I'm not sure if this
I'm not sure if this proliferance of on-page widgets is good or bad. I like the clippings widget on the IHT, and the sacbee toolbar is very well done but contains some gratatious functionality (toggle to non-serif?). Beautiful though. The Rush Limbaugh disgronifier (don't ask) is typical as well, but pretty ugly. (Links via the CMS-list)
Can someone have a think about this and come up with some rules? (For our readers called Jakob: not you!) Something like: when to use this, what to include and exclude, and how to deal with the icon problem/opportunity. I have to get to work.
If you're attending the ASIS&T
If you're attending the ASIS&T IA Summit this weekend and haven't picked a pre-summit seminar, there are seats available for the AIfIA Leadership Seminar on Friday (March 21, $US 575).
How this one slipped under
How this one slipped under the radar until now I don't know. "Our research seeks to bring modern information management and retrieval technologies to the average computer user in order to make computers a more compelling place for users to interact with their information." Screenshot using faceted classification.
My new theory is that
My new theory is that referrer spam is used to increase the amount of links to the referring websites since many pages detailing referer logs get crawled by Google. It's probably effective: do a search for "Generated by Webalizer Version" on Google (Webalizer is a popular search analysis tool), thus pre-selecting 112,000 referrer logs that are crawled by Google, and spam those sites with your site as referrer, thus increasing your pagerank. I would have kept my mouth shut but people are already doing it, so I might as well speak out.
This Century Sucks turns out
This Century Sucks turns out to be the guy in the cubicle next to me.
Google Search Appliance: FAQ: "3.
Google Search Appliance: FAQ: "3. Will Google's ranking work behind the firewall?: Google's search algorithms use more than 100 factors to determine the ranking of search results, many of them independent of link structure." Many people think Pagerank won't be very effective within an intranet environment, but we may well be wrong - Google surely has other tricks up its search algorythm sleeve.
How Google Grows...and Grows...and Grows:
How Google Grows...and Grows...and Grows: insights in Google's culture.
DonnaM: A new use for
DonnaM: A new use for scenarios: "We spoke with the client last week, who filled us in on what this new app would do etc. I thought I understood, but wanted to make sure. So, I wrote what I understood of the requirements in scenario form, not to communicate with the developers, but to show the client that I had understood.
They thought this was a fantastic idea - they could quickly see that I was thinking in the same way, that I understood the issues. It highlighted some things that they hadn't thought through yet, and showed how real people may use the system. They now have more trust in me (given that this is the first project I have done for this client, this is important). And they are thinking of using the scenarios in focus groups, training etc."
Macromedia part 2: Macromedia -
Macromedia part 2: Macromedia - Macromedia.com Progress Report: Beta 1 a more detailed report on the new design details what needs to improve: "The 'Experience Matters' promotion [Peter: which takes up half the screen real estate!] had a click-through rate of more than 3%, which is above average for us and 10X what static promotional elements obtain industry-wide. So from a business point of view, it was very successful." 3% clickthrough is successful for something that takes up half your homepage? What are these people thinking?
They did use some clever pageload metrics:
- "Initial render" is the number of seconds it takes to see something change in your browser. Our goal is 7 seconds.
- "Threshold of interactivity" is the seconds it takes before you can start interacting with the application or content. Our goal is 14 seconds.
- "Complete render" is the time it takes to complete the entire rendering. Our goal is 25 seconds.
An approach worth copying. The case study also notes: "A statistic that surprised us was that the satisfaction index did not change with connection speed. Said another way, connection speed didn't have any impact on satisfaction."
Also interesting: "At the same time, the new features we put in our home page application werent used. Less than 1% of our customers used the tray nav and less than 5% used the product and solution pickers."
The next page of the report discusses what worked well: "Weve seen great success this first week with our rich Internet applications. [...] In the first week, we saw a 93% increase in extension downloads. Said another way, the number of downloads almost doubled with the new exchange application. [...] Membership was up more than 300% this week. We should note that part of this increase was due to a change in registration processes. [Peter: plus the incoming traffic from the publicity generated by the redesign itself]."
There are more progress reports:
- On how the site works technically.
- The second beta. They seem very focussed on removing the amount of clicks to get somewhere, which leads to mistaken ideas like very expandable menus and such. In my opinion they should balance the user experience - the amount of clicks isn't always the most important thing, as long as you find what you're looking for and don't get lost the experience will be positive.
- What did we learn? (in short: homepages don't need complex apps)
Good to see an influential company open a conversation with their users like this.
The Design of the New
The Design of the New macromedia.com Beta Scary picture! (via Lucdesk)
Peter writes about his recent
Peter writes about his recent international usability tests.
InfoWorld: Technical trends bode well for
InfoWorld: Technical trends bode well for KM: March 14, 2003: "What k-loggers do, fundamentally, is narrate the work they do. In an ideal world, everyone does this all the time. The narrative is as useful to the author, who gains clarity through the effort of articulation, as it is to the reader. But in the real-world enterprise, most people don't tend to write these narratives naturally, and the audience is not large enough to inspire them to do it.
There is, however, a certain kind of person who has a special incentive to tell the story of a project: the project managers."
So Shopping.com ("Simply Fast") is
So Shopping.com ("Simply Fast") is trying to position itself as the Google of shopping, like Google's own Froogle. Quick and easy. Shopping.com is owned by Dealtime, a comparison shopping site which has bought the review site Epinions (who apparently weren't making much money).
Webword screenshot: plain lying infograph,
Webword screenshot: plain lying infograph, and badly done as well.
This is probably old news
This is probably old news but here are some RSS feeds from News.com
If you want to see
If you want to see an example of a good web index, check out the PeopleSoft Site Index (by Fred Leise, ex-argonaut) - it won the Australian Society of Indexers Web Index Award.
ContextualAnalysis: "... provides consulting services
ContextualAnalysis: "... provides consulting services in information architecture and metadata design, including creation of taxonomies and controlled vocabularies, including thesauri."
Flash Animation Tutorial 2: Animating
Flash Animation Tutorial 2: Animating body parts A great tutorial!
Michael launches the GraphViz sitemap
Michael launches the GraphViz sitemap generator.
New Scientist and BBC: "The
New Scientist and BBC: "The world's first brain prosthesis - an artificial hippocampus - is about to be tested in California. Unlike devices like cochlear implants, which merely stimulate brain activity, this silicon chip implant will perform the same processes as the damaged part of the brain it is replacing."
Travel UCD - consultants in
Travel UCD - consultants in travel and hospitality website design. A specialized UCD company. It kinda makes sense.
Visual Studio Magazine - Why
Visual Studio Magazine - Why We Don't Build Software for Users (Interview with the Coop - it's Coop day!): about UML and extreme programming: "One is the engineering movement, as exemplified by UML and the Rational Unified Process (RUP), which describe how you plan and document huge projects. The other is the craft movement. McBreen asserts that programming is craft."
I never thought of it like that. UML = engineering. XP = craft. Funky.
Cooper Labs Television Hub: "If
Cooper Labs Television Hub: "If lost, the remote control can be found by pressing the "Find Remote" button on the Television Hub's front panel, which tells the remote to audibly signal its location." Nice.
Cooper: Design Research: Why you
Cooper: Design Research: Why you need it: for a business audience: "Ever notice how often a product that makes a huge splash at tradeshows fizzles in the marketplace? The story goes like this: Product is introduced at show to much fanfare. News media gives Product lots of press, and consumers everywhere express interest in Product's features and capabilities. Product hits store shelves - and stays there. Some early adopters purchase Product, but it never penetrates into mass consumer markets.
[...]
designers must leador at least participate inuser interviews. Simply handing them a report generated by someone else is not nearly as effective." Yes yes yes. There is also a good discussion of why companies don't do design research (a phrase I will start using - it nicely distinguishes it from validating research like most usability tests).
Cooper: Time for another About
Cooper: Time for another About Face (via IASlash): the new version of "About Face" will finally have details on how to make personas: "A detailed overview of Cooper's Goal-Directed design methodology. How does Cooper bridge the gap from research to design? How do we create personas that are effective design targets? How do we create comprehensive, representative, and convincing usage scenarios?"
Oskar van Rijswijk: "I consider
Oskar van Rijswijk: "I consider style switchers noise." Me too. Arg, styleswitchers! They are the hit counters of 2003. Most annoyingly, they break my standard way of resizing text because they all use points and stuff for text sizing.
Easy Topic Maps: BeerTM: "This
Easy Topic Maps: BeerTM: "This is a collaborative project to create a topic map about beer. The idea is to first create an ontology for describing beer, and then allow people to provide their own content using that ontology. The topic maps provided by different people can then be merged together to yield larger data sets."
Boxes and Arrows: Happy Birthday
Boxes and Arrows: Happy Birthday B&A: "I am incredibly proud and amazed at what this little zine has accomplished in providing a space for information sharing. A quick look around reveals that we've got 111 articles, 84 authors, and already over 1,149 comments at the time of this writing."
WERBLOG: "On Alexa's list of
WERBLOG: "On Alexa's list of the Top 500 Sites on the Web, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google are in the top 5. That's not surprising. But sites #3 and #4 are, at least to me. They are two South Korean portals. In all, 11 of the top 20 sites on the Alexa list are Asian, dominated by Korea.
I knew Korea had the world's highest penetration rates for broadband and mobile phones, but hadn't realized how much usage patterns have shifted as a result. After all, this is a country with less than one-fifth the population of the US. Something major is happening when the usage disparity is that great. "
Jeremy: "This really caught my attention. It makes sense in the context of known usage patterns associated with broadband. Research shows that broadband consumers use the Internet much more frequently and for longer durations. I've also read that something like 50% of website usage is driven by broadband users, despite only 20% having it in the US. With Korean broadband usage so high, it makes sense. But like Kevin, I would have never guessed that it would skew this much." Just wait for the Chinese to get online.
Best of Buslib-L: interesting mailing
Best of Buslib-L: interesting mailing list archives to peruse.
The BBC has a fascinating
The BBC has a fascinating mix of language and locale for their international websites. For example, there are 2 sites in Portuguese: the African portuguese site and the Brazil site.
Scientific Visualization and Information Architecture
Scientific Visualization and Information Architecture (all PDF lecture notes) (via The Eyes Have It via Antenna)
Matt corrects me on the
Matt corrects me on the BBC CMS and points to an old but interesting article.
Business 2.0 - Magazine Article
Business 2.0 - Magazine Article - The Floor Plan With a Plan: Paco Underhill analyzes the Apple stores. The best store I've ever been in (as in: it made me want to buy stuff) was Ikea.
US public turns to Europe
US public turns to Europe for news: "Jon Dennis, deputy news editor of the Guardian Unlimited web site said: "We have noticed an upsurge in traffic from America, primarily because we are receiving more emails from US visitors thanking us for reporting on worldwide news in a way that is unavailable in the US media."
US media (especially the news) is indeed shockingly stupid. I can tell - I live here now.
So Nielsen, Tog and Norman
So Nielsen, Tog and Norman have surrounded them with an (almost) all girl team. Clever!
Sunday_Mirror.co.uk - SADDAM'S SOLDIERS SURRENDER:
Sunday_Mirror.co.uk - SADDAM'S SOLDIERS SURRENDER: "TERRIFIED Iraqi soldiers have crossed the Kuwait border and tried to surrender to British forces - because they thought the war had already started. [...] The stunned Paras from 16 Air Assault Brigade were forced to tell the Iraqis they were not firing at them, and ordered them back to their home country telling them it was too early to surrender."
Also in the news: eBay
Also in the news: eBay to close Half.com, scam targets Paypall users and Afghanistan activates its .af domain.
News.com: "The HP ProLiant DL560
News.com: "The HP ProLiant DL560 server comes with up to four Intel Xeon processors and up to 12GB of memory. Prices start at $7,099." Make that 100GB of memory and we're talking. Then I could have my entire system in RAM - database and all. (I'm not a server expert though)
Microsoft rebrands Office for enterprises.
Microsoft rebrands Office for enterprises. This, plus the xml-ization of Office, makes me think MS got it: Office can easily replace many disfunctional coorporate document management or CM systems. All MS needs to do is focus on features like versioning and workflow. If I was a CMS builder I'd be worried medium term.
Also on iaSlash, Jess is
Also on iaSlash, Jess is posting the SIGIA Highlight Reel. I hope he can keep it up.
Woody Pidcock of the Boeing
Woody Pidcock of the Boeing company: metamodel.com - What are the differences between a vocabulary, a taxonomy, a thesaurus, an ontology, and a meta-model? (via IASlash via Interconnected). All good definitions there.
If you are in New
If you are in New York and need some of them happy spring plant vibes (it's cold!), check out the New York Botanical Garden. They are doing a great exhibition about orchids.
