Karyn's blog

Yesterday was April Fool’s Day. And what I thought was a totally crazy joke, turned out to have a lot of interest.

For the gag I forwarded an old message to the building list serve to my staff but changed the subject and content of the message.

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I’ve been following, with some interest, over the last few years the open data movement. For me it started with Hans Rosling’s 2006 TED talk: Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen.

Last week a client asked me that very question, “What are the best labels to use on this website?” ADGi had been engaged to complete an assessment of the company’s current website's information architecture.

One of the main attributes of the design work we at ADGi do (and when I say design I mean interaction design and information architecture, not so much visual design) is that all of it is evidence-based. That is, all of it, and I really mean all of it, every interaction, every node in the site map, is driven out of user research and expert analysis.

http://wave.google.com/

Colour is the worst reason to buy a bike says my local bike seller (we’re talking bicycles here, not motorcycles). I can’t really disagree, it’s true, there are so many other things to consider like fit, comfort, components, style of bike that really colour shouldn’t even appear on the list of requirements.

A few days ago I got an invitation to join the Konnects network of someone I know. At the time I was not a Konnects member but thought I’d join to anyway as it’s good practice to be checking out new sites and services.

The subject of information architectures based on audience types has cropped up around the office a lot lately. A number of our clients are talking about it. It is a popular approach, one that seems to logically support user-centered design principles. But it is an approach that can reduce the findability success rate of a site and disrupt the user experience.

Today I was contacted by the Revenue Services Group. Who?

Even after talking to the woman on the phone I wasn't entirely clear who these people are so I did what everybody does, popped the name into Google...nothing. That's odd.

Around the time Alan Cooper was giving his really great talk An Insurgency of Quality at this year’s IxDA, I was giving a talk that came to some of the same conclusions from a different starting point.