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Support Boxes and Arrows
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1 min read
You can make a donation to the Boxes and Arrows hosting fund with just a few clicks.
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Amazon Gold Box
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1 min read
There’s a classic Seinfeld episode where Kramer’s new phone number is one digit from Movie Fone’s, so, surrendering to the misdialed calls, he imitates the automated voice. When he can’t interpret the key presses he improvises, ‘Why don’t you just tell me the name of the movie you want to see?” Which is kinda what…
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Interact?
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1 min read
James and I attended Why Games Matter, centered on celebrating Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, called by Warren Spector the only current book to focus on game design, as opposed to merely the mechanics of making games. Somewhat ironically the most interesting commentary came not from Salen or…
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Content Management Systems
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I’m working on a content management application – the part of the content management system the authors and administrators use – and jotted down a few principles to follow. They may not be applicable in every case, but expanding along these lines might lead to some design patterns. Manage content, not pages. This makes content…
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Experience People
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1 min read
Challis Hodge has launched Experience People, a user experience search firm. I have to respect the moxie he has to launch a recruiting practice in this economy. It makes sense to pick a niche he knows – design practitioners who get it and employers who get it – and he probably doesn’t need to fill…
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Elephant, the film
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1 min read
Saw Gus Van Sant and Diane Keaton on Charlie Rose yesterday discussing Elephant (trailer), their new film about a high school shooting reminiscent of Columbine. It looks awesome, telling the story as a documentary instead of what was the only viewpoint available previously, the victims’.
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New Books
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1 min read
A new IA book, which isn’t so rare anymore, by Alan Gilchrist and crew: Information Architecture: Designing Information Environments for Purpose. Also, What is Web Design? by Nico McDonald. Never met him, but he seems like a smart guy. That title manages to stay short, on topic, and also target a audience with a certain…
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Documentation
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Poor, defenseless little wireframes
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2 min read
Liz pens a great piece on simplifying wireframes. Doing so definitely requires an understanding of your audience, knowing what your audience assumes and what has to be explicitly recorded. Physical architects had settled on conventions before leaving for CAD, and we will too. Riffing from there, Christina asks if we still need wireframes, and gets…
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Move Upstream
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1 min read
Bill Seitz reports on a talk by Tom Peters…White Collar jobs are going to disappear over the next decade to the same degree that Blue Collar jobs did. It’s just a matter of who gets you: cheap labor from India, or a silicon wafer. I keep joking to friends that I’m going to work half-time…
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Email + Website
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1 min read
We usual IA suspects don’t write much about email and web integration (or streaming video, or some other neglected topics) but it’d be helpful. This is just a reminder to myself to see who has written about it. Some basic delivery options: Text/RTF/HTML in email Enclosure Link to website Some basic criteria for deciding on…
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Introvolothanapolana
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1 min read
Can I just say how much I like the name Plan B for the morning after pill? ‘Morning after‘ carries weird associations, and I respect the company for choosing a name that 1) reinforces that this is not a Plan A method of contraception, and 2) is not some abstract, invented, psuedo-Latin word. Nice work…