Year: 2006

  • Polar Bear the third out now

    Congratulations to Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville on the release of the third edition of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web! At a time when people who do information architecture (please don’t call them information architects!) are having yet another one of their many identity crises, questioning the value or the future of their…

  • Two Headline-Writer Roommates

    “Want to garner a DVD tonight? We could nab a good one.” “I’ll mull it, but don’t get roiled if I don’t. I’m not inking anything.”

  • Kid-friendly faceted navigation

    Dan Brown, author of *Communicating Design* points us to this interesting example of a search interface for navigating a children’s library.

  • Selling information architecture

    A recent discussion on the IA Institute mailing list revolved around selling the value of IA to executives. One reason why we address IA and other user experience concerns within the context of web strategy here at Extractable is because it helps communicate the value of the planning process in terms of aligning with business…

  • Microsoft licensing the Office 2007 ('ribbon' etc.) interface

    Via the IxDA list I noticed this item on the Jensen Harris’ An Office User Interface Blog explaining how application developers can license and implement the new Microsoft Office 2007 interface, “including the Ribbon, galleries, [and] the Mini Toolbar.” Here are more details on the licensing process and the place where you actually go to…

  • Stakeholder mapping

    On the IA Institute mailing list Patrick Walsh recently asked, “Is Stakeholder Analysis/Mapping a commonly used tool by IAs? It helps to identify all relevant stakeholders at the start of a project and can help ensure that they do not get overlooked.” He also pointed to a 2004 article in Boxes and Arrows by Jonathan…

  • The interface of a cheeseburger

    Via Scot Hacker’s foobar blog I landed on this interesting set of interface musings at Information Architects Japan, starting from the universal cheeseburger interface and meandering on through iPod and Zune. I like the quotation Scot selected: The cheeseburger has the easiest food interface one could think of. No forks, no knives, no spoons, no…

  • Microsoft Buys Firefox!

    What a surprise! Just a few weeks after launching the first update to Internet Explorer in years, Microsoft has announced that it has purchased Firefox from the Mozilla foundation. Bill Gates says that this is part of Microsoft’s plan to open source all of their software and move towards an MS Linux 2007 platform. :-)

  • Fast Design = Good Design

    Joshua Porter wrote a terrific article about Netflix and their Fast Iteration process. Since UIE is more of a design and user experience shop, the article focuses primarily on creative designers, but I think that the concepts apply equally to developers. At Extractable, we are always trying to move away from a classic waterfall process…

  • Sitemap Format Standardized

    Terry let us all know that today Yahoo, MSN and Google have agreed on a standard Site Map format. Using a sitemap.xml file will facilitate search engine crawlers to index your site and help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html

  • Audio from the IDEA conference

    I meant to post this a week or so ago, but Peter Merholz has put up the audio from presentations at this year’s inaugural IDEA conference in Seattle on the conference blog, saying If you have only 30 minutes, then listen to Bruce Sterling’s closing keynote. Honestly, though, there’s lots of great stuff here. Interaction…

  • What makes good design?

    On the IxDA list, LukeW asked which metrics or criteria can be used to judge “good” interaction design. Kim Goodwin wrote an excellent reply, saying “A few of us at Cooper were kicking this question around with Hugh Dubberly several years ago. We came up with 4 criteria we felt applied to all sorts of…

  • Zune's user interface

    Engadget posted a video showing a complete interface walkthrough for Zune, demonstrating its UI and wireless sharing feature (via Edwin Booth, who posted the link to the IxDA list, saying, “If you’ve used Windows Media Center, it’s very similar”).

  • Only in the Torah? Abraham challenges God.

    And now for something completely different… In this week’s synagogue Torah reading, Genesis 18:1 – 22:24, God tells Abraham that Sodom and Gomorrah are to be destroyed, and Abraham challenges the morality of this decision. He morally challenges God. And God accepts. “Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty? What if there…

  • Republicanists

    If the Republicans (and, increasingly, the media) get to keep calling us the “Democrat Party” instead of the “Democratic Party,” because they think it subliminally emphasizes the word “rat,” can we start calling them “Republicanists”? As in “What my Republicanist colleague forgets to mention is…” It would make people think “pianist” every time they thought…

  • California “here we come”

    The barbarians are at the gates, and Washington, D.C. may never be the same. If American voters thought the war in Iraq was the most pressing issue of the day, Barbara Boxer may soon be disabusing them of that notion. Likely to be the next chair of the Senate Environment committee, Boxer is ecstatically planning…

  • It’s Morning in America

    for reals.

  • Bush may find he is a President out of the loop..

    While both the President and the Democrats have promised to seek new approaches on Iraq, pundits have noted that new approaches may just not be available. In particular, they say not to expect something new to be discovered by the Baker commission. But, the Baker mandate (report due at the end of the year) may…

  • Rahel Bailie discusses World Usability Day

    Chip Gettinger of Astoria Software interview Rahel Bailie about World Usability day, noted via Scott Abel, the content wrangler, who writes: In addition to providing a succinct overview of usability, Bailie discusses why understanding the user experience is critical for information experts, content management professionals, and content management technology vendors alike. Is usability related to…

  • the golden grate

    Talk about diversity…here in the golden state we’ve managed to reach new heights of mixedness, all-over-the-mapness, and plain ol’ voter confusion as the results of the Caulifornia mid-term and governatorious elections illuminate the collective mind of the Left Coasters. We voted for a Republican Hollywood muscleman who lifted himself out of the political toilet by…

  • An appreciation, and some electoral arithmetic.

    Thanks and congratulations to our own Christian Crumlish and Cecil Vortex, who epitomized for us the heart and soul of the committed Long Haul. And thank you to Howard Dean, whose controversial decision to spend on party-building in all 50 states, not just limited battleground states, has been well vindicated by the competitive races and…