Information Architects Archive

Quick and Dirty Remote User Usability Testing

Tweet“There are three basic approaches to conducting quick remote interface tests, whether you’re testing live websites, designs, wireframes, or prototypes. The approach you take will depend mostly... 
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6 Tips for Better Branding with Avatars

Tweet“We’re living in a social media world, and, like it or not, our avatar is often the first impression others get about us as we interact virtually on social networks, blogs, microblogs and... 
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UI Pattern Documentation Review

Tweet“To date, the most common approach to propagating a single user experience standard is the development of UI guidelines and principles documentation within an organization. Development teams... 
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Complete Beginner’s Guide to Information Architecture

Tweet“Information architecture is an often misunderstood job title. Are they Designers? Developers? Managers? All of the above? In this article we’ll discuss what information architecture is, why... 
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Google Voice Launches, Perfect for Small Businesses

TweetGoogle stepped up its attack on the telecommunications industry on Thursday with a free service called Google Voice that, if successful, could chip away at the revenue of companies big and small,... 
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10 Steps to the Perfect Portfolio Website

Tweet“A personal portfolio website is all about promoting you. You are a brand, and your name is a brand name. No one is going to know about your brand unless you get it out there; and if you’re... 
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20 Tips for Better Conference Speaking and Presentations

Tweet“I’ll be straight up with you: I don’t profess to be an expert speaker. I’ve had my share of presentations that have been total flops, along with some very successful ones. But if anything,... 
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20 Steps to Better Wireframes

Tweet” Possibly the biggest mistake in any development project is failure to plan. Recently, the owner of a prospective start-up told me that planning was unnecessary and a good developer could just... 
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An Overview of Prototyping and Interactive Design

Tweet“In the broadest sense, all kinds of design artifacts are prototypes. Pencil sketches, blocks of wood, storyboards, wireframes, foam-core models, pixel-perfect state renderings,... 
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Anatomy of an Iteration

Tweet“Unfortunately, we’ve found that many teams don’t know how to iterate effectively. Good iteration is a deliberate activity, with four important stages: planning, implementing, measuring,... 
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8 Mind Mapping Software Tools to Capture Ideas on Your iPhone

Tweet“Since Apple opened up the iPhone and iPod Touch operating system to outside developers and gave them a place to sell their wares – the AppStore – a new breed of mind mapping tools has... 
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The Relationship between Creativity and Play

Tweet“At the 2008 Serious Play conference, Tim Brown, CEO of the superstar design thinking firm Ideo made a fascinating presentation about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and... 
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Introducing Interaction Design Frameworks

Tweet“Whereas a design pattern is a common solution to a specific, recurring problem (such as pagination interfaces), an interaction design framework is a set of design patterns and other... 
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Use of Photos in Interaction Design

Tweet“The barrier between web pages and desktop software is beginning to disappear, and modern rich client user interface technologies such as Silverlight/WPF, Air, or Java FX enables designers to... 
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User Type Views & Annotations with Polypage Software

Tweet“Here is another very good Polypage HTML wireframe submitted by Joey Marchy from nGen Works. Two interesting uses of Polypage make themselves visible in this sample. First, on the upper left... 
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Leveraging XHTML Code as a Design and Specification Platform

Tweet“One of the biggest problems with wireframes is the lack of a standardized notation. In other words, my wireframes certainly don’t look anything like your wireframes. This means that visual... 
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Pattern Languages for Interaction Design

Tweet“An interaction design pattern is not a step-by-step recipe or a specification. It’s a set of things we’ve learned that tend to work in clearly defined situations as well as some known issues... 
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Filling Your Dance Card in Hard Economic Times

Tweet“If you’re not peering over the cubicle wall, hoping that the global economy won’t affect your workplace, you’re either a Trump (or a Hilton) or in a watertight business—or possibly... 
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Lego Planes: From GeekDad Project to Real Business

Tweet“About two years ago, my then-9-year-old and I worked on a cool project to program Lego Mindstorms to fly a RC plane, which we cheekily called a Lego UAV. (And were then, even more cheekily,... 
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15 Tips for Freelancers Starting their own Business

Tweet“So you’re a skilled developer or design freelancer who has established a handful of customers who pay your bills and provide you with an income. That’s great. You may wish to keep things... 
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