Six Tips for Improving Your Design Documentation

Good organization, complete information, and clear writing are, of course, key to the success of any design document, but there are some other, less-obvious techniques you can use to make your documents more readable and understandable. Here are a few of them.

Olshavsky, Ryan. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Web Design>Documentation

Slate: Calculated Refinement or Simple Inertia

From an information architecture perspective, a daily web publication presents challenges and possibilities no newspaper editor ever had to face. As one of the longest-running daily publications on the web, Slate has dealt with these issues for years.

Garrett, Jesse James. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Usability

Review: Small Pieces, Big Thoughts

'Small Pieces Loosely Joined' is touted on the cover as 'A Unified Theory of the Web.' But its author, David Weinberger, knows better. And he says as much in the book. It's a unified theory, but not the kind you sum up in a tidy little equation.

Hinton, Andrew. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Reviews>Information Design

So You Think You Want to be a Manager

Every designer faces a choice at some point in their career -- to manage or not to manage. Erin Malone helps you walk through the questions you need to make that choice.

Malone, Erin. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Careers>Management>Design

Social Networks And Group Formation: Theoretical Concepts to Leverage

Understanding the formation, evolution and utilization of online social networks becomes important. While the Internet contributes to the information overload, it also provides useful tools to effectively manage ones social networks and through them gain access to the right pieces of information.

Singh, Shiv. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Web Design>Community Building>Social Networking

The Sociobiology of Information Architecture

Long before anyone was looking for 'godfathers' of information architecture, our fellow species were wrestling with some of the same problems we face today. The real godfathers of information architecture, as it turns out, emerged a very long time ago with the earliest origins of life on this planet.

Wright, Alex. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Information Design>Biomedical

Solving Mobile Challenges with Psychology-Driven Information Architecture

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.

Napchi, Oded. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Information Design>Wireless Web>Web Design

Speaking in Tongues

Last month I stated this is not a place for jargon. I felt that was important enough to call out. I certainly am being called to task for that.

Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Information Design>Writing>Minimalism

The Story Behind Usability.gov

The seeds for Usability.gov were sown in early 1999 when the popular CancerNet web site came up for a redesign. As usual, we began by seeking input for the new design from technical professionals: web designers, content writers, engineers. Our 'kitchen cabinet' also included users. But the opinions from this broad group of professionals and laymen were as diverse as their backgrounds. Whose ideas were right?

Koyani, Sanjay. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Usability>History

Storyboarding Rich Internet Applications with Visio

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?

Scott, Bill. Boxes and Arrows (2005). Design>Web Design>Information Design

Straight From the Horse's Mouth: You Only See the Tip

Bill Wetherell talks with Tom Wailes about how one team at Yahoo! turned the normal design process on its head. Their thoughtful approach was successful, Wails posits, because they worked small and crafty while being inclusive in most useful ways.

Wodtke, Christina and Bill Wetherell. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Design>Web Design>Project Management

Strategies for Improving Enterprise Search

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.

Ferrara, John. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

Studying the Creation of Kindergarten

How does the pursuit of one man's interests result in the creation of kindergarten and timeless design principles? Bill Lucas shows us how Friedrich Fröbel took basic elements to create intricate, scalable systems that can serve as a model for creating new experiential systems today.

Lucas, Bill. Boxes and Arrows (2005). Articles>Information Design>Instructional Design

Review: The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness

Whether you have been paying attention or not we are living in an age of aesthetics. So says Virginia Postrel in her latest book, The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness. Postrel examines how the role of aesthetics and style are transforming our culture and economy in a variety of ways.

MacLaughlin, Steve. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Reviews>Aesthetics

Succeeding at Information Architecture in the Enterprise

This article explores some of the approaches needed to ensure that we are successful at implementing IA within organisations, with the goal being to encourage further discussion in the community about these issues.

Robertson, James. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Information Design>Workplace

Synonym Rings and Authority Files

In part 3 of the continuing series on controlled vocabularies and faceted classification, the authors explain synonym rings and authority files and how their use can bridge the gap between natural language and complex controlled vocabularies (taxonomies and thesauri).

Fast, Karl, Fred Leise and Mike Steckel. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Information Design>Indexing>Language

Tackling Maintenance Projects

A typical maintenance project goes something like this: someone has a new piece of functionality or content they want to put up on the website. The IA’s job: find the best place for it.

Saffer, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Information Design

Taking the "You" Out of User: My Experience Using Personas

Meg Hourihan, co-founder of Pyra - the company behind Blogger, shares her team's experience in the discovery of Alan Cooper and the use of personas. Through their practical application, she tells the tale of how a product cycle was turned on its ear as the team discovered they weren't anything like their user.

Hourihan, Meg. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas

Talent Isn't Everything

To succeed as a creative professional, you need more than talent. Chanpory Rith offers us a list of seven habits that can help put a junior designer's career on the path to success.

Rith, Chanpory. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Careers>Advice>Design

Talking with Virginia Postrel

Postrel's new book, The Substance of Style, explores the economic, cultural, social, personal, and political implications of the growing importance of aesthetics in business and society.

MacLaughlin, Steve. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Graphic Design>Cultural Theory>Visual Rhetoric

Teaching Information Architecture to the Design Student

What the design student needs is a design course that stresses usability, human factors, and clarity, instead of the typical branding and interpretation problems they usually encounter in their other design classes. James Spahr recounts a year of teaching at Pratt Institute that attempts to cross those boundaries.

Spahr, James. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Education>Human Computer Interaction>Graphic Design

Ten Quotable Moments: Challenges and Responses for User Interface Designers

The following ten things have been said by actual clients and represent common and very human reactions to a new wrinkle in the process of building software: design. By gathering these comments in one place and sharing them widely, it becomes easier to recognize them, so we can keep our calm and contribute to effective software teams.

Krause, Brian R. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>User Interface>Usability

Testing Incentives: The Best Way to Pay

The topic of test subject compensation generates a lot of conversation...how do you motivate test participants?

Anderson, Clifford. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Usability>Testing>Methods

The Indie life: Talking with Louis Rosenfeld

Think you'd like to set up shop as an independent information architecture consultant? Polar Bear book co-author Louis Rosenfeld has a few words of advice: it's not your IA skills that are necessarily the most important ones.

Nattress, Paul. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Careers>Freelance>Information Design

The Power of Process, The Perils of Process

Traditionally, information architects and designers (UI, visual, ID) are creatures of process. We generally work in prescribed ways—discover, design, validate, repeat. We sketch first, then create rough flows and then finetuned detailed wireframes and mocks. This usually works well, once accepted, and most companies—whether in-house teams or consultancies—work along similar lines. In my experience, I have found that creating and documenting process has been a good exercise to help institutionalize ways of working, to help educate new team members as well as to unveil the mysteries of what we do for executives, product folks, and development teams.

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