I read Adam Greenfield’s Everyware in August of this year, but haven’t written anything about it yet. I like the book, a lot. It led me to think again about a number of issues that I kind of put to the side over the last two decades as I’ve made a living as a knowledge worker, i.e. methods analyst, technical writer, multimedia developer, Professor of Communication, web designer, human capital manager, e-Learning researcher, learning architect, customer experience designer. However, Adam’s book made an impression on me initially, more because of things that I experienced in the late 1980s and early 1990s than for its relevance today, though it is extremely relevant to today’s challenges in relating human experience to the ubiquitous nature of computing technology. Read the rest of this entry »
Everyware, Findability, and AI (Part 1)
December 17, 2006
2 Comments | 
Ubiquitous Computing, User Experience, Web 2.0 | Tagged: Artificial Intelligence, Everyware, Findability | 
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Posted by Larry Irons
Forget Tags and Folksonomies, Try Place-Based Stories
October 10, 2006From the first time I heard the work folksonomy I really liked the concept. The idea of building meta-data about places and things from the people who experience them really seems cool if you have an appreciation for sociability. However, I must say that the new twist on the concept offered by [murmur] provides people moving through places with thick descriptions rather than tagged information aggregated by collaborative filtering software. [murmur] is available in Toronto, San Jose, Vancouver, and Montreal. It is really an oral history project that allows you to access stories about places you pass through while you are there. But, the basic concept is much more than oral history. Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | v-Tags, Web 2.0 | Tagged: folksonomy, murmur, tags, visual tags, Web 2.0 | Permalink
Posted by Larry Irons
Museums and Folksonomies
February 2, 2006A folksonomy results from distinct ways of organizing cultural categories developed from the tags, keywords, people use to describe specific content, or services, on the web. The emphasis in folksonomies is on organizing data, not making friends. As Ellyssa Kroski notes, a key difference between Flickr, 43Things, and del.icio.us, when compared to LinkedIn and Friendster, is that the former are focused on organizing data from individual users for the user public, with social relationships arising as users share and seek out others of like mind. The approach is attracting numerous efforts to make accessing information needed to find things easier. I recently came across The Art Museum Community Cataloging Project, called Steve for short. It is an effort to use folksonomies to help visitors find art in museums. Read the rest of this entry »
3 Comments | Customer Communities, Social Networks, Web 2.0 | Tagged: social networking, Web 2.0 | Permalink
Posted by Larry Irons
On Findability and Visual Tags
January 4, 2006Interfaces are not what they used to be. The computer-human interface is both more and less than it was a few years ago. Interfaces are not only, or even primarily, a screen anymore. Yet, screens remain important to most design efforts, even though interfaces are increasingly part of the environment itself. As John Thackara and Malcolm McCullough both recently pointed out, entire cities are developing into user interfaces as ubiquitous computing environments expand.
Peter Morville has outlined one approach to the challenges posed by ubiquitous computing for people who need to go places or find things. He calls it “ambient findability”: “…a fast emerging world where we can find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime” (p. 6). Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | Experience Design, Social Networks, User Experience, v-Tags, Web 2.0 | Tagged: Experience Design, Findability, visual tags | Permalink
Posted by Larry Irons
Skilful Minds 