Case-Based Design Using Weakly Structured Information

Over 50% of the work done by the designer on a day-to-day basis is routine design that consists of reusing past design solutions (Moore, 1993). Despite of this fact, there are no tools that rationally support reuse of such solutions. Case-based design (CBD) has been pointed out as a promising aid to help this situation. In order to be of practical use, however, a case-based design system has to be able to use the information that the designer creates during the design process. The design information that the designer creates is today mostly in the form of weakly structured information, e.g. text documents, calculation documents, and 2D-drawings. This paper proposes an approach that enables capturing and representation of weakly structured information for the purpose of case-based structural design. The representation proposed allows us to apply most of the objectoriented abstract principles also on weakly structured information. It is also shown how the conceptual framework, the dependency structure, and the design process can be captured, represented, and used in CBD. The approach is successfully implemented into a prototype for reuse of computerized design calculation documents.

Johansson, Peter and Mina Popova. ITcon (2002). Design>User Interface>Information Design

Clarifying Search: A User-Interface Framework for Text Searches

Current user interfaces for textual database searching leave much to be desired: individually, they are often confusing, and as a group, they are seriously inconsistent. We propose a four- phase framework for user-interface design: the framework provides common structure and terminology for searching while preserving the distinct features of individual collections and search mechanisms. Users will benefit from faster learning, increased comprehension, and better control, leading to more effective searches and higher satisfaction.

Byrd, Don, W. Bruce Croft and Ben Schneiderman. D-Lib Magazine (1997). Design>Information Design>User Interface>Search

Descubriendo el Conocimiento

La Minería de Datos (Data Mining) es un término del que se hablado bastante en los últimos años. Sin embargo es sólo una parte de algo mucho más interesante: el Descubrimiento de Conocimientos o Knowledge Discovery. 

Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2002). (Spanish) Articles>Information Design>User Interface

DUX—Five Lessons Learned

Normally I would write a traditional conference overview to inform people about the recent Designing for User Experiences conference (DUX) held in San Francisco, June 6-8. Instead, I would like to impart a few of the impressions I came away with and recommend that everyone go to the AIGA Case Study Archive to read the papers that were accepted.

Malone, Erin. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Information Design>User Interface

Effects of RSVP Display Design on Visual Performance in Accomplishing Dual Tasks with Small Screens  

Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) represents a mechanism for exhibiting temporal information instead of spatial information to overcome the limitations of small-screen devices. Previous studies examining this area focused only on information presented by RSVP displays and disregarded changes in the performance of accompanying tasks associated with such displays. Therefore, this investigation performed a dual-task experiment (a search task for static information and a reading task for RSVP display information) to examine the effects of presentation mode (character-by-character, word-by-word, and one-line format), speed (171, 260, 350, and 430 characters per minute, or cpm), and text-flow orientation (vertical and horizontal orientation) of RSVP display information on the visual performance of users during different stages of usage (whether current usage is the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or eighth day of usage) for a small screen.

Chen, Chien-Hsiung and Yu-Hung Chien. International Journal of Design (2007). Design>User Interface>Information Design>Usability

Information Architecture for the Rest of Us

The purpose of this article is to explain information architecture in a very simple and clear manner. If you have been confused about information architecture and what it is all about, this is exactly the article you should read. An analogy is used to get at the core concepts and several useful examples are provided.

Rhodes, John S. WebWord (2002). Articles>Information Design>User Interface

Information Design for the Small-Screen Interface: An Overview of Web Design Issues for Personal Digital Assistants    

If the experts are on the mark, very soon handheld computer technology—--also known as the personal digital assistants (PDA)—--will supplant the desktop computer as ubiquitous technology on campuses and in the workplace (Weiser 1998; Chen 1999). In 1998, Gaston Bastien, vice president and general manager for the Personal Interactive Electronics Division of Apple Computer, noted that the handheld computer market 'could potentially grow larger than today's computer industry,' partly because of the capability of dynamic, modular design, and partly because its utility spills over to diverse communities of users. In 2001, Gartner Research (Bloomberg News 2001) predicted a 260% increase in unit sales, from 9.39 million units in 2000, to 33.7 million units in 2004.

Albers, Michael J. and Loel Kim. Technical Communication Online (2002). Design>Information Design>Web Design>User Interface

Keeping Tabs

The original tab signaled an information storage revolution and helped enable everything from management consulting to electronic data processing.

Tenner, Ed. Technology Review (2005). Articles>User Interface>Information Design>History

Modeling Information in Electronic Space: An Introduction to This Special Issue    

Organizing content for delivery on the computer screen challenges us to design our information in an imagined three dimensions. As mobile devices respond to the surrounding world, our content also needs to adjust to the real physical environment around our user. Our rhetorical space has changed, and in this special issue, authors wrestle with the ways in which we think, move, and design differently as we explore these virtual and real worlds. One team suggests showing the user the structure of the information gradually in search forms. Another author suggests that merging object-oriented thinking with visual language may offer us a way to consider structure and format together, while granting each its own distinct qualities. Focusing on mobile devices, one author sketches out the challenges we face in this new rhetorical space, and another highlights the idea of embeddedness, the fact that our devices are enmeshed within a content-rich world that we move through. Our final contributor takes us to museums, to

Price, Jonathan R. Technical Communication Online (2001). Design>Information Design>User Interface>Web Design

Navigation Blindness

Most web development projects put a lot of effort into the design of navigation tools. But fact is that people tend to ignore these tools. They are fixated on getting what they came for and simply click on links or hit the back button to get there.

Olsen, Henrik. GUUUI (2005). Articles>User Interface>Information Design

Practical Design of Outlines and Site Maps

Experimental new hierarchy-navigation UIs can hardly improve on the ancient outline.

Hoffman, Michael. Hypertext Navigation. Articles>Information Design>User Interface>Sitemaps

Streamlining an Interface Using Information Design Principles  

'Information design' is the art and science of understanding problems from the product user's standpoint, and using that understanding to select an appropriate mix of graphics and text that supports the design and presents necessary information appropriately. This progression topic presents a simple, iterative way to examine a design problem, and uses that approach to solve a common design problem (using space more efficiently in a software interface).

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Information Design>User Interface

Today's GUI - The 'WIMP' Interface

The user interfaces of today are dominated by the so-called WIMP UI - Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers. While there is no denying the success of these interfaces in bringing desktop computing to millions of users across the world, the GUI has grown to be a cluttered, discordant world of clashing icons and wasted screen space. In the WIMP world, objects (or more usually, applications) are presented in rectangular windows. They do not look real, or even bear more than an occasional passing resemblance to anything in our real world outside the computer. And amongst the visual noise and clutter, are hidden the clues necessary to make the cognitive leap to accommodate a metaphor which relies on the idea that 'windows' can exist on a 'desktop.' Objects and applications alike are represented by icons. But these icons only show a gross level of information - they indicate the class of object, but rarely impart status information or make important properties apparent.

IBM. Design>User Interface>Information Design

Towards a General Relation Browser: A GUI for Information Architects  

The paper presents the case of ongoing efforts to develop and test generalizable user interfaces that provide interactive overviews for large-scale Web sites, portals, and other partitions of Web space. The interfaces are called Relation Browsers (RB) because they help people explore the relationships across different attribute sets, thus enabling understanding the scope and extent of the corpus through active exploration of different 'slices' defined by different attribute value juxtapositions. The RB concept is illustrated through discussion of six iterations over a five year period that included laboratory usability studies, a field test, and implementations with a variety of data management problems. The current application to design concepts in a digital government setting is discussed, and the concept of the RB as the basis for an interface server is presented.

Marchionini, Gary and Ben Brunk. Journal of Digital Information (2003). Design>User Interface>Information Design

TreeDec: an Annotation Tool to Support Website Navigation  

Websites are often organized into logical hierarchies, or tree structures, in order to help users navigate. Ideally, users could view the entire tree, or jump to nearby pages. TreeDec (= Tree Decorator) is a system to support website authors and maintainers by providing automatic annotation of webpages under the control of a central file that represents the tree structure.

Cugini, John. NIST (2000). Design>User Interface>Information Design>Web Design

User Interface Design: Some Guiding Principles

User interfaces vary significantly from library to library, and even within a library, from library holdings to CD-ROM databases to web resources. Why such variation?

Tennant, Roy. Library Journal (1999). Design>User Interface>Information Design