Reloade Journal - RSS 2.0

Carolyn Snyder on Paper Prototyping in the design process

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 12:40:43 +0000

An interview by UIE's Ashley McKee with Carolyn Snyder, the author of the definitive 2003 book, Paper Prototyping.

It's an interesting read and anyone new to paper prototyping will find it useful on areas of what the technique is, who can use it, and how it's beneficial to the design process.

An interview with Larry Cornett, Yahoo Director of User Experience Design

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 11:57:09 +0000

I do like the concept that you have with the information scent, the semantic mapping. I think it definitely ties into the mental model that a user has when they approach search and they are doing a query. They're looking for things that come back to match what they have on their mind, what they are looking for in the results, so the more they actually see those search terms and things they are having in their mind, in terms of what they're expecting to see, the more relevant the search is going to be for them.

Reference: An interview by Gord Hotchkiss of SearchEngineLand

A quote from Bill Moggridge's new book Designing Interactions

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 14:19:10 +0000

Artists and designers are trained to use the language of explicit meanings to a rich communicative element over and above direct functional communication. If we only design with the function of something, not what it also communicates, we risk our designs being misinterpreted. Worst, we waste an opportunity to enhance everyday life.

Fitt's law and the new Office 2007 interface

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 18:33:54 +0000

I came across a really interesting blog post by Jensen Harris, on Fitt's law and new Microsoft Office "Ribbon" user interface.

Fitts' law is a model of human movement, predicting the time required to rapidly move from a starting position to a final target area, as a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target. Fitts' law is used to model the act of pointing, both in the real world, for example, with a hand or finger and on computers, for example, with a mouse. It was published by Paul Fitts in 1954.
Reference: Wikipedia on Fitt's Law

My Presentation on Digital UK from EuroIA 2006 in Berlin

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 17:39:05 +0000

I've managed to upload my powerpoint slides from EuroIA in Berlin earlier this year on Slideshare. I've embedded it below,

What is etymology and folk-etymology?

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 19:15:25 +0000

Etymology is the study of the origins of words. Through old texts and comparison with other languages, etymologists reconstruct the history of words - when they entered a language, from what source, and how their form and meaning changed.

Reference: Wikipedia's definition of Etymology, viewed 10 September 2006.

What is a backronym? and its relation to the word acronym

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 16:17:03 +0000

A backronym or bacronym is a type of acronym that begins as an ordinary word, and is later interpreted as an acronym.

The word "backronym" is a portmanteau of back and acronym, and was coined in 1983. [1] The term is also used for a new set of words put to an existing acronym (e.g. "advanced research projects agency" → "arpa" → "address routing and parameters area").

An acronym is a word created from the initial letters of a phrase: for example, Random Access Memory becomes RAM, pronounced as the word "ram".

Reference: Wikipedia's definition of Backronym, viewed 10 September 2006

Peter Morville, keynote speaker at EuroIA in Berlin September, 2006

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 22:44:54 +0000

This year's European IA summit in Berlin, to be held on the weekend of Sept 30 - Oct 1, 2006, looks to be one of this year's not-to-be-missed conferences for the User Experience (UX) & Information Architecture (IA) community here in Europe.

With some of Europe's most respected, brightest and talented professionals presenting & attending, I am truly thankful to have been given the opportunity to present my work with Grand Union whilst here in London.

I will write a little more leading up to the conference on my presentation, but head over to the EuroIA website now, Register and read up on the Summit Programme, all the Presenters & Speakers, and the Poster sessions during this year's conference.

An interview with Barry Schwartz by Jared M. Spool

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 21:25:43 +0000

UIE's Jared M. Spool has recently had the opportunity to speak with Professor Barry Schwartz about his research on how people make choices, his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less and as a lead up to the forthcoming User Interface 11 Conference.

A podcast of the interview can also be found on the Brain Sparks blog.

A 360 degree capture of North Italy in July 2006

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 23:59:45 +0000

Last month my sister visited from Oz, and we had the opportunity to head over to Italy for the first time. It was amazing, this 360 degree stitched photo is from a village in the heart of Tuscani a few hours drive from Parma. :)

A larger version can also be found in my Flickr site.

Programme for OZ-IA conference in Sydney (Sept 2006)

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 22:16:40 +0000

Following my previous post on the OZ-IA conference in Sydney next month, the conference programme has now been announced with some exciting practical sessions.

Eric Scheid forwared me an e-mail with details of the conference back home in Sydney. :)

IBM User Experience Technical Report: Inside Social Network Analysis

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 18:04:57 +0000

I came across this interesting article the other day, whilst doing a little research at work on Social Networking. The paper titled, Inside Social Network Analysis, is a technical report from October 1995 by IBM, Kate Ehrlich, Inga Carboni on Collaboration, Social networks, SNA, knowledge management, organizations, and UCINet.

Morning coastline in Cinque Terre, Italy :)

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:23:58 +0000

CINQUE TERRE! Some Flickr photos from Italy last week

Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:11:18 +0000

There is always something amazing visiting new places in Europe. Cinque Terre in Italy, is one place you completely fall in love with! :)

ENGAGE! - The 20th BCS HCI Group conference

Sat, 08 Jul 2006 15:53:22 +0000

ENGAGE! the 20th BCS HCI Group conference will be held on the 11-15 September 2006 at Queen Mary, University of London.

Engage and be engaged in an exciting conference in London's East End. For the first time, the HCI conference is engaging with six core themes. These themes capture some of the established favourite ideas in the community as well as suggest new collaborations and approaches.

Oz-IA 2006 Conference, Sydney (September)

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 16:18:43 +0000

Eric Scheid forwarded me an email on the forthcoming OZ-IA conference in Sydney later this year. :) It's great to hear this conference is happening back home!

I remember (while living & working in Sydney a few years ago) there seemed to be a funny feeling inside of you that felt we (us Aussies) were a little behind everything happening in North America & Europe. Although this was more a perception thing than anything else, in reality, our thinking and problem solving skills dealt with a different market, region and cultures.

There are some brilliant and incredibly smart people back home! It's fantastic to see an IA conference like this in Sydney. and OZ. It should be awesome!

3 types of Breadcrumbs

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 10:17:38 +0000

Hal Shubin has posted a summary on the ACM CHI-WEB forum about 3 different types of Breadcrumbs,

Path: Shows the pages you clicked on.

Location: The place in the information hierarchy where the current page fits or is stored.

Attribute: A set of meta-information describing the page.

Creating a tag cloud (weighted list) observations.

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 20:30:32 +0000

A reloade wallpaper titled 2K1, from 2001

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 22:42:27 +0000

Papers from the Multimodal User Interaction Workshop 2005

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:28:36 +0000

Papers presented at the NICTA-HCSNet Multimodal User Interaction Workshop 2005, MMUI 2005, Sydney, Australia.

Don Norman receives Benjamin Franklin Medal for UCD

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:37:02 +0000

The 2006 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer & Cognitive Science is awarded to Donald Norman for the development of the field of user-centered design, which utilizes our understanding of how people think to develop technologies designed to be easily usable.

Donald Norman believes that everyday things need not wreak havoc in our lives. Instead, he likes things that make us smile, things that we can use gracefully the very first time. His goal is to make the interplay between science and application extremely productive, with machines designed so well we do not think about them as machines.

The Design Observer is redesigned

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 15:33:05 +0000

I was revisiting some archived links of mine and I noticed that the Design Observer had been redesigned. It's a nice read :)

Eye tracking experiences by Seth Godin

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 10:47:17 +0000

Paul Love from work forward this great blog post by Seth Godin on his experiences from Eye Tracking.

I think websurfing is a hunting activity. The eye is looking for anamolies, for things that don't belong. (That might be why the word anomaly, spelled wrong in the previous sentence, got your focus). Once our peripheral vision confirms that something is familiar, we can ignore it and just worry about the new stuff. Squidoo is stuffed with new stuff (nearly all our visitors are first-time visitors) and so, for example, there's almost no focus on our Google AdWords. That's because they're familiar.

NASA's Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment

Wed, 31 May 2006 14:37:02 +0000

Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment

Since the dawn of the space age, unmanned spacecraft have flown blind with little or no ability to make autonomous decisions based on the content of the data they collect. The Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment (ASE) will fly onboard the Earth Observing-1 mission in 2003. The ASE software uses onboard continuous planning, robust task and goal-based execution, and onboard machine learning and pattern recognition to radically increase science return by enabling intelligent downlink selection and autonomous retargeting. This software will demonstrate the potential for space missions to use onboard decision-making to detect, analyze, and respond to science events, and to downlink only the highest value science data.

A BBC news article on ASE.

Recordings from the IA Summit Redux in Washington, DC

Mon, 22 May 2006 14:48:33 +0000

Livia Labate has uploaded recording from the discussions in last weeks IA Summit 2006 Redux sessions. Here are a few recordings with the discussions:

1. IA Summit Redux Part 1 (70 MB) - Intro and Summit overview with Dan Brown, tag discussion with James Melzer.
2. IA Summit Redux Part 2 (40 MB) - Wireframes and Deliverables with Nathan Curtis (and many interruptions by Livia, ha).

3. IA Summit Redux Part 3 (65 MB) - Web 2.0 with Shelley Price, Theory with Olga Howard, International IA (brief) with Stacy Surla, final wrap up with Dan Brown.

Referential and Experiential blog user groups

Thu, 18 May 2006 10:46:17 +0000

An interesting discussion and blog post about two identified types of blog users.

1. Referential
2. Experiential

It's interesting because when building blog and personalisation areas to websites, we can now identify these user types, their use of a blog and engage the User Experience in a particular way that enhances Community Building.

MapCruncher: Interactive Web Maps Come to Life

Thu, 18 May 2006 10:19:03 +0000

MapCruncher - a prototype technology from Microsoft Research that makes it easy for users to create their own, personalized mash-ups - may revolutionize the way people use online maps.

An excerpt from a Microsoft press release.

The success of YouTube and MySpace

Wed, 17 May 2006 10:28:46 +0000

The secret to success is to make everything one-button easy, then get out of the way. If you think collaborative architecture matters more, Flickr, Digg and del.icio.us have plateaued with audiences ... Photos, news, and other people's bookmarks just aren't as interesting as bootleg TV... The easier it gets to use, the less geeky the Net becomes, and the more it starts to look like real life.

Flickr goes Gamma from an earlier Beta version

Tue, 16 May 2006 21:34:23 +0000

I was revisiting my Flickr account today to explore interestingness when I noticed that some of the interface had changed. It was a breath of refreshing air to see how much Flickr had improved. Have a look yourself by visiting the homepage.

IA Summit 06 Redux

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 17:26:58 +0000

According to recent academic and business research, there is an enormous wave of people on its way to adulthood that may very well take us by surprise. And while many designers may be aware of this, we still face the challenge of making it clear to our clients and stake-holders.

This afternoon (5pm London local time) I attended the online presentation by Andrew Hinton here in the offices at work at Grand Union. It was a very engaging and topical presentation which was a repeat to a session presented at the IA-Summit in Vancouver in March earlier this year.

Andrew Hinton delivered his presentation using screen sharing software and a call line.