Media: Portals Revisited at Tangentium

"Permeable Portals: Designing congenial web sites for the e-society" by Richard Coyne, John Lee and Martin Parker, was originally a paper at the 2004 IADIS conference on the e-society, held in Ávila, Spain, in July 2004, and has now been made available on the Web at Tangentium (linked below).

Coyne et al turn to the nature of the Web portal and its design, starting from the assumption that there is a conflict between the freedoms suggested by the Web and the apparent need for access restrictions. Their response is to look at ways of managing access to websites in ways that are more subtle, more flexible and more creative than slapping password protection on them.

'But what if we have a multiplicity, an over-indulgence, a surfeit, of portals?' they ask. 'As we have already hinted, the web can be thought not only as a series of spaces into which one gains access via a special site or link, but as a surfeit of interconnected links. This is not just to give priority to links rather than nodes, but to acknowledge the place of the web as a matrix of entrances and exits, a profusion of links, with the content of a page as an ever-receding and transient moment in the relentless quest for information.'

This is not a piece of research that drops a series of statistics in your lap, or hands over a guideline or two. Instead, it's a piece to think about away from the desktop. They conclude that 'encouraging and observing active usage over time emerges as a strategy for maintaining web security in low risk domains'.

Associated Link: Tangentium: Permeable Portals

All change at the top for System Concepts
Source: System Concepts Ltd, 3 July 2009
 
Leslie Fountain has been promoted to joint Managing Director of leading usability consultancy System Concepts.

Life in UCD immortalised in fiction: you couldn't make it up
Source: UN, 2 July 2009
 
Sarah Herman's fictitious book on life in a user-centred design company has hit the shelves and The Guardian's book pages...

Interfaces Magazine - Issue 79: The Education Issue
Source: Interaction Group, 1 July 2009
 
The latest issue of Interfaces is now available as a free download from the Interaction Website.

Two new Behavioural research Tools from Noldus
Source: UN, 30 June 2009
 
Tool updates make on-site behavioural data collection easier.

Cell Phones that Listen and Learn
Source: MIT Technology Review, 29 June 2009
 
New software tracks a user's behavior by monitoring everyday sounds.

Top Six Don’ts for Usability Testing
Source: FutureNow Inc., 27 June 2009
 
Six tips for creating quality usability tests to ensure useful feedback from testers.

Usability: ‘Lovely software. But I can’t work it’
Source: FT.com, 26 June 2009
 
In a recent survey by Global Graphics, 77 per cent of office workers estimate they lose up to one hour a week because business software is difficult to use.

And what do you do?
Source: Dexo Design, 25 June 2009
 
How do you describe your job role? Here are the results of a recent 'Preferred UX/UI Title' Poll.

Most Doctors cite Usability as critical to Electronic Health Record Adoption
Source: TMCNet, 24 June 2009
 
It's all about 'meaningful use'.

Glossy monitors look good but can hurt
Source: QUT, 23 June 2009
 
A new advisory cites research which suggests high gloss monitors make users sit awkwardly.