Very cool do it yourself project from Instructables.com:

• A List Apart has a good write-up called Usability Testing Demystified
• Normal Modes has an eye-tracking heatmap gallery
• The University of Minnesota Web Services committee has published a phase 1 report on user discoverability
• Functioning Form asks whether social models affect contribution
• UXMatters asks whether UX can be Agile
• Brian Fling speaks at dConstruct 2009 on how mobile devices are changing design [MP3]
• The YouTube blog discusses UX at YouTube
• WebSiteOptimization.com has a usability study finding that Men need Speed

What’s the most efficient method for nearly choking a small digitization shop? Success. That’s something we’re experiencing at The University of Montana and we couldn’t be happier. Over the summer, the library partnered with Dave Beck of Native American Studies on a trip to the National Archives to scan documents from their Central Classified Files centering on the Blackfeet Agency during the period from 1907 – 1935 (Record Group 75.) We were pleasantly surprised by the amount of material that our two (very organized) graduate students were able to come back with: 15,000 images taken in a little under four weeks. We’re in the process now of ingesting the material into our digital collection to make them widely available eventually, but in the meantime I thought I’d share the equipment used on the trip.

Testing the camera setup before sending to DC in 2009.

Equipment List:

• Camera: Canon Rebel XSI
• Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55 IS (both came as a kit)
• Tripod: Manfrotto 055X Pro with a center post that fold out horizontally
• Tripod Head: 484RC2 Mini Ball
• Laptop: Dell 131L (one of our circulating laptops for students)
• Carrying Case: Pelican 1300
• Glass bubble level that is attached to the hot shoe
• Seagate 500GB extermal hard drive
• Total cost: Approximately $1,400

The camera was driven by the laptop which previewed the image being captured. The images were saved to the external hard drive and then FTP’d back to the library on a nightly basis. All images were captured as RAW files, and will be converted before being made live. Here’s an example of the quality of image the students came back with. The master image from which this example was derived is 4,272 x 2,878 pixels, the equivalent of a 240 PPI full color scan.

Example of a natural light capture

• Boxesandarrows has a fascinating article on implementing prototypes into design
• A List Apart discusses how to use site analytics for a bottom-up analysis
• More web data analysis from A List Apart, this time using site search data
• UXmatters gives a detailed analysis and tips for designing tables
• UXmatters discusses best practices for designing faceted search filters
• We Are Colorblind has a wonderful collection of design patterns for the color blind, including lots of good and bad examples
• Jakob Nielsen discusses the pros and cons of redesign in Fresh vs. Familiar
• Evantage Consulting claims that playfulness, usability, and context serve to delight users
• Lucid Plot discusses Content Strategy
• The Society for Technical Communication has started a Content Strategy SIG
• Gartner talks about four classes of experts needed for next-gen technology jobs
• Christopher Cummings talks about the problem with personas
• A presentation by Harry Brignull on casting a critical eye on eye tracking results

Tools:

• HotGloo is taking beta signups for their new wireframe app.
• Usabilla is a rapid feedback tool that looks promising
• SitePoint has a tutorial on mega-dropdowns using jquery
• Debra Agnoli and Lucinda M. Hall publish a usability analysis of Pathfinder Pro
• Interesting white paper on showing eye tracking results to users in conjunction with the think aloud protocol

Visualization:

• Vizworld has a 10-minute interview with Edward Tufte

Eye Tracking:

• Oneupweb has an intriguing eyetracking presentation up that discovers “areas of interest” in a few social web sites
• Think Eyetracking has an interesting write up of ca. 1967 “gaze plots”
• Virtual Hosting offers 23 lessons from eye tracking studies which could marked “citations needed”

Library Usability:

• Usability Post has an article on improving your observation skills and breaks the discipline into these non-verbal elements:
  • Physical Characteristics
  • Personal Style
  • Body Language
  • Facial Expression
  • Vocal Rate and Tone
  • Eye Movement
• A copy of the UM Mansfield Library usability study poster presented at ALA 2009
• Holger Maassen gives an overview of Card Sorting practice

User Behavior:

• Search Engine Land discusses how search engine results can cause a shift in search behavior (interesting because she’s citing an LIS article to make her point)
• Leslie McNeil Weber publishes Design Ethnography: Strategy for Visual Communications

Design:

• Judith Siess talks about designing web pages for “mature” users
• Linda Coss has a few tips for improving readability
• UI Patterns wonders if links should always be blue
• Information Architects says that web design is 95% typography

Content Strategy:

• UX Matters has a practical guide to conducting a content analysis which should result in a clear description of what’s available, gaps & opportunities, prioritization, and themes.
• (new to me) Fred Leise published a set of 11 heuristics for content analysis

Intranets:

• Jakob Nielsen advocates both avoiding intranet design based on org charts and allowing role-based personalization

Library 2.0

• Christian Crumlish writes about the Information Architecture of Social Experience Design

Found via elearnspace, here is a useful article from apophenia on the three types of social networks along with an important caveat:

1. Sociological “personal” networks
2. Behavioral social networks
3. Publicly articulated social networks

“We do ourselves an intellectual disservice when we assume that these different types of networks are interchangeable or that studying one automatically tells us about another.”

The rumors are beginning to be convincing:

Book publishers have been in talks with Apple and are optimistic about being included as part of its new portable tablet-sized computer, which the computer giant hopes to launch in time for the Christmas shopping season, according to the FT.

The device is expected to be launched alongside new content deals, including some aimed at stimulating sales of CD-length music, according to people briefed on the project. The touch-sensitive computer will have a screen that may be up to 10 inches diagonally. It will connect to the internet like the iPod Touch – probably without phone capability but with access to the web, and to Apple’s online stores for software and entertainment.

According to the FT, the device could provide an alternative to Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader and a forthcoming device from Plastic Logic, recently allied with Barnes & Noble. “It would be a colour, flat-panel TV to the old-fashioned, black and white TV of the Kindle,” one publishing executive said.

Via The Centered Librarian here’s a roundup of the state of ePaper (which is not limited to Kindle clones apparently.)

State of ePaper

Amazon and the Kindle have the clear lead in the eReader wars. However, numerous competitors to Amazon’s Kindle are cropping up and it’s worth taking a moment to review the state of the art in ePaper. [...]

• Marti Hearst’s new book Search User Interfaces is available for free on the web
• Design with Intent has a very interesting toolkit which boils down to several design patterns in poster format
• The same blog also has a post modeling different types of users: pinball, shortcut, and thoughtful users
• Tyner Blain has some tips for writing complete user stories when building personas
• UXMatters has a post on the Laddering Interview Technique which is claimed to assist in “eliciting goals and underlying values”
• Semantic Foundry talks about an interesting approach using Design Ethnography and Mood Maps
• User Focus has a list of 247 Web Usability Guidelines that can be downloaded to Excel
• New to me: Don Norman has a Ted Talk on 3 ways good design makes you happy

Here’s a quick chart that specifies the amount of disk space a single scanned 8.5″ x 11″ master file will take up. Pixels per inch (PPI) and bit levels were taken largely from the BCR best practices document. These estimates were generated with PhotoShop CS4.