Year: 2006

  • Digg's emergent IA

    Gene Smith writes in his Atomiq blog The genius of Digg is that it packs a simple user action with the maximum social intent. A digg is a single click – about as simple as it gets – and yet it’s the central component of the community.

  • Rapid usability iterations

    Thomas Vander Wal has an interesting post about quick and intense usability iterations: I definitely see the strong advantages of the intense sessions mixed with the usual longer term development. Finally it seems a broad section of the development world is finally learning that the best way to build out stuff is to sit with…

  • Two Countries Need to Be Put on the Spot

    “With hard-liners riding high in Tehran, there’s little chance of changing minds there. But the White House should still try, offering security guarantees in exchange for Iran’s giving up technology that could feed a nuclear weapons program.” NYT Editorial, “Still Spinning,” 8/14/06 Well, will the White House “still try, offering security guarantees”? Is the White…

  • LukeW's UX-role taxonomy (or 'Product Leads and Strategic Designers')

    Luke Wroblewski has some interesting thoughts about two orthogonal roles in the user-experience design process: Product Leads & Strategic Designers. I’m not sure whether I’d classify myself as one or the other, though. As director of strategy here at Extractable I’m clearly a strategic designer in this scheme, but I think I’d be equally interested…

  • Usability for CUs, a 12-Step Program

    David Rubini at online banking company Digital Insight has some words of wisdom for Web site operators of the Credit Union industry. The short of it is: 12 Steps to a User-Friendly Web site In order for an online banking to be successful, it must be effective, efficient and satisfying to the user. Developers and…

  • Social software provides buffer for shy people

    I think 12 frogs is onto something here with Why social software is good for introverts.

  • Rashmi Sinha's 'Designing for Social Sharing' slides

    I think Sinha summarized some of these thoughts on one of the tagging panels at the IA Summit this year. It looks like she has now developed this strand of thought into a focused presentation: (My slides for WebVisions: Designing for Social Sharing). I wonder if she has considered turning these thoughts into a book?

  • Visualizing flight patterns

    It’s interesting to see the slightly stylized map of continental US emerge from this data-driven map of Flight Patterns.

  • IDEA Conference launches a blog

    I don’t know if I can make it to the IDEA conference, but if not, I look forward to reading about it on the IDEA Conference Blog. (Self-plug: I hacked the site’s design into WordPress templates to get the blog working for Peterme.)

  • Blogging and identity panel proposal for SXSW

    Hugh Forrest, the indomitable lead organizer of South by Southwest Interactive has announced a public process for voting on and vetting panel ideas for next year’s conference. Apparently it will take several rounds, with the first round narrowing down the 173 panel proposals. The voting is open to anyone, but the votes of past attendees…

  • Are the Republicans Tough Anymore?

    In the aftermath of the foiled terror plot in the UK, it seems as if the Bush administration and congressional Republicans have suddenly lost their bearings. For a few months this year, they were relentlessly focused on the keys to a safe America, but now they are all over the map. Americans want to know…

  • Speaking of ‘Connecticut for Lieberman’

    Looks like his team forgot to register the domain: The Connecticut for Lieberman Party

  • 2007 SXSW Interactive Panel Proposal Picker (Round One)

    Hugh Forrest, the indomitable lead organizer of South by Southwest Interactive has announced a public process for voting on and vetting panel ideas for next year’s conference. Apparently it will take several rounds, with the first round narrowing down the 173 panel proposals. The voting is open to anyone, but the votes of past attendees…

  • Liz Danzico interviews Dan Saffer in Newsweek

    Liz Danzico of Boxes and Arrows interviews Dan Saffer about his Interaction Design book in Newsweek. Pretty mainstream, huh?

  • Another tactical blunder by Lieberman

    Even if you grant that Lieberman should run in the general election as an independent (and I do not), shouldn’t he at least have taken a page from Jed Bartlett and Howard Dean and called his party-of-one “Lieberman for Connecticut” instead of the self-centered sounding “Connecticut for Lieberman”?

  • A Hard Look at the West Bank Settlers

    It is past time to take a good hard look at the West Bank Settlers, who have led Israeli politics around by the nose now for decades, as if Israel’s right to exist were one and the same with their right to keep their settlements! I believe that peace with the Palestinians has long been…

  • Going Mobile

    Digital Web Magazine has a brief article with tips on designing for the mobile interface.

  • Rapid prototyping, good; code generating, bad

    Austin Govella explains why Rapid prototyping tools should NOT generate code: Why would you need the prototyping tool to generate production code? Is there something about the code they would generate that would make it better than the custom code most applications require? Does the rapid prototyper’s code generator let me tell it how to…

  • User interface design for engineers

    Why do engineers blanch at creating UIs? Why do so many designers create UIs without understanding the underlying technology? Nate Kohari has some suggestions: A Crash Course in User Interfaces.

  • Update on Oz-IA conference and retreat

    Eric Scheid tells me, We’ve now announced the conference program, and it’s quite exciting – lots of practical sessions, by practitioners, for practitioners. Over the next few weeks we’ll be expanding the detail on each session. Over the next few weeks we’ll be expanding the detail on each session. Stay tuned for more news, sign…

  • Jason Scott on 'the great failure of Wikipedia'

    I was looking at the Haddock blogs aggregator and in their links gutter I came across a transcript of a presentation given at Notacon 3 (whatever that is) in April of this year by Jason Scott. You can listen to the audio if you prefer. I tend to like the Wikipedia idea, warts and all,…