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Friday, May 11, 2001
OPENING THANG
Well kiddos, I'm going to France again end of next week. I've got a slight break between part one and part two of a project, and I'm dashing off for a couple weeks to the Sacramento of France-- thanks right folks, lovely and delightfully dull Dijon.
http://nothing-new.com/travel/France/burgundy/dijon/ (Dijon pictures start after the deviant cow sign)
In Dijon I will see my husband (woo hoo!), gain ten pounds eating butter-based food and contemplate pretty cows. And I may do some writing, hopefully....
My question to you dear readers is what would you like while I'm gone:
A series of guest editors?
Noel?
Me sporadically when I can connect?
Your choice:
http://eleganthack.com/gleanings/archives/00000011.shtml
Oh, I'm also going to Chicago for work from Monday to Wednesday. any advise on fun stuff to do in the eve, or on a Wednesday afternoon? I'm gonna mostly be on my own there, so love to know how a gal should waste her time...
Posted by christina on Friday, 05/11/01 09:20 AM CST
DESIGN MATTERS
Congrats nadav, for getting second place in the 5K contest!
This is a truly lovely work.
http://www.the5k.org/description.asp/entry_id=604
~~~
and Betsy sends me more type sites! Woo hoo!
"So, here are a couple of sites I didn't see mentioned in your paean to
typography.
http://www.itcfonts.com/itc/ulc/
Not my favorite site design, but lots of nuts-and-bolts type info with a
focus on type designers
http://www.letterror.com/index.html
Nice site from the Netherlands
http://www.gmund.com/gmund_neu/start.php
A really beautiful site for a paper company that breaks a lot of Web design
rules for typefaces and manages to get away with it."
Posted by christina on Friday, 05/11/01 09:19 AM CST
USABILITY MATTERS
So happy to have found this again: Keith Instone explains how to apply heuristics to the web
~~~
Rowley, David E., and Rhoades, David G. "The Cognitive Jogthrough: A Fast-Paced User Interface Evaluation Procedure.'' CHI `92 Proceedings, (May 3-7, 1992): 389-395.
Posted by christina on Friday, 05/11/01 09:18 AM CST
IA MATTERS
What is Audio Design?
by Gavin Shepherd, with Stephen Turbek
This report is a discussion of the issues regarding using audio elements and sound tracks in modern interactive environments.
http://reports.razorfish.com/frame.html?rr049_audio (PDF)
Posted by christina on Friday, 05/11/01 09:17 AM CST
MARKETING MATTERS
"Focus groups should be dumped. Instead, real customers should be observed
in real settings."
Business 2.0: Not Forcing the Issue. (via tomalak.org)
An increasing number of companies are turning to their online user communities to help them build and sustain their brands. The motivation is simple. It's an opportunity to create all-important buzz and disseminate information to their core base of users-with virtually no marketing costs.
Posted by christina on Friday, 05/11/01 09:16 AM CST
EVENT
eNarrative 3
Hypertext Narrative Flash Time:
San Francisco, CA, USA
June 16-17, 2001
"The role of narrative in Web experience is a pressing concern throughout the Web world, from entertainment to ecommerce. While new technologies for hypertext and web-based motion graphics promise to bring powerful narrative experiences to the Web, the reality is not so rosy: engaging web narrative is still hard to find, and commercial motion graphics have largely failed to merge sophisticated interaction with compelling storytelling."
http://www.enarrative.org/
Posted by christina on Friday, 05/11/01 09:16 AM CST
APROPOS OF NOTHING
Excerpts from "USA So Weird! The Foreigner's Guide to America."
"Restaurants that combine food and entertainment are an American specialty. You've probably heard of such famous American establishments as Planet Hollywood and the Hard Rock Cafe, where you can enjoy a variety of fried foods underneath Jean-Claude Van Damme's underpants or Neal Schon's guitar. Many large cities have "fifties"-themed diners, where you can be transported back in time to a more innocent era where hamburgers cost nine dollars."
http://modernhumorist.com/mh/0105/guide/
~~~
Went to biggerhand to catch up on how Henry's doing. you should too.
http://www.biggerhand.com/henry/2001/henry050601.html
I think may 5th was aimed at me....
~~~
Blogging wears folks out.
http://www.camworld.com/
~~~
So my sister said, "I got 37 hits last week!" If you have a second, click through and see if we can give her 38 this week
http://www.stylewithsubstance.com
Actually you may like her content... she is a terrific writer. Though I'm a little concerned about this shoe-obsession she has.
Posted by christina on Friday, 05/11/01 09:15 AM CST
Wednesday, May 9, 2001
Gleanings: Just my type
OPENING THANG
Still busy, though I am occasionally sneaking off to add a blog entry here and there. I finally solved the a-list mystery, thanks to Anil. Check out the blog for the story.
Now I need something new to obsess about. I'm thinking it might be typography...
I love type. I think I feel about type the way hetmen feel about women. I don't understand it, am incredibly drawn to it, fascinated by it, can stare at lovely type for hours.... I download font after font only to choke when the time comes to use them, and I end up choosing Tahoma over and over again (no, I can't explain my weird Tahoma fetish) for print and Verdana online. I suppose it's time to look for a typography class.
Some recent type-sites I've been exploring
netstar
and netstar's freshfont
Lines & Splines http://www.linesandsplines.com/
And Chad writes:
"before I fall asleep, here is the beautiful weblog I promised:
http://www.textism.com/
and here are two great examinations of typography:
http://www.textism.com/writing/
http://www.textism.com/textfaces/ "
DESIGN MATTERS
tired of the 216 and need more colors? get more crayons
http://morecrayons.com
the return of psychedelia (via metafilter.com)
http://www.larrycarlson.com/
http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/7556
Hobo Signs (via giantant.com/antenna/)
http://www.worldpath.net/~minstrel/hobosign.htm
The iconic language of the hobo
IA MATTERS
RE: Cory Doctorow. (via tomalak.org)
"The idea is that you have a folder on your desktop, you put some things in it you like, and it will fill up with things that you'll probably like. It figures out what you'll probably like by finding peers in the network who have taste similar to you and telling you what they think is good." dude!
http://www.feedmag.com/templates/default.php3?a_id=1703
BLOG OF THE DAY
In that "html chic" category of cool designs + lots of humorous little insights accompanying the links.
http://www.loxosceles.org/
USABILITY MATTERS
Statistical Research: Pop-ups more noticeable and more annoying
"Internet users are far more likely to notice pop-up ads than banners,
but they are even more likely to be annoyed by the pop-up ads."
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905356725&rel=true
Business 2.0: Better Data Brings Better Sales. (via tomalak.org)
Jakob Nielsen. B-to-B sites often try to get away with approximate pricing, because of the assumption that the two companies will meet in person to negotiate. Even so, users still like detailed price information that discloses how much each feature or option will cost.
MARKETING MATTERS
Darwin Magazine: Do You Really Need a Customer Czar? (via tomalak.org)
"Some top execs can't imagine life without a CCO; skeptics contend that for many organizations, creating another seat at the boardroom table could very well be a recipe for disaster. Does your company need a CCO? Or is this a management fad you'll want to take a pass on?"
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/050101/czar_content.html
TECH MATTERS
prepackaged css layouts. via kirk (morecrayons.com)
BlueRobot's Layout Reservoir has some elegant examples of CSS layouts:
http://www.bluerobot.com/web/layouts/
Glish.com has some cool layouts too:
http://www.glish.com/css/home.asp
As does the Noodle Incident:
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/boxes.html "
Noodle is dropdead gorgeous, btw...
NEWS & COMMENTARY
Some of dot-com jobless having fun
"Valerie Hoecke, at age 28 already a weary veteran of the dot-com world, is now focusing her time and energy on something new: rock climbing." Go Val!
Spam vengeance feels oddly satisfying; a simple click costs spam software companies from a few pennies to a few dollars.
http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/7560
CommerceNet: Most ecommerce firms outsource work
"Almost three-quarters of ecommerce-enabled companies are currently
outsourcing, or planning to outsource, parts of their work."
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905356711&rel=true
APROPOS OF NOTHING
thank god for geocities.
http://www.geocities.com/asianprince213/
AND FINALLY
Adam of V-2 writes:
"Excellent, and I mean AMAZING, article in James Gleick's "Best American Science Writing 2000." It's not available online (believe me, I looked), but it's worth picking up the book for. (Anyway, the book also has a piece by *The Onion*, so you know you can't go wrong.)
The article in question is called "When Doctors Makes Mistakes," by Atul Gawande, and while it sounds like a FOX TV special, it is a compassionate and surprisingly deep inquiry into task and failure analysis where "failure" is literally a matter of life and death.
Gawande deals with "latent errors" built into systems which assume human infallibility, cascades of trivial errors in complex systems leading to systemic failure, critical-incident analysis, and the search for the elusive sixth sigma of quality.
It's not IA precisely, but just exactly 'cause it comes at IA-centric issues perpendicularly, it sheds some innaresting light on our concerns. It's fascinating to see, for example, how long it took relatively trivial human-factors insights to be accepted even in truly mission-critical areas like anesthesiology. And anesthesiology adopted these insights far ahead of the rest of the medical/surgical profession!
Anyway, I think it's worth a shout-out to your readers...
Plus, as you know, v-2.org has been nominated for a Chrysler Design Award, further information regarding which may be found at
http://www.chryslerdesignawards.com
I am of course near-mute with gratitude and amazement."
Congrats Adam!
Posted by christina on Wednesday, 05/09/01 09:17 AM CST
Monday, May 7, 2001
Gleanings: How do you want to waste your time today?
OPENING THANG
Still very busy, but stole a couple hours to do some tweaks on EH, including tidying up the links page, adding a couple new articles to the article collection, and some rather odd navel gazing on my blog. Oh, and after moaning and complaining about how much I didn't care about Netscape, I changed the front page again so it'll work on that red-headed stepchild of a browser.
I worked this weekend, and how did I take breaks? By stretching and jogging into the park? No! Why would I leave my computer...
seeking the a-list
IA MATTERS
The Lost Chapter of Inmates (via equency.com)
"What we have managed to accomplish in just a couple of decades is the complete transformation of every business relationship from a natural, interpersonal, human one to one that is defined, modulated, constrained, and tainted by computer software. "
Visual Design for Instructional Content (Part II) (also via equency.com)
"The second part of the article explores the use of comics as instructional content with specific reference to the work of comics creator and theoretician Scott McCloud. "
Further Reflections on Information Architecture
"Discussed here:
What is IA?
Information Architecture != Architecture
Who Develops the Information Architecture?
Stop Whining About Marketing--Become Marketing!"
The URL as an Interface
"URLs should be simple, concise, and designed to last forever - reflecting the page's content and hiding the implementation. "
Found a new IA blog
DESIGN MATTERS
Dalliance is a family of 9 fonts inspired by the elegant handwriting on an antique map depicting a battle that took place at Ostrach, southwest Germany, in 1799.
For more information, click here
Set sample text in Dalliance
TypeCon2001
Make plans to attend the third annual typography conference of the Society of Typographic Aficionados (SoTA).
USABILITY MATTERS
Who Is 'The User' Anyway?
"No site or application has one single group of users who share the same attributes. On the contrary, there are likely to be a number of distinct user types, each of which will have differing expectations and work patterns. Good interface design will cater for as many of these groups as possible, whilst of course reflecting the different priority the business may accord them. "
APROPOS OF NOTHING
Okay, I think this trend has gone too far...
Sephora.com Givenchy Fragrance (via noisebetweenstations.com)
UK adverts complained about... naughty!
return of a classic:
haiku error messages
Posted by christina on Monday, 05/07/01 08:59 AM CST
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