Wednesday, December 15, 2004

IA/UX events listings

IA/UX events listings

http://www.adaptivepath.com/events/
http://www.nngroup.com/events/
http://www.uie.com/events/
http://louisrosenfeld.com/presentations/
http://www.iasummit.org/2005/
http://www.humanfactors.com/training/default.asp
www.usability.gov/events/index.htmlInformation

Mini Conference on Human Factors in Complex Sociotechnical Systems

The South Jersey Chapter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
will be hosting a mini-conference on April 28 & 29, 2005, entitled
"Mini-Conference on Human Factors in Complex Sociotechnical Systems."
This event will be held at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
William J. Hughes Technical Center (WJHTC), located near the Atlantic
City International Airport, New Jersey.

The mini-conference is an opportunity for researchers and
practitioners in human factors, human-computer interaction, and
related fields, who work with complex sociotechnical systems, to share
their research, designs, techniques, and lessons learned with each
other. This is also a good medium for researchers to communicate
their ongoing research as well as students to get a chance to present
at a conference. This will be the first year of the conference and we
hope the quality of the program will make it a regular event.

The mini-conference committee is seeking submissions for presentations
and posters that would be of interest to human factors researchers and
practitioners, as well as others interested in behavioral science,
engineering, and management. Papers should focus on domains that
involve multiple users with different knowledge levels, abilities, and
task needs, who interact with complex tools and with one another. We
are especially interested in papers related to, but not limited to,
domains with substantial safety, security, or economic implications.
Some examples of these domains are Aviation, Air Traffic Control,
Military, Law Enforcement, Homeland Security, Emergency Management,
Medical Process Control, and Finance and Securities Trading. We
encourage submissions discussing works in progress as well as
submissions from students seeking an opportunity to present their work.

The deadline for submitting to the conference is February 14, 2005 and
the committee has already started accepting submissions. Proceedings
for the conference will be published in a CD ROM format and
distributed to the conference attendees.

For more information please visit www.sjhfes.org

For any questions, please contact: miniconference@sjhfes.org

Send submissions to: submissions@sjhfes.org

Friday, October 01, 2004

AIfIA sponsors metadata practices conference

From aifia.org:

AIfIA sponsors conferences and events helping to build the practice of
information architecture. Learn more about AIfIA's sponsorship program
at http://aifia.org/pg/ia_events_sponsorship.php#000247

***********
September 30, 2004 -- AIfIA will sponsor Metadata for Interoperability
in the Global Corporate Environment, a pre-conference for the DC-2004
International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications.

The one-day pre-conference program takes place on October 10, 2004 in
Shanghai, China, and is expected to attract around 100 people. The
pre-conference workshop addresses the metadata lifecycle -- creation,
management, and use -- as it applies to enterprise applications and
activities, with focus on interoperability enabling international
business. Experts will present case studies about interesting
applications of metadata, and then discuss issues related to metadata
creation, management, and use in the enterprise.

"This pre-conference program will help participants learn how to
optimize the early stages of a metadata program for international and
cross-cultural deployments,"said Makx Dekkers, DCMI Managing Director.
"Support from AIfIA underscores the vital role of information
architecture in developing a metadata program."

"We are pleased to support this important initiative," said AIfIA
President Victor Lombardi. "We believe that information architecture
can help inform the process for aligning business goals to a metadata
initiative."

More details about this event are available at the DCMI conference
website at http://dc2004.library.sh.cn/.

Thursday, July 08, 2004

Happy Birthday, STOP Sign

I love finding crossroads where my interests in usability and mapping meet. In Happy Birthday Stop Sign, Eric Reiss discusses the birth and standardization of the ubiquitous stop sign.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

IA Deliverables

From time to time, I will post some interesting resources and tools in the information architectecture field. Today, you will find a list of Deliverables related to the IA process that were discussed on the AIfIA listserv.

Victor Lombardi's Blue wireframe (looks like a blueprint)
http://aifia.org/tools/download/LombardiWireframe.pdf

Clifton Evans' all-blue page...
http://www.infostyling.com/examples/Blueprinting_Object1.gif

Austin Govella's recent samples:

1. Very didactic. Client wanted more communication (59k PDF):
http://grafofini.com/stage/sample_deliverables/eto_wireframe_home.pdf

2. Very sparse. Client didn't care why or how. Just wanted progress (67k PDF):
http://grafofini.com/stage/sample_deliverables/ubs_home-wf.pdf

Dan Saffer suggested creating the wireframes on computer and tracing them by hand to look unfinished/changeable.

There are some more great samples on the AIfIA Tools page:
http://aifia.org/tools/

And great ideas and pointers on the IA Wiki:
http://www.iawiki.net/DeliverablesAndArtifacts

Process Outline from Thomas Vander Wal:

Initial meetings (discussion):
-gather user types, content types, possible interactive needs (not desires)
-estimate volume of information intially, and volume of information turn-over (how often and how much information is updated and added to).

Deliverable - Project Overview (Word document)
-Results of initial meeting/needs
-Rough persona and/or information use patterns of the user that come to the site (Why do people come to the site? What do they do with the information? Who is the audience? How often do they come to the site?).
-Client signs off once there is agreement

Deliverable FROM client - Content Inventory:
-individual documents they would like included
-current web sites they own, and/or pointer(s) to applications they want incorporated.

Deliverable - Content Inventory (spreadsheet):
This document will be our communication tool to prod the client for content that is missing and to show our work progress.
-category column
-raw content/document delivery column
-document size (words)
-number of images
-number and size of tables
-development status.

Deliverable - Open Card Sort (spreadsheet)
-For larger sub-sites
-client can do it themselves if they want

Deliverable - Content Object Type Inventory (outline format such as Word or PDF of OmniOutliner):
-images
-navigation
-referred links
-data tables
-headers
-sub-headers
-footers
-branding
-cross-branding
-dynamic elements
-rich content elements (where required)

Deliverable - Raw Wireframe:
-HTML with borders turned on and greeking
-one wireframe for each page type
-capture the various content objects and placement with consistency

Deliverable - Semantic Structure
-CSS classes and ids
-naming structure for dynamic and rich elements

Deliverable - Clickable Raw Wireframe
-include names and categories
-start testing it with users (heuristic assessment) and flow (particularly testing when users drop into the middle of a site).
-carved up wireframe into templates for HTML and/or CMS and applications.

Converted Content into the content templates.
Other elements are set as includes or are in the CSS.

Color Palette:
-known items (enterprise branding that is required)
-markup a few pallet options with CSS
-do a few user tests to verify choices/options
-create HTML CSS table listing the CSS attribute, an example, and when it gets used.

Graphic Development and Local Branding
-20 to 50% of the content has been converted
-tweak templates
-test and make adjustments accordingly

Depending on the size of the site, the number of people involved and access to read users, most of the steps in this process are flexible, except the raw HTML wireframe, clickable wireframe, and the content spreadsheets.

Thursday, May 20, 2004

GISMO blog

I am working on a new design for the GISMO (NYC area GIS user group) website and am experimenting with adding a blog.

Please take a look:

http://gismonyc.blogspot.com

This blog is hosted on blogspot.com. It is rather featureless at this point, but I think as an example of what a blog would look like for a group like ours, it is a start. I plan to move it to MovableType when I set up a new hosting account. I've decided to drop Brinkster & go to Netfirms. I took a class at eclasses.org in blogging and really love the MovableType interface.

Monday, May 17, 2004

What's up with Brinkster?

My website is down. Brinkster launched a great new site with new pricing structure. Somehow my files got lost in the mix. Not just my little website but a great big one I was working on for AMNH. I had been having trouble with Brinkster for a while - there were ads on my supposedly ad-free site. Now there are no ads, but no files either. It'll be a pain to repost these files, so I'm thinking about dropping the account. I was ready to move it to AMNH anyway & was planning to find a host that supports MovableType. Of course that was until I heard about the new MT pricing structure. Now I'm wondering if Blogger is where I belong.

{interlude}

So, just now I finished up with the support people via LivePerson. Of course they are not aware of why the files are gone. Did I delete them by accident, they wonder? Six hundred files in several different folders? Not likely. They don't appear to have any record of what happened regarding my previous problems with ads on the site or whether the person who fixed that problem had something to do with the missing files. So, I am mad. I have a backup of some of the files, but I probably lost some of the Vietnam expedition pictures that I had cleaned up. I'll have to go to the museum to see if they are there, or perhaps they are still in Outlook. Sigh.

So if you want me today, I'll be hovering over my WS-FTP console.

Thursday, May 13, 2004

Rumsfeld prefers being in Iraq

from today's Top Stories - AP "Rumsfeld Makes Surprise Visit to Iraq "
Rumsfeld was accompanied by Myers and several lawyers on a trip designed to reassure U.S. troops that the prisoner abuse scandal has not weakened public support for their mission and to get firsthand reports from the most senior commanders. Neither hid his feelings about the tough questioning he endured from members of Congress over the prison abuses.
"I'm really glad to be here," Myers enthused.
Before taking questions from soldiers, Rumsfeld said, "It's generally a lot more fun here than it is back home."

I wonder if the soldiers think it is more fun in Iraq.

Monday, May 10, 2004

GISMO Meeting Tomorrow

The next GISMO meeting is tomorrow, May 11th from 12:00pm-2:30pm at the Fund for the City of New York, 121 Sixth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY. Michael Schill of the NYU Furman (Real Estate) Center will discuss the NY Times 2/6 Exposure of New Web site www.nychanis.com. Anyone interested in geographic information systems software is welcome to attend. No need to RSVP. Lunch is provided by the Fund.

The next meeting is Thursday, July 15: Discussion on future of GIS/GISMO/NYC/NYS.

For additional details please see the GISMO website at http://www.geo.hunter.cuny.edu/gismo.

Thursday, April 29, 2004

GIS: upcoming meetings

I just posted a bunch of upcoming meetings to the GISMO website. Additional details are in the GISMO calendar.

Events through May:

Thursday, April 29, 5:00pm: GGSA Spring Lecture Series
Hunter College, North Building in room 1022, New York, NY
"Lost Geographies and Failed Globalization: From Versailles to Iraq"
Neil Smith, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center

Wed, May 5, 5:00pm: GGSA Spring Lecture Series
Hunter College, North Building in room 1022, New York, NY
"Tips and Tools for Color Symbolization for Mapping and Visualization"
Cynthia Brewer, Associate Professor of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University

Tuesday, May 6 at 9:00am: LIGIS: Long Island GIS Spring Meeting
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Brookhaven, NY
See www.ligis.org for details.

Tuesday, May 11 at 12:00pm: GISMO General Meeting
Fund for the City of New York
Michael Schill, NYU Furman (Real Estate) Center will discuss the NY Times 2/6 Exposure of New Web site www.nychanis.com

Friday, May 21, 2004 at 3:30 PM: Landmarks Preservation Commission
Public Hearing Room, Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street (at the corner of Centre Street and Chambers Street), 9th Floor, New York, NY.
The Archaeology Department will be hosting a guest lecture titled, "Recreating the Historical Topography of Manhattan Island." Use the north entrance. Please bring photo ID for entrance to the Municipal Building.

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

More CMS Tutorials

The new CMS Wiki has a definition of a Content Management System.
http://www.cmswiki.com/tiki-index.php?page=ContentManagementSystem.

It also has a discussion of the confusing term portal.
http://www.cmswiki.com/tiki-editpage.php?page=Portal

And something on Workflow.
http://www.cmswiki.com/tiki-index.php?page=WorkFlow

CMS Review has references to all the great books on Content Managemant.
http://www.cmsreview.com/Resources/Books.html.

Monday, April 26, 2004

City Council Hearing on 311 and Community Boards

Today, I went to a NYC City Council Public Hearing of the Committee on Technology in Government, on the role of the City's 59 Community Boards in the 311 system. 311 is the new number that New Yorkers dial to ask questions about New York City services, make complaints and to get information, such as library hours, bus and trash pickup schedules, etc. Community boards act as local advocates to their district constituents, recording complaints, alerting service organizations to district needs, issuing liquor licenses and making recommendations to the city planning agencies.

I arrived late and did not hear the testimony Dept of Information Technology & Telecommunications, who oversees the 311 system. A representative of the city of Hampton, VA was also present to give testimony on the sucess of their 311 system, which was implemented in 1999. I did hear the testimony of 6 Community Boards, representing three boroughs. I gathered from their testimony that DoITT was not providing the level of access to the system that the CBs require to do their jobs.

A handout of the DoITT testimony, which I read later on the train home, confirmed that they did not address the more specific information needs that the CBs require to effectively act as an advocate for their constituents. DoITT said that they offer aggregate data to CBs, in order to protect the privacy of citizens making the calls. CBs countered that they need specific incident data in order to respond to constituents on the status of complaints. Additionally, while CBs have received the computers, software, internet hookup, training and technical support visits from DoITT staff, many indicated that they do not have access to the data at all. (One CB District Manager joked that the computer support technicians had visited their office several times, but only to upgrade security on the system).

All testifiers from CBs said they strongly support the 311 system as a way to aggregate data and ease the volume of non-critical calls received on a daily basis, but required more involvement, i.e., access to data, in order to record and act on specific complaints in their community and handle more complex problems involving more than a single agency (which 311 is not currently equipped to do effectively - when the call is recorded and forwarded to an agency to handle, the incident is closed. If the wrong agency gets the call, or if another agency is required to handle a portion of the call, there is no process for feedback to the original complainer, or to 311 for that matter, that further action is required). Aggregate data, in the case of pothole complaints, for example, does not show where potholes occur, nor could it show that 20% of potholes in a given district are on a single street, which would indicate an infrastructure problem that the CB would want to address in its planning recommendations.

The CB representatives agreed that detailed incident data and geolocation information could be made accessible from the system, while still protecting the privacy of individual complainants. Still, some CBs suggested that it could be useful in identifying frequent complainers (CBs already know who they are in their districts) and that certain CB staff people who have been calling in complaints from district offices should be identified as such in incident logs rather than treated as citizen complainers.

311 is a great tool for gathering and handling complaints efficiently in a city as large as New York City. It would be a shame if citizens' primary local advocate were left out of the process. I am heartened that the City Council is taking the issue seriously.

Friday, April 23, 2004

Visio stencils

Visio stencils

- Henrik Olsen's web prototyping stencils and template
uses: prototyping, wireframes
http://www.guuui.com/issues/02_03_02.php

- Michael Angeles's wireframe stencils
uses: prototyping, wireframes
http://studioid.com/pg/visio_wireframe_stencil.php

- Jesse James Garrett's stencils
uses: flow
http://www.jjg.net/ia/visvocab/

- Peter Van Dijk's stencils (four of them here)
uses: sitemaps, isometric sitemaps, prototyping, wireframes, flow
http://iabook.com/template.htm

- Peter Van Dijck's older stencils
uses: prototyping, wireframes
http://poorbuthappy.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$51

Monday, April 19, 2004

Personas and Roles

Personas and Roles

Some Persona URLS:
http://www.cooper.com/content/insights/newsletters_personas.asp
http://iawiki.net/PersonaDesign
http://foruse.com/newsletter/foruse15.htm#3

Sometimes Personas is the right sentiment but not the right approach,
because they assume you have quite distinguishably different user
archetypes. In this case it may be better to adopt a role-based approach, whereby you define
different 'hats' or roles that a user may take in order to fulfil a kind of
task or set of tasks.

Roles URLs:
http://edp5285-01.sp01.fsu.edu/Guide4.html

Constantine and Lockwood's 'Software For Use'
http://foruse.com/questions/index.htm#5

Thursday, April 15, 2004

More on Site Maps & Indices

All of the following resources came from a discussion list (not my compilation). Apologies to whomever compiled this listing - I've forgotten so I can't give credit.... :(


Site Index examples:
Good:
http://www.peoplesoft.com/corp/en/indices/site_index.jsp
http://www.w3.org/Help/siteindex
http://www.montaguelab.com/Public/indexes.htm
http://www.census.gov/main/www/subjects.html
http://www.consumerreports.org/main/detailv2.jsp?CONTENT<>cnt_id=3171&FOLDER
<>folder_id=3167
http://www.writersblock.ca/common/index.htm

Not so good:
http://www.asindexing.org/site/backndx.htm
Different style / purpose:
http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/index/index.html

Product Index examples:
Good:
http://www.ibm.com/products/az/
http://www.peoplesoft.com/corp/en/indices/prod_index.jsp

Not so good:
http://www.3m.com/product/index.jhtml

Sitemap examples:
Good:
http://www.apple.com/find/sitemap.html
http://www.google.com/sitemap.html
http://pages.ebay.com/sitemap.html?ssPageName=h:h:smap:US
http://www.multimap.com/static/sitemap.htm
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/sitemap/

Not so good:
http://www.novuspetroleum.com/cmsaxs/site/1/5.asp?secID=18
http://www.miami.muohio.edu/sitemap/

Bad:
http://www.chaminade.edu/sitemap/content/sitemap.html (bad visual
representation)
http://www.chaminade.edu/sitemap/index.php (not much better - text w/
visuals once you click on a high-level section)
http://www.tamu.edu/00/sitemap.html?mode=d (too detailed, bad layout, no
logical order) http://www.raffed75.isgreat.tv/Sitemap.htm (yuck!)

The IBM Site Map Gallery:

Fascinating study of a big company dealing with lack of standards...map, map, who's got THE site map?

http://www-1.ibm.com/businesscenter/us/sitemap/ (simple)
http://www.ibm.com/investor/tools/iritsm.phtml (good use of bullets &
indention)
http://www-5.ibm.com/de/mittelstand/sitemap/ (interesting layout)
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/sitemap.html (jump nav at top good,
indention and level of detail bad) http://www.ibm.com/ar/sitemap/ (bad
windows explorer style layout) http://www.almaden.ibm.com/st/sitemap.shtml
(what's a link?)
http://www-306.ibm.com/e-business/doc/content/sitemap/sitemap.html (too
detailed)

Related Articles & Info:
http://taxonomist.tripod.com/indexing/design_checklist.html
http://www.asindexing.org/site/checklist.shtml
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/sitemaps_and_site_indexes_what_they_a
re_and_why_you_should_have_them.php
http://davidcrow.ca/2003/01/20/trends_in_sitemap_design.html
http://www.iaslash.org/node.php?id=2535#comment
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020106.html
http://www.evolt.org/article/evolt/4090/710/

Tools:
http://www.brown-inc.com/indexer/FAQ.htm

Site Map vs Site Index

http://www.aussi.org/indexer.htm
http://www.asindexing.org/site/backndx.htm
http://www.sun.com/siteindex/
http://my.webmd.com/medical_information/condition_centers/default.htm
http://www.adobe.com/products/main.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/all-stores.html/104-3468701-819
5133
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/508510/104-3468701-8195133

Accessibility Report

The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) in Great Britain just released an in-depth study on the accessibility of 1000 websites, with recommendations to improve the W3C WAI guidelines on accessibility. Thanks to Jim on the SIGIA-L listserv for finding this.

http://www.drc-gb.org/publicationsandreports/report.asp

For a response from the WAI read on:

http://www.w3.org/2004/04/wai-drc-statement.html

Summer Vacation

I am planning a trip with the family to Lake George in August and getting sidetracked by dreams of Montreal, Quebec City, Montana, skiing. Why must we have to plan so far in advance? No availability. We are definitely available the week you want, except were fully booked on Tuesday night, but we can accommodate those other days! We don't take children under 12. Sorry, we're booked. Sigh. Back to my phone calls.

Geographic Information Systems at the WTC

I recently wrote in my blog welcome message about a book project on the use of mapping technology in 9/11 rescue & recovery efforts. I'm moving this off the welcome message because I am going to start to write it. There are a lot of great resources on the mapping efforts at Pier 92 in New York City available at the GISMO website:

Yahoo! Groups : gismonyc Links

Directions Magazine has a great map gallery at their site:

Directions Magazine: Map Gallery of GIS Community Response to 9/11

Even National Geographics Magazine picked up the story, interviewing some of the members of GISMO:

National Geographic Magazine: Geographica: Mapping Disaster: Cartographers Aid Workers at Ground Zero

Thursday, April 01, 2004

Costa Rica

Green IguanaWe just got back from Costa Rica late Sunday night. We left New York on a snowy March 18th and were briefly delayed to de-ice the wings. Four hours later we were in San Jose, met our San Jose guide, who gave us a brief tour orientation while being driven to and dropped at the hotel. After an easy four and a half hour flight, we weren't too tired, but there wasn't much to do at the first hotel. We simply hung out in the back yard, overlooking coffee fields with San Jose in the distance, excited about our upcoming week and a half of adventure.

The next day our naturalist guide and driver arrived. We were to visit Sarapiqui, Arenal Volcano & Tamarindo Beach, with a plane ride back to San Jose for the last night.

Jungle and FallsOur first stop was the La Paz Waterfall Gardens and was our first taste of the local bird-life, plant-life, butterfly-life and food. La Paz is just a couple years old and has trails that go past five waterfalls. It also has an enclosed butterfly garden (boasted as the world's largest) and an unenclosed hummingbird garden. It was raining, of course. It is a rainforest after all. We hiked up and down trails that at points had metal staircases hung from the side of the ravines. We saw so many different kinds of birds, it is hard to name them all, and were happy at the end to sample the food at the buffet-style cafeteria.

It was clear from the beginning that Karla, our guide, and Mauricio, our driver knew each other well. They kept up a sibling-like banter that was half biting, half joking, but always funny and light-hearted. By the end of the second day, Karla had our girls coming up with schemes for tricking Mauricio or getting him back for the day's antics. They were overall good guides. Karla was clearly very well versed in the geology, biodiversity, history and cultural makeup of Costa Rica. And Mauricio was quick to stop the van at any interesting animal or plant life we passed (including coatimundi, Blue Morpho butterflies and the ubiquitous Impatiens, or "China" flowers that lined the roadways.)

Blue Jean FrogOur next two nights were in Sarapiqui. The La Quinta of Sarapiqui hotel was in a jungle area tucked between pineapple farms. The property was small, but had a few trails around a frog garden, butterfly aviary, fruit garden and a couple of fish ponds. We saw lots of tiny "blue jean" frogs: little strawberry, poison-dart frogs only as big as your thumbnail. We did some fishing but the fish were too smart to get caught.

CoatimundiThe following day, we toured La Selva Biological Station, which is an international research station. Sloths were too shy to appear but we saw just about everything else you could hope to see: coati, bats, lizards, howlers, capuchins, tiger rat snakes, pit vipers, peccaries, poisonous caterpillars, all sorts of birds. We also went on a river raft tour on the last day and saw a lot more creatures and stopped for a snack at a 90-year old farmer's home near a fork in the river.

Mount Arenal VolcanoNext day, on to Arenal Volcano. We saw shiny, smokey black stuff sliding down the volcano on our first day there, but no fire-show. We stayed at a hotel called Montana de Fuego at the base of the volcano, but the mountain was covered with fog for the rest of the trip. We visited a really nice, secluded hot springs & had some of our better meals there. I have to say I was a bit nervous staying so close to an active volcano and was glad when it was time to leave!

JaguarWe had some excitement on the drive out to the Pacific coast. Josie was bitten by a capuchin monkey at the jaguar rehab center. The facility houses animals that were taken from illegal traders and that were injured in the wild. The capuchin was formerly kept as a domestic pet under rather cruel conditions. Josie is healing well. Emergency services are pretty good in CR, when you can find them.

Tamarindo Beach was nice, but very smoky from the sugar cane farms (they have to burn the field to remove spines from the stalks before cutting them down, since it is mostly done by hand). There is a huge surfer community at the beach, mostly Coloradoans on vacation & Californian drifters. Our hotel had a beautiful new pool across the street that we found after two days which was a great find, but frustrating not to have learned of it earlier.

We stayed our last night at Xandari Plantation in Alajuela--Very Nice! It is part of a coffee plantation with a river & jungle hiking trails to explore. After our scare earlier in the week, you'd be surprised to hear Brett was already planning a Christmas trip back there! I brought back some coffee.