Building New Documents with XSLT  

This chapter will take you a few steps further by showing you how to add text and markup to your result tree with XSLT templates. First, you'll addliteral text to your output. Then you'll work with literal result elements, that is, elements that are represented literally in templates. You'll also learn how to add content with the text, element, attribute, attribute-set, comment, and processing-instruction elements. In addition, you'll get your first encounter with attribute value templates, which provide a way to define templates inside attribute values.

Fitzgerald, Michael. O'Reilly and Associates (2003). Design>Information Design>XML>XSL

Building the Beast: Talking with Peter Morville

Polar Bear book co-author Peter Morville shares the inside stories about the making of the new edition--from its original scribblings on an airsick bag to the ideas that didn’t make it in--and his thoughts about how the field has changed since their book was first published.

Olsen, George. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Information Design

Building the Treasure House: Creating Knowledge Bases for the World Wide Web

What is a knowledge base? What are the components necessary to build one?

Massa, Jack A. STC Orange County (1998). Presentations>Documentation>Information Design>Databases

Cadius

Cadius es una iniciativa al servicio de la comunidad de profesionales de la Arquitectura de Información y la Usabilidad.

Cadius. (Spanish) Organizations>Information Design>User Centered Design>Usability

Can Many Agents Answer Questions Better than One?  

The paper addresses the issue of how online natural language question answering, based on deep semantic analysis, may compete with currently popular keyword search, open domain information retrieval systems, covering a horizontal domain. We suggest the multiagent question answering approach, where each domain is represented by an agent which tries to answer questions taking into account its specific knowledge. The meta–agent controls the cooperation between question answering agents and chooses the most relevant answer(s). We argue that multiagent question answering is optimal in terms of access to business and financial knowledge, flexibility in query phrasing, and efficiency and usability of advice. The knowledge and advice encoded in the system are initially prepared by domain experts. We analyze the commercial application of multiagent question answering and the robustness of the meta–agent. The paper suggests that a multiagent architecture is optimal when a real world question answering domain combines a number of vertical ones to form a horizontal domain.

Galitsky, Boris and Rajesh Pampapathi. First Monday (2005). Articles>Language>Information Design

The Care of Content: A Red-Pen-Wielder's Perspective

What is the world (wide web) coming to when even us blue-haired English teachers have something to say about the Net? After all, we're supposed to be consumed with the past--a time long before the binary code when writers still used quills, and men, unfortunately, wore tights. (Sorry for the visual.) Well, in defense of red-pen-wielders everywhere, I have to say that just ain't so. Technology, particularly that which furthers education, is our concern. And the Internet (yes, I just started a sentence with the world 'and') is a source of great conflict. On the one hand, it is a storehouse from which vast amounts of knowledge may be retrieved--it provides information that may otherwise be inaccessible. On the other hand, because of its nature as an abyss, it's an illimitable source for the plagiarist. So, ironically, something that should catalyze learning is actually, in a way, simply making it easier for students not to learn.

Blum, Daphne. Digital Web Magazine (2000). Articles>Education>Information Design

Cartography

Maps take many forms, many themes, and many expressions, ranging from the straightforward city street map to the specialized terrain and statistical displays used by scientists and sports affectionados to highly sophisticated cartograms used by researchers and thesis-writers. All this work stands upon the shoulders of giants. Without hundreds of years of work and refinement, without the maps of Ptolemy and the projections of Mercator, there could never have been the common gas-station street map, and neither could there have been the highly technological GIS systems of today. Designorati:Cartography aims to explore the origins, view the state of the art, and guess at the future of the common (and uncommon) map. Maps abstract the world so we may comprehend it better. Maps also speak thier own language, but it’s one we can all learn. Maps are sometimes made with an agenda and a message, and sometimes just to inform. And maps, in an indirect way, reflect our own image. It is, in and of itself, an exploration. Designorati:Cartography hopes to become an explorers guide to that realm.

Klein, Samuel John. Designorati (2005). Design>Information Design

The Case for Web Architecture: A Communication Process Approach to Retail Web Site Development  

How is commercial Web site development informed by management decisions, marketing needs, business requirements, and consumer behavior and psychology (in short, the complex rhetorical situation surrounding commercial Web site development)? And how can the development process inform the formulation of a more effective Web commerce solution? I argue that the sense of community on the Web is the building block of retail Web commerce. I use a case study to show that using a communication process model can be an effective method of assessing market needs, business requirements, management decisions, and technology in the development of a retail Web solution.

Chu, Steve W. STC Proceedings (1998). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Rhetoric

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

A Center for Research in Technical Communication: Initial Ideas and Development for a Worldwide Network

The technical communication field lacks a place for on-line research in the historical, theoretical, and philosophical perspectives. For this reason, the idea of a Technical Communication Research Center was proposed as a way to help move the emphasis off of pedagogical and towards a more evenly balanced web site for technical communication research. Other sites are currently available for on-line research in technical communication, but not everything fits into the academic genre. We have found a market for a comprehensive research site in technical communication. The end product of TCRC will be devoted to both academics and professionals interested in both old and new research in their area of interest. Besides merely a research tool, the TCRC will also be a network for those working in the field. Through databases, email and periodical updates, the ultimate result of the end product is to connect technical communicators all over the world.

Arko, Kirsti, Leroy Steinbacher, John Velat and Dennis Walikainen. Michigan Tech University. Articles>Information Design>Web Design

Centralized versus Distributed Organizational Structures  

The nature of a corporation and its product line(s) influences the optimal structure for your information-development organization. When lines of business are unrelated, information-development organizations may best function independently; when lines of business are interrelated, the groups need a unified strategy. While favored by product developers and business leaders, distributed structures can produce inconsistent information quality to customers. Centralized organizations can meet customer needs, but they are often perceived as focusing on publication quality rather than content. The best solution may be a hybrid structure that takes advantage of the strengths of both.

Hackos, JoAnn T. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Information Design>Workflow

Challenging Current Practice

Is it better to have more items on a page and requiring fewer pages to be accessed (wide breadth), or to have fewer items per page and require more pages to be accessed (more depth)? Based primarily on studies reported three years ago by Larson and Czerwinski (1998) and Zaphiris and Mtei (1998), designers have been encouraged to construct broad, shallow sites.

Bailey, Robert. Human Factors International (2001). Design>Information Design>Web Design

Change Architecture: Bringing Information Architecture to the Business Domain

As information architects, we are not just architecting information; we are using information to architect change. Bob Goodman shows us how we can use business and management techniques to help us be more effective agents of change.

Goodman, Bob. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Information Design>Business Communication

Choosing an XML Editor

More and more people are working with texts and documents in XML format. With the increasing popularity of XML, the number of XML editors is also increasing and it can be difficult to choose the editor that best suits a particular user or task. The aim of this Information Paper is to provide an introduction to different features XML editors can have and the extent to which these features are implemented in various editors. It also presents the result of an evaluation exercise where different user groups tried a number of the editors.

van den Broek, Thijs. AHDS (2004). Articles>Information Design>Software>XML

Chunking Content: Toward a Rhetoric of Objects  

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.

Price, Jonathan R. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Information Design>Web Design>Rhetoric

"Chunking" Information

Most information on the World Wide Web is gathered in short reference documents that are intended to be read nonsequentially. This is particularly true of sites whose contents are mostly technical or administrative documents. Long before the Web was invented, technical writers discovered that readers appreciate short 'chunks' of information that can be located and scanned quickly.

Lynch, Patrick J. and Sarah Horton. Yale University (1999). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Writing

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

Clarifying the Real Goals of Hypertext

Hypertext should be seen as augmenting the existing techniques of structure and navigation, not as superceding and replacing them.

Hoffman, Michael. Hypertext Navigation. Articles>Information Design>Hypertext

Clasificaciones Facetadas y Metadatos (I): Conceptos Básicos

Los metadatos son información relativa a otra información. Al definir un grupo de metadatos para un objeto dado, estamos describiendo el objeto en cuestión, lo estamos caracterizando. Por ejemplo, HTML permite definir metadatos para una página web a través de su etiqueta . Esos metadatos (author, keywords...) caracterizan la página, describen su contenido. Los metadatos, utilizados tradicionalmente en el entorno bibliotecario, están resultando de gran utilidad en la Web, tanto en Sistemas de Recuperación de Información (back-end) como en Sistemas de Navegación (front-end).

Hassan Montero, Yusef and Francisco Jesus Martin Fernandez. Nosolousabilidad.com (2002). (Spanish) Articles>Information Design>Metadata

Clasificaciones Facetadas y Metadatos (y II): XFML

XFML (eXchangeable Faceted Metadata Language), creado por Peter Van Dijck, es un lenguaje o vocabulario con sintaxis XML para definir, distribuir e intercambiar metadatos en forma de taxonomías o clasificaciones facetadas.

Hassan Montero, Yusef and Francisco Jesus Martin Fernandez. Nosolousabilidad.com. (Spanish) Design>Information Design>Metadata>XFML

La Classificazione Come Investimento Nella Qualità dell'Informazione

La classificazione rappresenta un investimento che comporta dei costi nel breve termine, ma che dà anche notevoli frutti nel lungo termine (se impostata correttamente). Fra i sistemi di classificazione, quello a faccette (o multidimensionale) è sicuramente il più potente e versatile (nonostante gli schemi affermatisi come standard nella maggioranza delle biblioteche sono assai distanti da quello a faccette).

Gnoli, Claudio. AIB (2003). (Italian) Articles>Information Design>Metadata

Classificazioni per il Web

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.

Marino, Vittorio. AIB (2004). (Italian) Design>Web Design>Information Design

CMS Wiki

CMS Wiki is a knowledge base for Content Management.

CMS Wiki. Resources>Content Management>Information Design>Wikis

Cognitive Psychology and Information Architecture: From Theory to Practice

What do cognitive psychology and information architecture have in common? Actually there is a good deal of common ground between the two disciplines. Certainly, having a background in cognitive psychology supports the practice of information architecture, and it is precisely those interconnections and support that will be explored.

Withrow, Jason and Mark Geljon. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Information Design>User Centered Design>Cognitive Psychology

The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Slides Are Not All Evil    

This article first reviews three shortcomings in Tufte’s argument, then summarizes the booklet’s well-taken points, before offering guidelines for effective slides, no matter the tool. These guidelines and some of the analysis are based on more than 150 in-depth discussions of slides I have conducted with engineers, scientists, executives, and other professionals at workshops.

Doumont, Jean-luc. Technical Communication Online (2005). Design>Information Design>Presentations