The obesity map is a fascinating tool. Click through to interact with it-- you can see how we've grown as Americans over time.
After reading the NYTimes article on fattest states in the US, I found myself wanting to compare it with a poverty map-- I couldn't find one that did a red-state/blue state normalization, but this still does a decent job illustrating some correlation. (from the marvelous social explorer) I'd love to find a way to explore further...
When several smart people email you and say "watch this" you watch that: Hans Rosling on TED Talks
Two reasons: meta and content. The content is facinating, changing the way you see the world. For folks in our "biz" the medium is equally facinating; a compelling visualization of breaking down generalizations.
What the heck is this, and why do the lawyers think it is common enough to need to be represented iconicly?
We've been using Basecamp as our core collaboration/project management tool for PublicSquare. While it does seem to be true it's the best thing out there, at least if you are like me and want as lightweight tracking as possible; it has some amazing moments of lameness, some small, some really annoying. I've been haunted by them for months, now I must vent.
So here we go, Letterman style:
#6 
What's the difference between uploading in the file section and uploading a file within the context of a message? Not the advantage you might think of, which would be multi-file upload. The difference is you can't comment on files uploaded in the file area. I wanted to upload files in the file area, because that seemed proper, then discuss them. But no.
It took me awhile to learn this (because I am thick), but now I almost never use the file area, except occasionally to drop a song off, or backup a Photoshop file. It's a good place to hide things. Which maybe it was made for after all...
I still want multi-file upload. How many times do you need to upload 20+ images at a time? Every time you run a design project.
#5 
This is not search. Search has an input box, and a submit button. Trust me; I have seen an unbelievable number of hours of user testing. No box, no see. No see, no search.
#4
Um, why not add textile to to-dos, like everywhere else? It allows one to give context to a todo, if you can link to the message or note where everything was decided.
#3 
Writeboard has been integrated into Basecamp-- sort of. Although it looks like a part of Basecamp, with tab access, once you click on the tab, you find it's just kinda been pasted on. Moreover, you cannot email or IM the URL in the browser window. It just plain doesn't work. I'm not sure why, but I can't seem to learn this and continue to IM Lars a URL that doesn't work.
When I used to see this behavior-- users perpetually doing things "the wrong way"-- in usability tests, I'd call it an "unlearnable interface." It so contradicted established conventions that the user couldn't learn the exception. Since I have a samplesize of one (me!), I can't say for certain it's true here, but I suspect...
If 37 Signals didn't want to take on the technical challenge of fixing this, they might at least place the location of the writeboard somewhere where it could easily be seen, and cut and pasted into an IM, instead of forcing people through the email-me form.
This one has me tearing out my hair daily, when you finish creating a new message entry, it takes you to what appears to be the message overview page. But wait! It turns out it's been narrowed by the category you filed the new message. You have no idea how often I've sat, staring at the page, thinking where the heck did that message I was going to reply to next go? One team member has just given up using categories at all.
Also, if you edit the category, and save your changes, you are dropped on the page narrowed by the category the post *used* to be in! So the message essentially disappears. Wha-huh?
The ideal solution would be showing you all the messages once you have finished composing, but since this has been the behavior for some time now, and customers may have grown used to it, stronger feedback would be helpful. Perhaps a paperclip saying "We notice you filed that in design, so perhaps you'd like to look at other design posts."
#1 
This is my biggest annoyance, the one I call "Using Ajax to make your interface worse." One day, instead of the simple easy flat entry interface for writing a new message, they replace it with hidden fields you just open when you need. Sounds peachy? Well, let's say you are going to upload three images with a message, perhaps a thumbs up, a thumbs down and a warning icon, in order to get feedback. Well, lucky you. Instead of having to upload them one at a time, which is already painful (browse, select, upload, browse, select, upload, browse, select, upload) you know have to open up the upload access (open, browse, select, upload, open, browse, select, upload, open, browse, select, upload). Great, with ajax you just made my work harder!
Thank you for listening. I feel much better now.
Basecamp is a lovely application, with many many wonderful moments. I still do not hesitate to recommend it. But gosh, wouldn't it be swell if these moments never happened?
Scroll down on the page and look at the cloud-display.
(if gone, try the Widgetopia screenshot)
I think the future of metadata is not how it lets you retrieve things (which is all well and good) but how it lets you perceive things.
For some time I've thought tag clouds like those on del.ico.us & flickr's are far more useful for understanding the mind of a group, as opposed to retrieval (I think they are stinky at directed search, and just okay at undirected). This particular instance is a good example of telling you about the nature of the book. Not just the prominence of "people" over "users" but the size of the word "should" which I first thought to be useless-- it is, if you want to know what the book about, but not so much if you want to understand the tone of the book.
It would be interesting to compare, say, Jakob Nielson's first and last book to see how his language changes as he goes from scholarly to didactic.
Now image if it wasn't just the author's language, but the tags as well-- you could compare intent with effect.
WORDCOUNT / Tracking the Way We Use Language / is a lovely curiosity. I'd love to see other ideas on how to represent this, though... what if you could see all the five-letter words, and up? What if you could see it tracked over time?
10x10 / 100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time / by Jonathan J. Harris is an interesting visualization of the news, but not nessarily a visualizationtool-- the imagergy iscompelling, but not meaningful. Compare to newsmap
where size + attention, and you can slice and dice based on country. Which is a understanding interface, and which is merely colorful?
A recent article on document design in the WSJ shakily raised the question:
Is a poorly designed memo at fault for not warning the president the nature of the terrorist threat.
In many ways it's a retread of the butterfly ballot controversy, and the Challenger controversy, but I think it's a controversy worth raising again and again until careless attention to design stops killing people.
Here is the article (PDF) (html). Here is the redesign of the memo.
Here's what wasn't printed from my interview (lightly edited for coherence):
Q: I'd like to talk about the PDB and the redesign - especially what wasn't working in the original
A: I can't blame the president for having a hard time with the memo: it's a mess. Everything is wrong with it: bad writing, bad design and no sense of hierarchy. Presidents of large companies can only give a few minutes to most issues brought before them; it must be far worse for the president of the united states. Bush has to be able to judge in a few seconds how much of his precious time needs to be devoted to an issue in a memo: this one wasn't helping him.
People scan newspapers for a number of reasons: too much daily information, difficult reading conditions such as subways and buses, etc. Journalist like yourself write using the inverse pyramid. This allows the reader to immediately understand what the article will cover and if it is relevant to their lives. It's the same with writing for executives; they are so deluged with information they have to scan as a survival trait.
Imagine if that first sentence was "Data from reliable internal and external sources indicate Bin Ladin planning a large scale attack on an US target." from there you can move on to bullets
This way the president can glance over the memo to understand the threat and then dig in to richer information that can help him decide how to act.
Adding color and graphs would improve both scanability and impact. Imagine if every memo had bargraphs displaying a scale of how severe the threat was, how urgent the issue was and how trustworthy the data sources were. Bush could then compare that memo to those on corn production and diplomat dinner schedules and know where to place his attention.
In a strange way it's like designing a comparison shopping site like Yahoo! Shopping-- you know when users are searching for a camera, they want to be able to look over a number of stores who are selling the camera and quickly see if it is a brand they know, what is the user rating, how much is the price... the president may need to know how severe is the issue, how much time does he have to respond, how trustworthy is the information.
And he has less free time than an average shopper.
(I'm not a presidential adviser, so hard for me to say what he needs to know, but let's use those factors as strawmen)
Q: "what is information architecture?"
A: A profession devoted to making the complex clear, via information design and content organization. It requires an understanding of human nature when faced with mountains of data.
Some good definitions here
http://www.aifia.org/pg/about_aifia.php
1. The structural design of shared information environments.
2. The art and science of organizing and labeling web sites, intranets,
online communities and software to support usability and findability.
3. An emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of
design and architecture to the digital landscape.
Q: What is the growth of the info architecture field since you've been involved
A: When I first started, there were very few IAs out there. But the growth of data has resulted in information overload, and trouble means opportunity. There are hundreds of dedicated practicing IA's, and thousands of people who make IA a part of their work. Data is useless, knowledge is invaluable, someone has got to make one into the other.
Q: Have you ever heard of/seen a company that tries to apply usability principles to internal communications.
Yahoo! does. During a major Yahoo! property redesign, every single day the product manager sent out html email updates. Each item was a bullet point, and each item was color coded green, yellow or red depending on how much danger it was of slipping.
The Senior VP could take a look and in a second he knew where he needed to spend his time straightening matters out, and where he could relax. It was a very successful project, and those simple daily memos made everything run a bit more smoothly. I bet Bush would have enjoyed a similar design. After all, shouldn't a red flag be red?
Q: Do you know what the readership is like for "Boxes and Arrows"? Any sense of how many readers you've got, and whether it's grown during the two years it's been around?
A: In our first year, we had 1001117 page reqs, in 03 we had 2337704, and this year's numbers suggest we'll grown by another half. (aka half again each year.) our mailing list went form 2000 in year one to 6000 to year 2.
Q: What are big topics in IA circles right now?
A: IA is going in two directions right now. Many folks who are "hands on" IA's are becoming master craftsmen of taxonomy design and navigation systems. Others are going in a slightly tangential direction-- working on complete user experience strategies that encompass multichannel design based on business priorities. Both are thrilling: the hands-on IA's are embracing things like topicmaps and emergent classification tools like Wikis, while the big-picture IA's are becoming involved in organizational innovation and user experience strategy. Overall its an exciting field, with a lot of innovation and experimentation.
Q: What's going to be the challenge for the next few years?
A: The challenge in the next few years is two-fold; one is how do we push forward to the next generation of knowledge management. By that I mean how do we harness the vast amount of information that is out there-- every day physicians prescribe the wrong medicines because as humans they can't keep up with the massive amount of new knowledge flooding the field... sometimes this limitation results in a less than effective treatment, sometimes it actually result in death.
The information space is growing so rapidly its becoming harder and yet more crucial we keep it human-manageable. I think this is one of the reasons we're seeing search get so much attention-- its one potential solution to the problem.
The second challenge is exactly what you spoke of earlier... how are we making sure what we've learned is getting out there. That's one of the reasons I founded Boxes and Arrows-- it's critical that as advances are made, they are shared. That way we are standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, instead of reinventing the wheel....
Also see: every breath death defying: IA in the WSJ
Correction on the WSJ article: I am no longer President of AIfIA, that role is now Peter Morville's. I was AIfIA's first year president.
TC 510 Course Website David Farkas has an amazing collection of web-based articles supplementing his course that would make fine reading over the holidays-- the breadth and diversity of the reading would help round out any IA or ID thinking.
"Maps encourage boldness. They're like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible."
--Mark Jenkins
I think this a fine goal for any diagram one might make, from sitemap to flowchart.
After reading Consumer WebWatch: How Consumers and Experts Rate Credibility on the Web, it seems if you you want to be trusted, get design and IA right.
Just in time to inform our discussions of information design, The History of Visualisation
Vuk Cosic sent me a great link for airport signs by great artists, as well as a photo taken at a canadian airport.
If RSW has a crazy dream and they set it to techno, it woudl be the roystock video all the kids are talking about. Matt Jones knocked me out of my book coma to take a look, and it was quite worth it.
Compare to Wurman's Understanding USA
IBM/Ease of Use/Simplifying Tasks, the unorderable poster.
via cam
Sign warning about the uneven steps in the vatican museum.
All the fuss over findability resulting from Peter's article and the many insightful comments led me to think about this new concept until I saw this diagram in a dream. 
Structural Design Components
Unfortunately my skills fall mostly in two of the three circles, so this draft is pretty rough looking. This one is a bit fancier. I'll be browsing Information Graphics for inspiration later...
The key concepts should be apparent, though. An IA strives toward the goal of findability, an interaction designer toward the goal of usability and the information designer toward understandability.
Obviously there are overlapping points. I had originally thought to put something in them, but then realized many items could go there. Between IA and InD, browse structures, between IfD and IA you get navigation design, between InD and IfD you get interface (GUI) design and so on. Most websites (and most software) fall neatly in the middle.
This is definitely a draft, so I'd love to get feedback from folks. Cheers!
Location, Path & Attribute Breadcrumbs was Keith Instone's poster at ASIS&T's IA summit. If you dont' mind holding yoru head sideways, it is a very interesting read.
I like breadcrumbs-- they are both a navigational widget and a way to broaden your search.
How to Win Business with Proposal Infographics
"Information" graphics, on the other hand, add substance as well as style. They are the graphs, charts, diagrams, organizational charts and conceptual overviews that help make your proposal easier to understand. They liberate the powerful knowledge locked in the text of your proposal. When viewers see good examples of infographics, their reaction is, "That's meaningful."
God it feels so good to be surfing again. so many nice articles out there!
and hasty thinking?
"It appears that the pressure of everyday work and the little time that we have means that when we are about to perform an information graphic we adopt the tactics of immediacy. We start Excel, throw in some data and select a chart type, accepting the terrible colours that Excel gives us by default. "
from Information Graphics
There is No Such Thing as Information Design by Jef Raskin
"As a curmudgeon, I am delighted to point out that the popular term, Information Design, is a misnomer. Information cannot be designed; what can be designed are the modes of transfer and the representations of information. This is inherent in the nature of information, and it is important for designers to keep the concepts of information and meaning distinct. "
and yet
"This is where we-graphic designers, computer-interface specialists, artists, musicians, sound technologists, lighting directors, cognitive psychologists, type designers, ergonomicists, and even mathematicians and physicists-come in. It is our job as designers to create effective representations of information for human consumption. "
An interesting article, but this seems more semantics than revolution to me...
Hey folks-- I'm seeking examples of two things:
One: good info-diagrams that explain how a service or site works. pay my bills used to have one, but they've gone text.
Two: good examples of category managers. I'd love to see good web-based GUI's that allow users to put things in multiple categories, add categories, manage taxonomies, etc. any hints?
thanks!
information design - a searchCRM definition
"Information design is the detailed planning of specific information that is to be provided to a particular audience to meet specific objectives."
this article is one of the few that talks about the relationship of IA, ID and interaction design...
"In many cases, more effective than just words and photos, infographics can quickly help us grasp information and timelines in a visual and easy-to-follow manner. "
Notes from the Tufte roadshow... discussed in the Carbon IQ Log Contains Noel's excellent and extensive notes from the last Tufte seminar.
The latest issue of GAIN has Hugh Dubberly's Model of brand experience in a great article that i can't link to because it's in a special JS window in flash. Go to GAIN, find your way, it'll be fine. The brand area also included razorfish's model of brand and a few more Dubberly models. V. nifty.
Interesting article in Design Matters What's in a name? (and I'm not just saying that because I partipated)
"Are there two information architectures? One influenced by presentation and one influenced by structure? Is the presentation-based IA better served by the name "information design?" Does the medium really matter? Is print IA/ID different from web-based IA/ID in meaningful ways?"
Been thinking a lot about rules put forth by gurus. A woman recently put forth a post on the SIGIA list about how some higher-ups came back from a conference with a bag full of rules she was now expected to live by. They included:
1. "3 goals of a site have to be identified to determine the direction and voice for the site"
2. "There should only be a maximum of seven links on each page, more than that and we lose the user. It's just too many choices."
3. "Users won't click on items they believe are advertisements. Banner ads only work if they appear on the right side of the page."
4. "Users are trained to respond to "blue" or underlined items on a site to get somewhere else.
5. "There is no need for a button and a text click through (to the same page) on the same page."
Each of these "rules" is derived from a larger, smarter principal that someone has apparently determined is too complex for the idiots building websites.
Let's take a look:
1. "3 goals of a site have to be identified to determine the direction and voice for the site"
Let's translate this one: determine the goals of the site before you start building it. Goals need to come form multiple sources:
What are the business goals? (customer loyalty? investor excitement?)
What are the engineering goals? (easy to maintain? extensible?)
What are the sales goals? (more banner space? Customized pages for cobranding opportunities?)
What are the marketing goals? (reinforced branding?)
What are the user's goals?(I want to learn? find? buy? I need it to load fast? Work on my 3.0 browser?)
It's called requirements gathering, and no site should be built without it.
New rule: Do requirements gathering before you start designing a site
2. "There should only be a maximum of seven links on each page, more than that and we lose the user. It's just too many choices."
A better way to look at this would be "not everything can be the most important thing on a page" A page has to have a visual hierarchy and organization to make sense. Which means somebody gets to have their stuff in the top left corner of the homepage, and someone gets be below the fold. It is important to understand user tolerance of information but people can take a lot more than one might suppose if it is designed well. And sites with only seven links often look empty (I've seen this in user testing) belying the wealth of content that lies below.
New rule: Prioritize your page elements. Design a clear page hiearchy.
3. "Users won't click on items they believe are advertisements. Banner ads only work if they appear on the right side of the page."
It doesn't matter where you put the ads, if people think they are worthless they won't click it. I found the eyetracking study very interesting-- it showed people's eyes were looking at banners. yet Neilsen's banner blindness study showed people have no memory of seeing ads. To me that suggests that some lovely tiny bit of people's brains is quickly taking everything in, deciding what is valuable and trashing what isn't.
What is quite more valuable is designing ads that show the value of whatever is being offered and place them where they have meaning. So ads for a credit card don't make much sense on a greeting card site, but ads for flowers, chocolate, etc do. especially when placed at that important "susceptible moment"-- you've just sent a card.. don't you want to send a present too?
People don't want to be offered stuff they don't want. it's as simple as that.
New rule: Make ads contextual and meaningful whenever possible
4. "Users are trained to respond to "blue" or underlined items on a site to get somewhere else."
They were. and then every site on the web changed the rules (except maybe Jakob).
They key principal here is "make a link look clickable" make it a different color, make it a button, underline it-- do something to say "click me."
I've been in a lot of tests recently where people used "Braille" to find links-- they ran their mouse across the page and watched for the hand to show up. Kinda of a cruel thing to force users to do, no?
see earlier post on links
New rule: make links look clickable. Don't make non-links look like links
5. "There is no need for a button and a text click through (to the same page) on the same page."
I'm going with a flat "no" on this one: I think the real issue is "Should you have multiple ways to get to the same page on the same page." In a recent usability test of a large entertainment site, you could get to each piece of content by clicking on the thumbnail, the headline or the "click here" link that appeared after a short description. Some users used the image, some the title and some the "click here" link. None of them hesitated or were confused as to where to link-- I believe because each found a link they recognized would work for them.
I recently was shopping for a cd, and couldn't figure out how to purchase it. There was no "buy now" button. However the price was linked to the shopping cart. I didn't know that, and I started clicking randomly on things until I managed to hit the price link. Bah.
Why did I put up with this frustration? Honestly, it was the cheapest price on this particular cd. If it wasn't, I would have just bought it from Amazon.
New rule: support different people's ways of doing things (support different mental models)
Got an expert's pronouncement you need debunked or re-interpreted? write me
Hungry for more? IBM has a terrific article that goes after "the rules" of software design: Debunking the myths of UI design.
Information Architects 
Pretty much before there was a web, before Jakob was going to war with design, before all that hoo-haw...
There was Richard Saul Wurman saying that someone should design information in a way people could use it, and he called this person an Information Architect. Today we might call them information designers, but still.
Envisioning Information
In the arena of Information Design you cannot forget the Tufte trio (though reading the first might be enough unless you are an Information Designer). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Visual Explanations : Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative His books not only explain the power of graphical representaions of information to promote understanding, but also the high price of getting it wrong.
Well, I'm trying to find my recipe for pate brisee and all I can find is quiche. One more day of being a housewife, then I return to my more comfortable role of user centered design (IA, whatever)
I can't help but think about what makes a good recipe... my quiche recipe is of course a stellar example of the worst... no instructions, in two languages, fuzzy measurements: if it was a website, Jakob Neilson would mock it. Still, it is useful to me; I recognize the crust as pate brisee, and remember how to assemble it. If this was a recipe for only me, I would give it high usability marks. Since it is the public area of my website, I cannot. Always remember who the audience is is the first rule of usability.
A good recipe - I think - would have clear measurements in both metric and imperial, clear instructions, links to basic cooking techiques (such as kneading bread, sautečing, etc) pictures of the dish and variations. I have always enjoyed Tavola (formerly Digital Chef) for just these reasons. They also have an excellent search. A quick search for Quiche Lorraine turns this up.
Nice!
