Bobulate

A quick Monday note to mention a recent project I’m quite excited about. WordPress fans may already know that the redesign of the administration panel has been talked about for some time. Well, this weekend saw the release of WordPress 2.5, which included improvements far and wide, including the redesign of the admin.

I’m honored to have been a small part of its redesign. WordPress approached Happy Cog to streamline WordPress’ information architecture and design. We worked with the valliant Matt Mullenweg, who in turn gathered feedback from the team at Auttomatic, while we developed a new structural and design system. More…

Before we knew web design, before we knew what we did was called information architecture, we wrote. We sat patiently through grammar class, learning when the participle dangled and the sentence ran on. As we got older, we were handed down paperbacks gilded with lessons and rules about how to write. Guidelines from Strunk & White guided our high school prose.

But if we braved on, we may have encountered a different kind of grammatical attitude. Grammar rules dropped away; Strunk & White became idle on the bookshelf, and we were left to our own devices. More…

Sure it’s true. Books — real books in print — have been around for, well, quite a while. But as a new publisher of user experience books (and staunch researchers), we want to ensure that the books we design are as usable as possible.

We’re looking to apply some usability research strategies to test both print and digital editions of our first book, Indi Young’s Mental Models. To do this, we need your help. More…

Jake Barton, one of the speakers at the upcoming IDEA conference I’m so excited about, is always surprising me. Just when I think I understand his approach (designing spaces to tell stories), he comes out with another type of project altogether (designing films)—through it all, winning awards from every major design organization there is. There’s no doubt, Barton and his studio are truly remarkable. More…

I’m really excited about the upcoming IDEA conference in New York City. Not only is its lineup of speakers the very people I’ve been looking to for inspiration recently, but it’s being put on by the Information Architecture Institute.

OK. It’s true. I’m on the advisory board of the IAI, but I’m still thrilled to see an event sponsored by an IA-related organization reaching outside the typical boundaries of what’s considered to be “information architecture.” More…

Last week at An Event Apart Chicago hosted by Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer, I had the pleasure of meeting a huge number of approachable and impassioned attendees. I heard talks ranging from the high-level-inspiration kind to the get-your-hands-dirty kind that define the event.

For the first time, I gave a talk on The Seven Lies of Information Architecture. I wasn’t sure how it would fare, as I’m an IA myself, and contesting principles is always tricky. I got good feedback from some nice attendees and look forward to refining the ideas, providing more examples, as I develop the Lies. More…

Boxes and Arrows is devoted to the practice, innovation, and discussion of design; including graphic design, interaction design, information architecture and even business design. Since 2001, it’s been a peer-written journal promoting contributors who want to provoke thinking, push limits, and teach a few things along the way.
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