In preparation for my talk, i wanted to find a way to generate labels that looks like cards from an old-fashioned card catalog. I figured that there must be something like this somewhere online, but I didn’t know how difficult it might be to find. I typed “card catalog” into google and this Card Catalog Generator was the fourth result, with this explanatory post called Roll Your Own Catalog Card as the fifth result.

I love when things like this happen. So, now I’m going to use this to prepare some of the graphics for my talk and, it’s very meta, but I’m going to have to mention how easily I discovered it too. Thanks John Blyberg!

The aim of their talk is to discuss their point of view on how to present data in a way that’s meaningful - not just cool or interesting looking. There are some sites that present really beautiful infographics, but they don’t necessarily tell you anything. More suitable for hanging on the wall than for providing illuminating knowledge or understanding. I think that’s just wasteful.

I’m not a designer, myself, so in my line of work I generally collaborate with someone who is. Ideally, I bring insight on the full range of data and the story that it wants to tell, and the IA or designer has the tools and techniques to make that story come to life. Anh and Nirali have a great perspective on the thought processes, insights, and strategies needed to make those techniques really work, and I’m glad to see them contributing their ideas to the discussion.

For more details, read my article, The Semantic Web We Weave, on the Digital Design Blog.

One of the apps that, in a general sense, I actually like is an app that lets me rate and review movies, share my opinions on films, and read about the opinions of others. It includes a “Movie Compatibility Test” which tells me how close my taste is to my buddies’, based on comparing our ratings for some 50-odd movies. It alerts me every time one of my friends has taken the quiz, so I can go check how well we matched up. I love movies, and all this sounds pretty cool. The problem is…

Every time I want to see the results of someone’s test – no matter if it’s the first time I’ve checked, or I’ve seen the results dozens of times already – it makes me go through this screen which is designed to get me to invite more friends to take the quiz (and thus sign up for the app). If I’m being generous, I’d say this design is trying to coerce, but more often I think it’s designed to trick.

The main thing I want to accomplish when I come to this page is to see the results of someone’s test. After all, that’s what the link I clicked on to get here promised. This page has pre-selected some people that it will invite, if I click on either of the buttons that provide the most obvious path to seeing the results – the buttons that say “Continue to Results.” It is possible to see the results without inviting more people, if you click on the small, subtle link that says “Skip to Results,” up in the right hand corner. Did you see it? It doesn’t even really look much like a link. It’s even less noticeable when you see it in the context of the whole page.

It takes constant vigilance to use this feature of the app without accidentally inviting your friends to subscribe. Since it’s a feature that will definitely inspire return visits, you have to be paying close attention every time. If you feel in the least bit distracted, tired, or impatient, there’s a good chance that you’ll be so focused on your goal of seeing the results that you’ll just click on the most obvious call-to-action, and before you know it you’ve spammed a bunch of your friends. This happened to me the other day, even though I was already a long-time user of the app.

As an added bonus, since it randomly selects the subset of contacts to invite, I had no way of knowing who I had spammed. A couple people mentioned it to me that day, though, which spurred some discussions of the sneaky design that inspired this behavior. This kind of thing is of particular interest among my colleagues, because we spend pretty much all of our time thinking about usability, information architecture, and user-centered design. So, of course we have strong feelings about designs that seem to wield conventions of usability against us like a weapon. These kinds of practices bring the concept of “viral media” back to its infectious roots.

In one conversation with a coworker, I referred to this deliberate use of user experience to manipulate users as “disinformation architecture.” He quickly found a blog with that name, but unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with this idea (so I’m not going to link to it here). I think the author of that blog just thought it was an edgy-sounding name for a blog. That doesn’t mean I can’t write about it here, though. So, I’m going to call out disinformation architecture where I see it. Because it really bugs the crap out of me.

Helvetica was created in the late ’50s. At the time it solved many graphic design problems and it sort of took the modern world by storm. Later, there was some post-modern backlash, but the font was already so ubiquitous, there was no going back. The film depicted the views and feelings of many prominent designers, and offered a wide range of perspectives on the font.

The font’s supporters said it was successful because it was clean, straightforward, easy-to-read,  modern, uniform, democratic, human, friendly, efficient, neutral, unbiased, global, trustworthy, and authoritative. Plus, it’s flexilble. Essentially, you can use it in different ways and in a wide variety of contexts to give it any number of different connotations, and evoke a broad range of responses.

It’s detractors accused the font of being corporate, soulless, dull, oppressive, bland, imperialistic, conformist, and too ubiquitous. Everything from having no personality to being actually evil! David Carson, graphic designer and creator of Raygun magazine, commented that “legibility does not equal communication.”

Both sides had really good points. I suppose the question is: what are you trying to communicate, and how does that communication take form? Typography is like the textual equivalent of body language. One person can gesticulate wildly as they tell you a story, and that can augment the story being told, or it could just be distracting. Another person can sit calmly and tell you something in confident, even tones. This may give their words more credibility and authority, or they may be hiding something under that facade.