{User Experience, Information Architecture & Other Obsessions}

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Linkosophy

April 15th, 2008 · 4 Comments · Uncategorized

I finally uploaded Linkosophy on SlideShare.
Or you can download the 6 MB PDF version.
(Thanks to David Fiorito for compressing it down from its formerly gigantic size!)
Giving this talk at the IA Summit was a blast; I’m so grateful for the positive response, and the patience with these still-forming ideas.
If you’re after […]

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Personas and the Role of Design Docs up at B&A

February 27th, 2008 · No Comments · Uncategorized

So, my article is up… thanks to all the excellent editors who pushed me to finish the dang thing over the last seven months. Procrastination is a fine art, my friends.
Personas and the Role of Design Documentation - Boxes and Arrows
Here’s a nugget:
A persona document can be very useful for design—and for some […]

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The Cultivation Equation for Social Design (Part 1)

February 25th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Information Architecture

Note: This is something I had embedded in a few very long presentations from last year, and I’m realizing it would probably be useful (to me if nobody else) to elaborate on it as its own topic. Here’s the first part.

There’s a lot of writing and thinking happening around the best approaches to designing […]

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A Quick Reminder about IA’s Role in Social Design

February 20th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Information Architecture

There’s been a lot of talk over the last couple of years about a collective Eureka moment where we’ve all come to realize that the Internet, the Web, and designing User Experiences for those platforms, is “really about People … not products and information.”
I think it’s great that more folks are coming to this […]

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Kelly - Bottum-Up Not Enough

February 20th, 2008 · No Comments · Information Architecture

Kevin Kelly’s article Bottom Up is Not Enough is making the rounds, and rightly so. Here’s a snippet:
Here’s how I sum it up: The bottom-up hive mind will always take us much further than even seems possible. It keeps surprising us in this regard. Given enough time, dumb things can be smarter than […]

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Random thoughts on Space, Rules, Play & IA

January 29th, 2008 · 3 Comments · Information Architecture

I haven’t written here in many weeks, but it’s not because I’m not writing.
Lately, though, my thoughts have been too fractured to coalesce into anything that felt like a real blog post. I’m now realizing, however, that they never will unless I unclog the cognitive drain, as it were.
So, this post, in a […]

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Facebook Dystopia

January 29th, 2008 · No Comments · Information Architecture

I’m sick of Facebook. The noise and annoyance, the confusing permissions, the beta-intrusions into privacy and the rest are bad enough.
But what really chafes me about it is the Facebook Apps framework. I’m in full agreement with this post about Facebook, except that I’m not going to blame the developers that much.
The developers […]

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Flourishing, Friending & the Evolution of “Social”

December 7th, 2007 · 3 Comments · Uncategorized

As networked social applications mature, they’re evolving more nuanced ways of constructing and maintaining an identity. Two of the major factors in online identity are How you present yourself, and Who you know.
How you present yourself: “Flourishing”
Flourishing is how we ornament ourselves and display ourselves to others. Think of peacocks flourishing their tail-feathers. […]

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Innovation: tinkering, failing & imagining

October 22nd, 2007 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized

I like this column by Nicholas Taleb. I haven’t read his book (The Black Swan) but now I think I might.
I’m more and more convinced that this ineffable activity called “innovation” is merely the story we user after the fact, to help ourselves feel like we understand what happened to bring that innovation about. […]

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Joi Ito on Content vs. Conversation

September 5th, 2007 · No Comments · Information Architecture

Joi Ito, back in March, posted from the Game Developers Conference, where he is going to be doing a talk on the topic of “More than MMOs: Let Them Build It. How user-created content has transformed online games into a new web platform.” (Wish I could hear that talk! It’s one of my favorite things-to-obsess-upon, […]

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Where’s my Graffiti?

August 8th, 2007 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized

There’s been a bit thread on the IxDA list about patents in design, and Apple’s Gesture system, and whether or not it’s good or bad that Apple is patenting something that seems like it may fare better as an open standard.
I have mixed feelings about it, and it touches on some things that I’ve […]

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DJ K-Dub Nails It

August 3rd, 2007 · 4 Comments · Uncategorized

A lovingly eviscerating graphic design parody. From Kyle Webster. (Based in Winston-Salem, NC)

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