Dogmas Are Meant to be Broken: An Interview with Eric Reiss

With training in everything from stage design to Egyptology to hypertext games to web projects, Reiss has had extensive practice in finding out what makes an experience work. Could these be the principles I've been waiting for? I tracked down Reiss in Vancouver to find out.

Danzico, Liz. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Information Design>Theory>Minimalism

Doing Today's Job with Yesterday's Tools

Where is the software that can help us cope with the massive amounts of information that we deal with on a daily basis? Patrick Dubroy points out the problems with current personal information management, and makes suggestions about how to improve the situation.

Dubroy, Patrick. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Information Design

Don't Test Users, Test Hypotheses

User testing typically consists of a sort of fishing trip. We lower a lure (the user) into the water (the application or site) and see what critters (defects) bite. This is a valuable and time-tested approach. But when we start fishing for defects, we are left with some tough questions. For instance: When are we finished? How many defects do we need to find before we have fully tested the site or application? If we find a defect, how do we know how severe it is, and by what measure? In iterative testing, how do we compare results from the test of the current version with results from testing earlier versions?

Soudack, Avi. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Usability>Methods>Testing

Dreamweaver Primer

So, you’ve read the article, 'HTML Wireframes and Prototypes: All Gain and No Pain' and now want you want to make an HTML wireframe or prototype. This an easy and pain-free process, using Macromedia Dreamweaver 4.0. Follow this step-by-step guide and you'll be up and prototyping in a jiffy.

Stanford, Julie. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Web Design>Software>Dreamweaver

Dublin Core Conference Summary 2003

What is Dublin Core? And why would you need a whole conference about it? The end of September and beginning of October brought representatives from various countries around the world to a sunny and warm Seattle, Washington, host of the 2003 Dublin Core Conference.

Gonzales-Chan, Madonnalisa and Sarah Rice. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Information Design>XML>Metadata

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

Ease of Use Outside the Box

As user experience designers in an enterprise, we find ourselves knee deep in pixels. Should we use a dropdown element or a set of radio buttons? 10pt or 12pt size font? A broad-and-shallow or narrow-and-deep information architecture? While such design considerations are necessary and important, we miss huge user experience opportunities outside the webpage, outside the website, outside the browser. By tackling inter-application usability opportunities, user experience (UX) professionals can make things easier in a big way.

Padilla, Mike. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Design>Web Design>User Experience

The Elements of Style for Designers

What if E.B. White had written 'Hanging Commas 99% Bad' instead of a gentle list of reminders for young writers? Wodtke outlines how White's list of 22 reminders for writing can be just what young designers need.

Wodtke, Christina. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Design>Web Design>Writing>Minimalism

Review: The Elements of User Experience

By advocating a balanced blend of usability, creativity, and business sensibility, this book is a worthwhile introduction—or re-introduction—to the process of creating successful user experiences.

Boxes and Arrows (2002). Resources>Reviews>User Centered Design

Enterprise Information Architecture: A Semantic and Organizational Foundation

People disagree on what happens when IAs grow up, but Tom Reamy offers a foundation for information architecture as it advances, grappling with problems across the enterprise.

Reamy, Tom. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Information Design>Web Design

Review: Everything and the Kitchen Sink

I've used personas for years (though some might regard my process as a slightly heretical perversion of the method). I always think about the big picture, and I was just thinking BIG about personas at work when The Persona Lifecycle landed on my desk. Given my review of what's out there, The Persona Lifecycle is the most comprehensive book on personas I've come across. If you're so inclined, it can taking you from novice to expert. The authors, Jonathan Pruit and Tamara Adlin, take advantage of extensive teaching experience and punctuate their discussion with lots of real-world examples, case studies, anecdotes, bright ideas and handy guidelines. That being said, it's not an easy read, and it's not for everybody.

Govella, Austin. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Reviews>User Centered Design>Personas

The Evolving Homepage: The Growth of Three Booksellers

What lessons have we learned about how design improves the interface between customers and companies? Perhaps we can start by asking how websites have actually changed over time, and from that we can learn how websites should change in the future.

Lombardi, Victor. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design

Examining the Role of De Facto Standards on the Web

Just what are the design practices on the web that have the highest frequency? And are there design practices that all (or nearly all) sites employ?

Adkisson, Heidi P. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Web Design>Standards>E Commerce

Executive Dashboards

Contrary to first impression, an 'executive dashboard' is not found in a CIO’s car. Rather, an executive dashboard, also known as a manager dashboard, executive cockpit, or digital cockpit, is a child of what in the 1980s was referred to as the Executive Information System (EIS).

Kirtland, Alex. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Management>User Interface>EPSS

Expanding the Approaches to User Experience

Jesse James Garrett’s 'The Elements of User Experience' diagram has become rightly famous as a clear and simple model for the sorts of things that user experience professionals do. But as a model of user experience it presents an incomplete picture with some serious omissions—omissions I’ll try address with a more holistic model.

Olsen, George. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Information Design>User Experience>User Centered Design

Exploring Content Filters

What if there was a new way of navigating an online information space we've all seen before but just never thought to use? I'm talking about subtracting away information the user doesn't want. Content filtering is a much more natural way of sorting through categories, especially when the majority of your content is under more than one subject.

Evans, Clifton. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Information Design>Web Design

Extreme User Research

What is the biggest problem I face almost every time a client hires me to do something about a web project going awry? They don't know a thing about their users. They don't have a clue, whatsoever. Unbelievable but true!

Lafreniere, Daniel. Boxes and Arrows (2008). Articles>User Centered Design>Research>Usability

Faceted Feature Analysis

By crossing the characterizing facets with constraints, you are combining the subjective needs of the project stakeholders with the objective constraints of the project in a way that ensures all points of view are fairly considered. It also ensures that a project requirement is not included or excluded simply because one person yelled louder than the others.

Polansky, Adam. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Design>Project Management>Collaboration

All About Facets & Controlled Vocabularies

The authors present a comprehensive overview of faceted classifications and controlled vocabularies.

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

Fear of Design

Not so long ago, on my personal site I posted a little entry on design. And a comment was made: 'IA is not design.' This sentence has sat vibrating in my head for months. It speaks of bravado in the face of fear. But why should Information Architects fear design?

Wodtke, Christina. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Information Design

Focus on the Student: How to Use Learning Objectives to Improve Learning

As information architects we all know how important it is to keep the user in mind. The same is true in teaching IA: we must keep the learner in mind. Learning objectives are one tool to help keep your classes focused on the student. They will also help you develop the syllabus, lesson plans, and assessment methods.

Cown, Wendy. Boxes and Arrows (2004). Articles>Information Design>Instructional Design>User Centered Design

Foreseeing the Future: The Legacy of Vannevar Bush

Fifty years before web, 30 years before the personal computer, Vannevar Bush envisioned a new machine to make sense of the growing mountains of information, creating the notions of 'hypertext' and the modern link.

Malone, Erin. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Information Design>Hypertext

Foundations of Interaction Design

Interaction Design is distinct from the other design disciplines. It's not Information Architecture, Industrial Design or even User Experience Design. It also isn't user interface design. Interaction design is not about form or even structure, but is more ephemeral--about why and when rather than about what and how.

Malouf, David Heller. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Design>User Centered Design>Interaction Design

Foundations of Interaction Design

An interview with David Malouf on his article, Foundations of Interaction Design. We discuss several foundations of Interaction design including time, metaphor, abstraction, and negative space. David also provides greater detail to comments posted on his article from readers from around the world.

Malouf, David Heller and Jeff Parks. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>User Interface>Interaction Design>Podcasts

Four Modes of Seeking Information and How to Design for Them

Information-seeking behavior varies from situation to situation. Donna Mauer explores different ways in which users look for information and offers tactics for accommodating them.

Maurer, Donna. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>User Centered Design>Information Design