Design Matters

What is the role of the Enterprise Information Architect? Do we focus strictly on information infrastructure, or become change agents? http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/enterprise

To gather information for the next edition of “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web,” Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville have been surveying the Information Architecture community.

The newest survey “IA Education Survey, for Practitioners” is now open. The authors would greatly appreciate your input. (more…)

An interview with Karen A. Schriver by Peter J. Bogaards was posted in September, 2005. Karen is a member of the ID-IA SIG of STC. We originally reported this news in 2005.

To gather information for the next edition of “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web,” Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld have been surveying the IA community.

The third survey, “Software for IA,” is now open. (more…)

A recently posted article discusses semantics and patterns in CSS and web semantics and web patterns, and proposes development of a semantically rich set of design patterns for websites (originally posted December, 2005).

UXnet is working to foster collaboration among the many professional groups serving user experience professionals. Efforts are under way to build collaboration and create exchanges at both the local and national levels. Please visit http://www.uxnet.org/ (originally posted December, 2005).

In October, 2005 the Interaction Design Group (IxDG), which has served practitioners, teachers, and students of interaction design worldwide since 2003, incorporated as a non-profit, member-supported organization called the Interaction Design Association (IxDA).

Interaction Design Interaction design (IxD) defines the behavior of interactive products and how products communicate their functionality to the people who use them. (more…)

The Eyetrack III research on news websites, released by The Poynter Institute of the Estlow Center for Journalism & New Media together with Eyetools, may help answer questions such as: Is homepage layout effective? … What effect do blurbs on the homepage have compared to headlines? … When is multimedia appropriate? … Are ads placed where they will be seen by the audience?

In Eyetrack III, researchers observed 46 people for one hour as their eyes followed mock news websites and real multimedia content. An overview of the observations is available (originally posted July, 2005).

A server can track the number of times a link is followed to open a page, and the code can remove links that are not followed. For an example, visit this news map. Here the size of the font for each headline increases as the links are followed. Links that are not followed decrease in size and eventually become too small to see (originally posted July 2005).

The June 2005 issue of Fast Company features several articles on design. One discusses recruiting design executives. “The big trend right now is the search for designer as turnaround agent, or design savior. These are designers who think strategically and speak the language of business, in addition to being incredibly talented.” (This was originally posted in June, 2005.)