“Gabion is an illustrated archive of critical writing on architecture, design and related topics by Hugh Pearman. …Gabion is the site of Hugh Pearman, London-based architecture and design critic. Hugh has been attached to The Sunday Times, London, since 1986, writes for a wide range of other design and consumer titles, is the author of several books, and frequently teaches and lectures. What you find here is a selection — by no means exhaustive — of his writings in various media, including the full, uncut versions of articles previously published in The Sunday Times.”

“Most corporate intranets are born around a conference room table, with a bevy of expectations heaped upon them from the moment of conception. The human resource department wants employee self-service and document distribution; sales and marketing requires a portal environment for accessing customer information, sales presentations, and up-to-date product information; upper-level management envisions a communications and data conduit linking global operations and partners — while the members of the IT department find themselves cracking open another package of Tums as hundreds, or even thousands, of Web pages flash before their eyes.”

“By choosing to interact with me, you agree to accept these practices. I know that you, having just met me a few minutes ago, are concerned about how personal information about you will be gathered and used by me. As a respected provider of interpersonal content, I am committed to protecting your privacy. I have just handed you this notice describing my privacy policy. By continuing to interact with me, you agree to accept the practices described below.”

“At the heart of any good user-centred design process is the practice of prototyping. By creating and testing interfaces in rough format, designers are able to feed through improvements and feedback from users quickly and easily. This in turn helps to ensure a final product that is an evolved solution, in the sense that it has been through a number of iterations and emerged as fit for the job in question.”

“Most corporate intranets are born around a conference room table, with a bevy of expectations heaped upon them from the moment of conception. The human resource department wants employee self-service and document distribution; sales and marketing requires a portal environment for accessing customer information, sales presentations, and up-to-date product information; upper-level management envisions a communications and data conduit linking global operations and partners — while the members of the IT department find themselves cracking open another package of Tums as hundreds, or even thousands, of Web pages flash before their eyes.”

“The Best Designs was created as a resource for designers to view the best designs on the net, to read articles written by other designers, and to be guided to the most helpful web design resources on the Internet.”

“At the heart of any good user-centred design process is the practice of prototyping. By creating and testing interfaces in rough format, designers are able to feed through improvements and feedback from users quickly and easily. This in turn helps to ensure a final product that is an evolved solution, in the sense that it has been through a number of iterations and emerged as fit for the job in question.”

“It’s not that we don’t want to explain to you what this site is about, it’s that we think it must be obvious. We have a big list, and we put things onto this list. Sometimes we find things that should be near the top of other lists, but in general we only pay attention to the date when these certain things are brought to our attention. Then we give them to you.” What’s that mean? I think it means you’ll find reviews of good, well-designed things here. Nice stuff.

“Most posters in our collection are originals (exceptions are clearly marked), political posters, made in the period 1960-1990, published with the supervision of the Communist Party, and were designed to make people work harder, be better communists and good patriots… These pages were made with the goal to establish an online museum of posters. Since we have multiple pieces of many (original) posters in our collection, we can sell the surplus. We also welcome trade — if you have any interesting posters,-be they Russian, Chinese, American, old, new, home-made, political, movie, circus, ANY posters… let us know.”

“In this issue, InCA covers the juicy topic of Design Research — how it’s done, why it’s done, and why you should do it, too… All design-related research can be described as a blend of these two underlying dimensions and can be placed conceptually within the space defined by these two dimensions. Methods that are close together in this space are conceptually more similar than those that are farther apart. Often, researchers will draw upon different kinds of research for different stages of design. Indeed, Spool and his colleagues argue that user-centered design is most effective when user research is used at every stage of the design process.”

“The word ‘affordance’ was invented by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson (1977, 1979) to refer to the actionable properties between the world and an actor (a person or animal). To Gibson, affordances are relationships. They exist naturally: they do not have to be visible, known, or desirable. I originally hated the idea: it didn’t make sense.”

“Most posters in our collection are originals (exceptions are clearly marked), political posters, made in the period 1960-1990, published with the supervision of the Communist Party, and were designed to make people work harder, be better communists and good patriots… These pages were made with the goal to establish an online museum of posters. Since we have multiple pieces of many (original) posters in our collection, we can sell the surplus. We also welcome trade — if you have any interesting posters, be they Russian, Chinese, American, old, new, home-made, political, movie, circus, ANY posters… let us know.”

“In this issue, InCA covers the juicy topic of Design Research — how it’s done, why it’s done, and why you should do it, too… All design-related research can be described as a blend of these two underlying dimensions and can be placed conceptually within the space defined by these two dimensions. Methods that are close together in this space are conceptually more similar than those that are farther apart. Often, researchers will draw upon different kinds of research for different stages of design. Indeed, Spool and his colleagues argue that user-centered design is most effective when user research is used at every stage of the design process.”

“As Web development evolves, it becomes more clear that open-source, standards-based approaches are needed in order to achieve the six A’s of pervasive computing — authorized access to anyone, anytime, anyplace, on any device. Thus, the six A’s are becoming the marching orders for IT shops large and small, and Web delivery is on the agenda for most IT organizations.”

“It is rare today to build a site without selecting software that allows you to update and manage it regularly. Content management has become a catch-all term to describe software systems that range from short scripts to allow you to add new news or press releases to a single page through to complete publishing environments supporting multiple editors, interlinked document sets and workflow processes.”