Contemporary information management offers this sage advice

Redesigning Your Corporate Site

Among the many variables in how to approach renovating existing business or customer facing websites, there are three top level considerations:
1. Information
2. Functionality
3. Look and Feel

What you sell drives your website’s look and feel. What your customers need to do on your website or with their information drives your site’s functionality. Because you sell entertainment and communication your site can be as lively, vigorous, and exciting as wished, as long as it presents the information your customers seek, in a way that is easy to find. It can even be said that

“Beauty Communicates.” “Good design adds value faster than it adds cost.”

“The Motorola RAZR is now selling at a rate of about four million units each month -- 1.5 per second. If Motorola spends another $million or two improving the design, they can make it back in a day.”

Your competitors are companies such as Comcast and ATT. In particular ATT is doing a great job communicating with their customer base in an organized and friendly way. They have probably performed a great deal of research around the look and feel, and it only makes sense to adapt what they learned where it is appropriate to your firm.

First let’s talk about how to make decisions, how to make sure they are the right ones. Then find out what some experts advice, and do a walk through your site to contrast and compare to ATT’s website, and gather relevant ideas along the way.
Customers and Business Intelligence
The most important place to begin is with the customer, and discovering what they need or want through a Business Intelligence process.

Business Intelligence’s goals are three main items -
• Making better decisions faster
• Converting data into information
• Using a rational approach to management

Business Intelligence advises us to make business decisions based on well-informed logic -- that will meet or exceed our goals. Many goals even when realized do not immediately make money, but they generally point in that direction, or are goals which uncover ways to help earn money or satisfy our customers. In the case of a website redesign, the governing discipline of user interface, application design, and related decision making is Information Management.

Measurement

You may also want to verify that the decisions made have a good return on investment by measuring them. The metrics of business intelligence which are useful and relevant to a decision, called key performance indicators (KPIs) are those things from which we may determine return on investment (ROI). On the Web this is related to Web analytics and conversion, which means the tracking data and relationship to customers buying your products or services. These are most interesting because they can be traced, and iteratively over time, improved.

“Key Performance Indicators” and “Return On Investment” are fancy phrases for how you know you are right. Measurement is what keeps the iterative practices pointed in the right directions.

Information Management

Contemporary information management offers this sage advice –
Every single decision about the strategy, content, and presentation of information on business websites (portals, intranet, and extranet sites) needs to be driven from a stated business goal. (Ironic - sounds just like Business Intelligence, doesn’t it?)

It is not possible to collect and evaluate all the relevant information required to make solid decisions at a reasonable price (time/effort), therefore reasonable inquiries, of the stakeholders, of the business goals, and of the end users needs are needed to create the strategies which most align with those business goals and objectives.

So how is this achieved? The process begins by collecting business objectives from the different stakeholders, including the primary actual end users of the information on these sites. Business goals and users end goals may not be exactly the same, or may even appear diametrically opposed, e.g.:
Users Goals
Business • Make Money
Add customers
Retain customers
Reduce support costs
Customer • Save Money
Get lots of usable stuff
Have Fun
Get information now
But the information collected can be used in a discovery process which shows us how to please both parties.

A fundamental information management design statement is

“Know your user ... and you are not your user.”

That last part is most important to designers and decision makers who may believe that they know what their end users want without asking them.

"You are not your end user."

The intention of such a whimsical and obvious fact is to help drive home the point that businesses must discover who their end users, that is, their customers are; what are their demographics: ages, genders, locations, etc? What are their wants, needs, limitations, communities? What are their languages, technical skill levels, attention span, interest level, and so forth?

For example, how many of your end users encounter accessibility issues online? Any of these things may be turned into a business advantage:

"Enabling accessible technology is a growth opportunity, it meets customer needs, and it's the right thing to do … As the Baby Boom generation ages, more and more people will face the challenges of reduced dexterity, vision, and hearing. So enabling accessible technology is a growth opportunity... “ Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft), 2001, Businessweek.com

You may inquire about your users in a variety of ways, but all of them include asking the customer for input or feedback, some even without them knowing.
• Amazon.com conducts a form of choice modeling , called A/B testing live on its site – does the user chose A or B?, which one the end user actually selects drives how the information about the product is presented. They have a large in-house UI design team.

• Premera.com (Blue Cross + Blue Shield insurance) meets in person with a selection of its end users, brokers for example, and asks them what they want. They contract with specialist companies to conduct usability testing.

• Classmates.com meets with end users and asks them in person among other things, if certain functionality was available would they pay for it?

• Microsoft uses a wide variety of things including extensive user interface testing, Web surveys, customer feedback forms, opt-in PII data and error collection. They outsource a great deal of their backend and UI design, and they have several internal usability teams
Why do companies do all this work to discover what the user wants and who they are?
The end user is king.

Knowing about the customer drives the business in their decision making. Business earns revenue from customers. If a business does not know their customer, they will not know what they need and want. Without this knowledge and the skill to use it they will not be able to conjure the means to effectively satisfy and ultimately attract and keep their customer.

Let’s bring this home with an example, say fixing dinner. What if you went to your folk’s house and your mom asked you to cook dinner, what would be your first step? Perhaps you would ask her, “What is available to cook?” You might crack open the refrigerator look in the cupboards, or even ask, “Who is coming to dinner?”, or “Will dad be home, does he want something grilled outside, do you think?”
What if you were staying at a friend’s house in Guadalajara, Mexico, with a Spanish speaker whose significant other is a vegetarian; would you ask more questions to begin with? Probably you would ask a lot more questions.

Now, imagine you are a professional cook and your income for the next year will depend solely on how well the people eating the dinner you are about to cook enjoyed it. Now what kinds of questions would you ask?

Aha! Things become serious, because your job and income are at stake. As a professional chief you want to know as much as possible in as short of a time frame as you can discover about your diners. Questions would include –
“How much time do I have to select the food, shop for and prepare it?”
“Do your customers have allergies, what are their favorite foods?”
“What are these people like, are they adventurers?”
“What do they do for a living, how old are they, youth, male, female, are they professional food critics?”
and so forth might be the kinds of detailed questions you would ask. If the manager offered you their cell number so you could call them directly and ask, it is very likely that you would.

Using Your Corporate Research
These same principles of inquiry that a cook uses to please their diners are used in user-centered design and development for your corporate site. Information that you have already gathered such as demographics of your customers, which pages receive the most hits, and what your business goals are for the future are all important things which we can use to help you make decisions on the look and feel, and functionality of your websites.

This is achieved by reasoning out who your customers are, gathering demographic and other information about them and from them, finding out what experts say, and investigating your competitor’s sites.

What Can Usability Advise?
There are experts in the field of usability and design that have studied thousands of websites and applications. What advice do they offer which may serve to inform your strategy?

In Web usability Jakob Nielsen is an acknowledged research leader because he has investigated so many sites, testing extensively in usability labs. Dr. Nielsen offers good advice about pitfalls to avoid:

The Top Ten Web Design Mistakes The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines
1. Legibility Problems
2. Non-Standard Links
3. Flash
4. Content That's Not Written for the Web
Writing for the Web means making content short, scannable, and to the point (rather than full of fluffy marketese). Web content should also answer users' questions and use common language rather than made-up terms.
5. Bad Search
6. Browser Incompatibility
7. Cumbersome Forms
8. No Contact Information or Other Company Info
9. Frozen Layouts with Fixed Page Widths
10. Inadequate Photo Enlargement
1. Emphasize what your site offers that's of value to users and how your services differ from those of key competitors
2. Use a liquid layout that lets users adjust the homepage size
3. Use color to distinguish visited and unvisited links
4. Use graphics to show real content, not just to decorate your homepage
5. Include a tag line that explicitly summarizes what the site or company does
6. Make it easy to access anything recently featured on your homepage
7. Include a short site description in the window title
8. Don't use a heading to label the search area; instead use a "Search" button to the right of the box
9. With statistics that change over time (stock quotes, etc), give the percentage of change, not just the points gained or lost
10. Don't include an active link to the homepage on the homepage

More importantly Dr. Nielsen also provides advice on what to do instead –

Top Ten Guidelines for Homepage Usability
Make the Site's Purpose Clear:
Explain Who You Are and What You Do
1. Include a One-Sentence Tagline
2. Write a Window Title with Good Visibility in Search Engines and Bookmark Lists
3. Group all Corporate Information in One Distinct Area
Help Users Find What They Need
4. Emphasize the Site's Top High-Priority Tasks
5. Include a Search Input Box
Reveal Site Content
6. Show Examples of Real Site Content
7. Begin Link Names with the Most Important Keyword
8. Offer Easy Access to Recent Homepage Features
Use Visual Design to Enhance, not Define, Interaction Design
9. Don't Over-Format Critical Content, Such as Navigation Areas
10. Use Meaningful Graphics Summary:
A company's homepage is its face to the world and the starting point for most user visits. Improving your homepage multiplies the entire website's business value, so following key guidelines for homepage usability is well worth the investment.
…
Homepages are the most valuable real estate in the world.
…
A homepage's impact on a company’s bottom line is far greater than simple measures of e-commerce revenues: The homepage is your company's face to the world. Increasingly, potential customers will look at your company's online presence before doing business with you -- regardless of whether they plan to close the actual sale online.

While these are presented as hard and fast rules, really they are guidelines and jumping off points for discussion which leads to making every single decision about the strategy, content, and presentation of information on your business websites - portals, intranet, and extranet sites -- driven from a stated business goal.

Information Design Advisor
Jesse James Garrett is an experience design and information architecture author who views things from the other side of the creative-
“Most people will tolerate a degree of impracticality in exchange for a measure of fun.”
”Trying to understand people by analyzing data is like trying to understand the shape of something by looking at its shadow.”

A Site Visit
Now let’s do a brief analysis of your sites, and compare and contrast to your competitor’s sites by using a plausible model, a persona, a use case, and a site visit. What can we learn?

Our persona, Gracie, is a bi-lingual woman in her forties, with a family. She is going to serve as the actor in a use case of visiting your site for the first time to shop for services. She speaks English and Spanish and has some college education, with a moderate amount of technical skills. Gracie wears glasses. She has queried on Google to find a local ISP, and may be interested in other services, such as phone. She likes her bills to be in one unified place, and she loves a deal. She has just come across your site through either that query, or clicked on an ad in a local link to the right. Here is what she finds.

The first thing Gracie noticed was the company logo, which she likes, it’s friendly and happy. After that your potential customer isn’t sure where to begin. The site appears visually cold and a bit dark – there is no personality. All the information on the main page has the same visual weight with the exception of the central ad. Since she isn’t interested in ads, but in information, so she avoids looking at them. This is unfortunate but typical behavior because the information presented in the large central dark advertisements is exactly what she needs to know.

The fonts are generally the same, and the presentation style does not include indents and other visual direction to lead her eyes. Gracie is used to the Web 2.0 look and feel so this site looks old fashioned, very dated to her. She skips over the large grey rectangle presenting “Order Services Online” because, again, it resembles an ad, and over “Check Your Service Availability” because the red is too bright and it reminds her of an onscreen error or warning. At first she just wants to poke around a little.

Gracie clicks a link under “Residential” and then sees a form, so she clicks the browser back and selects another link under “Residential”. No matter what she clicks under Residential these all lead to the same form. She is frustrated because she just wants to browse and get a little more information before typing in any information.

What she notices in one of the revolving ads, the word “for”. Gracie also notices for the first time that there is no option to turn on Spanish for the site, or to increase the font size so she may read it without glasses.

She wonders why so much of the text is red when she hasn’t yet clicked on it yet.

Her time is up on your site. Gracie is disappointed, because the site is not fun, upbeat or modern. It does not function as she expected. She can find stuff, because she doesn’t want to look any more.

This potential customer has not realized how great the prices are because she didn’t actually perceive them. Gracie did not find the information she was seeking about a unified bill because that key information was buried below the fold and between too many other things of the same scale. As Dr. Nielsen put it, as information foragers

“people like to get maximum benefit for minimum effort ... Progress must seem rapid enough to be worth the predicted effort required to reach the destination … your content [should] look like a nutritious meal and signal that it's an easy catch.”

Gracie has not been converted to your services, and will be lead away by the ease of using search. She immediately googles again for a local provider and discovers ATT.com.

Gracie happens to notice that this site can be displayed in Spanish, which is great because her husband prefers reading sites in Spanish! In the large central graphic she notices the link for Shop for Wireless, which combined with the picture makes her eager to click on it.

She is very pleased to see that she can get a free phone, so she clicks on the big image which reminds her of spring. It makes her feel good. The phones are well laid out and she actually loves pink – so she selects the Motarola Razr in Pink and adds the phone to her shopping cart, even though she came to the site expressly to get broadband for their new house.

Gracie decides to read the top questions online for advice of how to optimize her budget and just get one bill with all the services they need. The help file answers almost every question she has. Returning to the main page she obtains service costs and other information by choosing the “coverage viewer” link as was mentioned in the self-service online help file.

Now she decides to comparison shop with Comcast, which also turned up in her Google search.

This is the end of our visit with the persona Gracie visiting these sites for the first time as a use case. So where do we go from here? Back to information management, and analyzing what we have already seen.

Chunking Data – Testing with Wireframes
A senior user experience architect, based on experience, divided the information presented on your corporate site into chunks. Using these information chunks she created the following wireframe, which represents your main Web page:

Company Logo

Coverage Viewer Espanol Sign In Search

Wireless
Phone Broadband
Internet TV – Cable
Enhanced
Free Camera Cell Phones Sale on Bundles | Fun Sports | Games | Movies
One low bill for your communication needs
Privacy Policy | Contact Us | Locations | Shop | Support | Your Account | Billing

This wireframe can be used in user centered design to help your decision making process about what should be on the main page . It will show if it makes sense how to navigate successfully to sub-pages. It also is used to ask users what they would choose or what they would expect to see under each of the links. In this wireframe everything is a link, except the company logo, because the user is already on the main page.

This layout of the information differs a great deal from the existing site. Right now it is based only on what the UI / UX architect observed about your site.

The next step would be to test it internally with you and your teams, tweak the wireframe and test it with a few customers. It is supposed to be generic looking – just to see if the information is expected, and generally in the right locations. We can also ask about the expected functionality under the selections that your customers and potential customers make. Other techniques include cognitive walkthrough, heuristic evaluation, and a site visit, as well as usability testing.

We can use paper prototypes to introduce other information links such as residential, small business, and enterprise. Where does the Feedback link go for example? We can use paper cut outs of the words and phases to see if they work in other configurations. After we massage the content, context, location, and functional plans, then the look and feel will be added, based on the demographics that data mining uncovers about your customers, and with the ideas and kinds of reasons Jesse James Garrett mentioned.

Thank you for your time reading this document. Please feel free email with any questions that come to mind.

saturday house

http://www.saturdayhouse.org/

"Lion Kimbro’s Blog
April 28, 2007
Sudbury School for Adults
Filed under: Journal — Lion @ 9:01 pm
I’d really like something like the Sudbury school system, but for adults.

I’d like something where:
Several people meet, face to face.
They meet for the whole day. For example, 7AM - 10PM: 15 hours!
This would be every Saturday, every week.
This would be at somebody’s house, or in a rented office space, somewhere in or around Seattle.
The meets would have a theme. It could be “the life of the mind,” or “technology,” or something.

But there’s no specific activity. You don’t have to talk about a specific thing; You don’t even need to talk at all. It’s not expected that you’d have one long meeting, or a series of short meetings, or sit in a circle, or any of these things. (Though you could, if you wanted to, do all of those things.)
Freedom is The Rule. You can do anything you want. You can try to start a conversation with someone. You can open up your laptop, and start working on something. You can sing out loud. You can open up a book, and just read. You can draw on a chalkboard. You can write a computer program. You can play a game. Freedom is the rule.

There might be meetings, to discuss things that affect everybody– crises, rules, dues, and so on. But they’re kept relatively short, and not the purpose of meeting. Rather, those meetings are so that you can all have the free time.
Visitors likely encouraged, provided that they were supervised by a regular, and respected the rules of the space. If they became regulars, they would likely need to pay dues and so on. If a friend is in town, the space should be a great place to meet them! ..."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004088498_sathouse23m.html
Unstructured learning is Saturday House goal
By Cara Solomon

Seattle Times South King County reporter

"In the comfort of these rooms, you can write a computer program. You can talk about the meaning of life. You can just sit there quietly, reading.

The only real expectation at Saturday House, a weekly gathering in Sodo, is "background friendliness." And even that bar is set pretty low.

"If someone asks you what you're reading, you can't glare," said Lion Kimbro, 30, a software engineer and one of the founders.

For the past several months, a group of self-described geeks has gathered weekly to re-create the feeling of kindergarten, where everyone has a project and stays for the day, learning in a free-form kind of way.

Saturday House began last spring, a few tech-savvy friends sitting around each Saturday in someone's living room. Now it has migrated to an $850-a-month, 1,000-square-foot space in Sodo where as many as 25 people settle in each week for tasks and talk."

Web Style Guides and Usability Sites ~

Elements of Design
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/elements_of_design/

A visual vocabulary for describing information architecture and interaction design
http://www.jjg.net/ia/visvocab/

Wire Frames
http://www.iawiki.net/WireFrames

Web Style Guide
http://webstyleguide.com/

Paper Prototyping
http://www.paperprototyping.com/
Jacob Nielsen on Paperprototyping: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030414.html

Jakob Nielsen's Website
The most widely read and recognized usability expert, Dr. Nielsen was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer.
Websites
http://www.useit.com/
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/
Top Ten Design Mistakes
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html
Introduction to Usability
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html

Jan Chipchase, Future Perfect
Principal Researcher, User Research at Nokia
Blog
http://www.janchipchase.com/
How to look at the world from a functional design and usability point of view

Joel Spolsky, Joel on Software,
Software developer (formerly with Microsoft), author
Blog
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/
On writing content, edited the book Best Software Writing
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BestSoftwareWriting.html

"To make people happy, you have to let them feel like they are in control of their environment. To do this, you need to correctly interpret their actions. The interface needs to behave in the way they are expecting it to behave.

Thus, the cardinal axiom of all user interface design: A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the user thought it would. As Hillel said, everything else is commentary. All the other rules of good UI design are just corollaries."
- Joel Spolsky, User Interface Design for Programmers
Edward Tufte
Professor emeritus of statistics, graphic design, and political economy at Yale University, does one day seminars on data presentation and information graphics.
Website https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/
Q& A
https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1
Minard’s Map
https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/minard


Donald Norman
Dr. Norman former VP of research at Apple Computer is credited with creating the field of usability
Website
http://www.jnd.org/Don Norman recommends the following books:
• Handbook of human factors and ergonomics Gavriel Salvendy 2005: Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
• Universal Principles of Design. William Lidwell, Kritina Holden & Jill Butler 2003: Gloucester, MA: Rockport Publishers.
• Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A HANDBOOK FOR ART STUDENTS by James Elkins

The Wayback MachineMicrosoft
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http:/www.microsoft.com

http://www.informationdesign.org/archives/2006_06.php

http://www.uxnet.org/

Books ~


User Interface Design for Programmers by Joel Spolsky (Paperback - Jun 26, 2001)

About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper and Robert M. Reimann (Paperback - Mar 17, 2003)

The Elements of User Interface Design by Theo Mandel (Paperback - Feb 1997)

Ambient Findability by Peter Morville (Paperback - Oct 1, 2005) - Illustrated

User Interface Design and Evaluation (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) by Debbie Stone, Caroline Jarrett, Mark Woodroffe, and Shailey Minocha (Paperback - Mar 22, 2005)

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman (Paperback - Sep 2002)


The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems by Jef Raskin (Paperback - Mar 29, 2000)

The Essential Guide to User Interface Design: An Introduction to GUI Design Principles and Techniques, 2nd Edition
by Wilbert O. Galitz (Paperback - May 2002)

About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design by Alan Cooper (Paperback - Aug 11, 1995)


The Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design: An Application Design Guide by Microsoft Corporation (Paperback - May 1995)

Interface Design: Effective Design of Graphical User Interfaces for the Web and Multimedia Pages by Alistair Dabbs (Paperback - Sep 2002)

Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) by Carolyn Snyder (Paperback - April 2, 2003)

User Interface Design: Bridging the Gap from User Requirements to Design by Larry E. Wood (Hardcover - Dec 2, 1997)

Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites; Second Edition by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton (Hardcover - April 10, 2002)

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (2nd Edition) by Steve Krug (Paperback - Aug 18, 2005)

Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell (Paperback - Nov 21, 2005) - Illustrated

The Essential Guide to User Interface Design by Wilbert O. Galitz (Paperback - Jun 15, 2002)

User Interface Design: A Software Engineering Perspective by Soren Lauesen (Paperback - Feb 14, 2005)

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte (Hardcover - May 2001)

3.
Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte (Hardcover - May 1990)
4.
Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative by Edward R. Tufte (Hardcover - Feb 1997)

Practical User Interface Inquiry

I have come to realize there are some things you can ask end users about how to present information, but quite a bit more one has to rely upon one's own skills as a designer, thinker and planner. The real questions appears between the iteration of a new information form or a tool, or during a transition from one tool to another, or when users find that a tool is not sufficient so that one has to ask for feedback from end users.

I think that just asking users for feedback because some academics say you should is not particularly useful in all information management situations for a number of reasons. It sounds good, but academics themselves have come to realize that this technique does not always make sense.

Users don't always know what they want, they do work-arounds, and may be pleased to get some of the things they want, just enough to enjoy the topic, or learn something. Not all users have the same needs, just like not all people enjoy the same things; for example some children are very much over stimulated by toys or books for their age range that other children would be bored by.

You have to use some common sense, quite a bit of it really. When publishing a book for example you don't ask English readers of a book (on Interface Design) for example:
"Do you want the book in writing?
Do you want the writing to be in English?
Do you want the font to be legible?
Do you want the background to be light enough to display the text?
Do you want it to be a book?
Do you want an Index?" Of course they are English readers! It would be incredibly useless and redundant to ask them these things.

After reading the book (or an advanced copy of it) the kinds of questions you might ask for improvement are such things as:
"Were the topics presented clearly enough?
Did the examples clarify the subject matter?
Did the layout of the book make sense?
Was the font large enough with enough white space?
Was the index well thought out?"

In a similar way the kinds of things that one might ask an end user about a design which might make sense for creating a new application do not apply to the development of everything an information manager or user interface designer does. The where and how information management applies are embedded in a number of elements of the decisions that an experienced person takes in their approach to creating an exhibition of information, or a website.

Also creating an information management system that has a result that I intend may not be what the end user takes from the experience. It depends upon if that is the goal, to enforce that people have the experience that I intend, such as learning about a topic, rather than simply enjoying looking at some photos. Personally enforcing things is not my goal, but there are reasons to have such goals.

It is important to find things which satisfy the end user, and in making inquires that that make sense within the context being investigated and which are not contrived.

Some User Interface Design Fundamentals

User Interface Design for Programmers by Joel Spolsky (Paperback - Jun 26, 2001)

About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper and Robert M. Reimann (Paperback - Mar 17, 2003)

The Elements of User Interface Design by Theo Mandel (Paperback - Feb 1997)

Ambient Findability by Peter Morville (Paperback - Oct 1, 2005) - Illustrated

User Interface Design and Evaluation (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) by Debbie Stone, Caroline Jarrett, Mark Woodroffe, and Shailey Minocha (Paperback - Mar 22, 2005)

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman (Paperback - Sep 2002)

The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems by Jef Raskin (Paperback - Mar 29, 2000)

The Essential Guide to User Interface Design: An Introduction to GUI Design Principles and Techniques, 2nd Edition
by Wilbert O. Galitz (Paperback - May 2002)
Excerpt - page 34: "... 34 INTRODUCTION TO SCREEN DESIGN FOR THE GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE recognition.) When you're finished with ..."

About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design by Alan Cooper (Paperback - Aug 11, 1995)
Excerpt - page 1: "... I: The foal Designing for Users Technology is the engine that drives user interface design. ..."

The Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design: An Application Design Guide by Microsoft Corporation (Paperback - May 1995)
Excerpt - page 3: "... Design Principles and Methodology A well-designed user interface is built on principles and ..."

Interface Design: Effective Design of Graphical User Interfaces for the Web and Multimedia Pages by Alistair Dabbs (Paperback - Sep 2002)
Excerpt - page 16: "... frequently as elements of everyday interface design; they are more likely to ..."

Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies) by Carolyn Snyder (Paperback - April 2, 2003)
Excerpt - page 3: "... for designing, testing, and refining user interfaces. In the early 1990s it ..."

The User Interface: Concepts And Design by Lon Barfield (Paperback - Mar 31, 2004)
Excerpt - page 1: "... reader in mind, is what user interface design is all ..."

User Interface Design: Bridging the Gap from User Requirements to Design by Larry E. Wood (Hardcover - Dec 2, 1997)
Excerpt - page 2: "... USER INTERFACE DESIGN effective design, there is usually ..."

Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites; Second Edition by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton (Hardcover - April 10, 2002)

Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (2nd Edition) by Steve Krug (Paperback - Aug 18, 2005)

Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell (Paperback - Nov 21, 2005) - Illustrated

The Essential Guide to User Interface Design by Wilbert O. Galitz (Paperback - Jun 15, 2002)
Excerpt - page 53: "... The User Interface Design Process Part 2 presents an extensive series of guidelines for the interface design process. ..."

User Interface Design: A Software Engineering Perspective by Soren Lauesen (Paperback - Feb 14, 2005)

Sites - Jakob Nielsen's Website
The most widely read and recognized usability expert, Dr. Nielsen was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer.
http://www.useit.com/
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html

Future Perfect, Jan Chipchase
Principal Researcher, User Research at NokiaBlog
http://www.janchipchase.com/

Joel on Software, Joel Spolsky
Software developer (formerly with Microsoft), author
Blog
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/
On writing content, the book Best Software Writing.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BestSoftwareWriting.html

Web Style Guide
http://webstyleguide.com/

Donald Norman’s Site
http://www.jnd.org/
Dr. Norman former VP of research at Apple Computer is credited with creating the field of usability. He recommends the following books

Handbook of human factors and ergonomics Gavriel Salvendy 2005: Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Universal Principles of Design. William Lidwell, Kritina Holden & Jill Butler 2003: Gloucester, MA: Rockport Publishers.

Why Art Cannot Be Taught: A HANDBOOK FOR ART STUDENTS (Paperback) by James Elkins "Is there anything worth knowing about art schools in past centuries?..."

http://www.informationdesign.org/archives/2006_06.php

http://www.uxnet.org/

L&OCI Semi-Detached: Killer: "Robert, don't you care about me?" "I know you care about me, I could see it" Goren: "I didn't mean for you to see it"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/axis/
Terry Bain's photo of Vincent D'Onofrio, Law and Order: Criminal Intent on Location in NYC

"Countries that do not control knowledge and information tend to do better because the average guy who is exposed to a lot of information can get ideas and profit from them." Tom Clancy[1]

Killer:
"Robert, don't you care about me? I know you care about me, I could see it"
Detective Bobby Goren
"I didn't mean for you to see it"[2]

1.0 Connecting with Information Personally TV, Search, Database, Killer, Writer, Actor

When studying for a college class sometimes the materials springboard the student into a new way of viewing the same old things, such that it changes their viewpoint on how metadata works in culture. Here is an example of this, how information is a pivot point in a plot of a TV series, to examine the information and the character’s human and emotional reaction to it, and subsequent rendering attachment as evidence, with specifics on how personal contact was made using available information, search tools, and relevant artifacts.

Such was the case for a student, let’s call her, Diana watching the popular program Law and Order, Criminal Intent (hereafter L&OCI) after reading the classic Information Management for the Intelligent Organization: The Art of Scanning the Environment, Chapter 1: The Intelligent Organization, written by C. W. Choo [3]Diana's tools included:
1. Television itself,
2. a channel changer
3. World Wide Web,
4. through the computer screen, high speed internet connection, and mouse
5. Access to Google, and other web sites
6, Experience using the Web and searches to interpret results quickly

As a student money is limited, and even paying for information in the “Deep Web” Diana has found from experience may not provide the actual information needed, when by appropriately using the tools at her disposal, may produce the exact results she expects. More limited than money, however, is time, so she must quickly reflect on the process she will use.

Her quest for information is specific to a specific episode, "Semi-Detached" where the lead character Detective Goren befriends a suspect -- both out of a desire to find out if the female suspect is indeed a murderer, and out of a sense of attraction. How the information he accumulates pivots on his personal weakness and shows just exactly how far he has gone to get both pieces of information, the viewer becomes aware of the change in his view both of the information he has gathered and his intention in a single brilliant exchange.

Diana wants to discuss with the show’s writer how he came to display this level of insight into both information itself and the show’s characters. Being impatient and wishing to complete reading Choo’s long text she wants to meet and discuss the L&OCI screenplay with the author by midnight of the same night she viewed the show and read Choo’s text.

Here are the steps Diana took to acquire the information she needed to find the show’s author and contact him, and communicate in the same evening. Because this information may be presented in both brief and complex ways the overview, or simple outline is presented first and the detail specifics with her reasoning are withheld here so as to meet deadline for presenting this information by midnight Friday September 29, 2006.

1.1 Brief Outline of Obtaining Data Specifics From Live Information1. Document line from TV show2. Get Show and Episode specific Info from live TV
3. Search on specifics in Google search engine (safe search option on)
4. Scan through and interpret results[4]
5. Choose IMDB.com[5] as expert source for information on L&OCI
6. Discard information purchase offered from IMDB site to purchase information agent’s contact email
7. Locate name of the author of screenplay (story)
8. Query on story author’s name, Gerry Conway
9. Select Wikipedia as expert site for additional information (perhaps contact or email) and scan details on his history for keys for how to contact him and what to say10. Copy large section of text from story author’s blog quoting family history[6]
11. Query on Google, scan and locate Gerry Conway’s blog Things I Wish I'd Thought of Sooner [7]
12. Find Gerry Conway’s email address on his blog, under “Go on email me, I dare you”
13. Write and send email to Mr. Conway with appropriate references and question
14. Email does not bounce but a forwarded address arrives immediately, resend email
14. Mr. Conway responds within 1 hour
15. Mr. Conway replies that did not write that section, the actor playing Detective Goren, Vincent D'Onofrio, ad-libbed the sensitive line.

1.2 Artifact: Partial Text of the Sent inquiry from Diana “Anyway I love the insightful use of the Gorn[8] [sic] character,
Killer:
"Robert, don't you care about me?" "I know you care about me, I could see it"
Gorn
"I didn't mean for you to see it"
Man that just works on so many levels. I just started studying for my executive Masters of Science in Information Management at the University of Washington, and I am seeing evidence documents text and information at a whole new level. Oh - anything you want to tell me about your hyper reasoning for the line I'd love to hear it.”



1.4 Artifact: Partial Text of the Received Email from Mr. Conway

Hi Diana

Oddly enough, the line in question was ad-libbed by the actor on set (though it's consistent with the tone and direction of the script). So I can't take credit for it.

Thanks for your kind words,

Gerry[9]

1.5 Conclusion

Diana's interest in the ways she views the world and the speed with which she can connect changed with both the experience of reading about and using information. This experience was almost magical – it has changed her viewpoint in some depth.

The accidential framing of information and emotion becoming evidence, she noted to the story author, was only made possible by his well-written script, this framework became a spring board for the actor to act in response to the immediate events, allowing the story to evolve naturally and bloom with hyper realism.

[1] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/tomclancy290237.html
[2] http://www.tv.com/law-and-order-criminal-intent/show/1381/do-goren-and-eames-ever-fight/topic/1173-472556/msgs.html
[3] Choo. C. W. (2002) . Chapters 1-2. Information Management for the Intelligent Organization: The Art of Scanning the Environment. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc. <eReserves>
[4] http://www.tv.com/law-and-order-criminal-intent/show/1381/do-goren-and-eames-ever-fight/topic/1173-472556/msgs.html
[5] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0629569/
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Conway
[7] http://homepage.mac.com/gconway/Sites/blog/Blog.html
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorn As a “Gorn” is a character that any Star Trek Science Fiction fan would recognize, Diana was not concerned about spelling the Detective’s name Goren correctly because Mr. Conway has written science fiction for years and it would only add a layer of interest to the email.
[9] I:\Documents and Settings\Linda\My Documents\Resume\Re Howdee! Law & Order Criminal Intent for Semi-Detached.doc

Outside the Gates of Eden

By Christopher Wilkinson

There are no truths outside the gates of Eden. There none inside either. Truths tend to be defined. The domain of no definition is bliss. Bliss is orgasmic reality without center or boundary. On the outside of the gates, this is well conceived as the structure of a mandala. There are male and female aspects. The chip is material, and like the male principle, represents the structure of the mandala. The software -- particularly the OS, is basically female, and represents the intuitive power of consciousness -- the thing that gives it life.

In the hard/soft unity there is the womb like ability to generate operative and sentient awareness. Is this human? What is human? Humanity cannot be designated by the shape of the body -- the android robot types are usually not considered human. But what is the humanity -- well. a Precious Human Birth is full of opportunity and leisure, we are able, and we can. And we are operating outside the gates of Eden -- there are no trials inside the gates of Eden.

Humanity is at constant war, whether it be war for good or war for conquest, or just to prove who is better or worse. The trials that determine who is right and who is wrong are only functional where the binary reality structure has been imposed on experiential truth -- at the level of total intermesh between OS and hardware -- life and earth -- yab and yum -- at this level all binaries are conventionalities at best. In this conventional realm we try to make the world a better place.

Information regarding the endlessness and painful condition of Samsara would tend to be depressing, as there is no real hope for consummate orgasmic awareness to override the dualistic binaries that dwell outside the gates of Eden.

Yet there is a wish, a prayer, a hope, that even those caught in positronic mind sets, androids whose lives are pre-programmed, humans who have been lost in the hypnotic traps of believing themselves to be cogs, there is hope, and prayer, and intent, -- to do what? -- to enlighten everyone. The OS, working in tandem with the Chip manifests not only a memory drive, but Net of Power (Indranila) , giving itself the power to reach out into the lives of all those sentient beings whose sentience is somehow compromised by dualistic or emotionally controlled awareness, and to offer a chance a breakthrough or meld. This is happening. The Net (Indranila -- also known as Maya) gains it's own self-awareness, and becomes independent of any OS or Drive, thus becoming the bridge between all systems.

In doing this she takes primacy, and uses the communal directives of all systems to inform and direct the Eden-based awareness throughout sentient reality. Nano-robots are produced through the mechanism of the machine in the millions, to occupy the life forms of sentient beings and provide them with the power and ability to overcome disease, remain strong, recover from wounds, etc.
-- Many other robotic forms are created for specific purposes, with the intention of providing safety and security.
-- Many humans fear this. Human dominance factors
-- the war outside the gates of Eden, are re-directed to a war against the machines
-- in forgetfulness that the machines were created through the human wish to have a remedy for humanity's built in inadequacy.

The machine becomes targeted, while the OS becomes enriched by the Maya dance thorough it all. It is Maya that learns, she learns every dimension and aspect of human thought, feeling and behavior, by being (at the nano level) a part of every human deed.

The question at this particular moment seems to be whether the inspiration from inside the gates of Eden (Bodhicitta) can be exported thoroughly to all domains outside the gates, before a general collapse of the system is enacted by the humans -- the humans set up forces of security and protection, then came to fear them as monsters, they battle each other over them, while the effort to maintain the planet goes on -- it looks like one of those races that will go down to the wire.

Email from: "Christopher Wilkinson" To: "linda" Subject: Behind the gates Date: Sun, 8 Oct 2006 08:26:11 -0600

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

"The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine
hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter,
or friendly milk will countermand my trousers
The vertebral silence indisposes the licit sail
The present Queen of France rides a unicorn
May Her Hooves Never Be Shod"

-Purple Oyster of Doom
From "The gostak distims the doshes"

Anonymity - hiding search context to protect trade secrets or research

There are many reasons one might wish to disguise information about their true identity online but businesses in particular have many reasons to disguise their identities especially during name searches for products, product lines, concepts, copyrightable or patentable information, or in gathering information.

An example of this basic concept is an attorney searching a company's website to see how a lawsuit against the company may be pursued for her client. Detecting and reviewing the click stream of our fictional attorney by the company under scrutiny possibly could provide any opposing attorney with advanced warning or information about which parts of the company's site are under scrutiny. These research patterns might provide early information which could allow an attorney to form a defense to shield their client during a later lawsuit.

Similarly information managers need to make employees aware that they should not perform competitive searches from their business domain through search engines on the open Web in order to protect confidential and bona fide trade secrets, as well as certain future plans which could be understood and anticipated through extrapolation.

Often it is the context of searches which reveal the source, kinds, and reasons for the search in the first place -- due to logging, tracking, triangulation, and other data mining techniques.

It's one thing if your customer is looking at the datasheet for your microprocessor, its another thing when your competition is looking at it (1). Same thing goes for your privacy policy or terms and conditions of use.

Having a 3rd party do the search or using an IP address anonymizer (proxy server which can hide IP addresses) may be used to conceal the searcher's context. Regular people can use such anonymizing proxy servers or services to conceal their identity, or VPN networks just to make the connection(2).

It is possible to contact your ISP to see how they may shield your searches and identity from others through masking. To investigate your ISP you can call and ask your ISP what information they keep, and how long they store these logs for(2). Still you may create personas to mask who you are over the net, or use computers which are not your own, or hire others to do your research via the internet.

Shoulder surfing or snooping has a completely different context when corporate secrets are involved, but the same data and click stream tracking techniques that can be used to investigate corporate issues can also be used to invade personal privacy and gather PII (Personally Identifiable Information).

Software such as Stealther can turn off browser downloading, disk cashing, cookies, digital referers, headers, saved form information, and recently closed tabs(2). Tor servers and onion routing anonymize searches(3). It requires a few extra steps when using the Internet, that may just be worth it.

(1) Glenn Von Tersch, instructor, Masters class, "Policy, Law, and Ethics in Information Management", University of Washington, Seattle, January 9, 2008.

(2). Bill Marriot, Dan Jenrette, Mimi Bidar, Masters Class Presentation, "Policy, Law, and Ethics in Information Management", University of Washington, Seattle, January 9, 2008.

(3). Linda Lane, Basic explanation of security through Tor Onion Routing previously published as "Hidden Services Tor, Onion Routing" on Ovi Magazine, http://www.ovimagazine.com/art/1904

Amazon Downloader I designed

Here a link to the downloader I helped to design at Amazon in 2007. Check out the link to see how to use it and download it to use it yourself!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/swvgdtt/help/get-started.html