User Experience & Design
12 Feb 2011
It used to be the axiom on the Web that "content is king," but the king has a new rival. The best sites do not just placidly provide content to a passive audience, but engage that audience to help create and explore content through online tools or "apps." Applications are...
4 Dec 2010
A few months ago, my colleague Brian provided an introduction to Card Sorting. Card Sorting is an Information Architect’s tool used to help organize a site based on how real world users think about organizing information. If you’re unfamiliar with the specifics of card sorting, I...
3 Aug 2010
On a recent project, the internal project team found success in documenting functional specifications in a Google Document, as show below:
The benefits of this process included:
Detailed functional specifications that 1) can be implemented, 2) provide a positive user experience, and 3) will...
26 May 2010
I love my Subaru. I've driven it with no issues for about seven years. (BRB - going to knock on wood.) Despite my love, there are two design flaws that have driven me nuts throughout the duration of those seven years. (Disclaimer: I drive a 2004 Subaru. These features may have been updated on newer...
10 May 2010
Joshua Porter's Designing for the Social Web
I attended the Information Architecture Summit in Phoenix, Arizona, back in April 2010. The IA Summit is the premier gathering place for information architects and other UX professionals. This was the 11th IA Summit, and it included Dan Roam...
16 Feb 2010
On January 23, Forum One sponsored UXCampDC, an unconference focused on all things user experience-related attracting close to 100 practitioners from the DC metro area. From Forum One, we had Suzanne Rainey, Brian Verhoeven, Courtney Clark, Matt Humphrey, Kate Bogh and myself. The...
4 Feb 2010
In a session entitled "Tabula Rasa - Methods for jumping into UI Design" at the recently held User Experience Camp in Washington (#uxcampdc), Brian Talbot lead us in a discussion on starting with a blank slate. A number of great ideas came out of that discussion. Since I really enjoy...
25 Nov 2009
On November 5, a group of web executives around the DC area joined us to hear 4 speakers share their stories and strategies to get return visitors. And boy did we learn a lot!
Michael Edson kicked off the session speaking about how the Smithsonian developed a new strategy to reposition...
17 Oct 2009
Today, I attended Public Media Camp in DC to hear/discuss with locals how Public Media + Social Media trends are shifting. Daniel Jacobson from NPR held a session on NPR's API. With a goal of publishing NPR content through various channels, opening up the API and building NPR.org on top of it has...
2 Dec 2008
Keith LaFerriere published an interesting article today on A List Apart about communicating the value of Information Architecture (IA) to clients, and outlining deliverables by phases.
Keith does a thorough job of outlining the various deliverables that are produced in sequence, and incorporates a...
