October 25, 2007
Information Design Watch
From Dynamic Diagrams
Design for Understanding

All of these articles first appeared on our Information Design Watch blog. Please visit the blog to view additional entries not included in the newsletter. You also can register and comment on most posts.

In This Issue:

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
-  Access Control Poster

INFORMATION DESIGN
-  Maps, Labels, Politics
-  Mindmapping Wikipedia
-  Map of Endangered Languages

DYNAMIC DIAGRAMS NEWS
-  Contractors Needed for Research, IA, Interaction Design

 
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Access Control Poster
Posted by Henry Woodbury

I was discussing a new project with a colleague the other day, one in which we need to turn a preliminary framework into a detailed process model, when I realized that a past project might help us out.

Back in 2002, we designed a Modeling Access Control Poster for that year's ASIS&T Information Architecture Summit. We intentionally challenged ourselves to explain web-based access control systems on a conceptual level, rather than show a particular case.

This approach now helps us, internally, to define the appropriate requirements-gathering baseline for a newly conceived system.

The printable poster is here: Modeling Access Control Poster (PDF, 287K).

 
INFORMATION DESIGN

Maps, Labels, Politics
Posted by Henry Woodbury

The Economist's Asia section offers a cautionary tale in the drawing of maps:

Almost any cartographic representation of the continent [Asia] is bound to upset some individual reader or government. Alas, we use maps not to portray the world as it ought to be, or even as we would like it to be, but as it is.

Cartographers, like information designers, seek to visualize accurate data. But what if the data is contentious? Read to the end to find the easy way out.

 
Mindmapping Wikipedia
Posted by Lisa Agustin

While Wikipedia is rich in content, approaching a given topic can seem overwhelming. The visual design for each entry steers users to approach the information in a linear way, top to bottom. In addition, the interconnections between subject areas are difficult to grasp at first glance, since hyperlinks to other subjects are found only by reading the text. Wikimindmap uses the concept of mindmapping to make researching any topic on Wikipedia more efficient and approachable. After running a search on their desired topic, users can size up a topic and what it covers at a glance, including crosslinks into related topics. Clicking on a node's (+) icon lets users expand that node, while clicking on the green arrow icon reorients their view to focus on one of the crosslinked topics. Interestingly, if an entry contains many crosslinks, these will dominate the visualization, suggesting to the uninitiated that an entry is more about hypertext links than core subject content.

 
Map of Endangered Languages
Posted by Lisa Agustin

A joint effort between the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, the Enduring Voices Project "strives to preserve endangered languages by identifying language hotspots—the places on our planet with the most unique, poorly understood, or threatened indigenous languages—and documenting the languages and cultures within them." The narrative on the National Geographic site provides some statistics to describe the gravity of the situation ("Every 14 days a language dies"), but it's the project's interactive map that is particularly engaging. The map offers two levels of exploring the extinction threat levels. A bird's eye view of the Earth shows the four levels of hot spots globally, while clicking on an individual location provides more detail into the history and uniqueness of the language and the specific nature of the threat.

 
DYNAMIC DIAGRAMS NEWS

Contractors Needed for Research, IA, Interaction Design
Posted by Henry Woodbury

Dynamic Diagrams is seeking to develop new relationships with user experience contractors to supplement our full-time staff.

Please refer to the post above or to the Careers page on our web site for details.

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