paid to be objective. On the other hand, how can I expect you to ever trust me if I don't keep my nose clean (or get it dirty-- not sure -- damn metaphors). At least you should be able to trust me to be opinionated.
The ammendment on the 99% bad alertbox reads more than a little like a backpedal. What does that do to the alertbox's trustworthyness? It makes you wonder what are the stories that don't get told at NNG. And other consultant companies.
It also reveals the price of being bombastic and absolute. If that orginal column had claimed merely that Flash was being misused, the current alliance would go down easier with the community(s). But the attention grabbing "99% bad" that got people to the site, and probably caught Macromedia's attention, is also the reason this job is going down so badly.
What can NNG do? Here is a chance to make real change. I don't blame them for making what is the right decision: to try to help what they view as a troubled product. But they are also going to have to live with the skeptiscm and catcalls.
That's the price of guruhood.
I was looking over the NN/g Events Agenda thinking about what sold out and what hasn't. Especailly curious to me was that IA 1 sold out, IA 2 did not, but web design 1 didn't, and wed design 2 did. At first I figured that san francisco has more experienced designer than IA's. But then looking at the agneda for each of these, I noticed the sold outs looked more pragmatic and applicable.
"Web design" is chronlogical in project time, and 1 focused on discovery. You know, the part everyone rushes through in real life? While WD 2 focuses on the hard core making part: interaction design, IA, prototyping and so on.
Meanwhile IA was organized along beginner-advanced. So I'm guessing the sign ups were people who just wanted enough to do their job, and fergetabout the theory and advanced skills.
Of course this is merely me pondering. But why does one course do well over another?
Today I bought a gift and had it wrapped. I wasn't shown any wrapping paper, just asked to choose between red, blue, ivory and something else (my memory fails me).
It reminded me a lot of being on an airplane and being asked beef or chicken. For someone like me, who eats anything that's cooked well, that question means nothing. I'd rather be told what the sauce is (BBQ or teryaki), or how it's cooked (boiled or grilled) of what cuisine (french or japanese) than "beef or chicken." It's like walking into an art gallery and having the salesman ask you "oil or acrylic."
The ivory had pineapples on it. I was not properly prepared.
While reading An Unorthodox Guide to Mentoring I laughed out loud
"My search for mentors came to an end when I got to spend a day with a man still considered a mentor to thousands. After a discussion that was so confusing I couldn't follow a word he said, a photographer came to take our picture. I was told to sit at the great man's feet, and he stood behind me. Waiting for the camera to go off, he farted. Right in my ear. You take revelations where you can get them. That moment summed up for me the true value of mentors. "
I've long thought that you must be your own mentor.
Elan contemplates sleep, and how it effects not only our ability to work, but also our ability to act human (and humane).
Maybe we can start a pro-sleep movement.
mr. philippe inspects the bike shop's interesting doorstop.
welcome to palo alto!
Peter Morville's new Social Network Analysis is a pretty sweet essay on the social network Peter used to learn about social networks. And check out those cool diagrams!
Meanwhile Jesse continues his recon. I'm even more uneasy about this entry, but I want to see how it all plays out before jumping to any conclutions about the essay. Facinating to watch it unroll.
The real mystery is how these people write a book and all these essays. And they've got spouses. It's all I can do to work, write the book and keep my husband feeling like a husband and not a couch-warmer dinner-maker.
Anyhow, my sentence of the week is "Design has consequences"
I can't think of a sentence that is more acknowledged as true and most often acted as if it were false in our industry.
Not at this moment, anyhow.
Nobody Cares That You Only Had the Weekend is another tale of trying to work in an increasingly fast-paced world. Unlike Morville's request that we all slow down if we hope to produce quality, David Baldwin seems to think quality work can be produced in half the time and speed means new tactics, not fighting to go slower.
Who's right? I don't know. Sometimes longer timelines means one just procrastinates then rushes at the end. Sometimes long timelines means one ruminates, and the solution flows out effortlessly. Sometimes longer timelines means time to explore the wackier ideas, and allows for innovation. Sometimes it leads to taking on two or three projects at once, and still working 15 hour days. Depends on the company, depends on the freelancer.
In my personal experience a gentle timeline leads to rumination which leads to breakthroughs. You can't "sleep on it" when it's due tomorrow. I often have important breakthroughs in problems when I do go to sleep, or when I take an hour walk, or when I go cook dinner or wash dishes. The break from the problem allows the subconscious mind to go to work. When horrid deadlines loom, one tends to chain oneself to the computer, locked in a stressfilled countdown where any solution is better than staring at a blank screen.
Consider that we Americans have the least amount of vacation than any other country (Annual vacation days: Italy 42; France 37; Germany 35; Brazil 34; Britain 28; Canada 26; South Korea 25; Japan 25; U.S. 13.), and consider even a week of vacation can reduce chance of heart attack. Consider this information from an Oxford health survey: "Some 34 percent report they have such pressing jobs that they have no down time at work. A full 32 percent work and eat lunch at the same time. Meanwhile, 32 percent never leave the building once they arrive at work; 19 percent say their job makes them feel older than they are and 17 percent say work causes them to lose sleep at home."
Now let's look at speed. It may produce bad work, it may produce good work, but it uses employees like firewood.
Something has to change. The world actually has enough advertisements for candy bars, the world has enough espresso makers. Why don't we slow down?
Slow down. Make better products. More importantly, make better lives.
I think a good wiki has to have a champion. Wikis may support multiple authors, but someone has to put in the initial work of putting up enough content to make it worthwhile to add to, and then keep the stray additions in line, make sure the whole thing makes sense.
Easy Topic Maps is such a wiki. It's interesting, well organized and laid out, and full of good info.
Understanding the Web as Media is an elegant draft of an essay that is still more important and insightful than most of the sleakly polished writing about the nature of the web that's out there.
"We were trying so furiously to make the medium do what we wanted it to do, few of us stopped to ask, "What is the web good for? What can the web do that other media can't do? What can the web NOT do that other media CAN do?" In other words, what are the unique media characteristics of the web? What are its inherent strengths and weaknesses? How does the web "fit in" with existing media?"
The web is an immature medium, but lately we've seen uses of it that reflect its unique nature-- napster, wikis, blogs...
A list I'm on recently rehashed the old argument what is IA with its attendent arguments about what medium it's suited to. I said
"My ultimate loyalty is to the web. This new medium should no longer be a shanty town. It's time for architects to step up and help build a mature information city, doing what we do best."
and I mean it.
As architects, we must first understand our building materials. The ground we build on. The nature of the lot. The qualities of the neighboring structures. The use of the structure by the peoples who will inhabit it. And finally we must puzzle out how to delight, how to innovate, how to make our new structure soar in people's imaginations and inspire a new series of spaces that are more useful, more precious to their inhabitants than anything that has gone before. It's not "beautiful or usable," it's what if we did it right....
The Mirror Project | See The Horrible Monster
Thinking a lot lately about the creative process and problem-solving mindsets. It occurred to me yesterday while contemplating my toes that we IA's are a terribly rational lot, and often forget to trust our instincts. Graphic designers often work from the gut first, then explore or "reverse engineer" a rational later. IA's study all the available data, digging for more and more until we are quite saturated it, then every aspect of our design is carefully calculated based on our information and analysis of it. I think that ability to justify sometimes makes a little-- unsure? fearful? unwilling to leap after a gut feeling. I think we need to trust those instincts; our unconscious mind is a powerful processor and those strange moments of "a ha!" are often simply our gut processing the data faster than our conscious brain.
Three a ha's I trust.
1. Dumb Questions. Often at the beginning of a project I'll get a completely wild idea, something that just can't be feasible. I am then faced with the prospect of asking a dumb question "what if," "is there..." or "why not...?" I usually know I'm about to be slapped down. But out of the answer I often get a hint of the solution. Brainstorming can be done out of a brainstorming session; we should always trust ridiculous flights of fancy-- how else are we ever going to do impossible things?
2. Inexplicable lines. Sometimes in my schematics I have an urge to put down a line, or sometimes a box. I don't know why. I always do. Then, later before presenting I go through and justify them all-- if the weird appearing line has no purpose I remove it. Schematics are not design, after all. But often it is standing for something... perhaps I'll make a note to the designer: be sure to create a visual divider here" or sometimes my unconscious brain is coaxing me to add a search box just where I might want to use it. By allowing those early schematics to be loose and sketchlike, I allow myself to play and thus gain a better understanding of the problem and its potential solutions.
3. The single user test. I suppose I could call this the "Doh!" moment as easily as an "A Ha" moment.... Sometimes during usability tests I see a user having a problem and I'll instinctively know that this problem will be had by a large section of the populace. As semi-scientific types, of course, we don't like to get data from just one user. But after seeing hundreds of users interact with websites, I'm pretty good at separating the idiosyncrasies of one person versus the archetypical behavior of a user. If I will listen to my gut when it says "Doh! Why didn't I see that before?" A good example would be a single fifty-five-year-old not reading one-point-font instructions modifying a form field. My gut will say "Doh! Of course people won't see that! It looks like legal text!" Later my rational brain will come in and point out that over 50's often have failing eyesight, and instructional text probably should be more easily readable.
Our gut is a fine tool in the IA toolbox, and illumination is sufficiently precious we shouldn't throw it away. Follow your gut, use your brain to sort it out after. But do trust that strange gut feeling, the uneasiness about a project, the weird idea for a solution, that oddball dream about the product... all those signals that your unconscious is about to deliver up a true "A HA!" moment.
Web Design Patterns is terrific project. Eric is collecting common design conventions such as breadcrumbs and sitemaps. I look forward to seeing it grow. A suggestion: how about linking to other sites that expound on the parrerns-- such as linking the shopping cart page to dack's best practices essay?
trying to add a spellcheck (yes, i know I need it most of all) so some things may not work for a bit)
trying to add a spellcheck (yes, i know I need it most of all) so some things may not work for a bit)
from LouisRosenfeld.com
"I see information architecture as the intersection of three areas (imagine yet another three-circled Venn diagram):
users: (who they are, what their information-seeking behaviors and needs are)
content: (volume, formats, metadata, structure, organization)
context: (business model, business value, politics, culture, resources and resource constraints) "
theyrule0001 is an amazing use of design to reveal the few people who hold sway over our lives. As IA's and as humans, this is well worth spendig time with.
thanks, Matt for pointing me to it.
Got a "messaging and branding" survey in the mail. The following are some of the questions and some of my answers.
"Please read the following product description in order to complete the final section of the survey.
'CompanyName is an online tool that enables companies to analyze purchase decisions drivers of startups by service area, geography and buyer characteristics. Using this powerful Web-based tool, companies can generate both standard and customized research reports from proprietary data. This information will help them gain a better understanding about the high-growth venture marketplace.'
Do you feel you have a clear understanding of what the product does?
no
What if anything do you like the MOST about the product?
I know you are a product for companies rather than human beings. Perhaps a comapany for VC? Anyhow I know to stay away.
What if anything do you like the LEAST about the product?
I'm still wondering what kind of companies? What kind of services? It seems like snake oil to me. Why do you think this phrase is okay: "to analyze purchase decisions drivers of startups."
What the sam-hill is a 'purchase decisions driver'? Why don't you just say "helps companies make informed decisions when purchasing?"
Go explain what you do to your mom. When she understands you're ready.
addendum: there is an amazing comment by tony burgess on this post taking me to task-- and he's right on. read it!
HannaHodge has closed their doors. They left a very moving goodbye on their homepage
excerpt -- emphasis mine
"We believe that the industry has made great strides over the last two to three years and that many experienced individuals and teams of experts have emerged in the professional services area that are more than capable of filling the needs of this industry. Now is an appropriate time for us to apply our skills, experience and determination to new areas where we can have the most impact in the fight to humanize technology."
Goodbye HannaHodge.
But never goodbye to the good fight.
Haven't seen AI? Here's a hint: when things freeze over, leave the theater. You'll be happier.
Seen it? Join the bitch-fest here: unHip: 07/03/2001: "A.I.: Entirely Artificial, Low Intelligence"
And IA? (which is AI spelled backwards)
Well, let's just say AI's an interesting object lesson on what happens when you have two cheifs (even if one dies in the middle of the project). I suspect Spielberg was haunted by a ghost looking over his shoulder and dilluted his own --albeit cheesy-- skills. I believe deeply in collaborative processes, but I also believe that every project artisitc or otherwise-- needs a visionary to drive it forward and keep it cohesive, be it producer, director, CEO... IA?
addendum Karl Fast sent me this intriguing article on the non-making of AI. An interesting look at how movies end up the way they do.
Jakob's first promoted micropayments in '98.
Will P2P finally make them happen? Clay Shirky doesn't think so.
The Case Against Micropayments
"Micropayment systems have not failed because of poor implementation; they have failed because they are a bad idea. Furthermore, since their weakness is systemic, they will continue to fail in the future."
and Scott McCloud thinks they will
What do you think?
from the article Alan Cooper of Cooper Interaction Design sees planning as key to downstream dividends
"It's inevitable that there will rise up in programming a separate but equal profession known as interaction design. These people will act as the bridge between business viability and technical capability. They will act like architects. "
hmm.. I could swear there was a title kinda like this.
Both Nielsen Norman Group and Cooper list "visioneering" as a service. Does Disney know about that?
"Visioneering is a systematic approach to creatively develop directions for future Web services and designs. "
"Visioneering
Whether you want to know how people will apply your technology, or what technology you need to develop to achieve customer goals, Cooper's Visioneering services help you plan for future opportunities."
I get a fair amount of mail from my cute little feedback forms, and every so often there are some odd ones.
"is there a way to find out the ip address of a machine whose user u are chatting with in a website?"
"hello,
I´m looking for gsm-sim-hacksn i wants to hack me in my own things so i will have money for my mobile with my cardwriter . i can do my sim-card in my writer thani must have a write software for the sim- card . please can you look for my software look you are a profesor and i´m a boy (12) from germaniso it must be a software it makes money to my card . i must do :
so i must make the small sim card in the big kart.
so please help me !!! "
Because I am not a hacker (nor a professor!) I can't help these poor souls. If you would like to post the answers to their questions as a comment, I'll happily email them and tell them to take a gander.
for those who haven't figured it out:
I am an Information Architect and User Researcher. I can barely edit Perl to change the background color of greymatter, much less hack anything. When it comes to hacks, I have more in common with Raymond Chandler than Kevin Mitnick.
I can even capitalize if the situation calls for it.
Try astalavista...
Architecture Week 2001 Official Site
Architecture Week brings architects, writers, dancers, filmmakers and others together for a nationwide celebration of contemporary architecture. You have the opportunity to get involved with events which include building previews and tours, lectures, exhibitions and installations.
In these days of lay-offs I get a lot of mail bounces.
They usually look like this (address changed to protect the innocent)
Your messagedid not reach the following recipient(s):
c=US;a= ;p=Breakaway; o=NYDataCenter;dda:SMTP=blurp@blurp.com; on Tue,19 Jun 2001 17:55:17 -0400
The recipient name is not recognized
The MTS-ID of the original message is: c=US;a=
;p=Breakaway;l=EXGATE-NY0106192155M8FTW93F
MSEXCH:IMS:Breakaway:NYDataCenter:EXGATE-NY 0 (000C05A6) Unknown
Recipient
This is the first one I've ever seen in English.
Hello,
Thank you for your message addressed to an Organic, Inc. address. The addressee is no longer working with Organic. Your message is being returned to you unopened and unread. We encourage you to reroute your message to another Organic employee.
http://www.organic.com/
No traceroute nonesense, no extraneous machine code...
I have no idea what sport they are playing.
But I'd probably buy a t-shirt.
Flipping through the latest Industry Standard, I came across this article, The Great Pretenders
Companies that offer free magazine subscriptions in exchange for survey information are sitting on a landfill of garbage data, because in the questionnaire universe, everyone is a senior executive with the power to approve millions of dollars in hardware, software and consulting services. Cubicle workers may not have money, power or prestige, but they're getting the same junk mail as their bosses.
The article also records a syndrome endemic to focus groups: not only do people lie to get into the groups, they then lie to get the approval of the other focus group members-- flirty women adjusting their opinions to get the approval of the male members of the group and vice-versa. Their opinions just can't be trusted.
At Carbon IQ we've luckily seen a lot less of this, partially because we do far more usability testing than focus groups so we don't have to deal with the vagueries of group dynamics. We have come across the occasional "professional tester"; a person who lies aobut how often they participate in user research studies so they can do a lot more of them and make the nice little stipend. One fellow not only did that, but was savvy enough to say when filling out the screener that he was a student. He was a student-- part-time. We recognized him as a fulltime local web developer, a profession we were specifically trying to avoid.
Otherwise we've caught folks by listening closely-- often they become comfortable in the course of the test and say something like "At the other test..." Oddly enough they are often willing to confess at the test they are repeat testers, even though they have lied on the screener. Perhaps because they feel they are already going to get their money. We've long taken the precaution of testing two more than the minimum needed, as much to be able to discard those who provide us with useless data as to cover for no shows.
As budgets tighten, more and more folks are doing guerilla usability testing. However, areas with high concentrations of web and software companies (such as San Francisco) start to become a problem for finding suitable test subjects. Between the preponderance of designers and developers and the fact that almost everyone has been to a test or two, it's hard to find an "average" user. My first piece of advice would be to hire a seasoned usability specialist and recruiter, but if that is out of the question, try these tricks:
Also ask if someone has *ever* held one of these jobs-- we had a test subject once who was a market researcher-- except she had taken some time off to have a baby, and cheerfully filled out the survey question "Homemaker."
Good luck!
IS THE WORST YET TO COME FOR INTERNET SHOPS?
But the worst may be yet to come. By yearend, the number of i-shops may be halved, or worse, analysts say.
"Yes, companies are going to go bankrupt. Yes, companies are going to get bought," says Steven Birer, a managing director at investment bank Robertson Stephens who follows i-shop stocks. "The pyramid on which this whole thing had been built -- the constant inflow of funds -- dried up"
Althougth the last couple paragraphs are cheering, at least for me...
Still, one key to staying alive may be to specialize. Now, companies that once offered everything are rethinking that approach.
Transparent New York is lovely and amazing. (via Lesbarkeit von Strukturen)
Can we do this with site mapping? Should we?
addendum
After playing with it for awhile, I grew used to its tremendous beauty and because frustrated with it for its lack of information. To be beautiful (I suspect) some data was removed that would make it easier to understand. In particular, Animated Manhattan frustrated me-- I felt there was knowledge just out of reach of my comprehension, and a tiny bit more explanation of what I was looking at, a referencing grid perhaps, would make all the difference.
George told me I had been mentioned on FuckedWeblog. Well, I didn't find an entry on my little blog, but the idea made me cross my eyes a couple times--
I leave the country fairly often, I always come back, and sometimes I even blog from France. It comes from having a French husband who hasn't immigrated yet. And having a highly developed sense of wanderlust. Plus I'm part of a small company during a struggling time, and starting to do the conference circuit and contemplating doing some writing that is longer than a paragraph... but that doesn't mean the blog is dead.
Oh no! Sometimes I am consumed with the desire to say very little, and where better to publish thoughtlets but on a blog?. That won't stop! But write everyday? What am I? The SF Chronical? (look the quality of that rag...) I'll write when I can, as well as I can manage, and hopefully someone out there will be entertained or informed. That's the nature of Bloginess.
Anyhow, for the remarkably long list of retiring blogs out there I give you all the very fine advice Peter gave me when I started up the elegantblog: "You don't have to write every day."
Voila, you're free! Write when you feel like it.
I know I gleaned it but this article is so on the money I have to give it an extra call out. Ask Tog: How to Deliver a Report Without Getting Lynched
"The finest set of recommendations will be rejected if the form in which they are received is seen as hostile or belligerent. I recently received a copy of an unsolicited report sent to a firm that seemed unimpressed with the writer's efforts. The reasons why are instructive to us all."
Pictures from the good design show are up. Enjoy, and please tell me-- what makes design "good"??
Ready for some incentuous link-love that we've all come to expect from the bloglife? Well, this time it's 100% worth it. Chad Thorton has put up a brand spanking new usability blog, and it's already chock-full of content goodness. Plus it's got a great name: Brightly Colored Food
I saw an exhibit of the 2000 Good Design Awards and pictures will follow shortly. The big question for me was what made these items winners? What is the essence of good design? More after I've slept on it...
A quick Google Search on drake hotel, chicago turned up the links I wanted, and one I didn't know I wanted... an elegant historical hotel. This is the first link I've clicked through in months. Just because it was relevent to me. (click on the picture to see full screenshot)
What's wrong: Sadly doesn't mention that it is in Chicago, which is something I can't assume since I get so many irrelevent suggestions from search engines.
And also what could "See your message here..." mean? "Advertisers: See your message here..." would have been more effective, perhaps.
While poking about preparing for my trip, I can across GreatBuildings.com, a very interesting site of information on the most renowed architectures of the world. Then that led me to Artifice DesignWorkshop Lite - Free 3D home design, walkthrough, and rendering software. I wonder how horrible it would be to try to model websites in 3-D, or if there is even a point. I know when I design the architecture of a website in my head, it is always 3-D.
aka "The a-list part II"
Started up a correspondance with anil dash, and he was kind enough to tell me the story of the a-list and let me share it with you...
Well, story was perhaps overstating it. The fact is, no one's ever canonized an a-list, because no one knows who's on it. Except that Kottke surely would be. And, by extension, Meg. Even more curiously, there are people who are friends with all the a-listers, read by all of them, but *aren't* on the list. Judith's calamondin.com comes to mind.
That site that you saw at a-list.blogspot.com that was quickly abandoned was the work of Joe Clark, who also wrote a screed at
http://www.fawny.org/decon-blog.html
His whining there was prompted by the New Yorker's article on Blogger (well, it really focused on Meg & Jason's relationship) which the article's author has posted on her personal site at:http://www.rebeccamead.com/2000_11_13_art_blog.htm
It was at that point when people really started to pile on, through a
combination of opportunism and jealousy. This can be seen at MetaFilter
at http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/4387
Then the topic clearly burned itself out and people got annoyed by any
mention of it. To me, that's when the fun started: http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/4334
After that, any mention of Pyra or Blogger or any of the people who worked there inciting bitching about the whole thing, with the only common thread being (1) jealousy on the part of the whiners, mostly because their sites get fewer hits and (2) accusations of elitism. Which I consider largely crap (I'm guess I might be biased) because not one of the people who's ever been labeled as an a-lister has ever been anything other than cordial to me, either in person or via email or phone.
Here, then, is my stab at an A-List. There's many more that *might* be listed, but I've erred on the side of exclusion. Which seems appropriate, given the subject matter.
Kottke. This one's a given.
Megnut. See above.
Evhead. I think, by dint of him being the only one who stayed at Pyra.
Haughey. Because of the one-two punch of former Pyra employee status and
Powazek. He's former Pyra and the {Fray}. That probably counts.
Beyond that, it gets a bit fuzzy. Peterme is considered one, although pretty much none of the others links to him anymore, except out of habit.
Nominees for inclusion would be Zeldman, although he's east coast like me and travels in very different circles. Possibly PB's Onfocus.com, as a former key Pyra guy. But he's very quiet and so's his site, so people tend to overlook him a bit. I think a strong case could be made for Heather's "Harrumph" but no one ever says anything bad about her because everyone likes her. So her a-list status would be pointless.
Judith's Calamondin has been referred to as a-list, which is again strange because, while many of the others in those circles read her site, she's pretty low-profile overall.
I'd probably personally include Brad Graham's Bradlands, as everyone
knows and loves Brad. By the same token, RCB's Rebecca's Pocket. But again, the whole point of the a-list is to bash its members, so neither of them fits the bill because you'd have to be a right bastard to find anything nasty to say about either.
I guess I'd throw in Zannah's /usr/bin/girl/ but she also seems to not engender a lot of antipathy, so she gets omitted, too.
Okay, my brain is empty now, and I can't think of anymore. This concludes my exhaustive study of the subject. Feel free to use this information as you wish. :)
a later note said
Even better, and more simple, check this out: Fan-faves. Ignore the first 2 or 3, and you're set.
First, how many diaries can one read on a regular basis?
Second, I can't imagine a list without lance .
But I didn't even know there was an a-list, so I can't be trusted.
Clearly there is something wrong with me. I became obsessed with discovering who the "a-list" is. I'm sure this is very old hat for most of you, so feel free to skip this post, since it has nothing to do with IA and everything to do with bizarre web subcultures. However, if you --like me-- rather enjoy bizarre web subcultures, hop on.
It all started with the ALA article on flaming the famous, which caused me to become obsessed with figuring out who the maligned four were.
"four writer-designers received praise for pioneering the personal storytelling site"
"the four had somehow "sold out.""
"Two of the four were so distressed by these accusations that they drastically curtailed their creative output"
Tease! So I read the forum in search of the four. That led me to Metafilter (I'd visited it before, but never gotten involved). MeFi led me to Shuffleboard where I briefly became a guru-groupie and flirted with jakob neilson (kinkier than becoming a furry).
I wandered back to MeFi where they had given me four names. I did a seach on "derek" and "powazek" hoping to track down the war that started it all. I finally did find it (or one of the wars, anyhow) on metatalk by searching on "webby" and following a link.
It was a pretty funny "flamewar"-- the worst the thread had to offer was a suggestion that {fray} was past it's prime (along the line of saying it's "so five minutes ago" and patently untrue). I did enjoy meg saying her grandmother was past her prime and she still loved her... woo, I thought I had a penchant for puttting my foot in my mouth. I never did find the insulted other three, but by that time I no longer cared.
Having now surfed MeFi and MeTa so much, I was amazed how often people referred to this "a-list" as if it were something written up somewhere. I did a quick search on it, and found no originating thread or official list. Shuffleboard soon convinced me that the a-list was a group hallucination held by heavy bloggers.
I was pleased to find metatalk, but almost immediately insulted matt (see comment regarding foot above). Sigh.
Continuing my inane streak. Woo hoo! No wiser, and never did figure out who the a-list consists of beyond meg, ev, cam(maybe), matt, powazek and kottke. But deeply amused trying so very hard to unravel something "everybody" knows.
Razorfish Founders Quit Top Management Positions
"Mr. Maheu, who once oversaw North American operations and corporate development at Razorfish, called Mr. Dachis and Mr. Kanarick "industry pioneers and visionaries" and said the company's goal was to "return to profitable operations and positive cash flow while successfully serving the expectations of our clients, shareholders and employees."
and
"The culture at Razorfish's NoHo offices stood out in comparison with other consulting firms for its warm and creative environment, employees have said. The two men, both from middle-class backgrounds, helped foster that, the employees said."
So why do I care? A friend was in the CIQ offices the other day talking about the early days of Razorfish and how it was one of the most nurturing amazing creative environments he had ever seen. That stood in sharp contrast with other stories I'd heard from another friend, of Razorfish being hell on earth for its employees.
I had always admired Razorfish greatly in my early days, amazed at their wonderful playful Christmas give-aways. I spent mucho time surfing their job listings not because I was job hunting, but because I liked to luxuriate in the interface like a hot bath. I applied once, I think, only to hear nothing. Later I heard tales of shocking arrogance to their clients, and I swore not to follow that example...
but I've only seen Razorfish from the outside. I have no idea what's true and what's not. They are a myth to me.
And now we carbonites are trying to build a nurturing creative environment, and I wonder what lessons can be learned. Is it just impossible to grow a company and not have it eventually own you? Is it important to stay small? Maybe nothing can last, and the only thing to do is grow a small company, then sell and start another. Maybe companies are like kittens... only cute when they are small.
(Don't get me wrong, I love cats. Quite more than I love corporations)
Finally, the website we've all been waiting for. The exciting new feature is "Ask E.T." Quick, everyone think up a good problem to ask!
The Work of Edward Tufte and Graphics Press (via Carbon Log)
I've oft pointed out origami diagrams are great examples of information design. These aren't true origami, but sure are dang fun. (via dynagirl)
YAMAHA MOTOR - PAPER CRAFT : VMAX Edition
"For easier use, Yamaha has completely redesigned the assembly manual for the VMAX, the commemorative first edition authentic paper sculpture. Anyone, including those who have completed the previous version, or who have given up on it, or who haven't tried it yet, can take this special opportunity to make their own authentic paper sculpture of the VMAX."
Human Factors International Articles
ones I'm excited to read include: Managing Your Defense Against GUI's from Hell, Pull Down Menus: Out of Sight, Out of Mind, Key Tips for User-Centered GUI Design and Icons: Much Ado about Something
yum!
what is it about bloggers imploding? is this the next phenomena? is this the price of a successful personal site? am I next?
There's a debate raging on the bay-chi list over nathan.com (he made his links too small, defying Fitt's law. Shocking! I've never seen a designer do that before.) The part of the debate I found interesting was the question of how to evaluate this weird hybrid, the personal-professional site. I've always held that personal sites do not get attacked on their usability. period. However, Nathan's site is a hybrid-- a personal-professional site.
some other personal-professional sites include
they vary in their emphasis on the more personal aspects of their life: Peter and Jef seem willing to marry the two, while Jesse and Jakob keep them neatly separate. The both have a ton of content, and pay the minimum effort to design (obviously some are more skilled than others, but I don't dare name names for fear of scoldings). They also often don't reflect what they preach: both Peter's site and Jakob's are notoriously hard to use when one is trying to locate a resource the offered in the past.
and of course this site is an example of the same: Eleganthack is decidedly a personal-professional site. I run it alone, it reveals my design and editorial failings, and it doesn't always practice what I preach (or what you might assume I'd preach). Instead it's a place where -- whenever I can steal some minute out of my day -- I shove my baby thoughts into the world to fly.
I guess my question is: what are the rules for evaluators when looking at these hybrids? Do we demand they practice what they preach, or do we simply thanks them for taking the time to share their knowledge. I lean toward the latter, but if your site is out there to promote your professional skills, shouldn't it also be an example of yoru excellence? The one chance to not have your craft watered down by compromises with marketing, technology, etc., typically foisted upon one in a commercial project?
Mike wrote to me:
there's a fine line between being usability advocates and usability police. comments about "being allowed" to do things and "the rules for" personal sites can come across as guliani-esque.
fly your freak flag nathan!
Nathan himself has this to say about personal websites.
Wonderful post on chiweb from adam on choosing not making software more friendly.
did usability testing this morning, and when I got back felt too lazy to leave the house. You are the beneficiary, with a ton of updates on the site. I *should* be writing a book proposal, I *should* be doing the IA for the redesign, I *should* be writing some new articles; but instead I tweak, and poke around and contemplate going to Josie and the Pussycats tonight.
Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You (via antenna)
GO/FA>LS d? s+: a C++++ U P+ L E-- W+++ N- w M-- V- PS+ PE !Y PGP-- t 5 X++ R* tv+ b++++ D G e++ h--* r+++ x+++++
so a while ago I saw evan rose's wish list and saw he has a book I thought he might like (The Mezzanine). i remembered how pleasent it was when vincent unexpectedly bought me a book. so I bought it for evan, even though he had no idea who I was. it felt good.
next i bought noah a dvd off his wish list, to say "thanks for greymatter."
it felt damn good.
so now i'm asking everyone to find someone's wish list (not mine, lazybones!) and buy them a book. or a video. it's gonna cost you maybe 20-30 bucks, but you'll tingle all over.
cheap thrill.
good thrill.
and be sure to add a link to your own wish list on your site, so when goodness comes a knocking, you'll be at the door.
why not?
The newly public Carbon Log allows you to give advice to recently laid off stacia. should she look for a new job? go to spain? grow mushrooms?
NETSCAPE.
F*cking netscape.
it's been a long time since I did any heavy html lifting, and netscape has got my goat. if anyone has a clue why my comments field doesn't show up in netscape, please write. Oh, and what are those wacked out squares? I don't get it.
later that same day
charles of little green footballs is a god. visit his blog view tips on netscape 4 workarounds and tell him he rules. he gave me the code that fixed my problem.
it's because of this, in your stylesheet:
input, textarea {font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 10px;
color: #333333;
border-color: #000000;
border-width: 1px;
padding: 2px;
margin-bottom: 4px;
}
netscape 4 doesn't like stuff like this. the border settings in particular. it's probably better to give netscape 4 a stylesheet that doesn't do anything to INPUTs and TEXTAREAs.
what i did was to separate out that style into a separate stylesheet and then make sure that only IE loads it with this trick:
link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/weblog1.css"
then add
style type="text/css" media="all" @import "/css/weblog2.css";
(this goes in the head section, of course.) all the styles that work in both browsers are in weblog1.css. the INPUT and TEXTAREA styles are in weblog2.css. netscape 4 doesn't understand the @import method of including a stylesheet, so it ignores the second sheet.
poncy old netscape.
next question: how does one deal with the fact that forms are sooo much bigger in netscape than in ie? I'm not writing two sets of code for two browsers. jeez louise, I want to love netscape, but it is a giant bug fest. 'scuse me now, gotta go buy some roach motels.
it's a personal site, so I don't care if it looks lousy in netscape, but it does have to work...
still later... charles continues to rock my world-- he's explained the deal with netscape forms.
by the way, i can also tell you a way to fix those huge netscape form fields. the reason that happens: netscape calculates the width of form elements based on a monospaced font, while IE calculates based on the current font. how IE derives a width from a proportional font -- i don't know.
there are a couple of ways to handle the discrepancy. the quick and dirty way is to use CSS to set the font for form elements to a monospaced font, like Courier or Courier New. the other way is to get it looking right in netscape, then adjust the width using CSS so it looks the same in IE.
nadav points at What Was Once A Village Paved In Gold Is Now A Metropolis With Rat-infested Ghettos which is interesting to me both as a history of a company's evolution, but also as a consequence of what happens on a site where you let your customers review products: at some point the product they review will be you.
It also makes me realize that I'm getting most of my news through a human filter (except, of course the holy two hours on sunday morning with the newspaper and iht) and I'm happy about it. I've long doubted the existence of "journalist objectivity" and by receiving all my news through blogs and the like, every single piece of news is so very clearly slanted, I feel free-- no, obligated-- to form my own opinions on the matter. I question what I see, I have to think, I search for other opinions... the "untrustworthy narrator" makes reading an interactive rather than a passive activity.
feel free to disagree.
a short note on the exception: I have loved the International Herald Tribune for years, and have always wished I could get it in America (I buy it when I'm traveling). Their website is all the things the paper is: succinct news with a world view presented elegantly.
from monday's gleanings
Welcome to Monday. Republic.com is the book everyone is talking about. Supposedly in it (I'll cheerfully admit I haven't read it and feel no urgency to do so), the author speculates that new technologies will allow us to become ignorant about the world around us and more intolerant, because we'll be able to filter out the news we don't want. Has he ever seen a family read the newspaper? In the most archetypical scenario, mom takes the food section, dad takes sports, brother takes classified, sis take fashion and little one reads comics. In a real life a similar but perhaps less gender driven scenario takes place: people read the sections that interest them. Ever watch someone couch surf across the TV channels? Filters happen.
Instead the author should be grateful that email allows people to forward news articles to each other, suddenly allowing a human filter to push through current events through the way a newsbreak interrupts a rerun of "friends".
Of course gleanings is very much a "daily me:" a human filter for your news. Don't you-all go having any orginal thoughts without me, y'hear.
and matt rose then wrote
Well yes, but doesn't that prove the author's point? Maybe it's not just new technologies alone that allow the filtering to happen. The point is that filtering does happen, and new technologies make it easier to do this.Filtering can be a good thing, but it is also certainly open to abuse. It doesn't necessarily allow more and better information through, it provides a way for the person to monitor the types of information they access, and adjust accordingly to get only the information they want. This matches your archetypical newspaper model, and it matches the way people personalize Web sites, news sites, sports sites, etc., so they only see the items they want to see.
In no way can this be construed as the user getting a full and unbiased account of the world around them. This is still true of the newspaper model, so it's not necessarily a Luddite reaction on my part. But the newspaper is at least delivered to your home in a complete unit, unlike the sports bullets on your favorite team that you get from a wireless delivery service, or unlike news on the Middle East conflict that one chooses to access only from a pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian point of view. Ifindividuals filter too much, they are in grave danger of creating an information source for themselves that is completely one-sided, and are willfully blinding themselves to things that they may not think are of interest when creating the initial filter, but which they could find fascinating.
This is the thing that bugs me most about personalization and information filtering. There is little opportunity for the chance discovery, the possibility that a random piece of information one would not expect to know is interesting beforehand jumps out at you and becomes a worthwhile part of your knowledge base. If we can program ourselves and our news sources to map to only what we want to hear, that DOES lead to mass ignorance and increasing tolerance.
Just a thought.
Good point. I've put the book on my wishlist. i still think these issues are too complex to be summed up as filters bad, filters good. I think it's more like filters inevitable, and information leaks out despite filters. can people be forced to be more knowledgable and tolerant than they choose to be? maybe, maybe not. not sure. have to ponder more...
Peter's April 15th entry comments on and expands upon many of the themes discussed here. Until he gets sleepy.
Sorry for any spyonit false alarms. I'm trying to set up a redesign blog, and ended up breaking this one. Ah well, can't make an omlette...
Travis has consented to allow me to reprint his insightful email here:
"The meat of your post from Monday -- where you cast about trying to arbitrarily determine whether the term "usability" should be applied to people who measure usability, or to people who create usability -- I'm not even gonna touch that. (except to the extent that I just did.)
and I'm not even going to touch the word "arbitrarily"--c
But I dig your question at the end, about whether to split forces, and I have an answer for you.
Info-centered IA is basically a term I picked up from the SF IA discussion to increase the chance that you and Noel would have a sense of what I meant. Application-centered IA is probably a better moniker. So there's that, there's user-centered IA, and my usual answer for a third type is revenue-centered IA (you know, MBAs do it, deliberately restricting some info while exposing enough to string people along -- very different from user-centric design).
My purpose in app-centered IA is to create structures for info -- data records, actions, processes, whatnot -- that are organized such that applications -- processes -- can use them well and build on them whenever necessary. The structures are never completed products, since you want themto last, to evolve along with their applications, to be friendly to new apps. I don't know how much this philosophy figures into user IA but it's critical to app IA. A complete website redesign has no equivalent in a good application information structure.
All the primary applications -- serial communication (e.g., encoding into XML), display (presenting in a web page), persistence (storing in a relational database), service (manipulating with program logic), etc. -- define the borders of my environment as an IA. So of course I'm particularly aware of all of them, and there's some translation that has to happen between each, but the idea is either to minimize that or to make it seamless and scalable.
Point is, I think that user IA and app IA are _very_ different, because user-centric design is all about patterns friendly to the human brain, which are exactly the kind of patterns you have to filter out if you want to be objective about app-centric design. Don't want to disappoint you as a would-be uniter, but I bet very few people are good at both. Maybe this is why my discipline is not very well covered in the preferred media of cocktail hours and weblogs; if you really want to get into technicalinformation semantics you go to W3C and start reading specs. And there's less room for speculation and rambling theorizing, which is definitely the fun and social part.
_Any_ IA is, like Adam says, a creative endeavor. Everyone wants to design _something_. Anyone with a single bit of serotonin in their brain wants to make pleasant order from chaos. Musicians organize sound. Writers organize thoughts. Software architects organize application logic. I'm sitting heretrying to organize variants of information architecture. But the fields are pretty divergent and that's why we usually specialize in just one. To be honest, I think "usability" -- or the constantly evolving acronym known as UI/UE/UX -- is more specific about describing your work than is "information architecture", which is understood by everyone you work with, but it doesn't surprise me that "defining IA" is such a necessary topic when dealing with those outside your circle.
If you want a real bit of fun, ask a traditional architect to define "information architect". An architect I know thought it must refer to the person who kept track of the specs for buildings. In fact, when I explained it, she was a little offended at the use of the term "architect" outside the context of buildings. Yeah, that's a bit extreme, but you get the point."
glassdog looks back on five years and finds it good. happy birthday, you old dog!
I've been corresponding with adam, the author of the terrific article I mentioned below, "Why is usability so hard?" and I got so het up I thought I'd share:
adam writes:
And therein lies the irony. As much as usability specialist and usability engineer may be confusing, it's nothing compared with the confusion that surrounds information architect. I suspect that you and I have similar definitions, but I've had people tell me that it's an extension of library science or that it's part of database programming, and when I look at job listings and see information architect, what they're usually describing is someone with good, solid user interface design skills. You seem to approach it as if it were most closely related to information design, is that correct?
me:
pretty much--
you have to understand the history of the title to some degree.
Richard Saul Wurman selected the title Information Architect to describe anyone who organized information into a form that promoted human understanding. In his book, Information Architects he showed examples of this that ranged from folks who did weather maps in newspapers to website design. But what he didn't know is the title already existed in the software world as a type of database engineer. When Lou and Peter came out with their definition in Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, it was heavily affected by their background in Library science. As former librarians, they were very good at organizing information for retrieval-- the key problem in most intranets (nearly all Argus's clients were intranets in the beginning). So their definition was filtered through their experience, just as Wurman's was through his background as an Information Designer.
Next: a lot of companies had these two books laying around: "Information Architects" and the polar bear book--"Information Architecture for the World Wide Web" And as websites grew too big for any one person to hold it in their head, people stepped up to plan those websites out-- sometimes graphic designers, sometimes usability folks, sometimes project managers, sometimes writers, sometimes engineers--- all they really had in common is they looked at big websites and thought "what a mess."
So they started organizing the websites. And in those days of strange and shifting titles, they realized they were spending all their time planning and organizing the structure of the website and no longer doing their old job, and maybe they were due a title change. And odds were high they had one of the two books on their desk, and decided that Information Architect was probably the best title for them, even if they didn't do everything in the book, or even if they did quote a bit more. IA's have grown up quite organically, responding to a need.
We are actually seeing some title-splintering now: new titles such as experience architect, information designer, interaction designer, content architect/strategist are showing up left and right. It is entirely possible as the job of "plan and organize website" becomes "plan and organize the interface" or "plan and organize the content" or "plan and organize the interactive behavior on the website" that the information architect will disappear much in the way webmasters are becoming more and more rare. Or Information Architect may only do one tiny part-- just the content organization, perhaps. Or just create site maps.
Personally I think that would lose the greatest value the IA gives to a project. When you have nothing but specialists work on a project, you have the equivalent of blind men describing an elephant: most engineers don't much care about business or user needs and they concentrate on how to make the code most effective. Most business people don't fully understand the consequence of code (nor do they care) and are interested in users only as consumers, and usability folks often get so concerned with users they forget the business needs or the engineering constraints.... A good IA takes in what is possible from engineering, what is viable/profitable from business and what is desirable/necessary from the users and balances them out into a system that works.
Please note my qualifiers "most" and "a good." I know many folks who can see beyond their discipline, and I know some IA's who cannot. But in my experience most IA's act as translators, going from one discipline to another to ferret out the compromises that will allow a solid system to be created. At Jesse's talk at ASIS: "What Do You 'DO' All Day?" pdf we discovered most IA's do a fair amount of requirements gathering and a chunk of project management. Mostly they don't touch the schedules (except to complain about them, natch) but they do run back and forth trying to marry conflicting requirements. Once those compromises are reached, they document them and realize them by designing systems (site maps, content organization schemes, wire frames, conceptual models and the like) to create a blueprint for the work to be done by design and engineering.
So if they IA is whittled down into the role of "thesaurus designer" or "interface designer" who will see the big picture from a design standpoint? Who will know what the elephant looks like? On the other hand both those jobs could be full-time jobs. I wonder what the future will look like. Will be have both? Neither?
Found "Why is usability so hard?" thanks to the lovely reborn xblog
Tons and tons of good stuff in the article, but this section in particular caught my eye:
The difference between a user interface designer and usability specialist
The user interface designer takes information gathered about the nature of the tasks and goals, combines it with a knowledge of human factors, culture, psychology, graphic design, and many other areas, and produces an interface which is designed to allow the end user to achieve their goals in a clear, appropriate way. The usability specialist is the one who tests that design.
The role of the usability specialist is not a creative one in the same way that a user interface designer is creative. The usability specialist simply reacts to the design based on established guidelines borne of experiments and experience (heuristics), or has end users react to the design by having them use the design in a typical way and observing the results. In both cases, what the usability specialist does is provide a verification role.
IA and usability are starting to be seen as the same thing. A friend writes:
"Souls who describe themselves as "information architects" almost always mean 'user-centered information architects', so much so that I've stopped bothering to clarify it. "He defines himself as a "info-centered information architect, where the goal is not to make users happy but to drastically reduce development time and effort by making information structures fit a wide range of apps (including html display)"
I've always said that the usability specialist (or usability engineer or whatever.. would you people please decide on a title) studies and tests, while the IA designs structures. IA is a calculatedly creative act, while usability is research-- during the beginning, middle and end of a project. IA's should not test their own work any more than a writer should edit their own.. it's just too hard to stay objective.
And usability folks need to not design if they are testing. It muddles things. I've seen more usability reports that look like text-redesigns. It's hard when you are evaluating (I know!) not to recommend a few simple changes that might fix the site, but it must be done with great caution. If a usability person is there only during testing, they may not fully understand the constraints made by the requirements, and make specific recommendations that are impossible for technical or political reasons. "Move banner to top so users understand it is an ad" could contradict the VP of marketing's desire to keep ads out of the branding space. "Most user's were not certain what was an ad and what was not, and may leave site before completing transaction. Recommendation: make it clear clicking ad will take user to another site and abort the sale" By pointing out the consequences of not making the design change, but leaving the change in the hands of the client is a more effective way to get the message across.
Usability folks also may step on delicate egos with their recommendations and --I'm very sad to admit-- have perfectly good insights discarded out of pique. A good recommendation is phrased with caution, using many qualifiers and kept general: "Most users had difficultly finding the search box, possibly because they were looking for a text entry field with the word search next to it. You may wish to explore ways to make the search box more visible, possibly by considering adopting standard web conventions such as placing it in the top left and/or using a standard format." I've seen recommendations such as "make links blue so user understand to click them", or "put box around text so users understand location of content." This prompts some entertaining eye-rolling -- Oh, those Jakob-types just don't get design-- but doesn't help get the interface working better.
But I digress... I keep coming back to my friend's quote. Should we really be splitting forces into info-centered and user-centered? Isn't an IA who is trying to "drastically reduce development time and effort by making information structures fit a wide range of apps " thinking of another set of users-- those in the company? Isn't it possible one could be user-centered in that one considers both internal and external users? Or is that too much knowledge for one IA's head?
I went to see the Soft Boys last night. I've always been a cockhead-- one who loves Robyn Hitchcock. I dig the music and I adore the surreal lyrics.
I was pondering his weirder stuff-- music that, upon reading the lyrics made no damn sense, yet when you took it in uncritically you know what he's singing about, even if you can't articulate it very well.
Some of my favorite lines from his songs:
"some things go in, some things go out, next time 'round I'll be a trout"
"a radio is playing in the darkness of a hall, there is someone standing near you who just isn't there at all"
"sleeping with your devil mask is all I want to do, and when I stop it means I'm through with you"
Some lines are easier to understand--
"In agony of pleasure, I crumble to my knees, I lick your frozen treasure, You cup my furry bees"
and some are just plain impossible--
"She uncorked herself, teeth spilling from her nostrils"
He's the John Ashbery of rock and roll, a man who strings together disparate images to create a genuine emotion-- conflicting and peculiar as those juxtopositions may seem to be.
It seems to me that this style of art-- I hesitate to call it surrealism-- is not confined by the medium it is executed in: it doesn't matter if the maker is a musicians or a painter or a writer, what matters is these works are created by smashing together strongly flavored disparate images. Roschenberg did it with his collages. Ashbery does it in What Is Poetry. Heck, San Francisco chef Elka did it with every menu she made at oodles: "chawan mushi with scallops, duck confit, gingko nuts, and shiso leaf " indeed!
A Degas sculpture isn't that different from a Degas pastel... I think of Picasso painting with light, with ceramics, with paint, with torn up magazines-- didn't matter much to him.
When I first got involved with the web, everyone around me felt they had to invent from scratch everything they did. There was no learning from past disciplines-- the baby was tossed out with the bathwater. While it was very very true that many rules of print did not apply and there were many bad sites built by scanning a brocure and uploading it, we ended up going too far, and forgetting the basics of human communication. We chose to unlearn lessons about understanding the market (the users, the audience), lessons on taking the time to design the composition of the work, to create visual hierachies that lead the eye, to use language that engages and seduces. We need to relearn those rules while still understanding that the way people view and digest material online is fundamentally different--I suppose I'm trying to talk about how the medium is and is not important.
I have no idea why I'm haunted this sunday afternoon to try to get down this elusive notion. But I am... it's overly simplistic to say: it's nothing like print. or, it's just another tool. It conforting to say, it's business as usual, the revolution is over. It was exhilerating to say "throw out the old! we're doing something completely different" Both statements are false. Both statements are true. Humans are the same, it's the paper that has changed.
Anyhow, I'm interested in finding examples of artisits (or anyone) trying to use the web the same way as Hitchcock and Ashbery and Roschenberg.
And if you want a taste of Robyn Hitchcock, buy one of his "perfect" albums, either the Soft Boys' Underwater Moonlight or one of his exquisite solo albums, eye or I often dream of trains Or you can fire up napster and try mispelling glass hotel.
p.s. ralph sent me the underwater moonlight site. cool.
Was reading the Sunday paper this morning and got pissed off.
I don't I ever get to read the Sunday morning paper without getting pissed off about something. This morning my eye was caught by the headline San Francisco's painted ladies have never looked so good, thanks to dot-com cash infusion. Reading the article it seems everyone agrees the city is looking better than ever, with tons of once-dilapidated buildings restored lovingly, but not everyone agrees on why they've finally got the treatment they deserve. The author of the book Painted Ladies says "I don't think the dot-com people give a damn about anything except money, so why would they care how their house or their neighborhood looks?"
I don't even know where to start with this sentence. Of course people with money care about how their house and neighborhood looks. Every drive through pacific heights or seaview or <insert your posh neighborhood here>? People with money care a whole hell of a lot. People with new money often like to look like they have old moneyand restoring houses is one way to achieve that. The dot-com people in San Francisco were often young media hipsters, and restoring a funky old house was much better than building some sprawling south-bay monster. So that's the easy part of the sentence to dismantle.
The harder one is the first part: "I don't think the dot-com people give a damn about anything except money" I don't know about your dot-com, but at Egreetings getting rich was considered about as possible as winning the lottery, at least by the folks in the trenches. The engineers routinely told stories of losing money with their options during the first tech-craze, tainting us new-to-the biz folk's green-eyed ways. So why did we work 70 hour weeks?
I think it was the nifty-factor. We were building something new, something that hadn't happened before. We were changing lives in tiny ways. Yes, we really did buy into it-- I didn't say we weren't ridiculous optimists, or silly idealists, I just said we weren't in it just for the money.
I remember Tony --co-founder of Egreetings and chief evangelist-- often sitting on the edge of someone's desk, telling one of our favorite speeches like a dad retelling a kid's favorite fairy tale at bed time: Email was soulless, email failed to carry emotions, it let folks down again and aging promoting misunderstandings and not caring the weight of our powerful human sentiments. And how an Egreeting was a rich medium, with pictures and sound, and could create a tool to allow people to express the full tone of their message." We all knew it was kinda goofy, and we all kind of believed it anyway. And you know, sending ecards is the second most common task people do online. We did touch people's lives in a small but nice way.
Ask Peter Merholtz about Epinions and he'll go on and on about the possibilities of self-defining systems and community as decision making tool. Ask John Shiple about Big Step and he'll talk about helping small businesses get online. Susan Gorbet at Snapfish will talk about how important people's photos are to them, and how sharing those pictures online is magical for families sprawled across America. They won't whine about lost stock gains, and they won't talk about dot-coms with a sneer. Yes, it was a mad time, but it let strange new ideas see the light of day.
When we look at this time, I think we'll see both the wackiness of a store devoted to selling panty-hose online, but we'll also see that the crazy investing allowed some very good and useful ideas to see the light of day. I'm embarrassed to admit that before the web, I had sent my grandfather about two presents, total. Now he gets Christmas and birthday gifts thanks to Red Envelope and we have quadrupled our correspondence thanks to email and egreetings. Heck, I bought a stranger a book the other day, just because I was reading their blog and saw they had a terrific novel on their Amazon wishlist.
Even after the craziness of tulip-madness the tulip fields of Holland continue to be beautiful. In San Francisco the newly restored Painted Ladies continue to make the city lovely. But for me the real gain is the invisible one-- the millions of ways my daily life got better, from the kozmo delivery that brings you ice cream in the middle of a hard day to my husband, who I met on yahoo personals.
Got an email today on something I haven't really thought about:
"do u have any thoughts or resources regarding the application of IA to game design? thanx petros"
First let me say I *heart* gamer/hacker spelling.
Second let me say: I'm so happy that greymatter allows comments so that I can pass this question on to you...
Come on, peanut gallery!
Hey Otwell responds to the Learning From The Sims article that opens with a slam at IA.
We were discussing this at the IA Cocktail hour. Turns out an IA had written to her and discovered the author had had a bad experience with a certain "east coast firm" that left her with a bad taste of IA in her mouth. I've heard other stories about these people who have terrorized clients and designers with their auteur behavior. They are giving IA's a bad name as bullies who push others around with their jargon and attitude. I'm sorry to say we occasionally see this in certain west coast firms also...
You know who you are.
Cut it out.
1. The client knows their business. Really. You didn't go to business school. You didn't spend x years studying hardware or book auctions or teen clothes buying habits. You may have spent a week in discovery doing so, but your client probably still knows more. Listen to them closely. Respect their opinions. If you disagree, instead of fighting try listening and asking questions.
2. The designers know their business. They went to design school. They came to the company and have probably lived through a few redesigns. Again, listen to what they are saying. They may know why you "just can't use a dropdown menu there". Collaborate. If designers understand how choices were made in your architecture, they will reflect that in their designs. If they don't, they'll do as they see fit-- as they should.
3. You know your business. You have no need to show off by using a web of complex words. If a client doesn't know what a heuristic is, go ahead and call it an expert review. Don't say, "we're going to do a cognitive walk through" say "we're going to walk through each part of your site and write down any problems we think visitors to your site will have." Same for wireframes, taxonomy, conceptual model...
4. Educate, don't dictate. Never say "that's how it has to be," take the time to explain how you came to your decision. If you dictate, what happens when you leave the project? The client is left with a bunch of mysterious documents they never really understood. I've heard a lot of IA's pondering why client x never used their solution for this or that... there are probably a lot of reasons for that, but I'll bet one is they never really understood why the solution the architect came up was a good one.
I love variations on a theme. On musicmatch I set up 6 covers of the song "there she goes" to play in a row, enjoying the different interpretations The mood of the song was tinted in one cover by reluctance created by the rough grumble in its singer's voice. Then the next cover reverbarated with joyful elation, shaped by its youthful singer's clear tone. Same song, radically different meanings.
So it isn't a surprise I delighted in finding exercises in style
Had a few IA's over for lunch today at Carbon IQ: shown here are Andi of metrius and Eric of musicbank. We talked market health, age verification issues, selling usability, wireframes and collaborative work parctices... oh, the usual.Can you guess what Andi's decribing here?
is this really such an incredibly beautiful design that they couldn't risk ruining it by adding more information so I'd know what was a link and where it might take me?
So where do I click to learn about possible plans? In the big gray box that tells me they provide health insurance?
This is a classic example of a page for investors and the CEO, as opposed to their actual customers. Is that a good idea?
compare that to Pacificare
click to see larger image
You can complain that it's ugly if you want, but I do have a pretty clear idea where to click.
They do have a disturbing propensity toward poetry, not someting I'm looking for in a health care provider. Though this one's entertaining... You have couch potatoes and tri-athletes. One size fits all won't work for you.Your company isn't a bowl of oatmeal,
it's a kettle of mulligan stew.
Night owls and early birds.
Would you like the name of a good tailor?
who's up for a nice steaming bowl of tri-athlete stew?
Lou: OK, to wrap up, you wanted me to ask you: what is the connection between IA, poetry, Deconstructionism and cooking? I’m dying to know the answer!
Christina: Attention. To do information architecture, to write good poetry or to read it, to engage in deconstructionist philosophy or cook anything tasty you must pay absolute attention to the thing you are working at, and consider with your entire mind. You must take it apart and reconstruct it with a certain understanding.
If you want to be a better IA, I recommend you study all these things. Take a good poetry class, preferably one that teaches modernism through the New York school. Frank O’hara’s Lunch Poems were poetry written at lunch, and perfect for reading at your lunch break. What could be more user-centered than to write a poem to perfectly match a moment in the reader’s day!
Study deconstructionism I do recommend Derrida’s essay on Différance, and Foucault’s The Order of Things (it may destroy your ability to take pleasure in writing for awhile, but it’s worth it.)
At least read some deconstructist-influenced fiction, such as If on a Winters Night a Traveler or The Mezzanine. These works reveal that the structure can be as important as the content it holds to effectively convey an idea.
Finally, cook difficult recipes from good cookbooks. You’ll definitely get an appreciation for the fine art of instructions. At the very least, you’ll eat better!
We align your systems and business strategies to develop high performance, effective solutions that compliment your business plan.no wonder users don't read. would you, if this was offered to you?
I posted this mini-rant in a recent gleanings.
Rant #215. Do usability testing at the beginning of a project, not just at the end. Too many redesigns break what was already working.People would rather keep using something broken they've already learned how to cope with than have to learn something completely new. In a Jupiter Consumer Survey, 44 percent of respondents indicated that they react negatively to changes in site layout, functionality, and look-and-feel, with 24 percent of total respondents exploring alternative sites as a direct result of the relaunch. Do you really want to lose 24% of your customer base? Do you?
and david responded
While I wholeheartedly agree with you about the need for testing throughout the life cycle of a project, I think your rant is a little too definitive. It could be inferred from your comments that we have only one chance to get it right with a website and that, if we blow it, that's too bad because we can't change it for fear of losing that 24%. Of course, the reality is that if we do redesign, and we do it correctly, we may lose that 24%, but gain enough new users to more than compensate for that loss. Not to mention enhancing the goodwill and strengthening the loyalty of those who choose to stay after a redesign.I have seen too many examples from projects that I have worked on where the increase in users has gone through the roof after a competent redesign. And I'm not just talking about curious users who want to see what's new. In several cases, I have seen conversion rates double and even triple. In addition to usability testing, that post-launch tracking and analysis is crucial. The company I work for has finally realized the value of being able to hold up concrete figures that say things like "we redesigned the site for Company X and their sales increased 500%".
I think that a lot of people fall into the "homo neophobe" category, even those who use the Internet.
"Change is bad! I don't like Change!" I wonder, of those 44% who bitch (and the 24% who leave) how many end up preferring the new site? Another thing to consider: what if the it's not the act of redesigning that caused the negative reaction, but the actual redesign itself? I have stopped using news.com, for example.Although that decision was based partly in the ugly-ass redesign they just did, the largest factor in that decision was the introduction of those enormous ads that take up 45% or so of the content area. I used to go to the site for the articles. Now the articles have been obscured by ads, so I'm going to get my tech news elsewhere. I would love to see a more thorough study of the effects of a site redesign.
Request: "I was wondering if there is anyone out there looking to mentor another Information Architect. While I believe I have the basics down, regularly assume leadership responsibilities in defining the Information Architecture process & methodology at my current & past employers, and have in fact mentored junior IA's, I'm looking for someone to help me extend my expertise and focus my professional development. Because there are so few of us who focus on Information Architecture & the User Experience, I have actually been offered V-level & directorship positions. Frankly, I'm afraid. Of course I'm flattered and anxious to build my resume, but I don't want to extend too far beyond my level of proficiency."
Response: "I was in your same shoes a while ago. I was looking and looking for a mentor, but there was no one-- no one who knew more than me and who also had the time/inclination to mentor. I decided to become my own mentor. I read books, surfed the lists, gave myself goals, had lunch or breakfast with anyone and everyone I could, joined other IA's in their work, and learned from the people I was mentoring (everyone in the world can teach you something).
It sounds like to me the world is telling you you don't need a mentor. maybe it's time to take a big scary chance and step up to the plate and take that VP job. Perhaps instead of one mentor, you can create a kind of "board of advisors" of senior people you can call on for advise when things get hairy. I have one of those, it includes a couple creative directors, a few senior IA's, an engineer, a woman who owns her own company and a couple book authors on web subjects. These folks are there when I'm perplexed, or need a hand with advice/references/etc.
I think we as women are particularly susceptible to not taking risks like men do, and are often afraid to go for jobs when we aren't a perfect match for the job description. I've seen guys fake it through interviews, then madly read up on the job they went for and teach themselves on the job. Worse yet, I've seen guys fake it to get the job, and fake it through the job. I think this everytime I am faced with a challenge I'm scared of. And then I get mad, and I go for it. It's usually very hard when I take these big steps, and I get horribly stressed, I get insomnia, I cry-- and then I've done it, I figure it out and I have one more thing under my belt and I'm another rung up the ladder.
Anytime you're really scared, go for it. Every time you beat that fear, you get tougher."
"I think there is a overall generalization that the US is ahead of other countries in regards to the Internet. It is true to some extent, but is usually gets carried over to all aspects of it. Now, granted that the US has been "at it" at a large scale longer, but most of the problems persist and countries elsewhere have been able to catch-up. Most of the IA's that I know have evolved from other fields, but I can say that I've been doing IA related work for the past 3 years or so. Hell, I followed PM and LR's book on "IA for the web" when redesigning an Intranet for a Spanish bank back in '98.I've talked quite a bit with some of my colleagues in Europe saying that "yea, ASIS&T is great, but we need something in Europe too."
Have we outgrown ASIS&T? Perhaps. I still think we have a lot to benefit from it, however, some people say the SIGIA is too "librarian-centric". I think there needs to be a more consolidated IA organization. Maybe an International IA organization with chapters all over the world."
I quite agree. I'd love to see a more international look at Web Design in general, and Information Architecture in specific. The HCI folks had their summit in Amsterdamn last year-- perhaps we should follow their lead.
Meanwhile, is it time for ISIS&T?
1. "The word "modularity" recurs in people's discussions" Peter notes. Noticed this too, and the only thing about that that surprised me was that it took so long for folks to jump on the modularity bandwagon. One of the main goals of the rational rose process is achieving modularity and reusable pieces. The rational process was sweeping the web development community, what a year and a half ago? longer? Information Architects need to get better at stealing and adapting. Software developers are frequently solving the same sort of problems we are: speedy scalable solutions to complex unique problems. While it may be true that "if you ask a engineer a question you'll get code for an answer," I think its time for us to look at their solutions and see how many can be adapted to our problems.
2. "It's the content, stupid" Duh on an epic level. Why do people come to a website? Because there is something there for them. Most often that something is that mysterious thing called content. Our jobs as IA's are to find the best way to get people to that thing they are seeking. We may get excited about adaptive architectures, bottom-up hierarchies or limited vocabularies-- but these are nothing but systems to connect point A (user) with point B (thing user wants.) It's that simple. I can't figure out why people are continually surprised that content is important.
The most beautiful hand-crafted raku ceramic cup in the world is useless if it leaks. It's an object of beauty, people may pay a large sum for it but then it sits on the shelf. A simple porcelain coffee cup will be held every day if it holds a good amount of coffee, keeps it warm, is comfortable in the hand and most importantly, deliver the coffee to the user's mouth. However, that cup is not used if there is no coffee in the house. You can make a beautiful site, you can make a highly usable site, but if there is no content there, it has no purpose.
No coffee in cup=cup is paperweight.
No content in site=site is useless.
(there are obviously exceptions for certain types of web applications)
3. "We're seeing the beginnings of a movement in the importance of developing conceptual models in design."
I remember Peter asking the CHI-WEB list about them the same time I was trying to develop one for a project I was working on at Hot. His post saved me. I agree 100% with Mr. Me's insight that they are invaluable to creating a usable system. When you have a clear idea of how you are going to express the workings of a system to the user, you know better what elements of the architecture to surface. I think a conceptual model should be a key deliverable of any architecture. Be sure to read Don Norman's post on conceptual models.
4. "Working With Clients, Not At Them" Well, I wish this was a duh. But too many agencies treat their clients as if they were misguided fools whose first coherent thought was being smart enough to hire the agency.
It ain't so.
They know the business better than you do. You can try to catch up by reading all their materials and books on the field your client works in-- but what project gives you time to do that? better to listen to your client educate you on their area of expertise. Sure, as an outsider you may come up with something they haven't thought of. You may also come up with something they have thought of, and discarded as impractical. By collaborating with the client, you can figure out which are which before you go down the long path of creating a presentation to sell something they knew wouldn't work six months ago.
Collaborating with the client insures a higher chance of your ideas gaining acceptance and getting implemented. I've heard too many agency folks say "Gosh, we created a great design for them, I wonder why it never went live." Perhaps if they had worked with their clients, they might know what worked and what didn't. At the least, they'd feel comfortable enough to call up and ask what happened...
Victor over at Noise Between Stations offers some advice on how to collaborate with clients effectively.
Trends Peter Missed
1. It's a Small World. IA is not only no longer a Californian profession, it is no longer an American profession. We were graced with European representatives at the conference, and I've been lucky enough to get emails from IAs in France, Italy, Spain and Germany. Perhaps it's time for an international professional organization? Or at least a conference abroad, to bring together our fellows?
2. Open Source IA. More and more IAs are clamoring to see each other's diagrams and deliverables. What I find interesting is that we can finally see some examples of documentation online-- because the market has gone sour and IA's have to put their portfolios online. Well, wrong reasons, right results.
There is also a growing frustration in the multiplicity of terms for the same things. How long can we keep calling our page architectures wireframes and schematics and page requirements? Until we can talk to each other, this profession can't go anywhere. Please read the glossary and unless you simply cannot stand a term, adopt it.
3. IA is getting into bed with HCI. Keith Instone's joining Argus and the influx of IA's onto the CHI-WEB list were the early signs. User-centered design has become such a byword in our profession Peter Morville referred to it as jargon in his talk. Companies from Inverse Ratio to Carbon IQ are so convinced of the connection they specialize in it (disclosure moment: I am part of CIQ.) Jared Spool, usability guru, was the keynote speaker at the ASIS&T conference. It's all coming together.
4. IAs want out of their little box. Andrea Gallagher gave a talk on connected devices, pointing out the need for information architecture in varied devices from cell phones to exercise machines. I heard more than one voice expressing the desire to attack product design, from chairs to airplane interiors. One IA waxed rhapsodical over voicemail systems and longed to design call centers. More and more IAs are working on software, wireless and wayfinding systems. The web is a nice big sandbox, but I think most IA's will only be satisfied with the whole Sahara.
5. We are tired of talking about what an Information Architect is. We aren't tired of talking about what an Information Architect does. Andrew Dillon and Andrea Gallagher both admitted they are no longer concerned where to draw the line between IA, interaction design, information design and the like. That they used to worry over the definition of the role, and now those concerns have vanished. I guess we are IAs and we know IA when we see it. Nice to see we are getting over our adolescent identity crises.
Erik, IA at music bank, came up and said "I've found my tribe."
Apart from the general good feelings of a community get together, I will say this conference is different from the Boston conference a year ago. There is a general attitude of "let's quit fucking around here." They could have titled this "pragmatic information architecture" rather than "practicing information architecture" I think the market climate has given people an certain impatience with the theoretical and a desire to get down to brass tacks: how do you actually accomplish what you do, how do you help your client understand their business model, how do you work more quickly and effectively? What do deliverables look like, what do we call them? How do we sell IA? It's time to stop navel gazing, and get on with things.
Saturday night I facilitated for Jesse James Garrett's talk on "what do you do all day," a group discussion on our roles and responsibilities. It was educational. Even though our core responsibilities are pretty alike (site organization, content architecture and interaction design) our outlying skills were many: information design, project management, coding prototypes, user testing-- and sadly many of these things were being done by IA's because "otherwise they won't get done" or "I understand what has to be done better than anyone else so I do it." I don't have to say it do I? These are the wrong reasons, people. This is why we end up working 12 hour days. We are control freaks. We need to cut it out.
Jesse said it best "The less you do, the better you'll do it."
more to come.... I'm tired!
Was flipping throughThe Art & Science of Web Design again, and a couple things hit me. One: Jeff is so very right about things that I hold deeply true and have never been successful in convincing folks I work with, including the superiority of liquid design, the inevitability that pages will never look how you designed them, that speed is paramount and pages should be designed to load gradually and that text should be in html, pictures in graphics. Now I am just praying this becomes everyone's bible, and these debates I still have will stop happening.
Two. Jeff Veen is the last of the webmasters. The webmaster was the guy back in the beginning of the web who knew a little about everything and could put out a site site from design to writing of the copy to html and graphics crunching. Then the webmaster lost writing and design, then engineering took over the coding (which ended up being so much more than html) and pretty soon the webmaster had dissolved into other jobs. In many ways this is a good thing. The great loss is there is no person who really holds all these pieces in his/her head. Producers and information architects are two "generalists" who have stepped up into aspects of this role, though neither of them holds the geeky piece that no one seems to properly value. How can you create without understanding the nature of your medium? Jeff's book shows the value of understanding the big picture.
now in french, suitable for framing. ooh la la
It was bought for me on my birthday from amazon.com by the ever lovely peter merholz. Get on the ball guys, collaborative filtering doesn't work unless your systems are collaborating. At least they've stopped trying to sell me The Design of Everyday Things after I rated it five times.
amihotornot.com is a bizarre phenomon. once you start clicking, you can't stop.
don't blame the tool, baby.
Gabe -- my partner at www.carboniq.com -- and I were walking along and we saw yet another logo comprised of a grid of dots with a couple of the dots smooshing into each other.They look to be the new swoosh, which is what drew me to this article. Anyow, at the risk of getting slammed with a zillion logos, I'd love it if folks sent examples... sapient is the only example I could find off the top of my head, even though their dots are a bit squarish. So mail me!
Flash is an accessible tool, and a lot of people are messing with it that have no clue what they are doing, and they are producing junk. So what. HTML is an accessible tool, and lots of people are producing junk (take a stroll through any geocities category.) So what. The revolution will produce failures and successes, but in the end we'll have a better, livelier medium for it.
addendum-- i won. killed the virus, mostly thanks to google.
So Christina Maria Wodtke wrote me back, and we had a good chuckle over the shock of meeting a sort of doppleganger. She pronounces it "vodka," leading to all sort of nicknames-- I'm suddenly glad my family pronounces it "wood-key."
Christina Maria also told me her family had come from the Von Wodtke line, prompting a google search on Von Wodtke (of course) leading me to this like minded Wodtke
Mind Over Media: Creative Thinking Skills for Electronic Media, by Mark von Wodtke. Is it in the genes?
recieved this charming mail in my inbox this morning
----- Original Message -----
From: Mads Damgaard fra Krogerup højskole
To: comments@eleganthack.com
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2001 2:39 AM
Who the hell are you!!!!!?????
And why are you using my name??
Christina M. Wodtke
Yes, Christina Wodtke is a rare name-- or rather Wodtke is a rare name (but not unknown ), and Christina is a fairly common first name. But I'm sure there are dozens in Germany, where the name originated, and more sprinkled through the USA and Europe. It's fun to meet someone with the same name as yours when you have such an odd name, but not when the writer is accusing you of identity theft.
Anyhow I'd love to hear from other wodtkes, especially of the christina variety... mail me!
btw, I'm Christina R. Wodtke, named for my grandmother Rachel Wodtke.
Here are my predictions
The layoff merry-go-round: A lot of people are going to get fired, or leave, and most of them are going to get hired again. However with so many people on the market they are actually going to have to work to find a job. People who should think twice about quitting: those with very little experience. Better to stick it out for another six months or so before throw your hat in the job hunt ring.
The market downturn: Is a downturn. It's going to be good again, but not as great as before. Don't be greedy folks. One thing is sure; recruiters are not going to be able to use stock-options to get people to work for less then market value (which is going to be less than it was). They will move to offering better benefits, like more vacation, as people are going to be less willing to spend their life at the office.
Micropayments: hah, like I'm going to predict anything about micropayments.
Europe: is going to continue to get more and more wired, and web workers with savvy and courage will move there to ride the wave of excitement that is similar to san Francisco in 93. And to get four weeks of vacation and great food.
Wireless: is going to continue to be a confusing mess for another year, and this will be fun for folks who like messing around in the unknown. Users however, will continue to use their cellphones for *gasp* telephone calls. My dream is they will be outlawed from doing so while driving.
The Web: will continue to show itself to be one of the most flexible delivery mechanisms ever. However, companies pressed for cash will change their attitudes and stop shoving proof-of-concept unusable sites out the door and start crafting carefully structured user experiences to improve brand loyalty and customer retention. and they'll hire Carbon IQ to help them do it.
Well, I hope so.
>>>Send me your predictions, and I'll post them..
EDITORIAL: 2001: THE YEAR AHEAD
By Kathy Foley
It's January again and time to adopt a wise countenance, stick the
neck out, and make a few predictions for the year ahead. It's not
the easiest of tasks and certainly has the potential to expose
would-be seers to plenty of ridicule but, bolstered by the relative
success of last year's predictions, I'm going to give it a go once
more.... Full story
Do Metaphors Make Web Browsers Easier to Use? has a potential answer, recommending "composite metaphors" to marry the ease-of-comprehension of the metaphor with the extensibility of none.
"This means doing more than simply alt tagging your images (though I notice more and more websites are forgetting the importance of even that simple task)." -- you< img src="pics/Sock-r.jpg" width="120" height="202" vspace="10" hspace="10"
align="left" border="1">
-- you
fixed. thanks for keeping me honest.
Alt tags are important! They help you with search engine placement, they improve acessibility, and they provide oppurtunities for humor and tangential meanderings.
Driving Over Jakob Nielsenis a Grand Prix style flash based driving game from urbanev.com. It's even pretty usable, though I wish it had instructions on the first screen and a start button rather than auto-starting. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride-- probably over Jakob Neilsen.
However, human resources are what websites are made of (rather than timber or concrete) and these days good human resources are extremely precious (<2% unemployment, folks). They should be used carefully. Better to invest in a good requirements gathering process and a use-driven architecture plan. The chapter entitled "The Scenario-Buffered Building" gives a good and quick process for brainstorming possible uses for a building that is entirely applicable to website design.
"The average download of a website is longer than the average visit to most corporate websites"
If he's right, that means that what you see during a download is as important as what you see when it's fully loaded.
No, it's more important... that's your chance to keep your users from bailing.
When I was at egreetings, I suggested we use a different standard for our SLA. Rather than demanding that the site load in 6 or 8 seconds, I suggested we try to measure how fast it was usable. Therefore we set limits such as: you had to get the main navigation to the card categories within 3 seconds of request, and the key cards in 5 seconds, and the global navigation in 8, and so on. By carefully calculating what should load in in what order, we could hopefully engage users with slower modems early, while still offering a rich range of offerings on any given page for those with faster modems.
This means doing more than simply alt tagging your images (though I notice more and more websites are forgetting the importance of even that simple task). It means designing pages with consideration to load order, creating series of grids rather than a design that requires one gigantic table. It means putting as much text as possible into html rather than a graphic so people have something to read while the page loads. It means learning more about css and how that can control load order.
And then maybe you can get your average visit to be longer than your average page load time.
This must be important because you asked us to remind you of the
following occasion:
Occasion: IPO 12/16/99
Visit http://www.egreetings.com/rsother if it's appropriate to
send a FREE greeting for this special day. We have plenty of
greetings to choose from and you can schedule delivery any time.
How about a gift? Our new Gift Center makes it easy for you to
find the perfect item. Visit http://www.egreetings.com/rsothergifts.
Have a great day,
Steve
Your Egreetings.com Customer Care Agent"
I merely assembled these quotes:
"Only two industries refer to their customers are 'users'"
(yes, drug dealers and software/web developers)
"The average download of a website is longer than the average visit to most corporate websites"
"The point of information design is to assist thinking." Good information design is "clear thinking made visible"
"Bad design is stupidity made visible. Chart junk is very often a sign of statistical stupidity"
"This is where God wants footnotes, on the side" (referring to sidenotes in his books.)
too simple I suppose.
I'm reading The Humane Interface now. Yes I know I'm overdue. If you haven't read it, don't wait. It is amazing. cog sci and ia. Yum. Every few pages I have to put it down to stare at the ceiling and think.
Just finished Reinventing Comics. It's as good as Scott McCloud's first, Understanding Comics, and works well as a stand alone. Good exploration on taking comics to the next level --online-- while keeping their core nature intact.
"It's all about setting expectations. If the box had been labeled 'Deep fried chicken wings and heads' no one would have been upset."
Chicken head found in wing box
If I was channeling this user, I'd say "The internet is a hassle to use, and though there is good stuff out there, but most of the time it's just to hard to locate. I've found a few sites that really meet most of my needs (usually my brother sends them to me. search engines suck.).
I won't stop using my favorites until they let me down... but then I will, because there are plenty more that are waiting to fill my needs..."
They find their favorite sites through recommendations of friends and family. They are loyal out of laziness, and any big redesign could sever that loyalty. They believe in the promise of the net, but they are only too aware of the reality.
Which is a few treasures tucked in a mountain of trash.
I'm both charmed and disappointed with this site. It's quite lovely, however it is only a collection of links. It might have been more compelling as an actual home for content: for beautiful unusable web expiraments.
man this is old school. I'm thinking he hasn't updated his look since '94. and it does my heart good.
Jeff Janson's redesign of the Florida ballot would have eliminated almost
all possibility of accidentally voting for the wrong man. I've gone one
step farther as shown in the attachment.
- Kevin"
And another in-depth one from blogger Dan Bricklin Ballot Usability in Florida
A great analysis of the typical erorrs caused by the ballot at fury "That's textbook ready" as my desk-neighbor says.
Jakob of course, puts in his two cents in his spotlight.
A lot of the best analysis of this situation is coming from bloggers, which is an interesting phenomenon in itself....
 |
 |
| Could this bad user interface... | have caused this spike in Buchanan votes? |
In depth
http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/09/florida_vote/index.html
more news as it breaks
http://www.bushwatch.com/
http://www.cnn.com
q: "So is there no place for the Jakob Nielsens of the world?"
a: "I think that usability is dead. That's really extreme to say, but I don't think my users are dumb."
Despite recount, Bush cautiously claims victory - November 8, 2000
"In a separate controversy, Palm Beach County voters complained that their punch card ballots had the names of presidential candidates on two pages instead of one. The voters said it led to confusion and they may have voted for Reform Party candidate Patrick Buchanan when they had intended to vote for Gore.
"I saw it myself with my own eyes," Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Florida, told CNN. "I talked to hundreds of people. There is no doubt there was mass confusion in Palm Beach County yesterday at the ballot box, which resulted in at least it seems about 3,000 plus votes for Pat Buchanan and I know that that's incorrect.""
Got a Compaq mp3 player for my birthday yesterday. It has really nice affordances. The play button is a nice large button in the center where my thumb can find it without me having to pull the player our of my pocket to look, while the other buttons are more discreet, and require conscious selection. Another nice feature: a lock to disable the buttons, so if you want to stick it in your pocket you can't accidentally push one. And screen lights up when you press a button, and turns itself off a few moments later. These tiny considerations are what creates a positive user experience. IA could learn a lot from product design.
once you start thinking about usability, the world looks different
A very good thread in the CHI-WEB archives on relative font sizes. Both arguments for and techiniques for accomplishing.
