Bottoms Up: Designing Complex, Adaptive Systems

Web design is under attack. Our enemy is a dangerous meme known as reductionism. This devious adversary is spreading the notion that we can fully understand Web sites as a combination of simpler components, and that we can break the process of design into lots of quick steps and clearly defined deliverables.

Morville, Peter. New Architect (2002). Articles>Information Design>Web Design

Building a Barrier-Free Web

Architects call the concept of making choices that work best for the greatest number of people 'barrier-free design.' While no Web site—or building, for that matter—can be equally accessible to everyone, the intellectual shift from thinking of accessibility as an add-on can be liberating. There are plenty of good reasons for constructing your sites with as few barriers as possible.

Kuchinskas, Susan. New Architect (2002). Design>Web Design>Accessibility

Considering the Color-Blind

Recently, I was surprised to learn that about 8 percent of men and 0.5 percent of women have some form of color blindness. For some Web sites that could translate to 1 in 12 visitors. That's a larger proportion of visitors than some other groups I consider when designing Web sites. The ratio of visitors viewing the Web with only 256 colors or a 640x480 pixel screen is usually less than 5 percent these days. Now include cross-browser support, older browsers, style sheets, and JavaScript in the mix. If you consider those issues when you design Web sites, you should consider your color-blind visitors, as well.

Newman, Chuck. New Architect (2000). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Color

Designing for Web Services

Many technology companies, consultants, and academics are hyping the future of Web services. But how will this background transfer of data between applications affect the user experience?

Lombardi, Victor. New Architect (2002). Design>Web Design>Content Management>User Experience

Effective Web Writing

You can use writing techniques to exploit the Web's strengths while avoiding its weaknesses.

Kilian, Crawford. New Architect (2001). Articles>Writing>Web Design

Migrating from HTML to XML

As the Internet world shifts its focus to XML and related technologies, what happens to HTML? Everywhere you go, products are becoming 'XMLitized' as vendors rush to gain market share. While this is great for companies that are only now beginning to build their infrastructures, what about the rest of us whose sites have existed for years, accumulating documents architected on old HTML technology? How are we to take our millions and millions of HTML documents and bring them into the next generation of Internet computing? Fortunately, the market for tools in this space is growing, and technologies like Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) are making it easier to migrate your repository of existing HTML documents.

Fischer, Peter. New Architect (2000). Design>Web Design>XML>XHTML

New Architect

Commentary and updates on current events and technologies.

New Architect. Journals>Web Design

New Architect Research

New Architect Research is your source for IT white papers and market research reports from over 3,500 leading IT vendors and over 60 top analyst firms. You can also sign up for the KnowledgeAlert email service to automatically be notified of new research or white papers as they come in.

New Architect. Resources>Directories>Information Design

Taking A Content Inventory

Provides a methodology for auditing web site content to produce an inventory -- a tabular document that may be used in information re-architecture projects.

Fraser, Janice. New Architect (2001). Design>Web Design>Information Design

Timeless Principles of Design

To design is to solve a problem, and Web-site design is no different from any other problem. You must understand the problem, define the goals, plan the steps, and generate a solution. Clearly defining the problem is intricately tied to understanding. Planning involves developing a clear approach and process for solving the problem. Only then can you look at execution. A designer's challenge is to assemble the necessary tools, information, and approach so that Web-site visitors leave more informed than when they arrived. You can track the site's success by motivating visitors to take actions you can measure.

Mok, Clement and Vic Zauderer. New Architect (1997). Design>Web Design