Boxes and Arrows has been serving the user experience and information architecture community since 2001. Along the way, some pretty big ideas have been developed here by people who are now leaders in the industry. We hope you’ll find inspiration in these posts.
The efforts to define our field and our role are understandable by-products of our economic times and of forces in our contexts of practice. What are the pressures behind this quest for definition? What are the options (and potential advantages) of refusing to pigeonhole ourselves?
Continue readingContent management systems suck. Or so you would think from the strife heard from analysts and practitioners alike. And yet, many websites regularly publish vast amounts of information with superior control and ease compared to manually editing pages.
Continue readingWhen resources are limited, the design must be optimized to make the best use of all resources. To account for this complexity, it is important to have a clear understanding of both sides of the design equation—what you have to work with and what you are trying to build.
Continue readingHow often do we want to simply make our point, instead of bringing our opinions together to reach consensus? Look at all the PowerPoint presentations and slick brochures: we want to tell our view, instead of listening to others. We want our opinion to be heard.
Continue readingWe’ve all seen blueprints–formally known as contract documents–which architects produce and builders use to construct. No one person knows all the details of the design; the end result is entirely a product of teamwork. But there is one axiom: architects do not build.
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