Xplaner
APRIL 8, 2008
In this short video (about seven minutes) I introduce some basic principles of visual language: Forms, fields and flows. I think of this as the “alphabet&# of visual language. This set of principles is the primary set of marks you need in order to create visual meaning. Did you like this? If so, please consider buying me a coffee!
Boxes and Arrows
AUGUST 7, 2008
We create software and websites to display and represent information to people. That information could be anything; a company’s product list, pictures of your vacation, or an instant message from a friend. At this moment, there’s more information available to you than at any other time in history. All this information has a lot of positive effects, but it also creates challenges. “What information consumes is rather obvious; it consumes the attention of its recipients … a
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Bennett Cherry
NOVEMBER 6, 2008
Sean Callahan, one of my former students at Cal State San Marcos, is on his 4th entrepreneurial venture, AddsYou.com. It's likely that you haven't heard of this site yet, but I'm guessing you'll be hearing more and more about AddsYou.com in the coming months as they near their alpha release in late November 2008.
Innovation Leader
AUGUST 21, 2008
Dan Ostrower answers the question: Do any of your members or partners have any thoughts on how to think about the integration process for the internet of things?
Speaker: Kevin Kai Wong, President of Emergent Energy Solutions
In today's industrial landscape, the pursuit of sustainable energy optimization and decarbonization has become paramount. Manufacturing corporations across the U.S. are facing the urgent need to align with decarbonization goals while enhancing efficiency and productivity. Unfortunately, the lack of comprehensive energy data poses a significant challenge for manufacturing managers striving to meet their targets.
Xplaner
NOVEMBER 20, 2008
Part of my exploration of visual literacy is looking at how we might teach people to express themselves visually. Part of this is learning how to draw simple objects. This video shows how you can draw a car using very simple shapes. Did you like this? If so, please consider buying me a coffee!
Xplaner
APRIL 11, 2008
I talk about some of the cognitive challenges of the information age, and why visual language is an important tool for dealing with them. Did you like this? If so, please consider buying me a coffee!
Business Innovation Brief brings together the best content for business innovation and strategy professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Xplaner
SEPTEMBER 15, 2008
This quote (&# The half of knowledge, is knowing where to find knowledge&# ) is inscribed over the doors of Dodd Hall at FSU. Apparently no one knows who actually said this , but it seems very applicable to the conversation about the importance of the network in connectivism. Authored by gminks. Hosted by Edublogs.
Xplaner
JUNE 9, 2008
Here are some basic rules of communication that could improve communication flow in a business. Some of them are fundamental "rules of engagement†that could set the overall tone for a company. Others are specific concepts for categorizing and measuring communication flow. The idea is that the link between communication and action can be measured and reported.
Boxes and Arrows
SEPTEMBER 18, 2008
I started writing this article with an emphasis on the financial domain. I then realized that I would like to broaden the focus because my findings are also applicable to a general domain like email account registrations, for example. In this article, I would like to take a simple example of how users register for an email account online. For a first timer, is the transition from a real world of letter writing to the online medium easy?
Boxes and Arrows
AUGUST 14, 2008
One of the most frequent tasks on many intranets is finding people within the company. Providing an effective way to search people is thus a key goal in designing intranets. This goal becomes even more important for an organization like Emirates, a leading international airline, which has over 35,000 employees with over 140 nationalities and where more people are likely to use this feature more frequently.
Speaker: Aarushi Kansal, AI Leader & Author and Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO at Aggregage
Software leaders who are building applications based on Large Language Models (LLMs) often find it a challenge to achieve reliability. It’s no surprise given the non-deterministic nature of LLMs. To effectively create reliable LLM-based (often with RAG) applications, extensive testing and evaluation processes are crucial. This often ends up involving meticulous adjustments to prompts.
Boxes and Arrows
JULY 10, 2008
As we discussed in “part one&# :[link] the skills in research, information architecture, interaction design, graphic design and writing define the recognized areas of User Experience design. However, there still remains much to discuss about what makes a UX team dreamy. Each UX Dreamteam has a finely tuned mix of skills and qualities, as varied as the environments in which they operate.
Boxes and Arrows
NOVEMBER 25, 2008
By any measure, Halo 3 is one of the most wildly-successful consumer software interfaces in recent memory: more than 1 million players played the game in its first 24 hours on Xbox Live; over 8 million copies sold to date; and “over 100,000 pieces of user generated content being uploaded daily [.] 30 percent higher than YouTube on a daily basis.&# It’s probably safe to say that more cumulative man-hours have already been spent in Halo gaming lobbies than in Microsoft Word!
Boxes and Arrows
AUGUST 28, 2008
Here’s how the game works: You’re on your computer, instant messaging away. One IM session is with a real person and the other is with an artificial intelligence (AI) program that’s designed to pose as a human being by using a casual conversational tone. The AI is able to respond in complete sentences with realistic syntax to mask its identity, even throwing in slang, canned humor, or typos.
Boxes and Arrows
SEPTEMBER 4, 2008
User Experience (UX) Week was held in San Francisco, CA from August 12 – 15. Boxes and Arrows, in co-operation with Adaptive Path, interviewed speakers in UX, IA, IxD, and Human Factors. Many thanks to the entire team at Adaptive Path for the opportunity to share these conversations with the communities of practice. Sketches from UX Week. T. Scott Stromberg from 404 User Experience Design and Ty Hatch of Ty Hatch Design captured the UX Week presentations with some quick and brilliant sketc
Speaker: David Azoulay, Marc Stracuzza, Román Tejada, and Guest Speaker Sucharita Kodali
Imagine a retail landscape where every interaction is personalized, every decision informed, and every opportunity maximized 🤔✨ Join us for an exploratory journey into the heart of AI-driven retail innovation. We’ll unveil the transformative potential of AI and data analytics in shaping the future of omnichannel personalization and e-commerce.
Xplaner
OCTOBER 9, 2008
I was reading this excellent post about groups and networks and I started to think about if groups filter access to networks. I think that all of the readings this week (at least how I understand them ) point to groups being a restricted entity. In other words, there are definite boundaries to a group, access is controlled, there is an accepted language and other norms, etc.
Boxes and Arrows
SEPTEMBER 18, 2008
It starts with any number of scenarios: Design and development have taken too long to produce a prototype, you need to release in three weeks, and you suspect there may be design flaws. You are trying to incorporate usability testing into an Agile development process. Or maybe you simply want to pare down your process to make it shorter and less expensive.
Xplaner
SEPTEMBER 30, 2008
Ok, I give! CCK08 is officially killing me! I’m going to try and hang in there. I think the problem is that the topics are so meaty, and interesting, that I want to only do this class and nothing else. For instance, this post has been sitting in my head for a while. I just haven’t been able to get the words together to do real justice to the idea in my head.
Boxes and Arrows
OCTOBER 16, 2008
The “IDEA Conference&# :[link] took place in Chicago on October 7-9 at the Harold Washington Library Center. The speakers pushed the boundaries of what it means to design complex information spaces of all kinds. We can all expand our practice by absorbing their experiences and ideas. In cooperation with the “IA Institute&# :[link] we’re happy to bring you recordings of most conference talks.
Advertisement
Scaling transformational innovations in large companies is challenging due to ‘Company Fit’ issues, which arise when the resources, processes, and priorities (RPPs) of the core business are not aligned with the needs of the new business. Many companies have learned how ambidexterity—the ability to both ‘exploit the present and explore the future,’ can help them address these issues for ideation and incubation of new innovations, but scaling transformative business innovations remains a challenge
Boxes and Arrows
DECEMBER 18, 2008
In Part I , I discussed how to make the first three steps of Quick Turnaround Usability Testing (QTUT)—Sales & Kickoff, Recruitment, and Preparation—as short and efficient as possible. In Part II, I discuss the final two steps: Testing and Analysis & Reporting. Steps in the QTUT Process Step 1: Sales & Kickoff Step 2: Recruitment Step 3: Preparation Step 4: Testing Step 5: Analysis & Reporting Testing It’s testing day.
Boxes and Arrows
NOVEMBER 25, 2008
It was not an easy recruit. Directors of IT are busy people. Oddly, they’re hard to get hold of. They don’t answer calls from strangers. They don’t answer ads on web sites. The ones who do answer ads on web sites we had to double-check on by calling their company HR departments to verify they had the titles they said they did. And now this. “Hi!
Xplaner
OCTOBER 1, 2008
Here is the tweet that started it: That twitter conversation was sparked by this Details article about the so-called Playboys of Tech (my daughter calls these sorts of guys hipsters…). Chrissie was annoyed that there are never any articles about hipster tech women. But that sentiment of that tweet - that somehow typical tech women are not gorgeous and hot - really rubbed me the wrong way.
Boxes and Arrows
AUGUST 7, 2008
Games are fun, addictive, beautiful, and immersive. Websites, for the most part, are not. Take a moment and think about what video games look like, what they sound like, the way you can move on the screen, what “you&# can be. Think of how you feel when you play and who you play with. Consider the launch of Halo 3 on Xbox 360, with unprecedented graphics, sound, and interactivity that Time.com called “refined to the point where it delivers only pure unadulterated gaming bliss.&# Peopl
Speaker: Jamie Eagan
As organizations strive for agility and efficiency, it's imperative for finance leaders to embrace innovative technologies and redefine traditional processes. Join us as we explore the pivotal role of digitalization and automation in reshaping what is commonly referred to as the “last mile of reporting”. We’ll deep-dive into why digitalization is no longer a choice, but a necessity for finance departments to stay competitive in a fast-paced environment touching on: 2024 trends for the Office of
Boxes and Arrows
JULY 10, 2008
Discount for Boxes and Arrows readers: Get a 10% discount by purchasing the book “directly from Rosenfeld Media&# :[link] Just use the code WFDBA. The scene is all too familiar. You’re presenting wireframes of the registration process for a new web application when the discussion veers down a dark alley. The sky has turned the color of black ink, and you can smell sulfur in the air as one team member after another debates the alignment of form labels.
Boxes and Arrows
DECEMBER 18, 2008
I’d like to talk specifics a bit. I’m sure there will be some readers at B&A who aren’t gamers, and probably even more who haven’t played Halo —so my apologies to those folks— but… describe in some detail exactly what you contributed to the finished product. When I look at Halo 3 , what ‘pieces’ of the experience did you work on?
Boxes and Arrows
OCTOBER 20, 2008
We’re embarking on Week 4 of the Work Literacy learning project. This week it’s RSS and feed readers. Although the thrust of the module is primarily about how learning professionals can learn and manage information by subscribing to feeds, I find that I’m more interested in how we can use feeds as learning tools for the people with whom we’re working.
Advertisement
See how companies like yours are tackling some of today’s most common business problems using AI-assisted automation for document processing. Manually capturing, extracting, and processing data within documents is a costly and outdated practice that’s holding your company back. IDP takes document processing to a whole new level so you can understand and use your data more effectively than ever before.
Boxes and Arrows
OCTOBER 3, 2008
( RANT ALERT! ) In a few weeks we’re going to be looking at blogs in the Work Literacy course. As we think about that module and the fact that for most people, their primary interaction with blogs is to read them, I’m growing impatient with this idea from a learning perspective. In fact, I have to go on record right now as saying that reading blogs is only a small part of what makes blogs powerful for learning.
Boxes and Arrows
SEPTEMBER 12, 2008
Even if you’re trying to find one, the connections among Elliott Malkin ’s body of work are hard to see. Part family history, part science project, part home-movie, his projects span genres that, initially, seem incidental. Yet many of his web-based projects—whether they investigate “butterfly vision&# or install digital graffiti throughout lower Manhattan—are connected in one simple way: they all explore unofficial signals in public space.
Boxes and Arrows
SEPTEMBER 4, 2008
Last week I did a training on facilitation for a group of 10 trainers. One of the strategies we discussed was how to debrief on experiential activities using Thiagi's Six Phases of Debriefing. It occurred to me later, that these are great questions to ask ourselves as part of developing our personal reflective practice and that they can be applied to virtually any experience, not just to formal or structured learning activities.
Boxes and Arrows
AUGUST 28, 2008
As IDEA 2008 draws closer, the IA Institute is conducting a series of interviews with the speakers for the conference. As Event Coordinator for IDEA , I fill a variety of roles, including the Interviewer of IDEA Presenters (which I proudly share with Liz Danzico). This is the second interview in the series, and this time I pulled the name of Andrew Hinton, Lead Information Architect at Vanguard, from the virtual hat.
Advertisement
Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.
Expert insights. Personalized for you.
101 
Let's personalize your content