paper & pencil

css-o-matic!

inknoise personal publishing created a too for auto-generated css layouts called Layout-o-matic:

Select a layout type, width, and other options to the left, and then click Download or View and pick up your multi-column CSS layout starter kit (turning it into something unique and beautiful not included). You're welcome to use the resulting generated layouts for any purpose, personal or commercial.

The resulting layouts have been tested in as many browsers as BrowserCam supports, and they appear to work in all of them except the 4.x browsers.

another tool out there from Max Design for creating different styled lists -listamatic

what users hate

the article Making Rich Web Application Architecture Usable outlines the things users hate to do when working with an online app and gives tips on how to avoid those things.

Users Hate Learning
- keep elements visually consistent
- use real-world metaphors
- fix element locations
- space out new tasks
- make buttons learnable (text label) and scannable (distinguishable icon)

Users Hate Repeating
- automatic data collection (contextual information such as location and task)
- re-use data across apps
- use default values that reflect the majority with user ability to change

Users Hate Waiting
-show progress
- give access to previous steps
- display partially loaded data to "minimize the perceived wait"
- use appropriate alerts

Users Hate Searching
- consistent nav
- "task-based interfaces should be loosely connected", allow users to choose their own paths
- but also display an ideal path
- give each task it's own url that can be easily bookmarked and linked to

Users Hate Reading
- present data in a way that is accessible to all and scannable

Users Hate Security Breaches
- get users consent when sharing data
- default to strict security and allow user to loosen it

Users Hate a Monotonous Look
- users like to be able to customize the look & feel (backgrounds, colors, skins)
- but keep interface elements consistent regardless of the "theme" chosen

Users Hate Platform Restrictions
"The ability to deploy applications on various operating systems across different accessibility software is an important criterion when it comes to choosing the development platform."

Users Hate Rigid Functionality
- provide options to edit functionality
- provide "presets" according to different audience types

Users Hate Mistakes
- auto-save actions and enable undo
- develop macros for repeat actions

soft skills of ia

jeff lash's new column in digitalweb mag, Soft Skills for Information Architecture, outlines the comunication skills you need as an IA,. I think these apply to pretty much all professions.

Know how to win arguments, but know when to give in

There will be times when, like it or not, you will not get your way. To paraphrase from the old axiom:

Grant me the strength to improve the features that I can
Accept the features that I cannot
And give me the wisdom to know the difference

Learn to make do with what you have

Keep everyone happy Information architects often act as the middlemen, interfacing with everyone from middle or upper management to marketing to development to IT. Each group requires something from IA, and IA requires something from each group.

Document, document, document However it is implemented, having a written record of actions, decisions, recommendations, and the reasons behind them can make the life of an information architect much easier and allow for better, more effective uses of time.

Embrace the librarian within you Again, the method is irrelevant, but the need to embrace the librarian within you, and develop a strategy to find and use relevant information, has never been more apparent as the amount of information available grows at an exponential rate.

Let other people do the work for you

proposal tips

Write Proposals That Sell

1. Steal a proposal that works 2. Understand (and flatter) your target 3. First the end, then the means 4. Use simple words 5. The price is right (and this is a buyer's market)

auto-expire content

Auto Expire script

Content will only be displayed between the 'Go Live' date and the 'Expires' date.

accessible image headers

Accessible Header Images With CSS And XHTML

describes atechnique for having images for headers with a text version sitting beneath that for users with images turned off.

macromedia central

Macromedia Central:

Central will provide an efficient new place where Internet applications can work together and help with different daily tasks. Central will also create a marketplace for applications created with Macromedia Flash.

this is for the "occasionlly connected" desktop & mobile apps

lots of discussions out there:
principles
blogs

comments on interwoven

Rohn Jay Miller posts a breif review of Interwoven on the ia-cms yahoo group

I've just completed building a large-scale publishing system on top of Interwoven, which is considered one of the top CMSs and I keep shaking my head at the conceptual limitations of the system.

as Mike J points out, most of these CMS's are really
"page generators," which allow simple link management.
But Interwoven---just to pick on them--has no index
of the pages you've posted to a site. So unless you
keep a really good Excel spreadsheet record on your
own, you haven't a clue about the number, distribution
and content of the pages on your site.

We've looked at trying to paste Adobe Acrobat 6.0 or
website spidering shareware on top of the Interwoven
mess to have some kind of audit feature of what's on
the site---but why is this our problem?

I've seen home grown CMS's--including one I expanded
into a large-scale CMS at Knight Ridder
newspapers--and I've seen shareware and a few
commercial low-end SiteBuilder type applications. But
where is the leadership in CMS's for large-scale
corporate and institutional Websites?

I think a root of the problem is that all the venture
cash was burned up two years ago and companies like
Interwoven and Vingette are holding on by the
fingernails. (Interwoven stock has fallen from $65 a
share three years ago to $3 a share now---which means
it was a $7 billion company and now it's a $350
million company)

Just ranting, but perhaps there's a CMS that's
listening.

roadmap to enterprise ia

lou rosenfeld created an overview of how to develop and enterprise level IA:
EIA Roadmap

The map covers:

Top-down IA - taxonomy, site map, site index, selective navigation

Bottom-up IA - content modeling, metadata development

Enterprise Search - interface, queries, results

"Guerilla" EIA - content from experts (k-logs), content from teams & communities (wikis)

another neat color picker tool

Color scheme

different than the others i've seen is you can pick different schemes (monochromatic, contrast, analogic) as well as adjust brightness, hue and saturation. And to make it that much better than anyone else's you can also select web colors only and see what it would look like to people who suffer from various forms of color-blindness.