September 2004
Mechanical Pong is a lovely bit of absurdist blurring of the virtual and the real. (via)
Since I’m going to have a son in a few months, I felt the need to stock up on sporty imagery. To that end, I just received these 3 sweet Otl Aicher posters from the ‘72 Olympics:
What are the possible ways to organize things?
For information, there are 7. For interfaces, there are at least 4, identified on a mailing list: Things, Tasks, Tools, and Time. Can you think of others?
Bullet Madness is exactly that. (via)
In Extending a Technique: Group Personas, Mike presents a detailed walkthrough of the development of personas for group behavior (his example is a family at an amusement park). It’s a nice gloss on persona development, and worth reading whether you’re working with groups or individuals. In general, I’m a strong believer in persona/scenario development as a “way in” to designing an interface. I don’t put quite as much stock in personas as some people; I think they are extremely important for defining problems, but they just feel a bit unwieldy as an ongoing part of the design process - that whole “What would Glenda do?” thing. Anyhow, go read the article :)
Also seen on Rajat’s new blog is the Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness.
Intelliseek’s BlogPulse uses the blogosphere to track trends. For example: Osama, Saddam, and Kim. (via)
Peter Morville has your Information Architecture summer reading list. Get cracking!