This link has been bookmarked by 51 people . It was first bookmarked on 26 Aug 2008, by Joshua Simmons.
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23 Dec 11
Satt QuintanThe author, though with a bit of muddly metaphors, proposes the role of webdesigners should be more like that of the cartographer and the rhetorician. That means the web designer should pay attention to the relational networks that users create or may define in a future website in order to construct more effective web spaces.
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In the 1970s, however, Henri Lefebvre’s work The Production of Space turned this view on its head, arguing that space is produced through the enactment of social relations.
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A building, in Lefebvre’s reading, is a map of the interactions of the people who inhabit it; an architect is not a builder in an otherwise empty wilderness, but an observer, chronicler, and shaper of the networks that exist around her—in short, a map maker.
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To the rhetorician Quintilian (35-100 CE), the key to persuasion was memory: the rhetorician had to be able to access quickly and accurately “the store of precedents, laws, rulings, sayings and facts which the orator must possess in abundance and which he must always hold ready for immediate use,”
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Quintilian suggests a remarkable mnemonic device:
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We require, therefore, places, real or imaginary, and images or symbols, which we must, of course, invent for ourselves. By images I mean the words by which we distinguish the things which we have to learn by heart: in fact, as Cicero says, we use ‘places like wax tablets and symbols in lieu of letters.’ (ibid.)
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The rise of the social web demands that if we are to help shape meaningful online experiences for our users, we must rethink our traditional role as builders of digital monuments and turn our attention to the close observation of the spaces that our users are producing around us.
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18 May 10
ken .Architect starts with abstract blueprint, creates structure - cartographer starts with structure, creates abstract map - hmm, is mapping off base, associative inspiration, make links, not maps? hitting on Descartes (I think therefore i map), Lefebvre (pro
analogy architecture cognitive design information management mapping memory metaphor rhetoric space structure web
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17 Feb 10
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11 May 09
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07 Mar 09
Felipe LavínTheory often takes a back seat to practice in the field of web design—after all, it’s hard enough to keep up with the latest acronyms without trying to carve out time for navel gazing about the profession. As a result, innovation in the way we think about
webdesign web ux usability design architecture navigation information from-delicious
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04 Mar 09
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18 Sep 08
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In the 1970s, however, Henri Lefebvre’s work The Production of Space turned this view on its head, arguing that space is produced through the enactment of social relations. Space, according to Lefebvre, is created by the flows and movements of relational networks—such as capital, power, and information—in, across, and through a given physical area. A building, in Lefebvre’s reading, is a map of the interactions of the people who inhabit it; an architect is not a builder in an otherwise empty wilderness, but an observer, chronicler, and shaper of the networks that exist around her—in short, a map maker. Websites informed by a Lefebvrian conception of cyberspace rather than a Cartesian one would provide truly user-centered design, by recognizing that it is the users themselves whose actions produce the website; the web designer merely facilitates that creation.
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11 Sep 08
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09 Sep 08
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created to persuade prospective students to apply, current students to collaborate, and alumni to remain engaged with the school
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we should use the flow of their interactions with the site and with each other to determine the form of this memory map
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07 Sep 08
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06 Sep 08
Cory SalvesonSince at least Richard Saul Wurman’s 1996 book Information Architects, architecture has been the primary metaphor for how we think about what we do. By adding a new metaphor to our theoretical toolboxes, we can gain a richer, more nuanced understanding of
map mapping webdesign webdev usability socialnetworks ui theory web design gui to-read
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02 Sep 08
Jeremy Beaudry"The rise of the social web demands that if we are to help shape meaningful online experiences for our users, we must rethink our traditional role as builders of digital monuments and turn our attention to the close observation of the spaces that our user
imported mmdi_150 mmdi_202 architecture memory info_architecture web sociable_web design usability delicious-import
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31 Aug 08
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30 Aug 08
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29 Aug 08
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28 Aug 08
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the users themselves whose actions produce the website; the web designer merely facilitates that creation.
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Just as Lefebvre leads us to see built spaces not as the expressions of a single architect, but rather as the production of the wide variety of human interactions that occur within them, so websites created by cartographers would cease being grand edifices of unidirectional communication and become instead the collective product of the individuals whose lives intersect within them. The rise of the social web demands that if we are to help shape meaningful online experiences for our users, we must rethink our traditional role as builders of digital monuments and turn our attention to the close observation of the spaces that our users are producing around us.
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The conception of web designer as information architect depends upon a vision of cyberspace not unlike the vision of physical space held by René Descartes (1596-1650). To him, and to most of Western civilization for hundreds of years, space was a void, a preexisting grid which remains empty until points are identified and paths plotted upon it. (Think of the digital plains depicted in the movie Tron.)
In the 1970s, however, Henri Lefebvre’s work The Production of Space turned this view on its head, arguing that space is produced through the enactment of social relations. Space, according to Lefebvre, is created by the flows and movements of relational networks—such as capital, power, and information—in, across, and through a given physical area. A building, in Lefebvre’s reading, is a map of the interactions of the people who inhabit it; an architect is not a builder in an otherwise empty wilderness, but an observer, chronicler, and shaper of the networks that exist around her—in short, a map maker. Websites informed by a Lefebvrian conception of cyberspace rather than a Cartesian one would provide truly user-centered design, by recognizing that it is the users themselves whose actions produce the website; the web designer merely facilitates that creation.
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27 Aug 08
Pierre Mounierle webdesigner n'est pas un architecte mais un cartographe. Très intéressant.
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Johann RichardTheory often takes a back seat to practice in the field of web design—after all, it’s hard enough to keep up with the latest acronyms without trying to carve out time for navel gazing about the profession. As a result, innovation in the way we think about
website webdesign web usability ui toread theory ux web.design for:unic.com for:tschulid ****
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26 Aug 08
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arcojediTheory often takes a back seat to practice in the field of web design—after all, it’s hard enough to keep up with the latest acronyms without trying to carve out time for navel gazing about the profession. As a result, innovation in the way we think about our creations has lagged behind the breakneck pace of change in the technologies we use to create them. Consider, for example, our craft’s foundational metaphor of “information architecture.” Since at least Richard Saul Wurman’s 1996 book Information Architects, architecture has been the primary metaphor for how “those who build websites” think about what we do. By adding a new metaphor to our theoretical toolboxes, we can gain a richer, more nuanced understanding of the way that we inhabit cyberspace. This enhanced apprehension of the medium should enable us to create websites that better serve our users.
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deborah husticWeb Designer as Information ... (via friendfeed: ognjen)
webdesign article information maps informationarchitecture cartography comprehension percieving design
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Michael Sean WrightThe conception of web designer as information architect depends upon a vision of cyberspace not unlike the vision of physical space held by René Descartes (1596-1650
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Websites informed by a Lefebvrian conception of cyberspace rather than a Cartesian one would provide truly user-centered design, by recognizing that it is the users themselves whose actions produce the website; the web designer merely facilitates that creation.
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In order to do so, Quintilian suggests a remarkable mnemonic device: the orator should imagine “a place…of the largest possible extent and characterised by the utmost possible variety, such as a spacious house divided into a number of rooms” (ibid.).
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Instead of imposing an architecture upon users from above, we should use the flow of their interactions with the site and with each other to determine the form of this memory map.
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23 Aug 08
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