Keyboard Accessibility: Basic Steps Towards a More Usable and Accessible Site

A presentation which shows examples of best-practices in web design for accessibility to users who interact with sites exclusively through the keyboard.

Lauke, Patrick H. Splintered (2009). Presentations>Web Design>Accessibility

Concept, Task, Reference: A Practical Guide to Choosing the Right Topic Type

This presentation is for beginning to intermediate users of DITA. It's based on my experience with projects on which I'm project manager, information architect, and writer.

Kunz, Lawrence D. SDI Global Solutions (2009). Presentations>Information Design>XML>DITA

Structured Authoring and DITA

What does structured authoring mean to you? Structured authoring is a publishing workflow that lets you define and enforce consistent organization of information in documents, whether printed or online. What it means to me: defining a goal and assembling architected topics to help the reader achieve that goal.

Vazquez, Julio J. SDI Global Solutions (2009). Presentations>Documentation>Information Design>DITA

The Power and Peril of Online Communities

Community is discussions, people, passion, alignment, emergent, support, connections, and relationships.

Happe, Rachel. SlideShare (2009). Presentations>Web Design>Community Building>Online

User-Centered Design for Technical Communicators

How can user-centered design principles be applied to technical communication?

Sansbury, Will. WillSansbury.com (2009). Presentations>User Centered Design>TC

Following the Rules

Laying out your poster on a grid establishes limitations for your poster. Choosing a font establishes limitations for your poster. Being conservative in your design choices establishes limitations. Working within limits requires discipline. Setting yourself limitations does not necessarily limit creativity; it can do just the opposite.

Better Posters (2009). Design>Presentations>Document Design>Posters

Better Posters

Academics use posters to present research, but their posters are often ugly, with tiny text, confusing layouts, and dubious colour schemes. Better Posters is about making posters informative and beautiful.

Better Posters (2009). Design>Presentations>Document Design>Blogs

Holding the Center

If you look through a poster session at a scientific conference, I’ll bet over 98% of their titles are centered at the top of their posters. Why? There is no advantage in reading. Most word processors and other publishing programs start with text left aligned by default, which implies that people deliberately center the text all the time.

Better Posters (2009). Design>Presentations>Document Design>Typography

Better Posters: Does Embellishment Improve Graphs?

It looks like the opening (quoted above) overreaches what the study actually does. The research only looks at backgrounds, but “chart junk” comes in many other forms: pointless 3-D effects, crazy colour schemes, excessive gridlines, cutesy cartoons, and more. The summary of this research in no way provides a scientific basis to argue, “I like the 3-D effect, and science supports it’s easier to read!”

Better Posters (2009). Design>Presentations>Technical Illustration>Charts and Graphs

Critique: Ape Scapula

I stumbled upon this poster while reading the blog Anna’s Bones. She described as being finished “just in the nick of time.” A few more hours, and a stronger editorial hand, probably would have been welcomed.

Better Posters (2009). Design>Presentations>Assessment>Posters

Scientific Poster Design  

A poster can be better than giving a talk. It’s just an illustrated abstract.

Graves, LiLynn. Cornell University (2009). Design>Presentations>Scientific Communication>Posters

No More Slidesters, Interlude: Making Presentations More Like Posters

Because many researchers use PowerPoint for their talks and lectures, they also tend to use it for every graphic problem, including posters. Predictably, the form of the resulting posters often look like nothing more than a series of ugly PowerPoint slides tacked together. A poster is more like a whiteboard than slides. But because many researchers give more presentations than posters, they’re not used to thinking in terms of a big space, viewed all at once, instead of a series of small spaces, viewed one at a time.

Better Posters (2009). Design>Presentations>Document Design>Posters

No More Slidesters, Part 3: Draw in the Open

As discussed recently, many people use PowerPoint to design posters, an act that borders on criminal. PowerPoint was designed for multiple projected images with minimal text, not one large image with complex text and graphics. People use PowerPoint because it’s the only thing remotely resembling a graphics software that people are familiar with. Microsoft Office simply doesn’t have a good, high end graphics component. Publisher comes close. OpenOffice does have a graphics component, simply called Draw. If you are not willing to shell out the big bucks generally required of a professional graphics software package, Draw has several features in its favour.

Better Posters (2009). Design>Presentations>Document Design>Open Source

No More Slidesters, Part 2: Three Publisher Tips

I have used Microsoft Publisher a lot for posters. I’m going to show three easy things that Publisher does well that are useful when making a conference poster.

Better Posters (2009). Design>Presentations>Document Design>Microsoft Publisher

Adding Style To Your Microsoft Wpf And Silverlight Applications 

Windows Presentation Foundation is a cross-browser cross-platform cross-device implementation of .NET for building and delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

Koenig, Chris. SlideShare (2007). Presentations>Multimedia>Interaction Design>Silverlight

Diagnosing Technical Issues With Search Engine Optimization 

Which pages have the search engines crawled? What kind of pages are they? Has the search engine Indexing indexed all of the crawled pages? How’s the search engine ranking traffic?

Robot, Jane. SlideShare (2009). Presentations>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization

Wicked Problems and SharePoint: Rethinking the Approach 

SharePoint can neither create nor destroy organizational chaos, but does an excellent job of reflecting the level of organizational chaos that existed at the time of deployment. The “SharePoint paradox” and paths to SharePoint wickedness. The power of Issue Mapping and IBIS based collaboration. How to leverage the best of SharePoint and Issue Mapping.

Culmsee, Paul. SlideShare (2009). Presentations>Content Management>Information Design>Microsoft SharePoint

What Is Social Interaction Design? 

What is SxD? Design of social media. It involves all web design disciplines: User Interface, Interaction design, Experience design, and Information Architecture. Social media include networked applications that permit direct and indirect, private and public communication and interaction. Social media platforms may be computer-based or mobile, even game platforms.

Chan, Adrian. SlideShare (2006). Presentations>Social Networking>Interaction Design