templatedata

Joshua Porter at Bokardo looks at the smackdown betwen the design teams of Google and Yahoo.

Bring it on.

I've moved house. Again. And one of the things I hate about moving house, aside from the obvious things, is the lack of internet access that can occur.

I'm waiting for my ISP to sort the move of my cable connection and in the meantime I have no access, not even dial-up as I have no phone as yet.

Anyway, the point of this moaning is that I have realised that I am afflicted by some kind of disease and today I found a name for it: continuous partial attention.

Andrea Schwandt-Arbogast doesn't like Technorati's new look. I have to admit, she's got a point.

Ugh.

An interesting article in today's SMH: Australian banks 'fail' in online mission. Finally, someone is getting it. If your website is difficult to use it doesn't matter how much you try to push people to work online, they will avoid it whenever possible.

The analysis of four large Australian banks focussed on finding information rather than the online banking applications.

To test out the sites, reviewers acted on advice from each of the banks that researching home loans and credit card deals were the top two reasons for visits to public areas on their websites. However when they set about the task of finding out about these products on each of the sites, they encountered some serious obstacles.

It seems that the basic task of information delivery was where the banks failed.

The study, conducted by US research group Forrester, found that illegible text, poor layouts and missing information were just some of the major design flaws that forced customers to turn to more expensive call centres and branches, or even to seek out alternative offerings from competitors.

"Each of the major banks could save more than $7 million a year by making their sites easier to use," the researcher said.

Now, that's money that talks.

One of the many changes that web developers are having to adjust to is that it's much harder to conceptualise and prototype a rich internet application than a simple page-by-page one. We've all been a meeting where a BA, PM or designer has tried to do this with something like PowerPoint, and have since realised that PowerPoint just don't cut it.

So, to cut long story short, here's here's a much cooler way of doing it in Visio.

Via the ever-interesting info aesthetics, a very interesting Flickr group: everyday information architecture. Well, it's interesting for someone who is fascinated with how people organise things...

Oz-IA conference and retreat

On the last weekend of September 2006 there will be a conference/retreat on information architecture in Sydney, Australia. We'll have a packed schedule featuring international and local speakers, you'll get to engage with panels, and participate in group sessions. And of course, there's the opportunity to catch up with your peers, network your way to new contacts, and have a good time.

Thanks to Mark Nearhos for the heads-up.

An interesting article in the Higher Ed section of today's Oz. Nigel Lendon and Zoe Bowman talk about their experience using a blog for research, in this case into war rugs of Afghanistan.

Worth a read.

Selling essays over the internet eh? It's a shocking by-product of the cut-and-paste age. Even worse, when you finally land a job and you realise it involves writing the essays and you found the job on your university's job website.

Oops.

After the Oz article of a couple of weeks ago, the Age is delving into the world of academic blogging. Interesting reading in light of some of our fresh new academic blogs.

It seems that academics who delay their entry to the blogosphere may risk increasing the digital divide and their standing within the now global academic community.

A very big call.

Experience-enabling design: An approach to e-learning design

This paper draws inspiration from diverse media to understand what constitutes experience. In doing so, it seeks directions for building experience into design of elearning products.

Conference: Enterprise Architecture on the edge – moving forward through SOA

The game theory of penalty kicks

Economist and soccer fan Ignacio Palacio-Huerta talks to Gelf about the Minimax strategy behind penalty kicks and why the most famous PK is called a "Panenka."

Create change

This website will help you understand the changing landscape and how it affects you and your research. It also offers practical ways to look out for your own interests as a researcher.