May 2004

  • In today’s Wall Street Journal the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture achieved something we wished for from the beginning, notice in the mainstream press. The story, Redesiging the PDB, quotes Wodtke and Morville among others in discussing how IA could influence attention paid to the infamous Presidential Daily Brief on Bin Laden. Unfortunately, the design…

  • Just when you thought you knew how radio buttons should work, Expedia introduces the Link Button: I stared for a few seconds, then guessed upon clicking the link it would give me an explanation of the term. Nope. It selects that option, same as if you clicked the radio button. Did Expedia do usability testing…

  • I’ve mentioned the Rotman Management (University of Toronto) design issue (.pdf) recently, but having finished it I’d like to point out what’s worth reading in this worthy mag: First, if you’re printing just do pgs. 5-30. The rest is fluff and alumni only. The dean’s column on page 7 contrasts the business focus on optimization…

  • The IHT site received a lot of attention for its front-end code, but John Weir also put thoughtful work into the layout. Check out his case study on Smoking Gun (no permalink, click on the map of the world). It hurts that he strived to avoid scrolling and now IHT has two banner ads that…

  • What Flash does well: SimpleViewer, a gallery from Felix at Airtight, and Slide Show from Todd Dominey of Dominey Design. Thanks guys!

  • Mike Kuniavsky has a nice spread in the new Metropolis magazine (not online yet). It’s great to see a blog post become a magazine article, with responses from the likes of IDEO.

  • The InfoDesign interview: Q: Lesson Learned From .Com Burst: A: People live longer than companies.