This is a really interesting presentation from Giles Colborne at our pals cxpartners. I think Giles makes an excellent point: designing for delight isn’t about cute interface gimmicks; it’s about helping customers achieve a better than expected result.
Archive for the ‘Information Architecture’ Category
Designing for delight
22nd June 2010Time magazine reinvents the magazine
11th June 2010The already impressive TIme magazine designed for tablets is improving. If I were a magazine editor I’d be very excited right now.
The Future of Wireframes
3rd March 2010Admittedly, this looks like the kind of post you’d skip (unless you’re an IA), but, bear with me because the author Nishant Kothary from visitmix makes a few good points. Like:
Print is about seeing, web is about doing.
&
Holy guacamole, Batman! Elliptical hotness! Okay, that’s not a good point, but, it is a nice quote!
Check it out: The future of Wireframes
Going local
17th February 2010The Guardian has today started its planned experiment to dabble in reporting regionalised, local news events.
Beginning with Guardian Leeds – and with Cardiff and Edinburgh versions also launching imminently – Guardian Local will feature news stories as well as guest opinion pieces from around the target area.
What with Newspaper Club already drawing massive interest from all over the web, it seems the demand for news hasn’t diminished, as media tycoons of yore would have you otherwise believe. If anything, demand appears to be increasing, but in parallel with the need for richer, more tightly focussed and easily-consumed information.
BBC’s Big Personality Test
24th November 2009The BBC has launched a new online questionnaire as part of their on-going Child of Our Time experiment.
What’s most interesting about this test is the results; rather than leaving you with paragraphs of dry analysis to read, the BBC site actually explains your results via a sequence of personalised videos.
It’s a really engaging way to relate interesting information that typically ends up relegated to a big stream of boring text.
The Postcode Newspaper
19th October 2009Newspaper Club, a service created to help people make their own newspapers, has been experimenting with the newly released beta of Data.gov.uk – and with impressive results.
Aimed at informing UK home movers, the system will mine freely-available data on a given postcode – including local services, environmental information and crime statistics – and then format the results into a newspaper for ease of consumption.
Aside from being incredibly useful, the presentation of the data is also beautifully crafted and immediately readable.
An open letter on bad design
5th June 2009
Designer Dustin Curtis was so disgusted with the American Airlines web site that he redesigned it, and posted the results as an open letter to the company.
Guess what? One of AA’s designers responded with a long defense about why better design dies a slow death at places like AA.
Some interesting thoughts and feedback, from someone actually within American Airlines’ web team, about how and why great design is crushed by dispersed corporate structure and disparate business needs.
(Curtis’ redesign is really nice and clean, too.)
Google says: “Do more with less”
30th April 2009An interesting – albeit visually bland – piece of IA by Google, in an effort to promote their marketing tools during the downturn:
Nice strapline idea
24th April 2009
Spotted over on BAM’s website – each item is a link.
Melbourne Airport
30th May 2008I had a look at the official Melbourne airport website.
They have a few interesting things:
- An interactive airport map (I don’t think it’s particularly well implemented. I’m sure we could do better though). This could have a place for BIA particularly around car parking.
- The homepage has a ‘travel times’ bump, updating traffic news of how long it takes to get from the airport to the city and back. Perhaps not so applicable to BIA, but might be for other airports in the future.
- Live flight radar lets you keep track of every flight that goes to or comes from Melbourne.
Interestingly, they don’t make a big thing out of destinations, or special offers. I wonder why? Do you think the airport business is different in Oz?
Pete Fairhurst
Jonathan Waring
Martina Welander
Andrew Arnott
Chris Thurling
Iwein Dekoninck
Matt French
Kate Thorpe
Laura Fletcher
Dave North
Bonny Colville-Hyde
Nick Raven
