Mini-IA: Structuring the Information About a Concept

[email protected] (Jakob Nielsen) Tue, 21 Jun 2011 05:50:00 -0700
Newsgroups gmane.comp.web.alertbox
Message-ID <SPARKLIST-7313542-19205659-2011.06.21-05.50.02--gcwa-alertbox#[email protected]>
In a miniature information architecture, coverage of a single topic is
chunked into units that are connected through simple navigation.
	
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for June 21:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mini-ia.html

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Usability Week 2011 conference

  * Toronto: July 11-15
  * New York City: August 1-6
  * San Francisco: September 25-30
  * Austin, TX: October 3-7
  * London: November 13-18

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

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NEW CONFERENCE VENUES: San Francisco, Austin, London

We're back at two of my favorite locations:

  * San Francisco: 
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/san_francisco/agenda.html

  * London:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/london/agenda.html

Plus, we'll be in Texas for the first time in 10 years:

  * Austin
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/austin/agenda.html

We now have two native Texans in the group, plus two more presenters
who live there, even though they're originally from elsewhere.
(Try to guess who are the Texans from the speaker bios :-)

NEW MOBILE SEMINARS:

Because of the rapidly increasingly interest in mobile user experience,
I have added 3 new specialized seminars to supplement the two general
seminars on mobile sites and mobile apps.

  * Visual Design for Mobile Devices and Tablets
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/mobile_visual_design.html

  * Writing for Mobile Users: Content Usability for Mobile Sites/Apps
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/writing_for_mobile.html

  * Mobile Usability Methods: How to Run Your Own Mobile User Studies
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/mobile_user_research.html

All of our other seminars simply report what we have learned in our
research. (Which spans countless mobile studies since 2000.) This last
seminar is exciting because it teaches you how to test your own designs.
(I know that most companies won't bother doing so, but you really
*ought* to :-)

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INTRANET DESIGN ANNUAL: deadline TOMORROW Wednesday

The competition for next year's intranet design award is still open (but
about to close) with a deadline for entries of June 22:

  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/2012

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Big Blue

IBM turned 100 last Thursday:

  > http://www.economist.com/node/18805483
  > http://www.economist.com/node/18803123
  > http://www.economist.com/node/18802844

(Disclosure: The Economist is one of our consulting clients, but that's
not why I'm linking to them. I just thought they had a particularly
thorough coverage of IBM's birthday. Including a nice short summary
in the first link in the above list.)

I worked at IBM twice: first (back in the dark mainframe ages) as a
student intern, and later as a research scientist at the T.J. Watson
Research Center. While at the latter job, I even visited world HQ in
Armonk, NY (a name that used to send the shivers through the tech world):
a beautifully designed but surprisingly modest building.

Congratulations on surviving a century's worth of paradigm changes in IT.
If we look at today's high-flyers, Apple, Facebook, and Google, I would
expect at most one of them to still be a leading company in 2111.