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- Book Recommendation: Letting Go of the WordsOctober 11
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If there is one book you should read next, it’s “Letting Go of the Words” by Ginny Redish
The other morning I changed my about section here on Bokardo to this:
“Bokardo is a blog about interface design for social web sites and applications. I write about recommendation systems, identity, ratings, privacy, comments, profiles, tags, reputation, sharing, as well as the social psychology underlying our motivation to use (or not use) these things. If this sounds interesting to you, grab my RSS Feed.”
This rewrite is an attempt to be as descriptive as possible. I need to explain exactly what I’m doing so that people who are new to the site know what they’re in for. I’m also giving people something to do with this information, asking them to grab my RSS feed if they find those topics interesting. If I can do this, then I’ve had a positive interaction with them.
Worrying about words might seem like a trifle, but from an interface design standpoint words are everything. If there is one thing I’ve learned as an interface designer, it’s that words are absolutely the most important part of interface design. If you don’t have the right words on the screen, you better hope you’re building a porn site.
To prove this, try to get rid of the words in your interface and see if people can use them. One thing you’ll find is how useless they are. This might lead us
- The Live WebSeptember 29
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We’re building tools to watch the world change…
Doc Searls has a wonderful post on his long-time meme: The Live Web.
What I like about Doc is that he knows words matter. So when he talks about the Web he uses specific words and phrases that frame discussion.
He says that when people treat their web sites like buildings, when they treat them as something to visit, then they become static and end up not worth visiting. It’s like a museum you’ve been to before…it gets old pretty quick if the exhibits don’t change.
But when people treat web sites like an environment, an ecosystem where human activity occurs, then people come and participate when they need to do the activity, your architecture being a place to do things as opposed to something to look at or experience.
If all you want is people to visit you, you’re not asking for much and will not get much for asking.
The essence of Stewart Brand’s book How Buildings Learn is an observation that the most successful buildings are ones that adapt to the changing activity of their inhabitants. This should be obvious, right? But it’s not, because we treat architecture as unchanging…we’re usually not around long enough (or paying enough attention) to notice the change.
This dichotomy also brings to mind
- Slides from Leveraging Cognitive Bias TalkSeptember 26
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Here are the slides from the talk I gave at d.Construct in Brighton a few weeks ago.
- Activity-Centered DesignSeptember 25
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Is the future of design activity-centered?
Quite some time back I argued that Information Architecture was the wrong frame in which to approach design. My post got a lot of push-back from the established IA crowd, who claimed that I was either wrong or claimed that my view was just rehashing existing debate. I probably deserved this push-back because I really had no idea what arena I was entering or what sacred cows I was actually attempting to kill. After talking with many folks afterward, it was clear to me that this debate has been around for a looooong time. Apparently the forces of interaction design have been facing off against the forces of information architecture in an epic battle for quite some time. I was flying a flag I didn’t know I was flying.
Thankfully, I didn’t burn too many bridges. I attended my first IA Summit this past April and found it quite enjoyable…in fact everyone I talked to had a strong opinion about it no matter what side they come down on.
Anyway, the conversations I’ve had since seem to prove one thing right: that the issue of how to frame design is an important one, no matter what you believe. In a piece written a few months after mine, Peter Morville agrees that framing is important, and actually seems to agree that IA isn’t always the right frame.
Morville includes a
- Free chapter of Designing for the Social Web availableAugust 27
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You can now check out a free chapter of of my book Designing for the Social Web on the publisher’s web site:
Design for Sign-Up: How to Motivate People To Sign Up For Your Web App
There is also a one-page version for easier reading/printing, which you can find here: http://www.peachpit.com/articles/printerfriendly.aspx?p=1216150
Enjoy!