Category: Information Architecture
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Class and Web Design, Part 5: The Politics of Class
(This is Part 5. Please check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 3a, and Part 4) Go get ’em Mom: patiencemerriman.com I recently designed a web site for my mother, who is running for the Vermont state legislature (I’m so proud of her!). Vermont is a small, largely rural state, and there are…
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Class and Web Design, Part 4: The Vicious Circle of Desire
(This is Part 4. Please check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 3a) Earlier, I talked about the markers of class that surround us every day. A person’s cultural immersion in a narrow range of class markers can create a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, a vicious circle of desire: Poor people can’t…
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Class and Web Design Part 3a: Tabloid vs. Broadsheet
What’s wrong with this picture? (This is Part 3a. Please check out Part 1 , Part 2, and Part 3) There’s a fascinating debate at Subtraction about the design of the new New York Post web site, between the AIGA’s Liz Danzico and the New York Times‘ (and Subtraction’s) Khoi Vinh. The discussion, I think,…
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Class and Web Design, Part 3: As Seen on TV!
(This is Part 3. Please check out Part 1 and Part 2) Does the “AS SEEN ON TV” badge tell you that a product is good? Or does it have the opposite effect on you? My guess is that, if you’re anything like me, the little red badge indicates “cheap crap” to you. But to…
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The Empathy Test
“Let me tell you about my mother…” In the movie Blade Runner, the “Voight-Kampff Empathy Test” detects whether or not a test subject is a real human being or an android “replicant”. A machine reads the body’s physical reactions to various psychologically- provocative scenarios (“Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil.…
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Elegance through Nomenclature
New York design firm Giampietro+Smith hits a little information architecture home run with their design for the magazine the revealer, a very interesting web site about media and religion. The problem of how to structure the presentation of breaking news, current-ish articles, and “evergreen” always-interesting material is something information architects face all the time but…
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Measuring The Morville Honeycomb
Peter Morville’s well-known “honeycomb” diagram (and accompanying article) illustrates seven qualities or “facets” of user experience design, going beyond just usability into six other areas where the user experience designer’s work is cut out for them. It’s a great diagram — I use it with clients to describe all the things we need to address,…
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User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Part 5: Non-Scientific User Research isn’t a Bad Thing
(This is Part 5 — the final part. Please read Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , and Part 4 first.) I would certainly agree that more rigorous methodologies can’t hurt in our field. But at the same time, I think that we need to be a little more honest about the value…
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User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Part 4: Research as Bullshit
(This is Part 4. Please read Part 1 , Part 2, and Part 3 first.) Okay, in this post I’m going to get a little down and dirty. I’ll show some examples of research which do not seem to really enable a design team to learn more about their users, nor convince stakeholders about correct…
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User Research Smoke & Mirrors, Part 3: Research as a Political Tool
(This is Part 3. Please read Part 1 and Part 2 first.) Explaining it to the boss. Next time you read an article about a user research success story, ask yourself if the conclusions of that research weren’t just common sense (or at least common sense to good UI designers) to begin with. Ask yourself…