Partial Recall » Visualization

Changing Color by Time & Frequency

I’ve been thinking of how color can be used by “fading” or “brightening” content elements and how CSS could be attached to date (and other) triggers. Shaun Inman demonstrates 2 specific versions of his site that apply this concept (v. 10 | v. 9). Here’s a more detailed explanation: “About the Heap”. Look at his archives to see the color fade effect (it’s most noticeable in v.10). Shaun also mentions that he uses color to identify seasons.

In contrast, Del.icio.us applies the opposite effect by “brightening” a content item over time the more the same URL is saved by others. That way the user can see how popular it has become to del.icio.us users. An example is shown below:

What other ways can you see color fade or brighten techniques applied?

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Apple Home Page Search

This morning I went to the Apple home page to find one of their commercials. I went to search and noticed that the behavior mimicked Apple’s own operating system and the “suggest” features available in browser search boxes. What I liked is that it not only offered suggested terms but displayed media previews along with the term. I realize this isn’t especially groundbreaking, given the amount of AJAX development in recent years. However, it reminded me that as Peter Morville analyzes search patterns, another to add to the list is the behavior of providing suggestions before a user has even executed a search. This might remedy the need to distinguish between a basic and advanced search, or the need to revise a search after seeing results. Notice the screen capture image (click image to see original) where I entered “ads” as my search term.

Tags: [Apple, search patterns, search, Peter Morville, Partial Recall]

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Edward Tufte iPhone Critique

Edward Tufte offers a critique of the iPhone’s interface design (includes video).

Tags: [Edward Tufte, Tufte, iPhone, Partial Recall, Apple, interface design, GUI, interaction design, HCI]

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Infographics in a Music Video

Interesting music video by The Longcut incorporates infographics quite nicely.

Hat tip to Jason Kottke

Tags: [infographics, Kottke, Longcut, music, Partial Recall]

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Storyboard Templates - Customer Service Style

A new storyboard template was released by Martin Hardee last week. This templates focuses on phone conversations. Click the image below to access the file.

Conversation Mary/Pravin/Galina

Tags: [Martin Hardee, Sun Microsystems, design, comics, design comics, storyboard, HCI, usability, task analysis, information architecture, Partial Recall]

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Design Comics

Other than Calvin and Hobbes, I’m not much of a comic guy. There’s been a number of contributors in the web design arena who have advocated using comics to communicate a user’s experience interacting with an information system (web or client). Typically, I think of the folks over at OK/Cancel, but I know others, such as Dan Brown, are influenced by Scott McCloud.

Today I came across a post by Martin Hardee of the Sun Design Team. His team has been using comics to convey user experiences with the sun.com site. Interestingly, he has provided a template that is freely available to use, provided you have access to Sun’s Office suite (OpenOffice is freely available). ~~Unfortunately, I am unable to install OpenOffice on my work machine, so I’ll have to look at the template when I get home.~~

As I mentioned to Martin, since I’m an information architect without the gift of artistic design, I am eager to use any existing templates. I’m a visual learner by nature, so having the ability to succinctly depict user experience issues to technical teams or end users alike in a visual (versus text) format is something I hope to do more of in the future. I truly hope that the template will provide some good images like that seen below. Thanks to Martin and Sun for graciously allowing me to copy content from his blog and repost it here.

Design Comic Template Example

Tags: [Sun Microsystems, Martin Hardee, web design, storyboard, comic, Partial Recall, task analysis, Scott McCloud, Brownorama]

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The Social Life of Visualizations

I thought I’d pass this along since it may be of interest to you…

HCIL Seminar Series Presents:

Speaker: Martin Wattenberg, IBM Research, http://www.bewitched.com/research.html

Where: 3258 AV Williams Bldg, University of Maryland , College Park

When: Tuesday November 7th, 12:30pm

Talk: The Social Life of Visualizations

Abstract:

Visualization is often viewed as an efficient way of getting information out of a database and into an individual’s head. I argue that the value of many visualizations derives instead from their position in social systems involving two or more people. Through a series of examples from both science and art, I will discuss how this viewpoint leads to new directions, questions and design principles.

Bio:

Martin Wattenberg is a research scientist at IBM, where he leads the Visual Communication Lab. His work focuses on new approaches to data visualization and collaboration. He is known for both applied and artistic visualizations, interpreting such disparate information sources as online communities, music, baby names, and stock market data. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from UC Berkeley.

Please visit: http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/about/events/seminar-series.shtml, For more information.

Tags: [hcil, data visualization, visualization, University of Maryland, IBM, visual communication, analytics, tufte, Partial Recall]

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Post a Slideshow on Your Site - Part III

Well, it’s now available and I’m very excited! Think of the possibilities. For teachers. For sharing knowledge in an organization. For sharing knowledge with the world. Sign up now and get started.

Post a Slideshow on Your Site - Part II

Post a Slideshow on Your Site - Part I

Tags: [PowerPoint, slides, Slideshare, social software, knowledge management, Partial Recall]

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Post a Slideshow on Your Site - Part II

…or, you could simply use SlideShare, once the kind folks open up the beta to everyone. Below is an example using the venerable Lou Rosenfeld’s recently posted “Enterprise Information Architecture” slides.

Tags: [PowerPoint, slides, Slideshare, Lou Rosenfeld, Information Architecture, Enterprise Information Architecture]

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Tufte in DC

This from Dan…

“During my talk at the last UX Week in August, I mentioned Edward Tufte, who has done lots of work in the area of information visualization. (You may have seen PeterMe’s review of Tufte’s new book Beautiful Evidence on his site - here, here, and here.) Tufte’s work can inform how we
develop user experience documentation.

Tufte will be giving his workshop in the DC area Nov 14-16 this year at the Marriott Crystal Forum. I *highly* recommend this session. The session is a full day, and costs $360. This includes ALL FOUR BOOKS!

You can learn more about his workshop here:
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses

If you do attend, please let me know! Perhaps DCIA will host a happy hour in which attendees can share what they learned!”

Tags: [Edward Tufte, Tufte, visualization, Beautiful Evidence]

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Rob Fay is a user experience architect making sense of an information age. He is passionate about the “I” in IT and strives to evangelize that information is a resource on equal footing with an organization’s human, financial, and physical resources.