How to Design and Write Web Pages Today by Karl Stolley

The graphic above shows that there is an immense amount of data on the Internet today. However it is useless to put information on the Internet without a proper analysis of the audience you are trying to address.

Thus, designing and writing web pages are a daunting task and is turning into a task that is becoming more common to more and more companies today. Therefore, this book is broken into four parts to help attack this issue:

Part I: What am I Writiing?
Part II: Issues and Challenges
Part III: Strategies for Success
Part IV: Problems and Solutions

Throughout the book, the reader will learn how to use WordPress, the importance of languages such as XHTML and CSS, how to design a web page, and many more. 

Here is the link to my full book review: 

http://docs.google.com/document/d/1OYOKR0dYePynOhE38CCYszDPC2TV7GVo8UCSygNrJYQ/edit 

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3rd Ed.

When I first saw "World Wide Web" in the title of the book that I was assigned, I cringed. I thought, "I'm no web guru, this book is going to make no sense to me."After reading it, though, this book is not meant to apply ONLY to the web. In fact, the authors go through multiple aspects of Information Architecture that can be applied to any field.

The largest emphasis of the book is the idea of an Information Ecology. That is, the relationships between the user, the content, and the context. In all documents and products, this relationship is malleable and organic - it is something that we, as Information Architects and Professional Writers need to be aware of and try to master. Successful end products, good Information Architecture, and happy stakeholders, result from researching about each of the three parts of the Information Ecology.

The book also goes deep into the heart of what Information design really is and how to explain it to others. This is the sort of introduction that people who are new to the field need to have. This book spells the basics out in interesting and helpful ways that I wish I had in front of me when I entered the field.

For a full review of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 3rd Ed please follow the link below:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G_GQxezGWLwLlSgxdOgSVhdQhVe841l6nApedCcrrMY/edit

Review of Brandscapes by Anna Klingmann

The experience economy is marked by brandscapes, which employ elements of information design and user-centered design. The author gives many examples of how companies create brands and the consumers who can't get enough of them. I suggest the book to anyone who is interested in branding and architecture.

For my book review: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1epm8i4MHpVT4md6XvEydDAZsnjeNRI8M4AY9-ZZtVAA/edit

For my presentation: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B-Qz-MQA15ynNjljNjQ2ZDUtMmQzZi00ODJlLTg4MjItMjNmODk4MGM1Mzg0

"A Pattern Language: Towns Buildings Construction"

Full review can be found here: Full_Review

Visual presentation can be found here: Visual_Presentation

"The Wayfinding Handbook" by David Gibson

Below are my final products for the book, "The Wayfinding Handbook" by David Gibson. My visual representation is a powerpoint presentation, because it effectively allows my audience to gain insight and knowledge about my text in a concise and cohesive manner, allowing each side to discuss a significant concept from the text. My book review provides the audience with an in depth explanation of the concepts covered within the text, and their significance to professional writing students and the industry at large.

In regards to the actual text, "The Wayfinding Handbook" is a very innovative read, because it discusses how the universal concept of information design can be so versatile, in this book particularly, through the concept of wayfinding. Wayfinding in short refers to creating visually competent, concise, cohesive yet detailed signage, planning and community development. It is an interdisciplinary subject because it encompasses aspects from professional writing, arcitecture and visual design, graphic design, and cartography. It presents information that is very valuable because this field and industry provide professional writing students a new opportunity to utilize their major and possibly acquire jobs post graduation.

Engl 515 final visual

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The above is my powerpoint visual representation of this text.

Engl 515 final book review

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This is my in depth book review for the text.

Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal

Story Board on Prezi

In Reality is Broken, Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal there is an impressive amount of statistics about the amount of time the average gamer plays video games. In fact, the amount of time is so impressive that it has led Jane McGonigal to come to the conclusion that reality is broken and therefore people have turned to virtual worlds to satisfy their worldly needs. 

From this idea, McGonigal further discovered that there is a ridiculous amount of human participation hours being committed to playing a single game: World of Warcraft. On average gamers are committing 210 participation hours per week to playing WoW. This visual is meant to be a story board of a greater visual that has the potential to show an overwhelming statistic and what that number could mean if it were applied to worldly problems outside of gaming. 

Included after the jump is a review of the book and how McGonigal's evaluation that video games and gamers are the future of our society can be applied to professional writers. This review is intended for all audiences, but is specifically geared towards helping people outside of the profession to understand the specifics of how a professional writer creates and designs successful documentation.

Information Archetechture: Blueprints for the Web Review

Imagine your company decides it needs a website, imagine that you draw the short straw, and imagine you have no clue whatsoever where to start or how you are going to make it through this. People in this position (as well countless similar ones) and many others who simply do not know where to start or simply want to know more about effective web-site design will benefit greatly from Christina Wodtke’s Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web. While this a very much book for beginners, some more experienced people will find good advice here too as it lays out a framework of good practices rather than a step-by-step “for dummies” guide.

The first thing the book does is draw a distinction between a myriad of “proper web design laws” written by web “gurus” and real world. There are no cut and dry design laws, if it were that simple she wouldn’t have the need to write the book and the job would be so much easier. But we all know it is not, what worked for one company and that “guru” made into a “law” will not necessarily work for you. Therefore do not just blindly accept any such laws you may run across.
Perhaps the most important point that is made in Information Architecture is regarding user-centered design. The author of the book conveyed one message very clear – do not guess on what your users may or may not like and build a website based on that. Bottom line is that you have to talk to the potential end users to get the answers you need. Not following this particular guideline can cost you both many hours of work and tons of money. Simply put it is a gamble you cannot afford. If you guess right, you will save yourself time you would spend on research. However, if you guess wrong, you will likely have to re-design almost the entire site. In addition, history shows that the latter is a more likely outcome, thus making the choice very easy – do your research!

Here is the link to the full review:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_6rmFpLAadtZjJmODBhODgtM2JmYy00MzVmLTk2ZjItYjdlOGYxY2JhMWYx

And here is the link to the presentation:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B_6rmFpLAadtOTM5ZjY2YTktM2I0OC00MDJiLWIzMTMtNTk0MTIzMTE0YmRm

One Click Richard L. Brandt

Convincing decision makers of the value information designers can add to an organization can be a tough challenge for any information designer. But, many decision makers will pay more attention if we can illustrate how much money their companies can gain by focusing on the customer. This focus on the customer often takes the form of usability or user-centered design, and Richard L. Brandt’s One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com illustrates the impact that a focus on usability and user-centered design can have on a company’s growth. This book begins with a history of Amazon.com and weaves Jeff Bezo’s various commitments to usability throughout the story.

Read the full review here.

Visual Thinking by Rudolf Arnheim

Rudolf Arnheim’s Visual Thinking a combination of vision and knowledge is a book that will ask you to think, but more importantly there is a lot to learn for anyone willing to look at something part of everyday life in a new light. Professional writers can benefit from this book in the ways that it talks about images, how to use them, and the effect that they have on people. After reading the book, I would sum this book up by saying that without our senses the mind has nothing to think with so, visual thinking is using our senses to learn and observe the world around us in our minds.

Review & Visualization: Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug

Follow this link to see my full review of Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G4_IWs3il5fBknz30aUm0TYnEJk4taICoT8aj9K88tA/edit

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky Review and Visual

In Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky attempts to explain group behavior and their organization online. It is an easy read with highly entertaining and relevant examples of how, with the right tools, people can organize outside of the traditional hierarchy. Specifically, Shirky provides a foundation for understanding the types of group interactions and formation that take place as well as the type of activities and contributions different members make to these groups.

This book would be most relevant to individuals working in the field of communications. It caters to those with an interest in social media, its trends, crowd sourcing, and their effects on society and the job market. The book does a great job of outlining what is going on in society today as a result of people adopting these tools as an effective way to organize, communicate, and take collective action. Furthermore, the book provides insight as to how one might use these tools to complete research and gather data from users, which is an integral part of information architecture and design.

Here Comes Everybody expands on a lot of the concepts we’ve discussed in class such as trends in a post-industrial society (Cohen), collective learning (Thomas & Brown), and civic tools/action (Shirky). Since the book is so accessible, and provides a foundation for concepts pertinent to information architecture and design, it would serve as a good introduction to user-centered design and social media as a source for research and impact.

Above I've embedded my interactive multimedia Prezi visual. In it, I strived to illustrate the main points discussed in the book, and contrasting which concepts are most important to information and user-centered design. There are no paths outlined in the presentation, so the viewer has complete control of which parts of the presentation he or she wants to view. Specifically, in the “Relevance” section I have included an image (seen below), inspired from by The Information Design Handbook by O’Grady & O’Grady.

User-Centered Design using Social Media Tools

For a full review, click here.

Shoshanna Zuboff's In the Age of the Smart Machine

I read and thoroughly enjoyed the middle portion of Shoshanna Zuboff’s “In the Age of the Smart Machine”. The book examines the effect of automation on American workers of every level. But the section I read dealt with labor relations between blue-collar workers and management.

The first two chapters of this section didn’t have much to offer on information design, but they were interesting. Zuboff examines the sociological underpinnings of the separation of management from workers thoughtout history. She sites examples and attitudes from texts of various eras that support a religious underpinning for management and capitol and then later a social Darwinist underpinning. She then offers examples of how the smart machine (automation, logistics software and programming) has changed or rather threatened this balance. This gives us a basis to understand her work in the later chapter, which has an important if tangential relationship to information design.
In the third chapter the most starling anecdotes are about management trying to limit or purposely design poorly to retain thier position. The machine is viewed as a tool in between the workers and the management and because of that it is a threat to both. But more so to managers in Zuboff’s book.

We see information design used as a tool in this section. It is a way for those with access to the information to keep it to them selves or rather problematize it a way that preserves their job. It is the opposite goal from what we’ve studying but it uses the same tactic. It seems that only the most poorly design information can be hidden in the ‘informed organization’ as Zuboff calls it. This illustrates how design is tied into access. And access has been tied to power for so long it seems ridiculously elementary to mention it.

The machine does a lot of the mental work done by managers even as it removes workers from the process. It limits the managers access in this way and in a more personal sense, their power. Often in the book from interviewees you get a sense of the pride, meaning or feeling of a requirement satisfied that we have in a job. When the machine takes these from workers or management, the need for what the job gave us remains.

It is viewed as an opportunity for workers to be promoted to operators or for management to be demoted to the same position. There is never an argument for removing humans from the process entirely but it asks where the humans who operate the smart machines lay in our ‘working’ social order.

The way religious or scientific ideas have been bent to satisfy this power dynamic are in flux in the age of the smart machine. An age which was in it’s nascent stages when the book was published is in full thrust today. She doesn’t predict much but she does convey a sense of a growing issue. And the issues it predicted have become problems today.

James Gleick's "The Information

James Gleick’s The Information follows the development and use of information. The book covers thousands of years of history in a narrative style, telling the story of information and its impact on us. Gleick focuses on modes of transmission, code languages, information in nature, and the post sixties information revolutions. He also invokes what it means for us to engage with information and how it in turn shapes who we are.

This book is appropriate for an audience of advanced professional/technical writers and practitioners who wish to advance their knowledge of the history of information. To understand where a field is heading it is helpful to ground one’s perspective in what has past. Understanding the continued proliferation of information helps orient the response in information design in architecture to an economy of attention scarcity.

The graphic represents the arch of information’s development. With the rise of technology (specifically, the personal computer), information can be transmitted and created in more and more different ways. The gradient arch shows the ‘density’ of information creation and transmission. The quick darkening of the gradient arch coincides with the rise of the personal computer. The x-axis shows the amount of information transmitted and the y-axis shows the time scale.

For full review of The Information follow this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oTBhhlz9b5iwTL-Bo64UMFgYeZNgkwbKr5fpUTnXYlM/edit?pli=1&hl=en_US

Information Design by Robert Jacobson

In Information Design, Robert Jacobson compiles the ideas of numerous professionals involved in the field of information design in order to create a very broad definition of the subject. This review focuses on what a prospective reader could learn from the book as well as recommendations for a variety of potential readers. As a visual aid, there is an accompanying PowerPoint which explains both textually and visually some of the major concepts in the book such as wayfinding, perception differences, and how data takes on new meaning. Overall, this book is useful for those hoping to broaden their views of information design but definitely not for narrowing them down or those searching for concrete and absolute ideals.

Info design presentation-3

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English515 jacobson bookreview-3

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Visual Review of How to Design and Write Web Pages Today

In what is called a post-industrial era, a time period where technology is advancing, information is flowing, and workers are becoming multi-skilled, the ability to be able to write for the Web but also be able to design a website is an essential proponent to advancing a person’s personal, academic and even professional lives. It is this topic I review in my powerpoint presentation, discussing and demonstrating the ways that Karl Stolley’s book How to Design and Write Web Pages Today provides assistance, offering an approach for building websites that will let readers reach their intended audience in an effective way with methods that never get old.

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