Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Jorge Arango

Jorge Arango — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:27 GMT

Wow, I’m surprised by the adverse reactions to Adam’s post. He makes some good points… these are issues worth discussing, especially here in B&A.

First, a mea culpa: I edited the maligned “Ambient Signifiers” article. I think Ross did a great job with this article; the “prior art” complaints should be delivered at my doorstep. I’m not deeply versed in academic HCI, and I should have done more research during the editorial process. I take Adam’s comments as a challenge to expand my horizons (and improve my editorial skills), and am thankful for this.

Adam may not call himself an Information Architect, but if you’ve heard him “talk about everyware”:http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/hiding_in_plain_sight it’s fairly easy to grasp the importance of his work to the future of this profession. Just like there is room in B&A for practical articles that discuss wireframes, card sorting, and such, there should also be room for big-picture, forward-facing thinking like his.

So here’s a vote to encourage Adam to write about these issues in B&A. (BTW, Adam: I’d be happy to have the opportunity to edit your article/s, should you decide to publish it/them here.)

Jorge Arango — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:21:18 GMT

Hi Luke, I’ve corrected the spelling of your name in the story. (Sorry about this!)

Jorge Arango — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:22:58 GMT

Thanks for your feedback. I’d rather focus the story on reviewing the book—I’m drawn by the fact that it’s a document of design decisions by the author of the app itself.

There are other places online where you can find a wealth of info on outliners. Ted Goransen has written a series of reviews of Mac outliners over at ATPM: http://www.atpm.com/Back/atpo.shtml

One of these articles focuses on Tinderbox as it compares to other outliners: http://www.atpm.com/10.10/atpo.shtml

Jorge Arango — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:28:34 GMT

I’m interested in your perspective on how UX / IA / design is impacted by being applied within a SCRUM workflow… * How is our “regular” design process changed? * Do tools and techniques require adjusting? (e.g. sitemapping, wireframing, etc.?) * What are the design leadership challenges?

Jorge Arango — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:34:08 GMT

Hi Jeff, thanks for writing, and sorry to hear you’re having trouble with the story.

“Meet your peers” was something of an experiment for B&A. The idea was to convey the overwhelming feeling one gets at the IA Summits of meeting all these people in one place in a short amount of time. I believed (and still do) that the best way to do this was to present all 50-odd videos on the same page.

We knew going in that we were pushing the envelope with regards to what is possible with Flash video, so we went to great lengths to ensure that the story wouldn’t give too much trouble. Specifically:

* We coded the story so the videos don’t load when the page is loaded. Each video only starts loading once you click on it. As a result, you don’t need a fast internet connection.

* We tested the page extensively on various browsers and platforms, including old (obsolete) browsers. We didn’t get any trouble from any of the configurations we tested. (It’s also worth noting that the story has published over three weeks, and this is the first complaint we’ve received about it.)

Can you give us more details about the environment you loaded the page in? (System memory, operating system version, browser version, news reader where you followed the link from, etc.)