#23114
How does a user interface designer know that a given design will work? How does anybody develop enough confidence in a design to move it toward the real world? The methods designers use to evaluate user interfaces require training and experience. But the people who need to hire designers are unlikely to have those skills. How do the people who are paying the bills know they are getting good answers?
Krause, Brian R. Boxes and Arrows (2004). Design>User Interface>User Centered Design
#30228
Connectors for Dashboards and Portals
The building block system includes several types of Connectors that make it possible for designers and architects to link the different areas of a Dashboard together via a consistent, easily understandable navigation model. The system also ensures the resulting information architecture can grow in response to changing needs and content. There's no special stacking hierarchy for the Connectors. However, they do have an official stacking size (most are size 3) in order to keep Dashboards constructed with the building blocks internally consistent.
Lamantia, Joe. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Web Design>Information Design
#28931
Many Web professionals consider content inventories critical parts of most projects. Are there certain specific things to look for during a content inventory? Fred Leise definitely thinks so. He proposes a set of content analysis heuristics and discusses how to utilize each one.
Leise, Fred. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Content Management>Taxonomy>Heuristic Evaluation
#28930
Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data
As interactions proliferate, so does the content that supports them. Why should software professionals take a step back and examine their content from a philosophical perch? Rachel Lovinger takes a look at content strategy and the benefits of its perspectives.
Lovinger, Rachel. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Content Management>Theory>Content Strategy
#20897
Controlled Vocabularies: A Glosso-Thesaurus 
'There is a singular lack of vocabulary control in the field of controlled vocabularies,' Bella Hass Weinberg, professor of library science at St. John's University in New York, is fond of saying. To help you cut through the maze of verbiage often found in this field, we have created a glossary of terms.
Fast, Karl, Fred Leise and Mike Steckel. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>Controlled Vocabulary
#25608
Crafting a User Experience Curriculum
It isn’t often that one has the opportunity to create a course about user experience, let alone an entire sequence of user experience courses. Jason Withrow's opportunity forced him to examine his perceptions of the user experience industry.
Withrow, Jason. Boxes and Arrows (2005). Articles>Education>User Experience>User Centered Design
#21280
Creating a Controlled Vocabulary
You have probably heard information architects discussing the benefits of their latest taxonomy project and how you should be implementing one. But how, you might wonder, can you get started? In the next installment about Controlled Vocabularies, our authors go into detail about one methodology.
Fast, Karl, Fred Leise and Mike Steckel. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Web Design>Metadata>Controlled Vocabulary
#31094
Jamie Owen explores how we can best utilize cues in our work by understanding how memory, cognitive psychology, and multimedia research affect how information is encoded and retrieved.
Owen, Jamie. Boxes and Arrows (2008). Articles>Information Design>User Centered Design>Cognitive Psychology
#21364
Customer Experience Meets Online Marketing at Brand Central Station
'Customer Experience' is all about how your prospective and current customers perceive your company, based on the effort they had to expend accomplishing the above tasks. If the word 'brand' pops into your head, you may go to the head of the class.
Sterne, Jim. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design
#26545
Customer Storytelling at the Heart of Business Success
We create personas to build upon that platform by bringing individuals within a current or potential audience to life.
Experience Planning Group. Boxes and Arrows (2005). Articles>User Centered Design>Case Studies
#26121
Customer Storytelling at the Heart of Business Success
As most of us know by now, customer personas and scenarios are vehicles for helping an organization continuously keep their customers in their line of sight. Traditional segmentation identifies and categorizes a current or potential audience based upon common characteristics, including demographics, attitudes, behavior, transactions, frequency of interaction, spend, and more. They are discovered by “doing the math,” which may include data aggregation, cluster analysis, factor analysis, and other statistical methods applied to large sample sets. And then segments are given catchy names like Savvy Skeptics, Active Balancers, Indulgent Nutritionist, or Trade-Uppers. When done right, segments are statistically derived from the analysis and synthesis of quantitative data and are a solid foundation for customer understanding.
Boxes and Arrows (2005). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas
#28932
Most IA tools and methods focus on the users and the content being developed for websites. Jorge Arango uses the ideas from anthropologist Edward Hall as a starting point to dig deep into the idea of context, its variations, and the impacts on how people interpret information.
Arango, Jorge. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Web Design>Cultural Theory
#21333
Defining Feature Sets Through Prototyping
Defining requirements and features can be a daunting task under the best of circumstances. The Vision Prototype allows the user-centered vision to be seen—and discussed—by all team members and then easily translated into a set of functional requirements.
Quinn, Laura S. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods
#21459
Deliverables and Methods: Special Deliverable #8
To date this column has focused on how to make deliverables more effective, either through their content or through the tools to create them. For this issue, I would like to explore the relationship between deliverables and methodology. Unfortunately, this calls for a definition of IA methodology, which may challenge the definition of IA as the hardest question in our field.
Brown, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Information Design>Methods
#29469
I started The Myths of Innovation in a positive frame of mind, generated by my interest in the topic (and the excitement of seeing my photos in print). I ended the book similarly enthusiastic. While it isn't a long read (I started in Cambridge and finished before I touched down in Los Angeles), good books don't need a lot of words to make their point. Scott Berkun clearly presents his arguments, demolishing many of the misconception about innovation. For those of us running businesses or developing new products, it's a must-read.
Robertson, James. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Reviews>Information Design
#31998
We create software and websites to display and represent information to people. That information could be anything; a company’s product list, pictures of your vacation, or an instant message from a friend. At this moment, there’s more information available to you than at any other time in history.
van Gorp, Trevor. Boxes and Arrows (2008). Design>Web Design>User Experience>Emotions
#29495
Review: Design Is Rocket Science
Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction is cunningly released at a time when acceptance of Interaction Design as a discipline is reaching a critical mass. The book precipitates a huge turn in the creation of interactive technologies toward the more research/creative or human-centric model, approaching the subject of this change from different angles and illuminating historical insights.
Evans, Clifton. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Reviews>Information Design
#23843
The Designers' Outpost: Capturing and Interacting with Design History
In a high-tech field like web design, we might expect to find computer-savvy practitioners accomplishing all their work with the click of the mouse and a stroke of the keyboard. However, in our studies of the early stages of web design, we found that good ol’ pens, paper, walls, and tables were the primary creative tools.
Klemmer, Scott. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Workflow
#21250
Designing Customer-Centered Organizations
Even with the present downturn in the economy, more companies, from new media to established banks, have larger usability and design teams than ever before. Should we be content that we have come so far?
Zapolski, John and Jared Braiterman. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>User Centered Design>Workflow>Usability
#21751
Designing for Limited Resources
When resources are limited, the design must be optimized to make the best use of all resources. To account for this complexity, it is important to have a clear understanding of both sides of the design equation—what you have to work with and what you are trying to build.
Quinn, Laura S. Boxes and Arrows (2004). Design>Web Design>Project Management
#30227
Designing for Nonprofits: User Experience Professionals Can Make a Difference in Society
As information architects, interaction designers, usability consultants, and developers, we don't have to change our careers to do something good for society. All we have to do is connect with the right nonprofit: One that shares our goals and whose mission we support.
Sanchez-Howard, Olga. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Web Design>User Experience
#20847
Designing for Real People: Additional Lessons for Web Design from Mall and Retail Design
Suggests lessons from bricks-and-mortar retailers that can be applied to web design.
Carliner, Saul. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
#21291
Designing on Both Sides of Your Brain
There's a natural balance that can be mastered between both intensely imaginative, and passionately logical lines of thought. We need to seek out this synergy to be good at design. The surprising truth is that for designers everywhere, the scientific method can be an extremely powerful tool for finding and evangelizing your great ideas.
Berkun, Scott. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Graphic Design>Methods>Cognitive Psychology
#23115
Developing and Creatively Leveraging Hierarchical Metadata and Taxonomy
In content metadata and hierarchies, you will often find a goldmine of implicit and explicit data that you can leverage to creatively contextualize content. After a brief introduction on taxonomy and metadata, this article focuses on finding and utilizing such relationships in hierarchies.
Ricci, Christian. Boxes and Arrows (2004). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Metadata
#20895
Wireframes: At once a singular composition and a collaborative expression, communicating the vision of both an individual and a team. As a result, they can be stacked with an enormous amount of detail. Are we becoming victims of information pollution in our own wireframes?
Danzico, Liz. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Information Design>Web Design
