OK-Cancel or Cancel-OK?

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for May 27 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ok-cancel.html

Summary:
Should the OK button come before or after the Cancel button?
Following platform conventions is more important than
suboptimizing an individual dialog box.
	
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Usability Week 2008 conference

  > San Francisco, June 16-21
  > Melbourne, July 21-26

In-depth training:
  > 3-day Intensive Camp: Usability in Practice
  > 3-day Immersion: Tog on Interaction Design

Specialized full-day tutorials:

  > Fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability
  > Application Usability (2 days)
  > Intranet Usability (2 days)
  > Websites That Sell
  > E-Mail Newsletter Usability
  > Writing for the Web
  > B2B

Full program:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

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IA AND THE KING'S COINS

While in London for last week's conference, I stopped by the British
Museum. Among other exhibits, I saw King George III's collection of
antique coins. Because this was part of an exhibition about the growth of
knowledge during the Enlightenment period, the collection was shown in the
way the King had organized it.

His Roman coins were sorted chronologically, which is the same system the
Museum uses to this day. But the Greek coins were sorted alphabetically
according to the name of the ruler depicted on the coin. This meant that
coins issued at the same time would be in widely varying parts of the
collection. It also meant that coins minted in the same city state would
be dispersed across the collection. Not surprisingly, the British Museum
no longer uses George III's system for its collection (except for this
special exhibit).

Information architecture lessons:

  (a) Alphabetical order is usually a bad way to structure items.

  (b) For a better structure, you need to understand the underlying
dimensions of interest (the King didn't know enough about ancient Greece
to correctly place the coins in time and space).

  (c) New info may cause you to restructure things for better access.

  (d) Two or more structuring principles may be better than a single one.

I think we can excuse George III for knowing too little about IA, but it's
amazing how many websites and intranets are still structured like the bad
part of his collection.

See also: "6 Ways to Fix a Confused Information Architecture"
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ia-improvements.html
	
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BBC: Web users 'getting more selfish'

  > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7417496.stm

Report from Usability Week London last week.