I've revealed my sources...
IA MATTERS
want to know
the shape of the web? (and that means more than .com)
narrative scenarios as a design tool
APROPOS OF NOTHING
from the devotimator folks
Amazon smartly asks the advice of their customers
NEWS
coke goes online (anyone else saying :why online?)
FEEDBACK
a friend writes:
"I'm curious how "HTML" pages that are containers for badly written and completely unnecessary JavaScript (or worse, Flash) and gratuitously incompatible with browsers that disable scripting can even rate as "functional". If I were shopping for a Web design house and saw www.marchfirst.com I'd say "You people don't know what you're doing" just as security drags me out the door kicking and screaming.
<NOSCRIPT> needs to be federally mandated."
this is so right in so many ways:
We're writing to ask for your help. Over the last few months, we've
tested several new navigational systems for Amazon.com, looking for a
way to make it easier for you to get around our store. (By
"navigational system," I'm talking about the tabs at the top of our home page.)
We think we've found a winner--feedback from hundreds of customers in
our testing has already been very positive. But we wouldn't want to
make such a change to how our store works without first consulting
you to see what you thought. So we'd sure appreciate it if you could
take a few minutes to check it out. Just stop by:
http://www.amazon.com/new-navigation
Then please drop us a line telling us what you think. E-mail your
comments to newtabs@amazon.com.
Many thanks for helping us make Amazon.com the best store it can be.
Sincerely,
Jeff Bezos
Founder and CEO, Amazon.com
PS: We hope you enjoyed receiving this message. However, if you'd
rather not receive future notices of this sort from Amazon.com,
please visit your Amazon.com Subscriptions page and sign in using
your e-mail address and password:
http://www.amazon.com/subscriptions"
Please note that this message was sent to the following e-mail
address:
cwodtke@eleganthack.com
Found a new resource: author of the Yale style manual.
All the cool kids are doing it: personas
the sh*tty internet logo of the week museum
which reminds me of the swoosh collector
a website where you can design your own shoes: interesting web-ap
a story for all designers: what about the websites that we never born
apropos of nothing
what if Lincoln had used PowerPoint?
biggerhand.com has taken over my job as idle surfer...
he writes
"ok, i give. this is brilliant
of course the funniest thing is that it's terribly designed.
(if you glean it, i found the link on kottke.org. he also links to untickalot"
also terribly funny.
Idle question: what is it designers have against capital letters?
he also sends this hot new palm ap (check out even if you don't have a palm... this may get you to buy one!)
and an article on how to build for PDA's
Hey, more on my favorite lawsuit, IAM vs. Razorfish!
from Tomalak:
Darwin: Scaredy Pants.
At what point does careful consideration verge on utter paralysis? How many
times can someone steal your lunch money before you starve to death? I'm
thinking about those questions because I've been researching the Internet
initiatives of Levi Strauss.
Apropos of nothing:
from dsharp
"Japanese Seizure Robots!
THIS IS AWFUL, I KNOW YOU WILL LOVE IT!
As if the flashing colors weren't enough, this site takes MIDI music to the
heights of artistry.
Prepare yourself, then click here:
and
Business 2.0: From January 1, 2000; 501 Blues
http://www.business2.com/content/magazine/ebusiness/2000/01/01/10399
and again from Darwin mag (I never heard of these guys before, and they are great!)
Darwin: Get Real.
David Weinberger. Combine fear and aggression and you end up with companies
literally afraid to speak like human beings. It's easier, after all, to plan
an attack than to communicate on the fly and--gasp!--listen.
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/080100/contact.html
they get it: quite a while on the Jupiter site, there was a terrific article on relanches and the dangers that lie with them (such as massive user bailout at the horror of trying to learn something new, no matter how much "better" it was) One of the ways to mitigate this was to inform user of an upcoming redesign and solicit feedback on it. Amazon did it for their new navigation. Alta vista does it here
redesigns are in the air: adobe.com
from newmedia.com "BROADBAND Walkthrough: Adobe.com
(Thursday, 3 August 00) Adobe completely sheds its old corporate image
with a dramatic redesign of its Web site. Aimed at fostering a sense
of community, the site features expert QuickTime tutorials, interviews
with noteworthy designers, online galleries, forums, and a free
virtual portfolio area. By Jeff Burger."
Speaking of Jupiter, and their research compatriots, I'm reading "how to lie with statistics" that appears to have been written in the 30s and makes quite entertaining light reading.
also found this
Salon: From September 2, 1999; Jupiter shoots for the moon
and
Boston Globe: Fortunetelling.
Ideas, visibility, and marketing drive that image. Forrester's researchers are
paid based on a complicated formula that considers their involvement in
closing sales and appearances in the media.
lately the CHI-WEB list has been talking about exercises in pointlessness (sites that are pure marketing tools and provide no value to user)
included were
http://www.eu.levi.com/LEJ/
http://www.myautogarage.com
here is a resource to make your life saner: standard banner sizes
the wonderful world of web-aps. this will keep IA's in business for years to
come
great conversation started by peterme on the CHI-WEB list
"What does a conceptual model look like"
Finally, something to show the client!
http://www.usability.com/tug_3_Product_Stages.htm
Conceptual design: the cornerstone of usability.
huh?
DESIGN MATTERS
There seems to be a revival of mocking jakob neilson (well, if you're gonna
demand fame, you gotta take your lumps.) Biggerhand.com sends this new
repository of all thing mocking jakob.
http://www.untickalock.com/jakob/index.html
By the way, apparently the infamous useit.com is about to undergo a makeover.
Don norman says his and jakob's sites have been redesigned and are being
user-tested as we speak. I'm waiting with baited breath...
but you can make it up to him: his birthday is coming up (thanks Mike!)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/wishlist/26JQ6PQQHD3T8/103-3658829-8248653
Honestly his latest alertbox
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000806.html
is much more inflammatory, bashing non-standard design and insisting (come on jakob!) that reputation managers will replace brand. Quite well working, much like a bad cup of coffee will get your blood running even before the caffeine hits the bloodstream.
Now that we're done beating on Jakob, check this out:
http://www.patricklynch.net/viz/viz020100.html
great article that explains why print has cause designers to design their
pages upside down...
It also helps explain a phenomenon I've seen in user testing I call "land
and scroll" Users come to a page and -before it's even finished loading, as
soon as they have anything vaguely resembling a page-- they scroll. I've
seen a quick up-down 'getting the lay of the land" and an instant permanent
scroll, pushing the global nav and any banner navigation down. hmmm
While we're at it, why not demystify another hero: Tufte!
Don Norman takes him down a peg on the CHI-WEB list
http://www.acm.org/archives/wa.cgi?A1=ind0008a&L=chi-web#30
APROPOS OF NOTHING
hey! Mexican wrestler game!
http://www.sbermprod.com/guest/wrestling.html#
plus lucha swag http://www.luchaswag.com/
don't know what I'm talking about? http://www.firstcut.com/9807/n1.html
(thanks Tracy!)
IA MATTERS
creating trust in cyberspace
iacandy
a bunch of truly beautiful odd new visualizations.. information design and IA are one.
plumbdesign thesaurus/
and the story behind it
www.thinkmap.com
more
http://inxight.com/
more
smartmoney
from
http://www.smartmoney.com/intro/tools/
more
http://www.artandculture.com
hey, anyone going to any of these?
BRAND
The Evolution of Brand Strategy
The Changing Roles of Identity and Navigation Design
Uncanny
The Art & Design of Shawn Wolfe
Published by Houston
Best known as the man behind Beatkit, the ubiquitous "brand
without a product," Wolfe was deconstructing consumerism and
brand fetishism since before he knew that's what he was doing.
See the cover image at:
http://www.emigre.com/CBUN.html
NEWS
Did you think that you can stop worrying about downloads?
Fast Company: Why the Long Wait?
Latency, says Reed, directly affects the quality of users' experience on the
Net. Although ISPs aren't blind to this issue, too few of them agree that
latency is the defining metric of their networks' performance.
Napster cannot be killed.
Industry Standard: It's Not Dead Yet.
Kevin Werbach. Rather than delaying a resolution of the major issues
surrounding online music distribution, the Napster injunction has accelerated
it. The injunction raised the stakes and also brought Napster tremendous
mainstream publicity.
yeah, these guys are the victims. sure.
Wired News: States: Labels Fixed CD Prices.
Thirty states filed suit Tuesday against the five biggest record companies and
two music retailing giants, accusing them of conspiring to fix CDs prices --
an act that the states say cost consumers millions of dollars.
the war between design and usability
USABILITY VS DESIGN
DESIGN MATTERS
A little while ago I asked what designers have against capitalization. Mike
of biggerhand.com has been kind enough to let me share his response to me
with you.
me: "What "do* designers have against capitalization?"
mike: "they get used like exclamation marks: Too Often And For Emphasis!!!!!
(usually the emphasis is that the copy sucks, but we'll build around
it with exclamation marks, or "bangs" in marketinguese, and caps.)
in the event of cap & bang bloat i usually strip them all out and get
the client to put them back in. they generally put back about 25% of
what I took out.
In one particularly dire situation I talked marketing down by telling
them that caps added significant overhead in k-count. We then came to
the compromise that we would capitalize the first word of every
sentence and the CEO's name. To give them a "warm fuzzy" I agreed to
capitalize the first word in every paragraph too.
I like making people happy! (<--bang)"
NEWS BITES
from tomalak
Business 2.0: Five Questions With Mike Mulligan, CEO of MapQuest.
And while they've got a brand that people know, it's a brand that's not
relevant online. It's like Brillo. Everybody recognizes the brand Brillo,
butit doesn't do you any good online. And everybody recognizes the brand Rand
McNally, but it doesn't do them any good online.
and for more on Rand Mcnally's struggle to play catch-up (also one of gleanings favorite
topics)
Business 2.0: World to Privacy Sites: Now or Never.
Looming legislation threatens to make many of their current functions
obsolete, and recent high-profile embarrassments have forced many of the
sites
to reconsider their entire raison d'être.
Business 2.0: The Perfect PR App.
The other day, I received a routine press release. It wasn't time sensitive.
It wasn't interesting. There was absolutely no way I or anyone else here
would've written about the contents of the release. Yet, it came in a FedEx
envelope sent via the highest, and most expensive, priority.
Computerworld: States formally object to proposed settlement between Toysmart and the FTC.
The objection was submitted by Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly,
who said in the filing that the effort to sell the customer data "is a breach of
Toysmart's promise and constitutes deception pursuant to the Consumer
Protection Act of Massachusetts"...