Design Matters

ABREVE FAQ Posted May 2005.

Is It Plain?, a manual for plain language writers 2002. Vocational and Rehabilitation Research Institute (Canada). Posted May 2005.

http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/index.php Posted June 2005.

Listings with no date were posted prior to March 2003. Newer listings are individually dated. 

Content and Complexity, edited by Mike Albers and Beth Mazur. 2003. Lea (publisher). ISBN 0805841415. (more…)

Agile-usability Yahoo Group. Jeff Patton. Posted June 2005. (more…)

Information Design: A bibliography Compiled by Michael J. Albers and Beth Conney Lisberg. Technical Communication. Second Quarter 2000. Available to STC members online. Many of the books in this list are in the Albers and Lisberg bibliography. Posted prior to March 2003. (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.)