Bobulate

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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Typically, users know what they’re searching for even before they choose a search engine over the site’s navigation. In this investigation, I’d like to explore how we can provide a user interface to help them search more effectively before they get started.

This investigation is about the ordering and structure of the search fields themselves, not the results, which have been the topic of much discussion already. For reference, I will refer to these interfaces in one of four ways: Standard, Surfacing, Qualifying, and Passive interfaces. More…