Applying Color Theory to Digital Displays

For backgrounds behind text, use solid, contrasting colors, and avoid the use of textures and patterns, which can make letterforms difficult to distinguish or even illegible. Choose combinations of text color and background color with care. Value contrast between body text and its background color should be a minimum of about eighty percent.

Gabriel-Petit, Pabini. UXmatters (2007). Design>User Interface>Accessibility>Color

Applying CSS to Forms

Learn how to lay out and format your forms with the power of CSS.

Moss, Trenton. Webcredible (2004). Design>Web Design>CSS

Applying Object-Oriented Design Concepts to Web Publishing  

This is a story of how one internal project at Sun Microsystems migrated printed user and reference documentation to an internal Web site. The principle architect of this site discusses how she applied object-oriented design concepts to the Web architecture to accommodate many learning styles simultaneously. As important as the successes of this project are its failures, which offer some insight into when and how to use the World Wide Web as a communication vehicle in your overall communication strategy.

Hoft, Nancy L. STC Proceedings (1996). Design>Documentation>Web Design

Applying Personalization to the Purchase Decision Process

The idea of personalizing Web and e-mail content is becoming well accepted because most of us already personalize the person-to-person communications that we use every day. However, planning a personalized web site has proven to be more of a challenge than many marketers had imagined.

Allen, Cliff. Allen.com (2003). Design>Web Design>Adaptive

Applying the Behavioral, Cognitive, and Social Sciences to Products

People trained in the Behavioral, Cognitive, and Social Sciences (BCSS) seldom play a critical role in the development of new products. Yeah, they do user testing and sometimes take part in the design, but seldom take part in specifying the product in the first place. Moreover, when economic times get tight, they are among the first to be let go. Why the failure? I place the blame squarely upon BCSS itself: students are badly prepared for the demands of a product-driven industry. Faculty are equally ill-prepared, and therefore unable to make a difference -- assuming they would even be interested in doing so.

Norman, Donald A. JND.org (2001). Design>Usability

Applying the Sensation-Perception Continuum to User Documentation  

The sensation-perception continuum represents the interplay of sensation and perception in everything we think and do. Technical communicators must exploit this continuum by understanding and applying sensory filters and perceptual tendencies in the design and development of information. This paper discuss three sensory filters: thresholds, cocktail-party effect, and sensory adaptation; it discusses four perceptual tendencies: perceptual set, figure-ground relationships, laws of grouping, and goodness of figures.

Coe, Marlana A. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Documentation>User Centered Design

Applying Web 2.0 Technologies to Technical Documentation

This article is based on my presentation at the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators' annual conference in October, 2006. Every now and then, there is a change in the value of what technical authors deliver. These are moments when organisations pay attention to technical documentation. This is because they recognise that these changes mean they can create something that will be of real value to the business and to their customers. In recent years, there have been three "waves of interestingness". The first wave was the introduction of Windows Help (WinHelp). The second major wave was the introduction of the Internet and intranets. This was a time when organisations looked at how they could transfer large amounts of information from paper to online. They were faced with issues such as how users could access and understand all this information easily - issues that technical communicators deal with on a day-to-day basis. I believe we're just about to approach the new wave, which we have called "Tech Writing 2.0".

Pratt, Ellis. Cherryleaf (2006). Articles>Web Design>Documentation>Technical Writing

Applying XSLT to XML Using ASP.NET

This article explains the basics of XSL to transform XML documents using simple examples. We will gradually focus on using ASP.NET to implement XSLT for any XML document and even to database queries. It introduces different ways of implementing XSL from browser's perspective and server's perspective. We will also discuss some tips to generate automated XML from database queries and then transform them to HTML using XSL transformations.

Chaterjee, Jagadish. ASP Free (2004). Articles>Information Design>XSL>ASP

Approaches to Creating Personas  

You do research to better understand your users, but exactly what is it that you want to find out about them? That's the first question you need to ask, and its answer dictates which research methods you should use, since specific methods are tailored to finding specific types of information.

Mulder, Steve. InformationDesign (2007). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas

Architecting a Tradeshow Booth: A New Job for the Technical Communicator  

Can a technical communicator step in and create a striking booth to attract attendees and successfully market a company? You bet – it is easier than it looks. Designing a tradeshow booth is a fun exploration of a communicator’s talents in design, organization, and writing. And if you dare to add some creativity to your talents, success comes automatically.

Faure, MacKenzie, Amey Celoria and Cecilia Kullberg. STC Proceedings (1998). Design>Information Design>Marketing

Architecting Our Profession

The change within the interface design process over the past five to ten years has coincided with an increasing number of large companies refining an industrial style model of design instead of focusing on specialization or interaction sustainability through design accuracy.

Evans, Clifton. Boxes and Arrows (2005). Design>Web Design>History

Architects of Knowledge: An Emerging Hybrid Profession for Educational Communications  

Knowledge architecture is a nascent, hybrid field with significant potential as an innovative, cross-disciplinary design profession for 'value-added' technical communications and instructional technology. However, the emergence of a comprehensive, coherent, grounded theory and a corresponding problem-oriented, practice-based curriculum is progressing slowly. By contrast, other professional specialties for information architects, multi-media designers and software interface designers are better established. Scholars and practioners interested in fostering the development of knowledge architecture as a legitimate and evolving profession are at the forefront in defining the essential performance skills and academic training needed in the core subfields of information design, interactivity design, media design, and instructional design.

Lasnik, Vincent E. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Information Design>Knowledge Management

Architecture of Designing Documents  

Both parks and document design share the same goal: to satisfy patrons and entice them to return. The common characteristics - available for many activities, easy navigation and circulation, appropriate equipment, effective use of space, and patron safety - are applied to document design. So take a walk - in a park - to find out about document design.

Lisberg, Beth Conney. STC Proceedings (1999). Design>Document Design>Information Design

Archiving Experience Design: A Virtual Roundtable Discussion

The following discussion was conducted over a six-week period late in 2002. We invited members of Loop’s advisory board and several distinguished guests to address the question of how we, as an emerging community of interest, might begin to address the critical question of preserving the history of our field.

AIGA (2003). Design>User Experience>History

Are Standards-Compliant Websites Better?

The adhoc way in which much of the web was developed has created a dilemma for web designers: should websites comply with standards, ensuring accessibility, or break the rules and work with older browsers? At this moment, the answer is simple: Websites should work with older browsers.

Baker, Adam. Merges.net (2001). Design>Web Design>Standards>Usability

Are the Product Lists on Your Site Reducing Sales?  

You can increase sales on your site as much as 225% by offering sufficient product information to your customers at the time they need it. One way to do this is to develop product lists that don't require shoppers to bounce back-and-forth between the list and individual product pages.

User Interface Engineering (2004). Design>Web Design>Usability>E Commerce

Are There Users Who Always Search?

Web designers often tell us that they spend a great deal of their limited time and resources working to improve their on-site search engines because, they believe, there are some people who always rely on the search engine to reach their target content. They find further support for this assumption from Jakob Nielsen who, in his book, 'Designing Web Usability,' asserts that more than half of all users demonstrate 'search-dominant' tendencies by going right to the search engine when they first visit a web site looking for content.

User Interface Engineering (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability>Search

Are We There Yet?

It's true: even simple projects get messy. Christina Wodtke comes clean on Swiss Army knives, the writing on the wall, and the untidy glory of the Boxes and Arrows redesign contest.

Wodtke, Christina. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>Case Studies

Are You Creating a Path of Resistance?

I've been watching people type in web site addresses for a long time now. However, I only started watching people closely about 4 weeks ago. I recorded 75 observations of people typing in URLs in the address bar (I kept a notepad with a running tally). I'll be the first to admit that this was not scientific and, as you might guess, I was acting in a biased manner. Nevertheless, I think the results are somewhat useful as a starting point. I found that in about 20 of the 75 observations, when people typed in a new URL they first tried the address without the 'www'. So, my findings indicate that about 27% of the time, users did not use the 'www'.

Rhodes, John S. WebWord (1999). Design>Web Design>Usability

Are You Customer Centred?

The first step in usability survival is to make sure that your development process is customer centred. This means making sure that customers are involved in the design and evaluation of the system.

Userfocus (2003). Articles>User Centered Design

Are you ready for XOP (XML-Oriented Programming)?

The domain model is a familiar concept to most OOP (Object Oriented Programming) developers and architects, and has been used successfully in a variety of systems and projects. But how does this principle apply to SOA-based solutions?

Xu, Peter. IBM (2007). Articles>Information Design>Programming>XML

Are You Satisfied with Online Shopping?

How many of you use the Internet to order merchandise? Many consumers are choosing the Internet to order merchandise rather than brave the crowds and traffic snarls at shopping malls. I don’t know if you have noticed it, but the order process and ease of use varies from one web site to another. The often-confusing process is enough to make you bail out and shop elsewhere. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, 'E-tailers Try to Keep Shoppers From Bolting at Checkout Point,' (1) usability, technology, and e-commerce issues are stopping shoppers from completing their purchases. The article states that about 65% of shoppers bail out at the checkout point. Poor design has cost E-tailers over $6.1 billion in potential sales.

Dick, David J. Usability Interface (2001). Design>Web Design>Usability

Are You Using the Right Search Engine?

What this all means is that when web users can't find what they want in Google, they should not automatically assume that they're at fault. At present, Google is heavily weighted.

Bennaco (2004). Articles>Information Design>Search>Search Engine Optimization

Are Your Prospects Walking Out on You?

Learn how to write compelling copy that will keep your site visitors interested in what you're offering.

Gandia, Ed. Webcredible (2005). Design>Web Design>User Experience