“A Colorado developer has created a subdivision of single-family homes that resemble little factory buildings. The subdivision’s houses ó each of which sports a name like the ‘Cannery’ or the ‘Steam Plant’ ó come complete with industrial-style details like these metal awnings.”

“A recent article on document design in the WSJ shakily raised the question: Is a poorly designed memo at fault for not warning the president the nature of the terrorist threat? In many ways it’s a retread of the butterfly ballot controversy, and the Challenger controversy, but I think it’s a controversy worth raising again and again until careless attention to design stops killing people.”

“dincTYPE let us know that they are having a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ day today. ‘Today only, 5/5 dincTYPE has made available five of our most requested commercial typefaces. We are no longer a commercial type foundry, so these fonts are unavailable anywhere. Except for today. There are five fonts, all with international character sets archived together for your downloading convenience. They include: Bachelorette, Boxboy, Funtime, Lady Luck, and Spotlight. Get them today, tomorrow they’ll be gone.’”

“The mind-boggling speed and reach of Internet search engines mask a severe limitation: They are powered by words alone… In hopes of wrapping their arms around more of that stuff, computing researchers have developed new search engines that can mine catalogs of three-dimensional objects, like airplane parts or architectural features.”

“The article starts off by citing Greg Storey’s work to redesign the infamous Bin Laden President’s Daily Brief. It then moves on to describe what Information Architecture/Design is and how it can make a difference in understanding information and in the bottom-line for a business. IA/ID also is mentioned in the decision-making process for the Columbia disaster, and Tufte gets to rail a bit against Powerpoint. Tufte also dismisses Mr. Storey’s redesign of the PDB (way to exhibit solidarity, Ed). The article then moves onto another favorite pundit, Nielsen, and he gets to quote his $71B in lost productvity sound-bite.”

“A project done in Java will cost 5 times as much, take twice as long, and be harder to maintain than a project done in a scripting language such as PHP or Perl.”

“I agree that there will always be a need for two different kinds of interface: One for naive users and one for expert users. The difference, as I see it, is that naive users are those who don’t have an internal model of the system (or some metaphorical interface to it) Thus naive users need that model represented explicitly ó one control (checkbox, textbox, button or menu-item) for each action they need to perform ó so they can read the functionality of the system from the interface. The interface decomposes complex ideas into a sequence of self-evident steps. Expert users, on the other hand, do have an internal model of the system and remember it’s capabilities and some way of refering to each of them. Thus they can enter commands which include references to multiple actions, composed grammatically.”

“The overwhelming response to my site has been so heartfelt & positive… and I’m so thrilled. That said, initially non-Catholics whispered to me that Catholics might get offended… as though warning me not to be surprised if the local parish showed up at my doorstep with torches. Here’s the irony: those who attended Catholic school and grew up memorizing the life stories of obscure Saints, Patrons to everyone from comedians to bruise sufferers, seem to be the biggest fans so far.”

“When conducting usability testing, the pressing need to meet technology requirements can mean that insufficient time is given to ensuring that other supporting materials have been prepared. The result can be a test in which the administrator feels uncomfortable and poorly prepared. As a consequence, participants may also feel ill-at-ease. The following is a list of materials that we regard as a minimum when running a test. Links to samples (in PDF format) are included where appropriate.”

“I canít emphasize how much design briefs have helped me in the past. They instill a level of trust between the designer and client, while establishing the mission, objectives, and milestones that keep you all on track. Peter L. Phillipsí ‘Creating the Perfect Design Brief: How to Manage Design for Strategic Advantage’ should be on the shelves of design students and practitioners because he covers the micro and macro issues of design briefs while touching on design management.”

“Here you can find a list with the fonts common to all versions of Windows and their Mac equivalents (in blue). This is the reference I use for knowing what fonts I can use when making web pages, I expect you find it useful too. If you want to know how the fonts are displayed in other OS’s, you can take a look to a capture of the fonts in Windows 2000 with Internet Explorer 6 and another one in Mac OS X with Safari 1.2.”

“Peter Morville is President and Founder of Semantic Studios, a leading information architecture and user experience consulting firm. He is widely recognized as a founding father of the emerging field of information architecture, and he serves as a passionate advocate for the critical role that findability plays in defining the user experience. Peter is co-author (with Louis Rosenfeld) of the best-selling book on the subject: ‘Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.’”

“Functioning Form is where art and technology emerge as experience, where message and medium meld, and where interactions are useful, usable, and enjoyable. Functioning Form is the interface. Functioning Form is about context, clarity, consistency, control, transparency, indication, and metaphor. Functioning Form is about communication. Function Form becomes interface design, the user experience design process, Web applications, and more.”

“It took me almost a year to transition. Today I feel confident I can do anything using web standards and they all make perfect sense to me. Even more, I don’t see any reason why I should use old school design methods anymore.”

“This is a survey of existing and proposed laws and regulations on cryptography ó systems used for protecting information against unauthorized access. Governments have long restricted export of cryptography for fear that their intelligence activities are hampered by the crypto use of foreign states and scoundrels. Since the rise of crypto use over the past decades, governments increasingly worry about criminals using cryptography to thwart law enforcement. Thus, many countries are considering laws focusing on maintaining law-enforcement and national-security capabilities through regulation of cryptography.”