At the beginning of 2004, Boxes and Arrows, takes a moment to reflect back on the predictions made for 2003 and where we landed at year’s end. Feeling optimistic, we also invited our peers in the community to share some of their professional resolutions for the new year.
Continue readingCategory: Workplace and Career
Designing Customer-Centered Organizations
Even with the present downturn in the economy, more companies, from new media to established banks, have larger usability and design teams than ever before. Should we be content that we have come so far?
Continue readingForgotten Forefather: Paul Otlet
In 1934, years before Vannevar Bush dreamed of the memex, decades before Ted Nelson coined the term “hypertext,” Paul Otlet envisioned a new kind of scholar’s workstation: a mechanical desk that would let users search, read, and write their way through a vast database stored on millions of 3×5 index cards.
Continue reading(Not) Defining the damn thing
Discussions of how we should label ourselves and define our work are like flu epidemics. They break out from time to time, follow a fairly predictable course, and often make us want to barf.
Continue readingInformation Design: The Understanding Discipline
There is not consensus on exactly what information design is. Definitions of the discipline from stakeholders who associate themselves with the field are consistent only in that they are typically high level, not very concrete and do not offer much in the way of direct practical application.
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