|
Aaron Marcus |
Aaron and his team have moved from traditional graphic design (charts,
diagrams, info visualization) to web sites. Under Resources, they offer a
lot of his articles on interface design, with a focus on global culture,
metaphor, and visual communication through the interface. Bias: He did a
good job editing a piece Joel Katz and I contributed to Visible
Language, years ago.
http://www.amanda.com/home/home_f.html |
|
Adaptive Path |
A major consultancy about user experience, with multiple stars such as
Jesse James Garrett and Jeffrey Veen. Check their publications. (New essay
every few weeks).
http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/ |
|
American Society for Information Science and Technology |
They have some good techie conferences on information architecture and
digital archiving. The bulletin is good, but they do not post current
issues, and they act as if they are going to charge you for articles they
display, from old issues. The ecommerce model is fuzzy, here, but the
articles are technically competent, and often useful.
http://www.asis.org/ |
|
Apple Human Interface Guidelines |
How to do it right. A model of good guidelines…and good design. Bias: I
used to work there, and my heart still belongs to the Mac.
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/ |
|
Argus Center for Information Architecture |
Here's a ghost site with a good archive still drifting about the web.
Originally, the Argus Center for Information Architecture was set up by
Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld, the two librarians who wrote the
definitive book on information architecture, back when no one else even
knew the term. Don't look for current info. They closed their doors in
2001.
http://argus-acia.com/index.html |
|
Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture |
Probe the research, with reports on topics such as The Future of
Information Architecture, The Problems with CMS, and A Simplified Model
for Facet Analysis.
http://aifia.org/pg/research.php |
|
Bad Designs |
Michael Darnell collects things that don't work right. Ambiguous signs.
Things that are hard to see, don't work together, things that get in your
way, controls that work in unexpected ways, or in strange places, and
missing labels. The problems reflect lack of imagination, but more
seriously, lack of empathy with the people who are supposed to be able to
use these gizmos. Mostly these messes are design screwups, but
occasionally bad writing steps in, to compound the problem.
http://www.baddesigns.com/ |
|
Bloug |
Louis Rosenfeld, who wrote the definitive book about information
architecture (with Peter Morville), taking off from his background in
library science, talks to other information architects. As he says, "Bloug
is Lou's blog; B*lou*g, get it?"
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/ |
|
Boxes and Arrows |
A peer-written journal about "the complex task of bringing architecture
and design to the digital landscape." They argue that no matter what your
title-info architect, info designer, interaction designer, interface
designer-you share a community of practice. The site helps you share tips
on technique, stories of innovation, and rants backed up by sad
experience.
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/ |
|
Brightly Colored Food |
Like M&M's? Grad student Chad Thornton's site explores user experience. A
well organized blog, with thoughts about design, social computing, online
communities, usability.
http://brightlycoloredfood.com/ |
|
Communication Circle |
Jonathan Price's own articles on creating complex interactive systems.
http://www.theprices.com/3artTW.htm |
|
Cooper
Design |
Alan Cooper, master of interfaces, inventor of personas, has left
Microsoft to do consulting, and his site shows you how to work with
clients, even though he hides some proprietary info. Want to know if you
are on the right track? Under "Why Cooper?" look at the process.
http://www.cooper.com/index.asp |
|
Croc O' Lyle |
A blog on usability, web design, information architecture and user
experience practices. Lyle Kantrovich bills himself as a User Experience
Architect.
http://crocolyle.blogspot.com/2002_02_03_crocolyle_archive.html |
|
Design Interact |
Reviews and interviews with people who design user interactions. Forums on
interactive design, shop talk, and alas, the biggest, on self promotion.
Resources are first paragraphs scraped off of press releases. The site
belongs to the same company as the graphic design journal, Communication
Arts, which features this site in its left rail. Real reviews tend to be
short, opinionated, and broken up too much for easy flow. Still, you'll
get the graphic designer's view of new site designs.
http://www.designinteract.com/ |
|
Design Not Found |
Bad experiences captured in a library of screenshots, with the full story,
recommendations on avoiding the same mistake on your site, and lots of
comments. This company specializes in trouble, or what they call
Contingency Design - " Design for when things go wrong (error messages, no
search results found, missing pages, bad form entries)." Nice reviews of
successful sites, too.
http://www.37signals.com/dnf/index.php |
|
Digital Web |
An online magazine for web designers, artists, and authors. Book reviews,
product reviews, articles, and columns on usability, information
architecture, problem solving, and design. Bias: They gave our book a
great review, so naturally we think they are very smart.
http://www.digital-web.com/ |
|
D-Lib |
Digital library research and development, including new technologies,
applications, and contextual social and economic issues. The librarians
have studied many of the problems we face in information architecture-for
years. Here theybring their expertise to bear on collections of electronic
information, um, er, just like web sites. Don't be put off by the insider
talk. They are dealing with issues like taxonomies, thesauri, cost per
article, and dynamic galleries of images. Previously funded by the folks
who paid for the first Internet (DARPA), this monthly online magazine is
now sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
http://www.dlib.org/ |
|
Elegant Hack |
Christina Wodtke, author of Information Architecture, writes this blog.
"This is everything I've gleaned from the vast field of information we
call the web. Not only all the IA, ID and any other "I" you can think of,
but also odd articles, random thoughts, and so on and so on and so on...."
Look at her Widgetopia, too, for clips from a wide variety of
sites-interesting, or peculiar solutions to common design problems. A
beautiful, fun site.
http://eleganthack.com/blog/ |
|
Flamenco Search Interface Project |
An interesting way to display the results of a keyword search, or, as they
describe it, "Hierarchical faceted metadata." Particularly useful for
large collections of images. Follow a topic to its page, to get the full
categorization. Thanks to Linda Urban for pointing me to this experiment
at UCB.
http://bailando.sims.berkeley.edu/flamenco.html |
|
Good Experience |
Mark Hurst's blog, email newsletter, and site focuses on giving users a
satisfying experience. He's positive, friendly, and helpful, even when he
details complete breakdowns in service, functionality, or interface
design. He also runs the Good Experience Live conference (Gel to you).
http://www.goodexperience.com/ |
|
HCI Bibliography |
A list of articles, books, and sites on human-computer interaction.
Special sections on accessibility, education, internationalization, and
kids and computers.
http://www.hcibib.org/ |
|
History Wired, a few of our favorite things |
Imagine that you have three million objects in your museum, and you want
to show those all online.
Using Martin Wattenberg's Map of the Market
created for Smart Money, the Smithsonian lets you browse over a map
indicating groups of famous, unusual, or every day items. The
visualization tool is based on work by Ben Shneiderman at the University
of Maryland. You get a timeline, key words and pointer lines, thumbnail
images, and a search. See a used chewing gum container, inaugural gowns,
gold coins. You can zoom in to see related objects, or go to an article
about the object itself.
http://historywired.si.edu/index.html# |
|
IA Canon |
Here's a list of books, articles, and sites devoted to information
architecture. Want to ask questions, and debate policies? Join the wiki,
of which this canon is just a small part.
http://www.iawiki.net/IACanon |
|
IA Slash |
A news site for information architects, or anyone interested in
information organization, usability, user testing, user interface design,
and ,you know, stuff like that. Modeled after slashdot, this community
news site invites contributions, and syndication.
http://iaslash.org/taxonomy_html |
|
Info Design |
Thom Haller can't find the information he wants. So he writes an
occasional rant, Adventures of an Information Architect. Here's his
reflection on writing:
Writing, I believe, offers us a grand opportunity to frame our work in
respect. We have the opportunity to construct information to help people
do what they want to do so they appreciate the experience. This requires
that we ask them what they want to know - and then we work as hard as we
might to craft the information to help them out as much as possible.
The site offers some good resources on information architecture, and a
pitch for his company.
http://www.infodn.com/ |
|
Lynda |
If you have to ask who Lynda is, you are just getting started in graphic design for the
web. Lynda Weinman has become an industry, turning out cds, books,
articles, and tips on how to use professional tools and design to enhance
visual communication through web, print, and motion graphics. The home
page shouts "Buy, buy, buy," and you probably should, if you need solid
guidance on web graphics. But she posts plenty of tips, articles about
color, and a gallery of inspirational web sites, under Free Resources.
Yes, scroll down, and look over on the right.
http://www.lynda.com/ |
|
Mappa Mundi |
A magazine that died, but left a great archive of articles about maps of
all kinds, for people who like site maps, and information models. A
strange deserted site, with hundreds of serious explorations of strange
approaches to organizing information in space.
http://mappa.mundi.net/map/ |
|
MIT Media Lab |
If you want to see what we might encounter in the future, explore these
research projects and publications. Examples: electronic publishing,
spatial imagery, object-based media, viral communication, smart cities,
the society of mind. Some of the most innovative thinkers in the digital
world hang out in the lab, teach courses, and carry out experiments here.
http://www.media.mit.edu/ |
|
Mr. Beller's Neighborhood |
Thinking about organizing your site around a map, or a photo? A bunch of
editors and writers, led by Thomas Beller, attach stories to a satellite
photo of Manhattan, with parts of Brooklyn. You see little red dots
indicating a story, click and get a popup tale of that neighborhood.
"These images were taken by a plane flying over the island. Every dozen
blocks or so, another picture was taken. This is what accounts for the
odd, patchwork look of the Hudson and East River on the main map."
http://www.mrbellersneighborhood.com/ |
|
New Architect |
Formerly Web Techniques, this paper magazine posts a few current articles,
then selected pieces from past issues on subjects like enterprise
computing, web hosting, wireless content, and security.
They also post
lots of white papers and marketing stuff from vendors and analysts. Of
course, you have to sign up, and when you download one of these papers,
your contact information gets sent to the original vendor.
http://webtechniques.com/ |
|
Olive |
The On-line Library of Information Visualization Environments, organized
around eight categories of data type (1D,2D,3D, chronological, and so on).
Links to articles, books, commercial products, research projects, and
videos. This web-site is a class project for Dr. Ben Shneiderman's
graduate course on Information Visualization at the University of
Maryland.
http://otal.umd.edu/Olive/ |
|
Peterme |
A blog about design (and random other things) with longish entries, often
following a recent discovery, such as a book by Henry Dreyfuss, or the
brochures of national parks. Great photos.
http://peterme.com/ |
|
Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus |
If you like Roget's, you'll love playing with this tool for exploring word
relationships, displayed as spatial maps. Plumb argues that their Visual
Thesaurus translates language into a visible architecture, and I would
agree. If for no other reason, enter a word, and watch the related words
appear, then follow one of those paths. Here's a dynamic interface that
gets beyond menus and searches.
Background: "The Visual Thesaurus accesses data from WordNet, a publicly
available lexical reference system developed by the Cognitive Science
Laboratory at Princeton University. This database, inspired by
psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory, contains over 50,000
words and 40,000 phrases collected into more than 70,000 sense meanings."
Take the guided tour, and you'll see how Java makes those words dance.
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/online/index.html |
|
Publications on thesauri |
An extensive bibliography on how to build and use thesauri, mostly as part
of search systems.
http://www.willpower.demon.co.uk/thesbibl.htm |
|
Semantic Studios |
Peter Morville made the term Information Architect sound reasonable,
despite Richard Saul Wurman's claim to have legitimized it in his
coffee-table book of graphic design. Morville and Rosenfeld's book is
still the first one you should read when beginning to pour the foundation
for your web site. In his irregularly published column, he reflects on IA,
libraries, and whatever. He posts a bunch of his articles, too.
http://semanticstudios.com/ |
|
Site Point |
Overall, this site aims to help web developers. One section, though,
focuses on usability and information architecture. Good articles, but
broken up into a half a dozen sections, so go for the Printer-friendly
version, to see everything at once.
http://www.sitepoint.com/subcat/82 |
|
This is Broken |
The participants in this gallery run a race to the bottom, contributing stories about interfaces that
balk, or frustrate users.
A tribute to bad customer experiences, hosted by Mark Hurst, who also
authors the Good Experience newsletter.
http://broken.typepad.com/ |
|
UI Web |
Articles on usability, interface design, interaction, and design, from
Scott Berkun, who was one of the developers of Internet Explorer when he
worked at Microsoft as a project manager, usability engineer, team leader,
and UI design evangelist. Each column is a solid essay.
http://www.uiweb.com/ |
|
Web Monkey |
If you want a fun, simple intro to information architecture, Web Monkey
offers this 5-lesson tutorial by John Shiple. He's biased toward design,
but gives a quick nod to content and function.
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/98/28/index0a.html?tw=design |
|
Web Page Design--for Designers |
Joe Gillespie talks CSS, fonts, platforms, browsers, technology.
Originally, this site addressed graphic designers moving into the web, but
nowadays, he concentrates on the biggest problems that people face when
creating a layout and interface for a site. New to web design? He answers
your top ten questions (which he has heard thousands of times).
http://www.wpdfd.com/ |
