The IA Summit, an annual gathering of Information Architecture specialists, ended on a high note with Whitney Hess's closing plenary. Taking Whitney's advice before she gave it, the past 12 months I've gotten involved with several different communities, namely the awesome Drupal community. It was my first IA Summit so I guess that makes me a Newbie. There were things I would have done differently, both at this conference and others in the past:

Newbie Mistake #1: Not putting yourself out there

Source: Flickr

Source: Flickr

Source: Flickr

Source: Flickr

Overview

I'm rebuilding a site in Drupal, with the very awesome assistance of himerus aka Jake Strawn. There's a very complicated View to build and we could really use some input on how to make this happen, and whether it's possible using just Views & Contrib code (for the most part).

I recently read Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter), written by Christina Wodtke and Austin Govella.

Introduction

I've created a quick voluntary redesign of the XE Trade currency exchange service dashboard and Basic Trade (first screen only), out of sheer frustration when I first used their service a few months ago. When I started this post, I wasn't aware that XE Trade was in the process of updating their site. A notification on the login screen now tells me my account will be migrated to the new design at some point, but for the moment, the screenshots presented are exactly what I see. Information on how to preview the new UI is found in the P.S. below.

I recently presented Evaluating the User Interface and User Experience at the Boston Drupal 4 Design camp, held at MIT's Stata Center.

My presentation was for web designers, Drupal themers and anyone else involved in web projects, but my message is this: test and QA your own work, but don't QA your work by yourself; always get a second pair of eyes. My talk covered* the whys and hows of best practices and testing:

• Screen resolutions

In my Evaluating the User Interface and User Experience presentation at the Boston Design 4 Drupal camp, I touched on the need for designers to check the color contrast between foreground and background page elements, to ensure the color combination is usable and accessible to all.

In this blog post, I explain why all registration form submission error messages should be stated in plain language as a single step, not in an irritating succession.

Just now, I tried registering for BNET, after being prompted to login or register to read an article. Fine, whatever. I'll register.

The registration form is too long (while writing this, I went back and counted 18 fields. 18, really?

I recently received what seemed like the billionth email from Pottery Barn. While I love their stuff, I am kinda on a budget and I don't need to be reminded how each of my sparsely furnished rooms are kinda pathetic. Here's their refreshing take on unsubscribing.
Dear Pottery Barn Subscriber,

We understand how daunting a full inbox can be. If you would like to receive fewer emails from us, simply select from the options below.