Participatory design is an approach to design that attempts to actively involve end users in the design process to help ensure that the product designed meets their needs and is usable. This approach is focused on process and is not a design style. For some, this approach has a political dimension of user empowerment and democratisation. For others, it is seen as a way of abrogating design responsibility and innovation by designers.
#10754
Write a book this afternoon. Sound preposterous? To the contrary--you can create an information-packed, 16-page booklet using a single sheet of paper in little more time than it takes to type the text. Use it to market your product or service, to tell the story of your organization or to offer tips and how-to information to prospects and clients. Print five or ten copies directly from your laser printer or take your master artwork to a commercial printer and have it reproduced by the thousands. No matter how you cut, fold and staple it, this book is proof-positive that big things do come in small packages.
Chuck Green. Ideabook.com (1999). Design>Document Design>Prepress>Printing
#25574
Boost Your Website With Expert Content
The only effective way to promote a website is by hosting unique, quality content. Search engine optimization and paid inclusions are a waste of time and money if there isn't a compelling reason for your visitors to come back once they have found you.
Warren, Robert. TypePad.com (2003). Articles>Web Design>Writing
#19394
Border Crossing: The Role of Design Research in International Product Development 
At a time when theorists write of globalization as a global and local process, businesses can little afford to make assumptions about customers, even in traditional markets. This paper addresses the importance of applied design research, in the context of globalism, to the initial stages of product development. Products are understood here to include three-dimensional objects like appliances and furniture as well as communication products like software. Current debates about cultural identity in the context of widespread travel and global media are outlined. The possibility for research to identify the criteria of cultural appropriateness and acceptance of products is explored, and an argument for applied research as imperative for product design in today?s international business arena is advanced. The essay concludes with an appendix outlining an array of relevant research methods.
Roberts, Melody. AIGA (2001). Design>Web Design>International
#25568
Review: Bosworth's Web of Data
In a Thursday morning keynote at the MySQL Users Conference 2005, Google's Adam Bosworth advocated an open model for data. Although he was not referring to open source, he expanded upon the example by explaining that customers like open source software because of the transparency.
Steinberg, Daniel H. O'Reilly and Associates (2005). Articles>Reviews>Information Design>SQL
#20953
It's not been easy for art directors and graphic designers to maintain a career amidst rapidly changing technology and design trends.
Shinn, Nick. ShinnType (2001). Careers>TC>Typography>Graphic Design
#23073
Bottoms Up: Designing Complex, Adaptive Systems
Web design is under attack. Our enemy is a dangerous meme known as reductionism. This devious adversary is spreading the notion that we can fully understand Web sites as a combination of simpler components, and that we can break the process of design into lots of quick steps and clearly defined deliverables.
Morville, Peter. New Architect (2002). Articles>Information Design>Web Design
#20775
Boxes and Arrows is the definitive source for the complex task of bringing architecture and design to the digital landscape. There are various titles and professions associated with this undertaking—information architecture, information design, interaction design, interface design—but when we looked at the work that we were actually doing, we found a “community of practice” with similarities in outlook and approach that far outweighed our differences. Boxes and Arrows is a peer-written journal dedicated to discussing, improving and promoting the work of this community, through the sharing of exemplary technique, innovation and informed opinion.
Boxes and Arrows. Journals>Web Design>User Centered Design>Interaction Design
#28688
Brand Experience in User Experience Design
As user experience professionals, we have the opportunity to work more closely with brand and marketing specialists to clearly articulate the brand perception we want to elicit from our customers. Brand perception is, in part, an expectation on the part of a customer regarding future interactions with a company and its products and services. To achieve our desired brand perception, we must consistently represent and deliver the brand values we have led customers to expect.
Baty, Steve. UXmatters (2006). Design>Web Design>User Experience>Marketing
#23969
Branding and the User Interface, Part 2: Tips on New Media Branding: Behavior and Color
A look at how branding differs between traditional applications, like printed corporate collateral, and emerging new media applications, such as software user interfaces, with a focus on behavior and color.
Fortin, Nate. Cooper Interaction Design (2003). Articles>User Interface>User Centered Design
#10574
Many web sites exist primarily to create or strengthen the brand for a product or service. We’re finding that a site’s usability can dramatically affect branding. And the graphical aspects of the site — such as logos or evocative pictures — have much less effect on branding than we expected.
User Interface Engineering (1999). Articles>Usability>Web Design
#25223
Branding Copy and Web Sites: A Bad Fit
The trouble with using text as a branding tool on web pages is that it gets in the way of what visitors are looking for. Visitors want and expect text to be useful and information. They are in 'active' and 'engaged' mode. They are searching. They want something. Text that isn't useful is disappointing.
Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Marketing
#28695
Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful
Breadcrumbs use a single line of text to show a page's location in the site hierarchy. While secondary, this navigation technique is increasingly beneficial to users.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Design>Web Design>Information Design
#18282
Breadcrumb Navigation: An Exploratory Study of Usage
Breadcrumbs serve two purposes: 1) they provide information to the user as to where they are located within the site, and 2) they offer shortcut links for users to “jump” to previous categories in the sequence without using the Back key, other navigation bars, or the search engine. Breadcrumb paths give location information and links in a backward linear manner. Navigation methods, such as search fields or horizontal/vertical navigation bars, serve to retrieve information for the user in a forward-seeking approach. As suggested by Marchionini, systems that support navigation by both browsing and analytical strategies are most beneficial to users since various patterns, strategies, tactics, and moves associated with both types of strategies are normally used.
Lida, Bonnie, Spring S. Hull and Katie Pilcher. Usability News (2003). Design>Web Design>Usability
#23308
Breadcrumb Navigation: Further Investigation of Usage
There has been speculation that a breadcrumb trail also aids the user's 'mental model' of the site's layout to reduce disorientation within the site (Bernard, 2003); however, we have not found research to validate this assumption. It would seem logical, however, that a constant visualization of the path to the user's current location would increase their awareness and knowledge of the site structure.
Rogers, Bonnie Lida and Barbara Chaparro. Usability News (2003). Design>Web Design>Information Design
#25529
Breaking out of the Cubicle: How a Small, Swiss Company Got its Groove On
In the mid-1990s, Makiko Itoh and her partner left New York's cubicle land for a web shop of their own in the suburbs of Zurich. Learn from her tips on running your own web agency.
Itoh, Makiko. List Apart, A (2001). Careers>Management>Web Design
#20448
One of the lessons I learned at my mother’s knee was that you have to know the rules in order to break them properly. (Mother was a graphic designer.) The rules that are worth breaking are the ones you understand the purpose of – maybe you even agree with that purpose in general. There are plenty of stupid rules for the Web, rules that were put there by people who extrapolated too soon from too small a set of data. Those rules are no fun to break, kind of like removing a tag that says 'Do not remove under penalty of law' from a sofa cushion. We won’t bother with those rules today. Let’s go after the rules worth our time and effort. Given that, here’s my list of Web rules I’d most like to see broken, but only if they’re broken well.
Gunn, Eileen. Upper and lowercase Magazine (1998). Design>Typography>Web Design
#23986
It takes research, humility, and skill to truly understand your customers well enough to serve them better than your competitors.
Cooper, Alan. Cooper Interaction Design (2002). Design>Web Design>Consulting>User Centered Design
#26203
The Internet Archive is one of the largest archives of digital media in existence. It contains five times more information than is in the Library of Congress and several times more information than is currently available publicly on the web. David Womack interviewed its creator, Brewster Kahle, for Loop.
Womack, David. AIGA (2002). Articles>Web Design>History
#31914
Bridging the Designer–User Gap
Depending on how representative designers are of the target audience, a project might need more or less user testing. Still, usability concerns never go away completely.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2008). Articles>Web Design>Usability
#23511
Bridging the Gap Between Creative and Technical Types
Does a gap between those considered creative types and those considered technical types really exist, or is it just a perception we've fostered?
Torok, Karen. Hanson (2001). Design>Project Management>Collaboration
#20477
Bridging the Gap Between Design and Editorial
With both Adobe InDesign® CS and Adobe InCopy® CS in your publishing workflow, writers and editors can compose stories in InCopy at the same time designers are laying out the pages using InDesign—without overwriting each other’s work.
Adobe (2003). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe InDesign
#25493
Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs 
Weblogs (blogs)--frequently modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological sequence--are the latest genre of Internet communication to attain widespread popularity, yet their characteristics have not been systematically described. This paper presents the results of a content analysis of 203 randomly-selected weblogs, comparing the empirically observable features of the corpus with popular claims about the nature of weblogs, and finding them to differ in a number of respects. Notably, blog authors, journalists and scholars alike exaggerate the extent to which blogs are interlinked, interactive, and oriented towards external events, and under-estimate the importance of blogs as individualistic, intimate forms of self-expression. Based on the profile generated by the empirical analysis, we consider the likely antecedents of the blog genre, situate it with respect to the dominant forms of digital communication on the Internet today, and advance predictions about its long-term impacts.
Herring, Susan C., Lois Ann Scheidt, Sabrina Bonus and Elijah Wright. (We)blog Research on Genre Project, The (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Blogging
#28267
Bridging the Gap: From Raw Usability Testing Data to Design Implementation 
Learn practical ways to influence members of your company’s product engineering group with usability testing data. Putting the authors’ tips into practice will help you improve the design of your company’s products.
Leritz-Higgins, Sarah E. and Catherine J. Yaspo. Intercom (2006). Articles>Usability>Information Design
#19188
Bridging Usability and Aesthetic Design of Wheelchairs
A wheelchair provides transportation for the disabled, independence and self-sufficiency to someone who would otherwise be completely dependent on others. But is functionality the only aspect of a wheelchair worth contemplation? Should we not evaluate the design aesthetic of wheelchairs to the same extent that we analyze the design of other useful and purposeful objects?
Fields, Betsy. Usability Interface (2003). Design>Usability>Accessibility
#21923
A Brief History Of Technical Illustration
A history of technical illustration, from the classics to the present.
Hulsey, Kevin. Kevin Hulsey Illustration. Articles>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration>History
