In 2008, Entertainment Weekly magazine began efforts spiff up EW.com. Despite this website’s dated look and ad hoc information architecture, readers loyally consume and comment on the snarky writings of EW’s writers. Google likes EW, too – consistently ranking EW among the first natural results for terms like, “American Idol,” and “Twilight.” The challenge was to fix the problems and keep the Google juice. (more…)
As a User Interface Designer, I always crave seeing my designs being used by real people. Ideally, every project I work on would have a user testing sessions before, during and after design. But not all clients have a budget for this kind of research. That’s why I’m keen on some good, ‘ole fashioned usability research from Kansas. (more…)
My new favorite book is The Design of Sites, Second Edition. It covers just about every topic in User Experience Design. And, of course, it is a totally user-friendly book.
My excitement about ELMER 2: Simplified Form Design (PDF – 1 MB) may be due to my Scandinavian roots. But it is probably more likely attributable to the fact that I am a total geek when it comes to documentation. The Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry has written remarkable guidelines on designing simplified web forms. If I’d had something like this when I started out, it would have been my secret weapon.
This document is a very tight example of design documentation. *begin nerd voice* The guidelines are in a tabular format with cross references and clear examples. It also has a glossary of terms used in the document like “inline error” and “standardized text.”
*/end nerd voice*
And don’t forget, as the document footer says… “In case of discrepency, the Norwegian version prevails.” Yahr!
Today I saw a great presentation (Powerpoint 6.7 MB) by Michael Tyrell. Fresh out of New York University, Michael started work as a Junior Information Architect last year. His presentation is illuminating for anyone who is interested in getting started in information architecture and wants to know what’s in store. Great work Mike!
Tobi Jo: This morning I am talking with Rachel Lovinger, a Senior Content Strategist for Avenue A | Razorfish. Rachel will be presenting at next week’s Semantic Technology Conference. In addition, she recently published a paper on Boxes and Arrows. And just this week, she started her blog Meaningful Data, available here http://meaningfuldata.wordpress.com/
