[BEEP]

Links for 2008-06-27 [del.icio.us]

2008-06-28T00:00:00-05:00

The Paper Version of the Web at Deeplinking
Many of the websites we use started out as scrawlings [..], “next year’s Twitter” may already exist on paper. [..] Some folks have been thoughtful/narcissistic enough to upload photos of their UI sketches, and I find them fascinating.

Links for 2008-06-25 [del.icio.us]

2008-06-26T00:00:00-05:00

Firms should deploy Ajax to improve e-commerce sites, Gartner says
The analyst firm has identified nine areas that it suggests could be developed to improve the buying experience on e-commerce sites. Pre-caching data could be used to enable buyers to shop at their own pace. Checkouts can be simplified by putting all the

Links for 2008-06-24 [del.icio.us]

2008-06-25T00:00:00-05:00

Typographica
Typographica is a journal of typography featuring news, observations, and open commentary on fonts and typographic design.

Links for 2008-06-18 [del.icio.us]

2008-06-19T00:00:00-05:00

YouTube - Procrastination
"procrastination is making a cup of tea"

Links for 2008-06-17 [del.icio.us]

2008-06-18T00:00:00-05:00

Dutch Game Garden
Dutch Game Garden is een Nederlandse stichting die concreet helpt bij de groei van de NL games industrie op nationaal en internationaal niveau. De stichting wordt financieel ondersteund door het ministerie van Economische Zaken, de Provincie Utrecht en de

Links for 2008-06-16 [del.icio.us]

2008-06-17T00:00:00-05:00

Wordle - beep
my del.icio.us tags on Wordle

Links for 2008-06-12 [del.icio.us]

2008-06-13T00:00:00-05:00

TwitterCounter: How popular are you? (open beta)
TwitterCounter is a service for Bloggers, Social networkers and other well connected individuals to communicate and track the amount of followers they have on Twitter. Add the TwitterCounter to your blog or profile to attract more followers.
Inthefield marketing, communicatie & advertising
Inthefield is een creatief marketing & communicatie bureau. We doen het vooral net even anders. Soms letterlijk met de poten in de klei. Tussen de klanten, middenin het veld. Daar waar het gebeurt. Babyboomers, ouderen, 50 plussers, youngtimers en soms oo

You read my t-shirt...

2008-05-14T20:20:00.002+02:00

Thank you ThinkGeek for making my ~~t-shirt~~ day!

The Web And Beyond: Mobility places going fast!

2008-05-06T08:02:00.002+02:00

Tonight we will have another meeting with the organizing committee of The Web And Beyond: Mobility the Chi-Netherlands conference for which I am the Program Chair. One of the items on the agenda is an update on the number of registered attendees and whether we should take action to increase that. I think that last bit will not be necessary: places are going fast!

If I am not mistaken, we have already sold 325 out of the 450 seats! Historical data predicts that we will see 2 or 3 more spikes with registrations before the cut-off date for payments (May 16).

This means that if you planned to attend the conference, you may want to register right now (or, if you are Dutch: hier registreren).

The Web And Beyond: Mobility early bird deadline is Sunday

2008-04-24T23:24:00.003+02:00

This is just a short notice to inform you that if you have been thinking about registering for The Web And Beyond: Mobility, the early bird registration deadline is this Sunday, April 27.

For members of Chi Nederland, BelCHI, ACM SIGCHI, BNO, the prices are:

Regular price: €110 (after 27 april: €140)
Students and PhD candidates: €40 (after 27 april: €50)

For non-members, the prices are:

Regular price: €140 (after 27 april: €170)
Students and PhD candiodates: €55 (after 27 april: €65)

Given the fact that this is a full-day, 3-track program with 4 international keynote speakers (Ben Cerveny, Jyri Engestrom, Adam Greenfield and Christian Lindholm) plus presentations by TomTom, Philips and The Netherlands' most mobile bank, Rabobank, this is exceptional value for money!
Registration is available on the website, both in Dutch and English (at the bottom of the page). I suggest you register now and thank me later, alright?

Keynotes for The Web And Beyond: Mobility

2008-03-30T20:51:00.003+02:00

The Call for Participation for The Web And Beyond: Mobility was closed last month. Since then the Program Committee has been reviewing the submissions which included companies like Philips and TomTom as well as German, Danish and, of course, Dutch companies and universities.

We are close to publishing the program which will include tracks on mobile applications, maps & location based systems, social profiles & rich presence and ambient intelligence & everyware.

Those tracks also match nicely, and not unintentionally of course, to our four international keynote speakers. I am happy to announce them here:

Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware, will present ideas from his upcoming book in "The City Is Here For You To Use".
Christian Lindholm, ex-Yahoo!Mobile and ex-Nokia, will predict the future in "The New Mobility: Visions of mobile in the years to come".
Jyri Engeström, founder of Jaiku (now owned by Google), will talk about clusters in the social graph (I think) in "Nodal Points".
finally, Ben Cerveny, ex-frogdesigm, ex-Silicon Graphics, ex-Flickr and now advisor at Stamen and Director of the Playground Foundation, will talk about "Models of Urban Dynamics".

More about them and (soon) about the program, will be published on the conference website (also in English)

New Little IA: Emiel Boersma

2008-03-14T13:11:00.003+01:00

Like his older brother Kasper, my second son took his time before he decided it was time to add one to the world's population but: On Friday, March 7, around 10 in the evening, Emiel Oscar Boersma was born!

Shortly after the home-birth he and his mother had to be taken to hospital: Emiel was underweight and cold, Marijke had lost quite some blood. Emiel was placed in a small, heated bed, Marijke had a tube placed in her arm with some clear, salty fluid dripping in.

Thirty-six hours later, we welcomed them back in our house and they've been going strong ever since. Emiel is growing fast and Marijke has been spotted cycling outside!

The first pictures are up on Flickr, tagged with "emiel". I am sure many more will follow.

Become a Leader!

2008-02-13T22:09:00.004+01:00

At the upcoming IA Summit, the IAI Institute will once again sponsor a pre-conference workshop. The theme this year is "Becoming a Leader".

The intro of the workshop's description says it all:

Information Architecture is maturing as a profession, and IAs are increasingly being called on to leadership positions within their organizations. This seminar will be a daylong workshop that will explore the relationship between Information Architecture and Leadership.

The workshop will consist of four sessions:

The Courage to Lead, by Christopher Fahey
Teams that lead, by Margaret Hanley
Strategy Matters, by Harry Max
The Users That Use You, by Karen McGrane and Josh Rubin

Assuming I make it to Miami (I am supposed to have a newborn baby by then!) I plan to attend the workshop and hope to see you there!
(P.S.: I also have a poster at the Summit!)

That's not me!

2008-01-28T21:44:00.000+01:00

Recently, a company called Frisia (a credit supplier) started airing commercials where a character has my name. Several people pointed me to the commercial. And, purely for the record: that is not me!
Yes, I work for financial institutions (the word "bank" appears five times on Info.nl's portfolio page and there's a couple more names from that industry) but I do not appear in their commercials (yet :-))!

The Web And Beyond: Mobility - Call for Participation

2008-01-23T23:43:00.000+01:00

As I promised last November, I will post relevant updates about the The Web And Beyond: Mobility conference for which I am the Program Chair. Today's update is a shout-out to you to participate in the conference.

Earlier this month we published the Call for Participation (also available in Dutch). Here's an abstract:

Themes for the conference include (but are not limited to):

Mobile applications
Maps and location based services
Rich presence and social profiles
Ambient intelligence and everyware.

We are interested in submissions that deal with user needs in these areas and the associated design/technology solutions, as well as their impact on (interaction) design, business, education, and our society as well as individuals.
The following formats will be considered: Talks/Presentations, Panels, Posters, Mini-workshops, and Product Demos/Interactive Prototypes.

I hope you will consider submitting a proposal. If you're not sure if you should, feel free to contact me.

IA Institute in Fortune Magazine

2008-01-22T23:33:00.001+01:00

Update (Jan 25, 2008): The advertisement section is now available as a PDF on the IA Institute website.

Today is a good day for Information Architects. The American edition of Fortune Magazine for this month includes a small section on Information Architecture.

The IA Institute's board (more specifically: our President Eric Reiss) helped edit the content and find advertisers to complete the section.
At the moment the IA Institute website points to the Fortune magazine website where you may want to order a reprint of the issue if you're not a subscriber.

One of the best careers for 2008: User Experience Specialist

2007-12-27T20:30:00.000+01:00

On the IxDA mailinglist, Chris Dame pointed the subscribers to a US News article on the best careers for 2008 which featured "Usability/User Experience Specialist" on the list of best careers!

The article is a bit heavy on the usability engineer side and a little light on the user experience side but to the general audience that this article was written for, it's a good description of what a lot of people in our field do.

The day in the life" sidebar got some push-back from the IxDA subscribers because it managed to leave out the design part of our job entirely (unless you consider "make recommendations for changes" a description of design activities). I mostly agree but must also say I liked the tone of the section very much. How do you feel about this description of a requirements gathering session: "While you make suggestions and raise questions, for the most part you're a listener. You leave the room with a list of musts, maybes, and questions about the prospective product."? And the last sentence is a realistic description of how I usually feel after a project: "The final product ends up incorporating only some of what you had hoped for, but you still feel a sense of pride for having helped ensure that the [product] will be more effective and pleasurable to use."

I will work to keep this job on the list of best careers in 2009!

Jakob loves IA (a bit late)

2007-11-26T20:50:00.000+01:00

Jakob Nielsen just published his latest Alertbox, this week on Intranet Information Architecture. I feel he is slightly behind the curve of IA's big wave, but he says some interesting things nevertheless.

Why do I say he's behind the curve? Well, IA is a bit 2005, 2006-ish. These days it's all about interaction design and especially user experience. Of course, I may be wrong, and in fact, there is some evidence that IA is still on the rise. The recent UPA Salary Survey results show (although I can't find them; maybe it was the-list-that-shall-not-be-named where this was discussed?) that IAs make the most money of all the professions in the UX field. Then again, our own IAI Salary Survey (results to be posted soon) indicated that in 2007 less people called themselves Information Architect than in 2006 (30% vs. 50%) but that may also be a sign of the distribution of IA responsibilities over more people. Ugh, now I'm confused.
This all may sound strange coming from someone who just got elected to the Board of Directors of the Information Architecture Institute, I realize that. Let's say I am trying hard to bring back those fine IA days...

And why is Jakob's article still interesting?
Well, because:

where he says "Given a little training in the most important IA principles [..] teams can certainly achieve great IA results without full-time, dedicated information architects" he copies my idea of Guerilla IA which nicely completes the circle, because I stole that term from him.
like I proposed at EuroIA this year, he combines processes with patterns in his research, if I go by the sentence "We initiated an effort to document intranet IA processes and the resulting designs".
he takes Information Architecture serious, and doesn't call it 99% bad.

So, if Jakob loves IA, I love Jakob!

Help end world hunger

2007-11-20T23:35:00.000+01:00

Increase your (English) vocabulary in this game-for-the-good-cause.

For each word you get right, FreeRice.com donates 10 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger. I played until I reached 1000 grains of rice and tried to keep my vocabulary level at 30. I want to know how you did! (thanks Mark Hurst)

And if you have a blog, consider adding a message like this too...

"Hello World" from The Web And Beyond: Mobility

2007-11-12T13:11:00.001+01:00

I just got of the phone with the committee-chair of next year's Chi-Netherlands conference "The Web And Beyond: Mobility" (for which I am the Program Chair) and he mentioned that our initial website is live!

For now it's still a bare bone structure in need of more content and some tweaks, but it feels good to see something!

In the months until May 22nd 2008 I will try to post updates on the progress we are making as a team.

Number 47 in Top 100 UCD blogs

2007-10-16T10:03:00.000+02:00

I was informed by the maintainer of the Top 100 User-Centered Blogs that I am on the list: check out number 47! (Oh, I guess you are doing that now...)

I must confess I have a vague feeling the Top 100 is part of a series of compilations aimed at generating traffic to Virtualhosting.com, but it still feels good!

Picture by dogfaceboy, selected from the 47 obsession pool

StUX still useful

2007-10-13T23:09:00.000+02:00

Back in June, Tom Dell'Aringa posted a diagram of how he envisioned UX activities in a software development process. When he asked for feedback I pointed him to my IA Summit 2005 presentation Stux - integrating IA deliverables in a software development methodology. It seems that Tom was inspired.

Tom's revised diagram looks a lot like the poster we developed for StUX and follows the same basic structure but with changes where necessary (as I suggested in the lessons learned slide). Tom had to work with the Microsoft Solutions Framework and he included activities that his UX team shares with other teams (Business, Content, Marketing and Development) something I wish I could have done in the original diagram.

In the discussion of his diagram on the IxDA mailinglist, Tom defends his choices with verve, exactly what I wanted to accomplish with my presentation. I am glad the presentation is still useful after two and a half years (and counting).

I rediscovered this discussion from June when I checked the statistics for this blog.

Interviewed by Jan Jursa (The Hot Strudel)

2007-10-03T23:25:00.000+02:00

Jan Jursa, who blogs at The Hot Strudel, is a fellow Big Information Architect (in size; we're both 6 foot and 5 inches, or around 195cm) from Germany. He interviewed me via email and asked me 5 questions:

When you look back, what were the most valuable lessons you have learned practicing UXD and IA?
How would you describe the relation between UX and IA?
Could you explain a little bit what [your T-model] is all about and what is the status quo right now?
In your experience, what are the most approved IA deliverables and methods? Could you please scetch a typical basic IA workflow? (hey, that's 2 questions!)
Do you find it hard to sell IA services to clients that are more focused on their business objectives than on end user needs? What is a good argument for integrating Information Architecture in the overall website-building process? (again! So there's 2 bonus-questions thrown in for free!)

Read my answers in English or German.

This was the second time I was interview by a German IA: Wolf Nöding interviewed me during the 2006 IA Summit as part of his IA Voice initiative.

Processes + Patterns (EuroIA 2007 presentation)

2007-09-25T00:55:00.001+02:00

Despite having been sick for 20 days, and despite my coughing fits, I managed to deliver a pretty well-received presentation at Euro IA, last week in Barcelona.

Here's the Slideshare-version:

After explaining the concepts of patterns and collections, I spoke about how I thought process patterns and design patterns could be combined and about what the benefits would be to designers and team managers (and of course users and clients) once they were combined.

I ended with a challenge to IAs (and user experience professionals in general) to find new ways to combine process patterns with design patterns. I was lucky to have heard of one such initiative just before the presentation, so I could call them on stage during the Q&A. I hope it inspired the attendees and indeed a couple of people approached me afterwards with suggestions and ideas.

More suggestions, examples, comments, ideas are welcome!

IA Institute Board elections: Your votes please!

2007-09-04T09:49:00.000+02:00

update (25 september, 2007): I have been selected as a member of the Board! Thank you for your votes. Let me know what you'd like the IAI do for you or other IAs.

I am a candidate for the Board of Directors of the Information Architecture Institute. If I get elected I hope to help Information Architects become better educated, better connected, and better valued.

If you are a member of the IA Institute, you will have received an email saying you have the opportunity to vote. I encourage you to have a look a the candidates' profiles and cast your vote using the link in the email message.

And if you decide to not vote for me (I know I won't, just to keep it fair), I'd like to know why: I may be misguided in my view of what the Institute and its members need...

Michael Jackson dies, beer wins.

2007-08-31T21:47:00.000+02:00

Michael Jackson, a man once known as The Beer Hunter, died yesterday. An obituary can be found at All About Beer. A sad day for beer lovers worldwide...

This is the man that inspired me to maintain Boersma's Beer Page, a collection of links to other beer-related resources on the internet, for almost 9 years. It can now only be found with the help of the Internet Archive.

I feel blessed for having shaken the man's hand, handing him my beer-fraternity's gift for friends (a beer glass with out logo, plus the means to hang it to a wall) and having spoken with him briefly when he visited a beer-related event at my campus.

As Michael writes in his last column, "for the moment, I had cheated Mort Subite." In the end, Mort Subite won.

I hope you'll consider selecting that link and learning a little bit about this beer, or any other beer for that matter, in honour of Michael...

Register for Euro IA! (and apologies, and an update)

2007-08-19T12:25:00.000+02:00

I realize it's been 2 months since I last posted and I guess I owe you, my readers, an apology. I have neglected rule number one of blogging: post, post, post! Before I explain some of the reasons, I'd like to urge you to register soon for Euro IA, Europe's premier conference on information architecture and associated fields, to be held on September 21-22 2007 in Barcelona, Spain. After next Tuesday, August 21, the price goes up.

This year the organizing committee (of which I am again a proud member) has increased the number of presentations by creating a parallel program during 8 of the 12 slots. This allowed us to keep the breaks long (the Euro IA is also a social event!) but still have more presentations by European practitioners, plus the odd American.
Have a look at the list of presenters, the program (PDF) and the list of posters, and register!

And why has it been 2 months since I've posted? I can think of 2 reasons:

Holiday! With my girlfriend and our son, I have taken 3 extra-long weekends off to spend some time together and away from work. We camped in the garden of friends, stayed in another friends' house while they were on holiday, and enjoyed the hospitality of my brother-in-law and his family. Since Kasper is such a lovely kid, he features in all pictures, I am lucky to feature in one or two...

Work! With a team of colleagues at Info.nl, several excellent freelancers and many contributions from the client, we have been working hard on getting more sections of the new SNS Bank website ready for publication. Six teams, compiled of several types of of designers, marketeers, product managers, editors and programmers, are working in parallel. Since I helped create the interaction concept I am responsible for guarding that concept and keeping it alive in all sections. This means I am a member of all six teams... The first section, the one for Savings products is already online with more to follow later, probably in a big-bang style.

There; an update on my personal life, my work, and my hobby, all in one posting! Any requests for what's next?

School's in!

2007-06-18T08:11:00.001+02:00

This week is full of educational efforts; I hope my brain keeps up. My highlights include the UX Intensive workshop, Day 2 of my IxD class, and the Chi-Netherlands conference.

Today is the first day of Adaptive Path's UX Intensive workshop and I will be attending the workshop on Design Strategy by Brandon Schauer.
Tomorrow I will be teaching the second day of my 3-day Interaction Design class (in Dutch) through Lectric. Day 2 is traditionally about Design so I will be looking for my black turtleneck shirt ;-) Oh, and in the evening I hope to learn how my fellow local UX practitioners are doing as we're having another Amsterdam UX Cocktail Hour, sponsored by Adaptive Path. This may also be a good way to hear what the attendees of the Design Research workshop have learned.
Wednesday is a normal workday; I will be working in Utrecht on structuring the Mortgage-section of a new financial website. I will find out from the design team members what questions people ask when they are in different phases of buying (and using) a mortgage.
Thursday is a good day to be in Eindhoven: Chi-Netherlands is organizing its annual conference, this year on HCI-Methods. I heard it is sold out. The tree parallel tracks in the program all look interesting so it will be hard to pick what session to attend. It will be hard to convince people to attend my workshop on deliverables...
Friday is a day to learn from co-workers: it is traditionally the day for our UX team meeting where we share our progress in projects. It is also the day for a second interview with a candidate for the 10th spot on our UX team.

I will be soo smart next week :-)

Accepted for Euro IA!

2007-06-07T13:23:00.000+02:00

Another speaking engagement to be added to the calendar: The Euro IA committee accepted my proposal for a presentation about Processes and Patterns (partly based on my two articles on this topic from last August).

Now, I can hear you thinking: "Aren't you part of the Euro IA organizing committee? How objective is that?". Well, yes, obviously I am, but I can say that the blind review process that we applied for the first round of selections assured that the reviews and scoring were as objective as possible. And even in the second and final round, where we had access to the names of presenters, we hardly spoke about people (except to confirm their experience in the field) and instead focussed on the topics and, to a certain extent, geographical distribution. As a committee, we tried to get together a diverse program in as many aspects as possible. Also remember that the committee is comprised of committed, experienced practitioners who, besides organizing conferences, also like to share their knowledge and ideas with fellow practitioners.

I already started planning the trip to Barcelona, and hope to bring a couple of colleagues. I also hope to see readers of this blog in person. Do you plan to attend Euro IA?

Running a design process workshop at HCI Methods conference

2007-05-24T00:09:00.001+02:00

Chi-Nederland, the Dutch SIGCHI chapter formerly known as SIGCHI.NL, will hold her annual conference on June 21 of this year, in Eindhoven. I will be there.

The conference website (Dutch only for now, except for the location page) now contains the program for the day and if you look carefully, you'll see that, as a side event, I will be hosting a workshop on design processes. It's called "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours" and can be seen as a shorter version of the workshop on sharing deliverables that Keith Instone, George Olsen, Lisa Chan and I organized at CHI 2002.

The rest of the program looks cool enough. It's not last year's The Web and Beyond that attracted 600 attendees, but it will do :-) Tjeerd Hoek, who now works with frogdesign but best known as a former Design Director at Microsoft (responsible for the "ribbon" in Excel if I'm not mistaken) is a good catch! And many sessions will be held in English, or so it seems, so people from France, Germany, Denmark and further away will enjoy it.

It's a bit of a shame there's an overlap with Adaptive Path's UX Intensive in Amsterdam; the conference might draw some budding Information Architects away that might be served better by Chiara Fox's full-day workshop on IA. By the way: my offer to help you arrange a 15% discount on UX Intensive still stands.

I guess it really is conference season...

EURO IA submission deadline approaching fast!

2007-05-04T23:57:00.000+02:00

I'd like to remind the readers of this blog that the submission deadline for the Euro IA conference is May 15.

That's it. You know the drill. Check the website. Discover the theme is "Translating Information Architecture". Read that it will be in Barcelona. Check your calendar. Start writing your submission!

UX Intensive in Amsterdam

2007-04-18T10:23:00.000+02:00

Even though I asked for MX (Managing Experience) I am glad to hear that Adaptive Path is coming to Amsterdam again, this year with their UX Intensive program.

UX Intensive will feature 4 full-days of educational content (hey, they don't call it intensive for nothing!) on core user experience topics:

Each and every day is run by an expert in the field: Dan Saffer for example, the man that will run the Interaction Design program, wrote Designing for Interaction. Adaptive Path's Senior Information Architect Chiara Fox worked with Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville at Argus Associates before they wrote the IA Bible.

This is a great event to attend with your team of user experience designers, if only to hear things again that some of you may already know: After this event, you will all speak the same language and have a common frame of reference.
You will also benefit if you're a single designer and don't have a team to learn from: Let the fellow attendees be your team for a day (or 4 days). Share your problems with the group and learn from their experiences.

You can choose to attend just 1 or 2 days, but the best way to learn all about the umbrella field of User Experience (or, in my view, to broaden the base of your T) is to visit all 4 days! I suggest you register soon!
If you're interested, ask me about a 15% discount...