Today is all about interactive timelines. Here’s a few you might want to look at if you’re ever after some precedents/benchmarks etc. (And a few accidentally found cool interactive maps).
So, Ben Barren revved up the Downunder Conference conversation again this weekend. More conversation ensues at the Women of 2.0 post earlier on this site.
We’re talking about unconferences (what are they?), should a chick blogging conference be included as a stream in a larger Downunder Web Conference? (If so, which one). And, is Ben Barren the appropriate champion for Aussie women who blog?
Come, join the fun 
So, Malcolm Gladwell got me thinking about focus groups the other day. Actually, he got me thinking about the characteristics of groups and the way that people perform when in front of their peers, as well as perfect strangers.Malcolm was kind of talking about his recent article in the New Yorker, and gave this overview of a ‘taxonomy of reason-giving’:
[Tilly says] … We employ four kinds of explanations, he says: conventions (social formulae), stories (common sense narratives), codes (legal formulae) and technical accounts (specialized stories). And we get into trouble when we use one kind of reason in a context where another is necessary….
is it just me or have the spammers in China gone crazy lately?
Looking at my spam folder in gmail, not only have I been getting a whole lot more spam than usual (all beautifully captured in the spam folder thankfully), but it all seems to be in Chinese.
Bizarre. You too?
(ok, i’m a nerd… i’d never actually *buy* it though. James would).
From time to time I have the pleasure of talking to others who do Information Architecture as a part of their work. Sometimes as *all* of their work, although usually as a part. (Of course, there’s lots of debate and confusion over where Information Architecture starts and ends, but I’ve posted about that already).
Given that IA as a profession is really only about 10yrs old (or at least, that’s the figure I hear bandied about), it makes sense that *most* IAs have a ‘past life’ of one kind or another. This has got me to thinking that there are probably about six different species of Information Architect, based on the kind of professional past life they’ve had (nor not).
I’m going to make some wild sweeping generalisations here… bear with me
Here’s what I’m thinking:
10-19.jpg "Pencils")
So, I’ve been doing a whole bunch of wireframing lately.
I have to admit that, in the last little while, I’d gotten into the habit of wireframing straight into Visio, maybe after a quick thumbnail sketch on a notepad somewhere.
The site I’m working on at the moment has quite a bit of application type functionality in it, as well as a whole bunch of content, and offers the opportunity to be a little bit creative with the interaction design.
Out of habit, I pretty much launched straight into Visio (after a couple of quick sketches), but the further I got into it, the less satisfied I was with the output.
So, just for a while, I dumped Visio, got a whole pile of paper, some pencils and a sharpener, and just played around with ideas.
Ahhh. That’s just *soooo* much better.
It’s a little bit 37 Signals/Getting Real (although, these *will* end up as Visio wireframes in a functional specification - the size and dispersal of the team on this project demands that kind of documentation), but it does seem to be a popular approach to documenting RIAs. (Jeffry Veen was saying the other day that he’s going from pencil sketch to build these days).
So, what’s so good about pencil sketching your wireframes?
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