Visio Replacement? You Be the Judge

In the same way that the Internet took us to the next level of interaction, complete with rich visuals, simulations are doing the same for application definition. McDowell explores the ins and outs of new simulation tools. Will one of them work for you?

McDowell, Scott. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Information Design>Methods

Visual Vocabulary Three Years Later: An Interview with Jesse James Garrett

This interview focuses on Jesse James Garret's Visual Vocabulary, a site architecture documentation standard.

Brown, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Documentation>Information Design>Web Design

We Are All Connected: The Path from Architecture to Information Architecture

Information architecture has a great deal to do with traditional architecture—especially in the ability of each discipline to plan and connect various important elements together.

Chiou, Fu-Tien. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Information Design>Professionalism

We Tried To Warn You, Part 2

Some failure allows complex organizations to learn and grow; others can be catastrophic. In Part 2 of his series, Peter Jones explores the factors of user experience role, the timing dynamics of large projects, and several alternatives to the framing of UX roles and organizations today.

Jones, Peter. Boxes and Arrows (2008). Design>Web Design>User Experience

Web Traffic Analytics and User Experience

As a specialist in the user, you gain knowledge through observation and direct questioning of individual users. Now, you can add to that insights gained from data pulled during their actions on the site. By looking at this information, you will get a fuller picture of user behavior, not in a lab, but in the true user environment.

Diamond, Fran. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Web Design>Statistics>Log Analysis

What an Information Architect Should Know About Prototypes for User Testing

There are several important factors to consider when you are planning to do prototyping for user testing. You will want to make careful choices about fidelity, level of interactivity and the medium of your prototype. Chris Farnum offers descriptions and best use scenarios to help you make the best prototype decision for your tests.

Farnum, Chris. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Information Design>Usability

What Does 'Rich' Mean?

Amid the current hype of Web 2.0, rich has become the de facto buzzword suggesting fresh, sexy digital products, often marked by glossy buttons with AJAX-driven behaviors. But what does rich mean to a UI (user interface) designer who wants to craft intelligent, compelling, and memorable interactions? Given current digital and technological trends, today's UI designers must deepen their understanding of richness. Such an effort will strengthen designers' vocabularies (adding legitimacy and weight to client discussions), and enable designers to temper judgment when it comes to applying rich capabilities.

Gajendar, Uday. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Web Design>Interaction Design

What I Learned From Television

Despite the increasing number of website ads, consumers aren’t necessarily getting their feathers ruffled more, they’re getting smarter.

Danzico, Liz. Boxes and Arrows (2005). Articles>Web Design>Marketing>E Commerce

What is a Controlled Vocabulary?

Finding the right words to communicate the message of your website can be one of the most difficult parts of developing it. Our authors guide you through the concepts behind a well-designed controlled vocabulary and discuss the pros and cons of its development.

Fast, Karl, Fred Leise and Mike Steckel. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Writing>Controlled Vocabulary

What is a Web Application?

What distinguishes a web application from a traditional, content-based website and what are some of the unique design challenges associated with web applications? A reasonable launching point is the more fundamental question, 'What is an application?'

Baxley, Bob. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Web Design>Programming

What Is Your Mental Model? An Interview With Indi Young

Rosenfeld Media has just released Indi Young's Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy With Human Behavior. Boxes and Arrows sits down with Indi to talk about the origins and evolution of the mental model.

Baum, Chris. Boxes and Arrows (2008). Articles>Interviews>User Centered Design

What's in a Name? Or, What Exactly Do We Call Ourselves?

Defining the audience for Boxes and Arrows sparked the same heated discussion as the community-at-large about what exactly do we call ourselves?

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

What's Your Idea of a Mental Model?

We need a way to document and express mental models that is as simple and robust as personas for user profiles and scenarios for tasks. By laying out users' current mental models and a target mental model, we can clarify our thinking and communication about the user interface's objects, metaphors, and interaction.

McDaniel, Scott M. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Information Design>User Centered Design>Cognitive Psychology

When the Show Must Go On, It's Time to Collaborate Or Die

Lighting design has a utilitarian role: to put enough light on the stage so that the audience can see the actors. But the lighting also helps shape the performance by providing the color and overtones that add meaning and layers and depth. The same mix of art and technology, craft and discipline exists in user interface design.

Quesenbery, Whitney. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Collaboration

When the Show Must Go On, It’s Time to Collaborate Or Die

No one knew what to do. But there was a deadline, and the reviewers were coming. As a team, we walked through the schedule again and again until we had a plan. The next day, the video was edited, the shop finished the screens, and the production crew walked through the critical paths.

Quesenbery, Whitney. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Collaboration>Usability

Where the Wireframes Are: Special Deliverable #3

A wireframe, as you probably know, describes the contents of a web page by illustrating a mock layout. Usually wireframes are rendered in some kind of drawing program, like Visio or Illustrator, but can also appear as bitmaps or even HTML. In his latest installment, Dan Brown, shows how the wireframe can transcend layout and work for all team members.

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

Why I'm Not Calling Myself an Information Architect Anymore

Attending conferences often crystallizes the direction of a career or confirms choices made as people meet and communities bond over similar goals. It isn't often that you hear about someone throwing off the mantle of a title or dropping out of a discipline altogether. David Heller explains why he feels the title IA isn't appropriate to what he does anymore.

Heller, David. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Careers>Information Design

Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping

'Experience design' doesn't just apply to online design. Paco Underhill's 'Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping' explores customer experience and consumer behavior as they affect retail and offline environments and in turn provides dozens of lessons for those in web development.

Lash, Jeff. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>E Commerce

Wireframe Annotations in Visio

Few information architects tap the full power of Visio. For the IA, Visio is a means to an end—a mechanism for capturing some ideas on paper before they are transformed into graphics, HTML, and code.

Brown, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2004). Articles>Information Design>Software>Visio

Wizards and Guides: Principles of Task Flow for Web Applications, Part 2

In part one of this article the discussion was one of views, forms, and the manner in which they could be combined into a task structure known as a hub. This installment expands on those themes by exploring two other types of task structures commonly employed in web applications--wizards and guides.

Baxley, Bob. Boxes and Arrows (2004). Design>Web Design>Workflow>Collaboration

Writing Smart Annotations

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.

Saffer, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Web Design>Information Design

Yahoo! Mail: Simplicity Holds Up Over Time

In many respects, email is the ideal web application: it's an application that people often need access to when they’re away from their 'home' environment, and the core user tasks (reading and writing) are easily accommodated with standard HTML interface elements.

Garrett, Jesse James. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>User Interface>User Centered Design

You Are Here: Maps 101

Maps are one of the most basic (and informative) infographics. The simple map. A rectangle with a few lines, some labels, and an X can impart what it would take hundreds of words to describe. Lee McCormack offers an insightful look into how to create a simple but informative infographic —the map.

McCormack, Lee. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Graphic Design>Technical Illustration

Your New Excuse to Get an Xbox: How UX Professionals Can Learn from Video Game Design

Games are fun, addictive, beautiful, and immersive. Websites, for the most part, are not. Take a moment and think about what video games look like, what they sound like, the way you can move on the screen, what “you” can be. Think of how you feel when you play and who you play with. Consider the launch of Halo 3 on Xbox 360, with unprecedented graphics, sound, and interactivity that Time.com called “refined to the point where it delivers only pure unadulterated gaming bliss.”

Northrop, Mia. Boxes and Arrows (2008). Articles>User Experience>User Interface

Review: Zen and the Art of Information Architecture

New Web 2.0 interaction design can offer a lot of new suggestions for easier interactions, good use of white space and other glaring design solutions to the typically very busy space of information architecture. But, if you practice IA well, including some new Web 2.0 techniques, you can begin to create mental space as well as white space. Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design, a new New Riders book by Robert Hoekman, Jr., is a great place to find out how much mental space can be offered by your systems.

Evans, Clifton. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Reviews>Information Design