Simon Willison's Weblog: information-architecture

Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group

2024-12-08T21:05:56+00:00

I just learned about this delightful piece of internet culture via Leven Parker on TikTok.

Occlupanids are the small plastic square clips used to seal plastic bags containing bread.

For thirty years (since 1994) John Daniel has maintained this website that catalogs them and serves as the basis of a wide ranging community of occlupanologists who study and collect these plastic bread clips.

There's an active subreddit, r/occlupanids, but the real treat is the meticulously crafted taxonomy with dozens of species split across 19 families, all in the class Occlupanida:

Class Occlupanida (Occlu=to close, pan= bread) are placed under the Kingdom Microsynthera, of the Phylum Plasticae. Occlupanids share phylum Plasticae with “45” record holders, plastic juice caps, and other often ignored small plastic objects.

If you want to classify your own occlupanid there's even a handy ID guide, which starts with the shape of the "oral groove" in the clip.

Or if you want to dive deep down a rabbit hole, this YouTube video by CHUPPL starts with Occlupanids and then explores their inventor Floyd Paxton's involvement with the John Birch Society and eventually Yamashita's gold.

Via @leven_parker

Tags: information-architecture, internet, tiktok

What are some good ways to insult an Information Architect?

2012-11-29T15:37:00+00:00

My answer to What are some good ways to insult an Information Architect? on Quora

Ask them if they've started calling themselves a UX designer yet, or if they've jumped straight to Service Design :)

Tags: information-architecture, quora, ux

What are good ways to design a web application? Do you, for example, begin with a wire-frame of the front-end and work your way back to the database schema? The reverse? Figure out both ends and work towards the center?

2012-01-22T10:13:00+00:00

My answer to What are good ways to design a web application? Do you, for example, begin with a wire-frame of the front-end and work your way back to the database schema? The reverse? Figure out both ends and work towards the center? on Quora

I start with a working prototype, which I find I can often knock together in a couple of hours using Django. Having a functional (albeit buggy, ugly and insecure) prototype makes it much easier for me to start to reason about the larger application. There's not much point in coming up with a comprehensive architecture plan only to find out you're building the wrong thing!

Tags: information-architecture, prototyping, web-development, quora, management

What is the "best" programming language to learn if you want to mockup your own ideas but don't have a technical background?

2011-02-09T14:18:00+00:00

My answer to What is the "best" programming language to learn if you want to mockup your own ideas but don't have a technical background? on Quora

I knew a very talented UX designer at Yahoo! who did all of his interactive mockups in PowerPoint - including widgets that you click to transition to another "page" in the interface. I've heard of people doing the same thing in Keynote, and OmniGraffle Pro also has tools for creating interactive mockups.

Other than that, you can't go wrong with learning HTML and CSS - it'll pay off many times over, and you can learn just enough jQuery to mock up some interactions.

Tags: information-architecture, quora, ux

Quoting Bruce Tognazzini

2009-11-05T19:22:15+00:00

If you are demanding registration before checkout, you need to cease this practice immediately. It is costing you a fortune.

— Bruce Tognazzini

Tags: bruce-tognazzini, information-architecture, login, registration, signup

XFML

2007-08-30T22:27:49+00:00

XFML

Throwing the new home for the XFML specification some Google juice; the domain name got nabbed by a squatter.

Via Peter Van Dijck

Tags: google, information-architecture, peter-van-dijck, xfml

Long pages work

2007-08-30T12:40:07+00:00

Long pages work

And thanks to Pay Per Click advertising, splitting an article over multiple pages to get more ad impressions doesn’t make sense any more.

Tags: information-architecture, payperclick, peter-van-dijck

The blooming of information architecture at Google

2005-11-22T05:56:11+00:00

The blooming of information architecture at Google

A discussion of the IA concepts embedded in Google Base.

Tags: google, information-architecture

Wikipedia enhancements

2004-05-31T22:20:29+00:00

I don't know when it happened, but Wikipedia has a stylish new design in mostly valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional (the front page validates, some of the inside pages do not) with a CSS layout to boot. They even have an option to turn off the single layout table used on their home page. The site seems much easier to navigate now and the organisation of the front page is a masterpiece of information architecture. When you've got over 250,000 articles just in the English version providing a useful home page is going to be a challenge, but Wikipedia pulls it off with aplomb.

Every time I visit Wikipedia I find something else to be impressed by. This time round it was the Community Portal, which provides resources for Wikipedia contributors including Things you can do, an Article of the week, a Tip of the day and a myriad of other links. This is seriously well-organised content. It's interesting to see how they deal with the challenges of 250,000 items in a single namespace as well.

Their recent Webby award for best community was thoroughly deserved. And yes, they even encourage people to collaborate on writing their press releases.

Tags: css, information-architecture, wikipedia

A List Apart Again

2003-10-22T18:09:07+00:00

A List Apart has unveiled the long awaited redesign, and is celebrating it's third manifestation with three brand new articles.

The redesign is currently being discussed on Webdesign-L, and the general consensus is that it's a bit of a disappointment. I agree; while a perfectly servicable and attractive design to me it gives off the air of a well designed weblog rather than a cutting edge web design and development magazine.

Of the three new articles, the best by far is Doug Bowman's Sliding Doors of CSS, which describes in great detail how multiple background images applied to nested elements can be used to create a set of elegant, size-expandable tabs. Multiple nested backgrounds are not a new idea, but I haven't seen Doug's technique of creating a narrow image for the left hand side which overlaps a much larger right hand image before. I'm sure we're going to see a lot of interesting variations on this in the next few months.

Joe Clark's Facts and Opinion About Fahrner Image Replacement confirms the now widely accepted fact that display: none; hides content from screen readers, rendering the Fahrner Image Replacement technique obsolete. According to the author, the article was completed some time ago and thus does not cover more recent innovations in the field of image replacement, such as the Leahy / Langridge hack.

The third article, Random Image Rotation, introduces a simple PHP script for randomly serving up an image from a directory. I've always found the server side development material on ALA relatively uninspiring, but I guess this is because the target audience of the site is more designers than developers.

It's worth mentioning that the site's information architecture has been completely redone, making it far easier to dig through the excellent material in the archives. All in all it's great to see the site back again, and I look forward to reading new material as it arrives.

Tags: a-list-apart, information-architecture

Information Architecture testimonials

2003-01-04T20:54:49+00:00

Poor old AIFIA are still trying to explain what Information Architecture is in easily understood terms. Their latest effort should be pretty much garaunteed to succeed - 14 testimonials from web experts explaining why it is important in pleasant little sound bites.

Tags: information-architecture

Content inventory tips

2002-11-20T22:43:20+00:00

Peter has been blogging the progress of a 3828 page content inventory he is working on. Day Two describes his method of working with Excel, Day Three provides three useful inventory tips. Christina Wodtke's Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web has a nice overview of the content inventory process which recommends a dual monitor setup and links (well, footnotes) to these tips by Noel Franus. Peter has also commented on my decision to go with the blue RSS button in favour of the standard orange XML button - I've posted my reasons in a comment attached to his post.

Tags: information-architecture, peter-van-dijck, christina-wodtke

More geek books

2002-11-09T21:47:30+00:00

A £5 Amazon gift voucher combined with Amazon.co.uk offering free shipping on orders over £39 has lead me to order 3 more books: Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Don't Make Me Think! and The Elements of Style. They should arrive on Monday. I wonder if All Consuming can pick up on links to isbn.nu?

Tags: information-architecture

IA has arrived

2002-11-06T17:30:20+00:00

Christina Wodtke: Information Architecture has arrived:

What's led me to the conclusion IA has arrived? Articles on IA are seen in every publication that addresses the web, from engineering to design. A recent search turned up 188,000 results on "Information Architecture". Information Architecture for the World Wide Web has gone to second edition, Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web hit the best seller list on Amazon in its second week on the stands, and three more books on IA are scheduled to come out next year. Jobs for Information Architects are found on most job sites, but more importantly, information architecture is listed as a skill for designers and programmers alike. And finally, the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture launched Monday-the first organization dedicated to promoting and advancing Information Architecture. These are heady times for information professionals.

I'm nearly half way through "Blueprints for the Web" now - I'll post a review of it once I've had time to read and digest it all but impressions so far are very favourable.

Tags: information-architecture, christina-wodtke

Asilomar Institute

2002-11-06T00:50:58+00:00

The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture - very promising organisation, great site but I have to admit I'm not too keen on the name (though I'm sure it will grow on me). The highlight of the site for me has to be the 25 Theses, which provide an excellent condensed description of what IA is and why it is necessary. The site lead me to make my first impulse buy in quite a while, so with a bit of luck from Amazon Christina Wodtke's Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web should be with me in the morning.

Tags: information-architecture, christina-wodtke

Zend re-design... terrible!

2002-11-03T20:58:52+00:00

Zend (the commercial company behind the PHP scripting language) have launched a redesign of Zend.com. My verdict on the new design ... terrible.

Non-standards compliant code and a huge mass of nested tables
The main site navigation is a bunch of pull-down menus that don't work with javascript disabled (or in Opera)
The fonts are tiny, and are sized using pixels meaning they can't be resized in IE.
They haven't cleaned up the information architecture, which has been the worst part of the site for ages (there is still very little distinction provided between Articles, Tips, Columns, Tutorials and Code Gallery Spotlight)
A lot of the navigation on the front page is images with no alt attribute! - navigating the site in lynx is a case of trying to guess which [LINK] goes where

The positives? Well, it works in Netscape 4. Wake up and smell the coffee guys, 1996 was a long time ago.

Tags: information-architecture, php, zend

Mike Pletch to Column Two

2002-08-08T12:30:41+00:00

I spotted Mike Pletch in my referrals this morning. His blog has a clean, readable design and some great content, particularly if you are interested in information architecture and content management. Via Mike I revisited Column Two which is currently documenting an implementation of a full content management system for a client - well worth a read.

Tags: information-architecture

An IA process

2002-06-24T23:39:42+00:00

Anders Ramsay: How I work as an Information Architect (via Guide to Ease). An interesting overview of Information Architecture, including what it involves and how it can be aproached. The article also touches on Software Engineering related concepts such as project management and system design.

Tags: information-architecture

XFML

2002-06-20T01:04:49+00:00

XFML - eXchangable Faceted Metadata Language (via Guide to ease). Now this is interesting. It's an open XML format designed to facilitiate the publication and distribution of metadata - it uses a load of terms that are currently way over my head (hierarchical and faceted taxonomiest, topicmaps?) but the general principle looks fantastic. I wrote a metadata system last year that used a relational database and it was something of a nightmare - XFML looks like it solves some of the problems I faced, although my biggest challenge was how to grab and present usable information from the huge amounts of metadata collected which is a problem that falls outside the scope of XFML. XFML is best summarised by the following quote:

Say you run a weblog on a certain topic. You put your posts into categories you have invented yourself. A friend of your also runs a weblog on the same topic, and also puts their posts into categories they invented themselves. Many of these categories are really the same thing, but they are called something else. You both publish your metadata in XFML format. XFML allows you to relate these categories, so they still keep their own names, but your system knows they are really the same. So you import your friends XFML file, and manually relate the categories that are the same. You set your weblog software up so it will import your friends file daily to check for changes. Now your software can automatically generate links to stories about the same topics on your friends weblog that show up with your stories.

Incidentally, Peter Van Dijck (the guy behind XFML) runs a superb blog covering information architecture and other web related topics - Guide to Ease. I've only been reading it for a few days but I'm hooked already.

Tags: information-architecture, peter-van-dijck, xfml