Just when you thought you fully understood the three circles of information architecture, your assumptions are being challenged again. Withrow comes around with an argument for looking at the context circle differently.
Continue readingCategory: Process and Methods
Simplify your work and your life by learning the tools and techniques that authors have used to conquered gnarly problem spaces. From avoiding burnout to doing scrappy research on a shoestring budget, you’ll benefit from their experience, avoid making the mistakes they made, and go on to make all new mistakes of your own. (Then contribute your learnings back to us!)
Interaction Modeling
Interaction modeling makes design decisions explicit. In principle it’s simple: record what users “should” do, what they actually do, and then explain the differences between the two. Of course there’s more to it than that, and Matt Queen gives us all the details in this story.
Continue readingThe Lazy IA’s Guide to Making Sitemaps
The more automated our lives become, the less time we seem to have. And as an information architect, a lot of time is spent making sitemaps … by hand. How valuable are sitemaps to a project team and to clients? Would your time be better spent doing other tasks than hand building sitemaps? What if we told you, “now you can.” Find out how.
Continue readingChange It Up!
Not every upgrade comes with a big budget, so you have to work with what you’ve got. Here are a couple of ways you can work with an existing UI to give it a new look and a new function.
Continue readingStoryboarding Rich Internet Applications with Visio
The recent rise in more powerful technologies that provide richer user experiences online has presented us with a challenge. As designers, we are moving from from designing for “PIAs” to designing for “RIAs.” Does our documentation style change with the technology? Will our standard ways do the job?
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