James Cooper August 25th, 2008
I probably shouldn’t admit online that I’ve never really been a big fan of social networking site. Frankly, I feel that they all get so cluttered with distractions that they lose their value pretty quickly. I have had accounts on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and a few others but rarely check them out - I guess mostly because I feel that I don’t have the time to cut through the chaff to get to the wheat.
Then I met Twitter… I was pretty convinced that Twitter was another waste of time and just another way for the self-obsessed to say “hey look at me”. Then I tried it and decided it has some good uses after all. Initially, I got it setup so that a friend on a road trip could post her progress to all of our friends without having to find someplace to send an e-mail from. Then I just started randomly posting what I was up to as a sort of online journal to myself. And eventually, a couple weeks ago, I tied the tweets into my Facebook accounts and this blog. While I was in New Orleans on a family emergency last week I found out that at least one friend keeps track of me via Facebook - an account I rarely check but now update by default when posting a tweet.
Of course, one side affect of having an identifiable account and of having it post to so many places is that I need to watch what I say. At one point I accidentally did a public reply that was none too polite and certainly not the type of copy you may want to have a potential employer or account come across…
James Cooper August 14th, 2008
Wow.
Just came across this today on Gizmodo. As someone who fancies themselve’s a photographer and a UX Designer, this is pretty cool. Basically, the folks at the UW and Microsoft put together an application that works with photo collections to create “3-D” photo tourism experiences. You’ll have to see it to appreciate it.
Personally, I love shooting long exposure photos to capture activity in a scene. For the most part this tends to render people only partially or as a blur (unless I use a strobe). What I like about this application is the sense of activity created by seeing random photos featuring random people streamed into a single experience.
James Cooper August 12th, 2008
I have to admit that I love maps. I suppose that it makes sense that someone with a linguistics degree has an interest in seeing where in the world stuff is but its really the “new” interactive features that I love.
Recently I’d had an opportunity to spec out a project for a client in which we’d use some pretty simply “off the shelf” features to build a very informative Google map. I was impressed with how much data can be displayed via the API and how easily. In this case it was for a major film festival where we wanted folks to walk out of the theatre and make a last minute plan to see their next film. Of course they’d need theater locations and all that but the ability to show them bus routes, position on the route, walking time/distance, etc.. were all great ways to get someone to decide that they could catch another film.
I just remembered an old just-for-fun-project I’d done an eternity ago (4 years) in which I did an overlay from my Garmin GPS onto some forest service maps. It took a few steps and a bit of wrangling to get it to work out the way I wanted but now it would take next to nothing. In particular GPS Visualizer is a nice online tool to help make some pretty cool maps for visualizing a variety of information. Not all of them are “click and save” - meaning they take a little work - but they are still all relatively simple.
I need to start making some maps!
James Cooper August 11th, 2008
I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve managed to stay involved with the Masters of Science in Information Management program since graduating with the first cohort. Mike Crandal, the program Chair, has remained a valuable contact and a helpful reference throughout the years.
Last spring I was invited to present to the graduating daytime program regarding IA as a career and just what can be done with it. Of course, there are a million possible things to say as there are any number of ways to use the knowledge learned in the program. I took the opportunity to give a fairly minimalist presentation in which I discussed the IA’s role as part counselor, interpreter, partner, and sleuth. Fortunately, it was well received and put me in contact with several up and coming IA or UX folks.
This Fall I’ve been invited back but this time instead of meeting them as they get ready to graduate it will be in one of the first classes of the program. I’ve only got an hour to impart my “wisdom” of just what an IA does (or at least what I do) and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of it!
James Cooper August 7th, 2008
I don’t claim to be the genius who thought of it but I’ve been getting a lot of mileage out of this approach lately.
After attending a UIE conference in San Diego last year I started to think a lot about the phrase Elegant (or Graceful) Degradation and its counterpart Progressive Enhancement. I’ve found that the concept of Elegant Degradation can be quite damaging if taken as the view as the best way to think about making user experiences accessible to all.
What I mean by that is that rather than creating the “killer app” and then dumbing it down (aka taking away features) we need to take the Progressive Enhancement approach by thinking about the best lowest common denominator experience and then piling the “sexy” on top of it.
As I thought about it more, I equated the two to Afterthought and Forethought. Elegant Degradation reeks of afterthought to me. “Here’s a killer app, now how can we make it work for users without <insert technology here>?” By applying a little forethought, or Progressive Enhancement, we can attempt to ensure that a site, application, or any experience scales UP nicely rather than trying to pare it DOWN to meet user needs.
This next part may seem controversial or heretical to some but a colleague and I were just comparing this approach to how Vista was delivered to the public. Vista has all kinds of sexy and exciting visualization features that work really well on the right computer. However, if your computer isn’t “the right computer” the experience can be pretty painful out of the box.
Run the install or unpack the computer and you get hyper slow visualizations and the potential for crashes until the USER slowly turns off the unnecessary features. This puts the user in the position of having to be in charge of their own “elegant” degradation when all they really wanted was to type a document, check their e-mail or surf the web.
After saying all that, it’s probably good that comments are disabled on this blog for now!
James Cooper August 7th, 2008
A colleague pointed out this site to me recently. I can’t say that it is full of best practices samples but it does provide some nice inspiration when feeling a little need for creative ideas.
The 404 error pages are some of my favorites…
James Cooper August 6th, 2008
Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPhone. I seriously can’t believe how much I use it for e-mail and Web browsing every single day - its completely changed my usage habits toward my “real” computer. I find myself contemplating how it will impact my work as an IA or UX “something” nearly every day.
However, no matter how great the sales volume is for Apple, I marvel at Steve Jobs’ ability to generate excitement around what are relatively minimal numbers. Sure, in comparison to how many laptops Apple could sell in a weekend, a million iPhones is incredible. But just to put it into perspective compare it to Nokia’s sales stats for the year: Apple, 4 million iPhones last year; Nokia 110 million N93i model phones sold last year with a grand total of 440 million phones sold last year all together!
James Cooper August 6th, 2008
I read this article from Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox a few weeks back but it was brought to my attention again today. What was most interesting to me about it this time around was that I had just had a conversation with a client about the relative importance of their homepage versus the content pages deeper in the site. In this case, the homepage is really just a landing page to drive the user further into the site to either donate money, get involved, or buy a ticket to an event. Many of the visitors to this site won’t even see the homepage as they come through opt-in direct mail they receive. Of course, the homepage is important but it isn’t the most important nor will it create the strongest impression of all pages within the site.
James Cooper July 29th, 2008
As this field begins to reach maturity, it is interesting to see what others have to say about where they find themselves in their careers. If you are a “Web Professional” you may wish to participate in this year’s survey as well.
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Spread the word!
Let your colleagues know about the survey. Download a handy banner, upload it to your website, and link to:
http://alistapart.com/articles/survey2008
James Cooper October 30th, 2007
Information Architecture is all about relevance. It’s about finding the things that matter—the things you and your team need to make connections, make decisions, and make a difference. It’s about the right person getting to the right thing at the right time. But it’s more than simple efficiency—information architecture transforms facts into insights by organizing content so it fits the way you and your team think. Finding relevant material becomes intuitive. That pays off with people spending more time acting on information, instead of searching for it. The result: less frustration and greater productivity, because people are working with relevant information more often.
From The Information Architecture Institute