categoryallspace2-Design Information Design Web Design http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Information-Design/Web-Design A directory of resources about design and information design and web design in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Information-Design/Web-Design http://tc.eserver.org/31512.html http://tc.eserver.org/31512.html Admit it. Your intranet is a mess. What started out as a great idea for sharing information inside the company has turned into the corporate junk drawer—a jumbled collection of useful, not-so-useful, relevant, irrelevant, redundant, inconsistent and unmanaged stuff. While parts of it make you proud (perhaps the employee directory or news portal), taken as a whole, it just hasn’t lived up to all the grand ideas you had when you posted those first few pages. http://tc.eserver.org/31443.html http://tc.eserver.org/31443.html Genesys, a system of medical care facilities in central Michigan, has introduced an innovative way to couple emerging mobile communication technology with sophisticated medical care. Recently, the hospital system introduced the use of hand-held wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs) by physicians in its 440-bed system, which is made up of three local hospitals merged into one. http://tc.eserver.org/30861.html http://tc.eserver.org/30861.html This study tests the effects of personalized and 'stealth' political discourse on weblogs (or blogs) and the repercussions on levels of political trust, information efficacy and political uses/gratifications. By surveying readers of three different blogs (N=1838), this study identified significant effects as a result of exposure to political statements on blogs. Indeed, there were differences in the levels of political cynicism depending on how political statements were communicated. Readers of non-political blogs were more confident in their level of political information and their ability to participate in politics. Finally, political uses/approaches and avoidances were examined, as were differences based on gender and age. http://tc.eserver.org/30773.html http://tc.eserver.org/30773.html We're moving toward a shared network model, where people publish and subscribe. The really appealing sites integrate feeds for a community of users in an invisible, seamless way, making it easy to see what we're all up to. http://tc.eserver.org/30670.html http://tc.eserver.org/30670.html XUL is a surprisingly easy way to build cross-platform browser extensions or even stand-alone applications. Discover how to build powerful, flexible Mozilla browser extensions that go beyond the capabilities of other tools like embedded scripting languages or CGI--because they're built right into the user's browser. http://tc.eserver.org/30673.html http://tc.eserver.org/30673.html Have you ever wanted to bring the technical know-how of developerWorks straight to your workspace or personalized iGoogle, Netvibes, or My Yahoo page? Now you can with developer gizmos. It's the power of syndication at the click of the mouse: no programming, training, or registration required. Add any developerWorks custom feeds, or a developerWorks spaces portlet as a Google Gadget, Netvibes Module, or Yahoo Widget directly to your preferred syndication mashup, keep up with developerWorks feeds on your Apple iPhone, or download a developerWorks Gadget for Google Desktop with the content you select from developerWorks. http://tc.eserver.org/30228.html http://tc.eserver.org/30228.html The building block system includes several types of Connectors that make it possible for designers and architects to link the different areas of a Dashboard together via a consistent, easily understandable navigation model. The system also ensures the resulting information architecture can grow in response to changing needs and content. There's no special stacking hierarchy for the Connectors. However, they do have an official stacking size (most are size 3) in order to keep Dashboards constructed with the building blocks internally consistent. http://tc.eserver.org/30123.html http://tc.eserver.org/30123.html Hart explains how understanding hierarchies--the order in which information is grouped--can help you choose an appropriate balance between the depth and breadth of your online information. http://tc.eserver.org/30013.html http://tc.eserver.org/30013.html Visual and interaction design for successful e-commerce Web sites and Web-based applications requires meticulous attention to detail. Because the smallest matters can ruin the user experience, an orderly process--such as usage-centered design--guided by robust principles is needed; iterative testing and repetitive redesign is inadequate to find and address all the diverse matters needing attention. This paper reviews basic principles and then surveys best practices in the detailed aspects of Web design in three broad areas: details of architecture or organization, details of interaction design, and details relating to commercial activity, especially shopping. Specific recommendations in each area are offered as examples of best practices based on usage-centered principles. http://tc.eserver.org/29986.html http://tc.eserver.org/29986.html Microformats is a term used to describe the storage of information using simple markup variations within existing markup languages. To a certain extent, microformats describes a methodology or philosophy, and comprises a set of design principles. Microformats is not a new language. It is usually a permutation of XHTML. The philosophy of microformats involves storing data in human-readable formats which are also machine-readable, but the emphasis is on the humans! Information tends to be visible, rather than hidden metadata. http://tc.eserver.org/29978.html http://tc.eserver.org/29978.html XML became an integral part of Microsoft's strategy around the time of Internet Explorer 4. IE4 was an XML-aware browser. As well as displaying HTML documents, it could also display XML documents through an inbuilt XML parser. Another part of IE4 was something known as the XML DSO (Data Source Object). The XML DSO allows you to manipulate primitive XML 'data islands' by binding (or attaching) the XML data to HTML presentation elements. The XML elements within Internet Explorer continue to be improved and added to with every new IE release. http://tc.eserver.org/29953.html http://tc.eserver.org/29953.html Firefox 2.0 brought several important changes in its XML support. It's currently reaching its peak in user deployment. Learn about updated XML features in Firefox 2.0, including a controversial change to the handling of RSS Web feeds. http://tc.eserver.org/29673.html http://tc.eserver.org/29673.html A map-based approach to building a content inventory allows it to be a tool from the concept stages and throughout the life of the website. Patrick Walsh tells us why to use them, shows us how to create the maps, and how to leverage them over the long haul. http://tc.eserver.org/29676.html http://tc.eserver.org/29676.html Acquiring and installing a search engine is just the beginning of creating an effective enterprise search system. John Ferrara walks us through strategies for addressing critical aspects of the user experience often overlooked or ignored. http://tc.eserver.org/29590.html http://tc.eserver.org/29590.html This article explains a useful way to embed data in an HTML document, and store it on the client, using XML. With XML becoming ever more pervasive and the client side implementation gaining a lot of ground, you will probably find yourself using this technique in many projects. http://tc.eserver.org/29493.html http://tc.eserver.org/29493.html Now that you've got a website it's time to start thinking about promoting it. Search engine listings are the number one way to generate traffic to your website. http://tc.eserver.org/29491.html http://tc.eserver.org/29491.html The Google Sandbox is a filter that was put in place in about March of 2004. New websites with new domain names can take 6 to 12 months to get decent rankings on Google. Some are reporting stays of up to 18 months. The Sandbox seems to affect nearly all new websites placing them on probation. Similarly, websites that have made comprehensive redesigns have been caught up in this Sandbox. Does this Sandbox Really Exist, or is it just part of the Google algorithm? This has been a big controversy with many different opinions. Most now believe that this is an algorithm. In either case, the Sandbox functions to keep new sites from shooting to the top of Google in just a few weeks and overtaking quality sites that have been around for many years. This appears to be an initiation period for new websites. http://tc.eserver.org/29489.html http://tc.eserver.org/29489.html Google's increasing use of anti-spam features has meant that optimising websites for Google has become much harder and it's now not just a case of opening your websites source files in notepad, adding some keywords into your various HTML tags, uploading your files and waiting for the results. In fact in my opinion and I'm sure others will agree with me, this type of optimisation, commonly referred to as onpage optimisation will only ever be 20% effective at achieving rankings for any keywords which are even mildly competitive. Those of us who aced maths in school will know this leaves us with 80% unaccounted for. http://tc.eserver.org/29490.html http://tc.eserver.org/29490.html Explain some of the first steps to get your website not only optimized for the search engines, but to push your website up in the rankings war. http://tc.eserver.org/29492.html http://tc.eserver.org/29492.html Outbound links' anchor text affects a page's search engine ranking in much the same way that inbound links' anchor text affects search engine ranking. http://tc.eserver.org/29443.html http://tc.eserver.org/29443.html Not all content is created equal. In fact, the real issue isn't the primacy of content, since no user in their right mind will come to stare at a blank screen labeled Me.com; the real issue is what type of content you're offering. http://tc.eserver.org/29419.html http://tc.eserver.org/29419.html One of our favorite cliches is that you can't use the printed book as a model for online information. Web-based information, which is following the same evolutionary progress as online help systems, has inherited this 'books are bad' philosophy. However, any statement we've begun to take for granted bears some re-examination, because unquestioningly accepting dogma undermines our efforts to improve communication. http://tc.eserver.org/29385.html http://tc.eserver.org/29385.html A weblog about the Web, computer vision and life. http://tc.eserver.org/29355.html http://tc.eserver.org/29355.html Describes the effect of bookmark naming on bookmark recognition. The purpose is to provide empirically-determined guidelines for web producers on how to title pages in order to optimise the recognition of bookmarks by users, and increase the rate of revisitation to their websites. http://tc.eserver.org/29357.html http://tc.eserver.org/29357.html Describes the effect of bookmark naming on bookmark recognition. The purpose was to provide empirically-determined guidelines for web producers on how to title pages in order to optimise the recognition of bookmarks by users, and to increase the rate of revisitation as a result. http://tc.eserver.org/29293.html http://tc.eserver.org/29293.html There is an astonishing amount of disbelief that the users of web pages have learned to scroll and that they do so regularly. Holding on to this disbelief--this myth that users won't scroll to see anything below the fold--is doing everyone a great disservice, most of all our users. http://tc.eserver.org/28916.html http://tc.eserver.org/28916.html Stephen Few's Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data defines the state-of-the-art of information dashboard design. Few, who is an expert in data visualization for the communication and analysis of quantitative business information has provided a complete, practical, and illuminating guide to dashboard design. If you are designing front-ends for executive information systems for Business Performance Management (BPM) or for monitoring and analyzing the performance of sales, marketing, or information systems, Information Dashboard Design provides all you need to know to ensure your dashboards communicate efficiently and effectively. http://tc.eserver.org/28859.html http://tc.eserver.org/28859.html Syndication has taken the web industry by storm. It's used everywhere. Talk to a web developer and they'll tell you they've been using it for years. But, as with a lot of things geek, those on the cutting-edge often forget to tell others how to use the new technology. http://tc.eserver.org/28853.html http://tc.eserver.org/28853.html With the growing popularity of Web 2.0, a new data interchange format called JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is emerging as a useful way to represent data in the business logic running on browsers. Learn how PHP-based server programs can convert XML-formatted enterprise application data into JSON format before sending it to browser applications. http://tc.eserver.org/28844.html http://tc.eserver.org/28844.html All too often web pages, even home pages, provide readers with a variety of choices, but don't really provide a clear way forward. This is particularly true when a site has multiple products or services to sell. But this lack of direction is also evident on some sites which have just a single offering. http://tc.eserver.org/28695.html http://tc.eserver.org/28695.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/28657.html http://tc.eserver.org/28657.html Wireframes can comprise many different patterns, each of which is a discrete element that provides specific functionality and may include instructive copy, images, text fields, buttons, links, etcetera. Together, the patterns create a complete Web page. Of course, when wireframing in patterns, it always helps if there is a pre-existing library of patterns to draw from, but I have found that getting through the first wireframe reveals most of the reusable patterns. http://tc.eserver.org/28425.html http://tc.eserver.org/28425.html A good way to get insight into the complexity of web design is to compare it to more familiar design disciplines. Like web sites, buildings are designed to support a wide range of experiences, which involves design from the high-level architecture to signage and interior furnishings. http://tc.eserver.org/28377.html http://tc.eserver.org/28377.html もしユーザが、いつもウェブサイトの間違えたセクションを開いているなら、ラベリングの改良から、構造の明確化まで、幅広い改善策がある。 http://tc.eserver.org/28354.html http://tc.eserver.org/28354.html People disagree on what happens when IAs grow up, but Tom Reamy offers a foundation for information architecture as it advances, grappling with problems across the enterprise. http://tc.eserver.org/28342.html http://tc.eserver.org/28342.html After ensuring that content is useful, well-written, and in a format that is suitable for the Web, it is important to ensure that the information is clearly organized. In some cases, the content on a site can be organized in multiple ways to accommodate multiple audiences. Organizing content includes putting critical information near the top of the site, grouping related elements, and ensuring that all necessary information is available without slowing the user with unneeded information. Content should be formatted to facilitate scanning, and to enable quick understanding. http://tc.eserver.org/28333.html http://tc.eserver.org/28333.html Designers must decide, early in the design process, whether to create long pages that require extensive scrolling or shorter pages that will require users to move frequently from page to page (an activity referred to as paging). This decision will be based on considerations of the primary users and the type of tasks being performed. For example, older users tend to scroll more slowly than younger users; therefore, long scrolling pages may slow them down considerably. As another example, some tasks that require users to remember where information is located on a page may benefit from paging, while many reading tasks benefit from scrolling. http://tc.eserver.org/28272.html http://tc.eserver.org/28272.html Wikipedia may be the biggest technical document ever created, but it and other Web 2.0 elements present challenges. Read about the popularity of Wikipedia, then let Intercom know about your professional experiences using wikis, blogs, and other Web 2.0 applications. http://tc.eserver.org/28259.html http://tc.eserver.org/28259.html Small websites get less traffic than big ones, but they can still dominate their niches. For each question users ask, the Web delivers a different set of sites to provide the answers. http://tc.eserver.org/28221.html http://tc.eserver.org/28221.html Whoever performed any usability tests knows, that users look straight away at the content. Users first look the pictures then at the titles then at the text. Navigation often gets completely ignored. In my seven years of conceiving websites and monitoring usablity tests I am tempted to say that navigation is useless. http://tc.eserver.org/28147.html http://tc.eserver.org/28147.html For a long time I have been an advocate of quality content on web sites. And now I am conducting an experiment that pitches quality content against immediate gratification. http://tc.eserver.org/28136.html http://tc.eserver.org/28136.html When users find the answers they are looking for, the investment in technical documentation gets a chance to pay off. In large volumes of technical information, just finding the answer can be half the battle. Microsoft found that users of its intranet were spending an average of 2.5 hours per day online - 50% of that being searching. This article was written as part of an experimental online workshop with the MITWA (Mentors, Indexers, Technical Writers & Associates) discussion group(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MITWA/). The article retains the workshop format including learning assignments. http://tc.eserver.org/28091.html http://tc.eserver.org/28091.html When your website's users consistently go to the wrong sections, you have many options for getting users back on track, from better labels to clearer structure. http://tc.eserver.org/28031.html http://tc.eserver.org/28031.html A comprehensive start from scratch and step-by-step approach to learn this important procedure. This illustrated article is your guide to SSIS designing. http://tc.eserver.org/27636.html http://tc.eserver.org/27636.html Clarifies exactly what XHTML is, explains why you need to be learning about it from today, and steps through the process of transitioning to the standards based way of marking up for the web, and beyond. http://tc.eserver.org/27625.html http://tc.eserver.org/27625.html One of the great pitfalls of using client side techniques, such as JavaScript, to display content on demand is the prerequisite that everything be contained in variables. This makes adding and updating the content very cumbersome. http://tc.eserver.org/27459.html http://tc.eserver.org/27459.html Can our users and what they need quickly, with the least amount of effort and frustration? How can we make information work for different types of users? We know that 'visual is easier,' but we need to understand how people actually use documents to harness the visual power. This session focuses on a core task:page design for impatient, goal-oriented users. It proposes that visual designs which provide a clear 'map' to the information make user orientation and navigation easier, and provide access options for different users. While the focus is on print, the principles also apply to the electronic environment. http://tc.eserver.org/26943.html http://tc.eserver.org/26943.html Men and women don't browse the Web the same way; one should design for both feminine and masculine webs. http://tc.eserver.org/26877.html http://tc.eserver.org/26877.html The open source Firefox Web browser continues to grow in popularity. Users like the security and convenience features it offers. Developers like the Firefox attention to standards compliance, inherited from its Mozilla roots. The most recent version, Firefox 1.5, comes with many features for XML developers, including XML parsing, XHTML, CSS, XSLT, SVG, XML Events in JavaScriptâ„¢, and XForms. Additional third-party extensions provide even more XML support. In this article, Uche Ogbuji provides an overview of XML features in Firefox 1.5. http://tc.eserver.org/26876.html http://tc.eserver.org/26876.html This second article in the series, "XML in Firefox 1.5," focuses on basic XML processing. Firefox supports XML parsing, Cascading Stylesheets (CSS), and XSLT stylesheets. http://tc.eserver.org/26793.html http://tc.eserver.org/26793.html Libraries and librarians can create the kinds of compelling services that will bring our users back. We can't expect a brighter future unless we work hard for it. http://tc.eserver.org/26779.html http://tc.eserver.org/26779.html Sitemaps are common deliverables, desired by clients who want a visual representation of a site. Since they are rarely used to make decisions, information architects may not consider them the valuable tools they are. The effort required to make and maintain them requires time that might be better used elsewhere. In fact, I would suggest that making sure the little boxes line up is a waste of an IA's mental abilities. http://tc.eserver.org/26715.html http://tc.eserver.org/26715.html Once a visitor gets to your web site, you want to make sure they can find what they are looking for quickly and easily, or they will just go elsewhere. If a web site is easy to use and understand, visitors will come back time and time again. http://tc.eserver.org/26542.html http://tc.eserver.org/26542.html The recent rise in more powerful technologies that provide richer user experiences online has presented us with a challenge. As designers, we are moving from from designing for "PIAs" to designing for "RIAs." Does our documentation style change with the technology? Will our standard ways do the job? http://tc.eserver.org/26158.html http://tc.eserver.org/26158.html Ample research has proved that companies can save many thousands of dollars by rewriting key documents in plain English. Poor communication on the Web and intranet are squandering the time and money of many an organisation. http://tc.eserver.org/26155.html http://tc.eserver.org/26155.html Every directory on the site must have an index page. The index.htm or index.html page is a standard requirement for every directory on every site. http://tc.eserver.org/26136.html http://tc.eserver.org/26136.html I have long wondered why government web sites all over the world tend to use metadata of several different types jumbled together and overlapping. For example, pages with two description metatags or two or three title tags are common. I suspect that most of the replication and confusion has developed for historical reasons. http://tc.eserver.org/25863.html http://tc.eserver.org/25863.html Web pages cited with personal author identification in 12 longer Web bibliographies and a collection of 19 shorter Web bibliographies were investigated. With one exception, the personal author names could be matched in the visible text of the great majority of pages. Metatags (both for authors and for descriptions) and page titles rarely added any author information. In some cases, frames or inline graphics appeared to be the sources used. Somewhat more frequent probable sources were linked pages, such as home pages. http://tc.eserver.org/25617.html http://tc.eserver.org/25617.html Site diagrams can be quite helpful in answering all kinds of hard questions. How to create the right diagram became a personal challenge for Jason Withrow. He shares his story through tips and techniques… http://tc.eserver.org/25355.html http://tc.eserver.org/25355.html Wise-Women is a world-wide, online community of web designers, developers and programmers. http://tc.eserver.org/25274.html http://tc.eserver.org/25274.html I have been reading a lot about how companies are enthusiastically embracing RSS as a wonderful alternative to email newsletters. I can understand their enthusiasm, in part. After all, legitimate commercial email and newsletters are being decimated by spam filters. In addition to which, consumers are growing weary of having to distinguish between what is spam and what is not. There are additional benefits to making newsletters available by RSS. RSS means your subject line never disappears below the fold of an email window. With RSS the newsletter is always there, ready and waiting for when your reader is ready to take a look. With RSS your archives can be just a click away...providing easy and immediate access to previous issues. http://tc.eserver.org/24770.html http://tc.eserver.org/24770.html The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) has been employed by the world's public health officials to chart the nature, frequency, and geographic origins of diseases and causes of death in human populations since the late nineteenth century. The ICD has been modified every decade since the 1890s, and a study by Bowker and Star of these changes, in concert with the work of others on the practices employed in information mapping, can be used to better understand the organization of large-scale web sites. Specifically, web designers must adapt classification schemes to fit multiple social worlds. Additionally, we need to understand that these systems can become so entrenched in our thinking that they become "invisible," thus undermining our ability to adapt them as future needs or insights arise. http://tc.eserver.org/24494.html http://tc.eserver.org/24494.html This exercise will show you how to create an interesting rollover effect with a nested symbol. http://tc.eserver.org/24224.html http://tc.eserver.org/24224.html The production of a web page has become a common assignment in a number of university classrooms, but there has yet to be established a pedagogy for the generation of large group-generated web sites that replicate the methods found in industry. In Studies in Hypertext, a course offered to technical communication students at the University of Central Florida, such a pedagogy is being shaped. In this course, students with little or no experience in web site generation work their way through a series of written and small web site construction tasks to eventually produce one complex and competently-integrated web site. http://tc.eserver.org/24051.html http://tc.eserver.org/24051.html On a Web site with very few pages -- as in a small art gallery -- what you see as you enter can reveal all you need to know to successfully navigate the space. If the home page acts as a front door, then it can display hypertext links to all or most of the pages (up to 10, say) on a small site. Web sites have a way of growing larger, though, and not many sites stay under 10 pages for long. If visitors can't see everything from the front door, how will they know what you have to offer? How will they find what they're looking for? http://tc.eserver.org/23985.html http://tc.eserver.org/23985.html The term mapping describes the relationship between a control, the thing it affects, and the intended result. Poor mapping is evident when a control does not relate visually or symbolically with the object it affects, requiring the user to stop and think, 'what's going to happen when I turn this knob?' http://tc.eserver.org/23981.html http://tc.eserver.org/23981.html The authors explore ways in which categories can be leveraged to improve search. An interface named SWISH is presented, in which search results are automatically categorized, and pages in the same category are grouped together. http://tc.eserver.org/23890.html http://tc.eserver.org/23890.html Dopo aver esplorato i principali modelli di classificazione elaborati dalla biblioteconomia, l'articolo si sofferma sulla classificazione a faccette (Faceted Classification), illustrandone le possibili applicazioni al web e i gli indubbi vantaggi che ne derivano. http://tc.eserver.org/23889.html http://tc.eserver.org/23889.html The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of depth and breadth of web site structure on the user response time. http://tc.eserver.org/23895.html http://tc.eserver.org/23895.html This document of best practices offers assistance in creating metadata records for digitized resources using the Dublin Core element data set. http://tc.eserver.org/23846.html http://tc.eserver.org/23846.html Design organizations inevitably run across the debate of Visio versus HTML wireframes. The decision for one over the other is never a clear-cut one since, as with all things IA-related, it depends. This article seeks to sort out the issues by describing the pros and cons of each and identifying situations where one may be more effective than the other. http://tc.eserver.org/23844.html http://tc.eserver.org/23844.html We stand poised to dive into the new year. What will 2003 hold for the profession known as 'what we do' and its children, information architecture, usability, interaction design, interface design, and graphic design? We asked our authors to hazard a guess. http://tc.eserver.org/23835.html http://tc.eserver.org/23835.html Held up as a trio of 'must have' books for the Information Architect, Tufte’'s books are the quintessential resource for information design. But many IAs may wonder how Tufte'’s principles can be applied to their daily work. Dan Brown offers three lessons from Tufte. http://tc.eserver.org/23626.html http://tc.eserver.org/23626.html We need to develop a rhetoric of objects to understand the new way in which we must create and deliver content over the Web. We are facing a new multiplicity of audiences—niche groups, and even individuals, to whom we offer customization and personalization. With our new tools and new ways of thinking about what we create, we are inventing informative objects that address the needs of our audiences, letting go of the concept of a document, as we plunge into a world of small chunks of content. In this presentation, I consider how this new approach to technical communication affects our ideas of audience, invention, arrangement, style, delivery, memory, and character—the canons of traditional rhetoric. http://tc.eserver.org/23628.html http://tc.eserver.org/23628.html Staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency created a template then steadily converted Web pages to achieve a 'corporate face' for www.EPA.gov, the Agency's Internet site. Management and maintenance of Agency Web pages rests among the technical subject matter and administrative experts within headquarters, program, and regional offices and laboratories – rather than centralized. Template design, deployment and conversion involved many employees and contractors nationwide, and took almost one year. As of February 1, more than 90% of EPA's Internet pages comply with the template, and staff continue improvements to the Agency's public Web resources. http://tc.eserver.org/23426.html http://tc.eserver.org/23426.html There have been tries to put modern software technology to work for our profession. True, we use tools that were created using object-oriented (OO) technology and we even document such programs. But you know the problem: The programmers change 'a single bit' of the program and you chase down all those 39 instances of that change. This paper will give you insights into possible ways to use object-oriented technology by yourself. http://tc.eserver.org/23308.html http://tc.eserver.org/23308.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/23301.html http://tc.eserver.org/23301.html Recent studies have shown that while the use of breadcrumb trails to navigate a website can be helpful, few users choose to utilize this method of navigation. This study investigates the effects of 'mere exposure' and training on breadcrumb usage. Findings indicate that brief training on the benefits of breadcrumb usage resulted in more efficient search behavior. http://tc.eserver.org/23291.html http://tc.eserver.org/23291.html The reason why Visio is the favourite prototyping tool of many interaction designers is because of its ready-made interface objects, you can drag-and-drop onto pages and its ability to link pages together and export them as web pages. But what distinguishes Visio from other prototyping tools is its use of layered backgrounds. http://tc.eserver.org/23261.html http://tc.eserver.org/23261.html The authors describe an experiment to see if large breadth and decreased depth is preferable, both subjectively and via performance data, while attempting to design for optimal scent throughout different structures of a web site. This work is testing the theories of Miller in his classic 'The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two.' http://tc.eserver.org/23262.html http://tc.eserver.org/23262.html Outlines three easy steps for determining the information architecture or navigation scheme of a site on which you are working. http://tc.eserver.org/23229.html http://tc.eserver.org/23229.html 佐藤直美によるWeb情報設計についてのウェブログ。毎回鋭い視点で軽快にかつさわやかにファセット分類法から映画にダイエットと幅広くアットランダムに語られる。 http://tc.eserver.org/23201.html http://tc.eserver.org/23201.html Discusses the monetary cost of taking a short cut and skipping development of a sound information architecture with proper documentation for later reference. http://tc.eserver.org/23215.html http://tc.eserver.org/23215.html Explores the psychology behind how users make navigational choices as they navigate through 'information spaces' and how information architects can use this information when crafting the navigational experience. http://tc.eserver.org/23203.html http://tc.eserver.org/23203.html Drue Miller examines what she refers to as the 'Seven Deadly Sins' of information design: Forgetting who your users are, not creating a flowchart, not organizing your content, not using consistent navigation, using unclear link colors, using the TITLE tag incorrectly, and not looking ahead. http://tc.eserver.org/23210.html http://tc.eserver.org/23210.html Provides a methodology for auditing web site content to produce an inventory -- a tabular document that may be used in information re-architecture projects. http://tc.eserver.org/23218.html http://tc.eserver.org/23218.html The goal of the following study was to determine the potential usefulness of tracking traversal patterns through a browse hierarchy as a way to monitor confusion and determine its source. The major conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that this method is a useful and insightful way to monitor user experience. http://tc.eserver.org/23216.html http://tc.eserver.org/23216.html This interview focuses on Jesse James Garret's Visual Vocabulary, a site architecture documentation standard. http://tc.eserver.org/23180.html http://tc.eserver.org/23180.html This article explains how information architecture can impact the sales process, and how and effective information architecture can help a site flourish. http://tc.eserver.org/23177.html http://tc.eserver.org/23177.html Describes when to use faceted classification on web sites and provides instruction for creating a faceted classification system. http://tc.eserver.org/23115.html http://tc.eserver.org/23115.html In content metadata and hierarchies, you will often find a goldmine of implicit and explicit data that you can leverage to creatively contextualize content. After a brief introduction on taxonomy and metadata, this article focuses on finding and utilizing such relationships in hierarchies. http://tc.eserver.org/23122.html http://tc.eserver.org/23122.html With the rapid growth of the World Wide Web and the development of hierarchical web sites, it has become difficult for users to get an overview of the contents and structure of web sites because of their growing size and complexity. To alleviate this problem, an application called WebTOC was developed at the Human Computer Interaction Lab(HCIL) at the University of Maryland. This application provides a graphical description of the hierarchy of a web site and gives a breakdown of the types of data available at the site (text, video, audio, etc.). The paper presents a study comparing WebTOC with a textual table of contents and no contents page. This experiment found no statistically significant differences between interfaces, but we suspect the main factor in this result is the limited availability of subjects (21 subjects altogether - only seven subjects were tested per treatment). The subjective satisfaction surveys showed a preference for WebTOC. This paper presents a number of lessons learned and makes several recommendations for further study of WebTOC. http://tc.eserver.org/23098.html http://tc.eserver.org/23098.html Automated classification tools can't solve today's large-scale web and intranet indexing challenges alone. Neither can humans. But solutions that integrate human expertise with software products such as Interwoven's Metatagger and Autonomy's Categorizer can provide real value and savings. After a brief introduction to automated classification, this white paper discusses the benefits and limitations of manual, automated, and hybrid approaches. It explores the opportunities for leveraging controlled vocabularies and thesauri to produce more effective indexing solutions. http://tc.eserver.org/23101.html http://tc.eserver.org/23101.html 2001年のIAサミットを境にIAの理論と実践についてIAコミュニティでかつてない議論が起こりました。この6つの章からなるエッセイは、IAの今までとそしてこれからどこへ向かっていくべきなのか論争に終止符を打つべくJJGが書き上げた渾身のエッセイです。 http://tc.eserver.org/23070.html http://tc.eserver.org/23070.html Un resumen de la historia y estado actual del campo de la Arquitectura de Información en Chile. http://tc.eserver.org/23073.html http://tc.eserver.org/23073.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/23076.html http://tc.eserver.org/23076.html Even with the best possible design of any single page, your site will fail to attract visitors if not equipped with a neat, consistent, and intuitive navigational interface. This article addresses the main issues designers confront when building effective navigation tools. http://tc.eserver.org/23059.html http://tc.eserver.org/23059.html An introductory article discussing when and how to use controlled vocabularies in the development of information architectures. http://tc.eserver.org/23057.html http://tc.eserver.org/23057.html When I compare the usability of the highly graphical MAPA dynamic site map with that of a more traditional text-based table of contents, the traditional approach wins hands-down. You can scan the contents much faster and you don't need a fast connection or a Java-enabled browser. http://tc.eserver.org/23018.html http://tc.eserver.org/23018.html Web site maps are created by webmasters and content providers to help users navigate and search complex web sites. A variety of styles of map are used, many based on organisational charts. Presented here are some of the best examples from around the Web. http://tc.eserver.org/23016.html http://tc.eserver.org/23016.html I believe the most important thing to consider when building a sitemap is what kind of experience do you want to give the user. http://tc.eserver.org/23015.html http://tc.eserver.org/23015.html About how to use a sitemap on all of one's web pages. Includes some statistics, that you will see below, that encourage rethinking navigation on small web sites. A sitemap on every page is an interesting idea. I've only seen this done in a few cases, and usually it is not done well. However, Peter obviously spent some time working on his and he solicited feedback form users. http://tc.eserver.org/23017.html http://tc.eserver.org/23017.html The Web site map is one of the key tools that site designers can provide to help surfers successfully navigate through their site. However, the art and science of creating intuitive and useful Web site maps is still in its infancy. http://tc.eserver.org/22863.html http://tc.eserver.org/22863.html Drawn by the lure of being 'on the Web' and wanting a quick Web presence, corporate clients increasingly ask information developers to take an existing paper document and 'just stick it on the Web.' This request may arise without considering whether the Web is appropriate, whether the document can or will be used in this medium, or whether the target audience even has Web access! If you’re the information developer asked to turn existing information into a Web document, take comfort: your careful analysis and preparation can make the result a usable Web site, not just an information dump. http://tc.eserver.org/22823.html http://tc.eserver.org/22823.html Put some logic in your pages with PHP. Minimize the hassles for yourself and your users. http://tc.eserver.org/22646.html http://tc.eserver.org/22646.html This document discusses the evolution of the Internet from an unorganized collection of web pages to an organized collection of data. It outlines how XML is at the center of that transformation, and how organizations can take advantage of this evolution with the development of web based services. http://tc.eserver.org/22497.html http://tc.eserver.org/22497.html Currently, computer users are 'lost in hyperspace:' they have difficulty knowing where they are and locating the information they desire. To remedy this, information should be situated in an information space that enables people to explore knowledge in the same way they navigate in the physical environment. This thesis will enumerate a set of principles to guide information space design, enabling designers to create effective information spaces. The design principles fall into three categories: communication principles, which inform the spatial organization of information; wayfinding principles, which structure the space to allow successful navigation; and computational principles, which use the computational nature of digital media to enhance the information space. Two information spaces designed using these principles are presented and analyzed. http://tc.eserver.org/22471.html http://tc.eserver.org/22471.html It seemed five years ago that 'information architect' was becoming a popular, fancy name for tech writer. Have all of the information architects of the late '90s morphed into usability specialists with a special emphasis on the Web? Or have they gone back to being 'learning products engineers' and 'technical writers'? http://tc.eserver.org/22399.html http://tc.eserver.org/22399.html We all know products don't sell themselves. Yet identifying the holes in your shopping cart can be a challenge. Ivan explains in simple terms how information architecture can impact on the sales process, and how you can help your site flourish. http://tc.eserver.org/22406.html http://tc.eserver.org/22406.html Whether you want to build your own forum, publish the messages from a mailing list on your Website, or write your own CMS: there will be a moment that you'll want to store hierarchical data in a database. And, unless you're using a XML-like database, tables aren't hierarchical; they're just a flat list. You'll have to find a way to translate the hierarchy in a flat file. http://tc.eserver.org/22374.html http://tc.eserver.org/22374.html Users mainly ignore primary navigation bars because the information featured is less relevant to their tasks. http://tc.eserver.org/22044.html http://tc.eserver.org/22044.html Generating a site plan is an optimal approach to starting your site. http://tc.eserver.org/22062.html http://tc.eserver.org/22062.html When we are trying to envision the structure of a Web site, we may sketch diagrams on white boards, create outlines, fill whole walls with yellow stickies. Kahn and Lenk offer many sophisticated ways of visualizing your site. If you are planning a new site or reorganizing an existing site, this book provides an historical context for your information architecture, in-depth studies of complex sites, and a wide range of inspiring diagrams and site maps. http://tc.eserver.org/21800.html http://tc.eserver.org/21800.html Information Architect: 1) the individual who organizes the patterns inherent in data, making the complex clear; 2) a person who creates the structure or map of information which allows others to find their personal paths to knowledge; 3) the emerging 21st century professional occupation addressing the needs of the age focused upon clarity, human understanding and the science of the organization of information. http://tc.eserver.org/21760.html http://tc.eserver.org/21760.html The word 'information architecture' is used quite a bit in the Web industry and is closely related to customer experience. Sometimes customer experience and information architecture will arrive at the same solution -- but they aren't quite the same thing. http://tc.eserver.org/21764.html http://tc.eserver.org/21764.html World Wide Web authors must cope in a hypermedia environment analogous to second-generation computing languages, building and managing most hypermedia links using simple anchors and single-step navigation. Following this analogy, sophisticated application environments on the World Wide Web will require third- and fourth-generation hypermedia features. Implementing third- and fourth-generation hypermedia involves designing both high- level hypermedia features and the high-level authoring environments system developers build for authors to specify them. We present a set of high-level hypermedia features including typed nodes and links, link attributes, structure-based query, transclusions, warm and hot links, private and public links, hypermedia access permissions, computed personalized links, external link databases, link update mechanisms, overviews, trails, guided tours, backtracking, and history-based navigation. We ground our discussion in the hypermedia research literature, and illustrate each feature both from existing implementations and a running scenario. We also give some direction for implementing these on the World Wide Web and in other information systems. http://tc.eserver.org/21730.html http://tc.eserver.org/21730.html The Web was originally conceived as a hypertextual information space; but the development of increasingly sophisticated front- and back-end technologies has fostered its use as a remote software interface. http://tc.eserver.org/21624.html http://tc.eserver.org/21624.html Even before there was XML, there was the Document Object Model, or DOM. It allows a developer to refer to, retrieve, and change items within an XML structure, and is essential to working with XML. In this tutorial, you will learn about the structure of a DOM document. You will also learn how to use Java technology to create a Document from an XML file, make changes to it, and retrieve the output. http://tc.eserver.org/21627.html http://tc.eserver.org/21627.html Topic Maps provide a system for organizing information, and XML Topic Maps bring this system to the world of XML. In this article, Uche Ogbuji examines XML Topic Maps, introducing the technology in the course of reviewing a key book on the topic. http://tc.eserver.org/21598.html http://tc.eserver.org/21598.html It is important that on the Semantic Web, people produce data that is clean and interoperable. Some RDF techniques can currently only be learned through the RDF community, through hours of research, or through implementation experience, so this is an attempt to gather some useful but quick hints and tips into one place. http://tc.eserver.org/21597.html http://tc.eserver.org/21597.html The Semantic Web is a conceptual information space in which the resources identified by URIs can be processed by machines. It operates on the principles of 'partial understanding' and 'inference' (being able to infer new knowledge of terms from data that you already understand), and hence evolution and transformation. Because the URIs are being used to represent the resources, systems can grow on a globally decentralized basis, similar to hypertext documentation systems on the early WWW. http://tc.eserver.org/21603.html http://tc.eserver.org/21603.html Hace casi tres años comentábamos que la promesa de la web semántica era convertir la red en 'un espacio auto-navegable y auto-comprensible.' ¿Dónde estamos hoy en día?. http://tc.eserver.org/21566.html http://tc.eserver.org/21566.html What is Web site architecture? It means laying out or grouping any similar areas of a Web site. In a re-design project for my former company, I realized the importance of site architecture and navigation when I contacted the Customer Service departments and discovered that an average of thirty-five calls a day were from the Internet users. Most of those calls were about confusing page layouts and navigation procedures (users did not understand the current navigational system). I determined that by redesigning the site architecture and navigational system, we could reduce the customer service calls by 50%, thus saving the company an estimated $30,000 per year. http://tc.eserver.org/21560.html http://tc.eserver.org/21560.html I know that a Web site with good navigation will put you closer to your goals than one without. The article that follows may give you ideas for adding navigation to your own site. http://tc.eserver.org/21569.html http://tc.eserver.org/21569.html Taking the time to plan a Web site is crucial for the success of the project. http://tc.eserver.org/21463.html http://tc.eserver.org/21463.html Now that you've figured out the navigation, placed the content, and figured out page flows, it's time to explain just what exactly that collection of 'Lorum ipsum' greeking, HTML widgets, and X-ed out boxes are, how they work, and how they meet the site goals. http://tc.eserver.org/21415.html http://tc.eserver.org/21415.html As the field of information architecture matures, we are beginning to understand the new challenges it raises for wireless media. This article suggests that some of these challenges can be best addressed through an approach called 'psychology-driven information architecture,' which bases design decisions and solutions on the psychological profile of the end user. http://tc.eserver.org/21369.html http://tc.eserver.org/21369.html The world of mobile phones is a jungle of technologies with few established standards that, in some ways, resembles the early days of personal computing. Here the author presents an impressionistic landscape of this world, a glimpse of the near future, and thoughts on what it might mean for IAs.