Information Theory

“Information Theory regards information as only those symbols that are uncertain to the receiver. For years, people have sent telegraph messages, leaving out non-essential words such as “a” and “the.” In the same vein, predictable symbols can be left out, like in the sentence, “only infrmatn esentil to understandn mst b tranmitd.” Shannon made clear that uncertainty is the very commodity of communication.”

Read:Lucent | Information Theory and Overview of Information Theory


Film Director Metaphor

I was reading the discussions on Elegant Hack and other places about “big IA” and “little IA” when I found this link which I think uses an interesting metaphor to describe the work I do.

From IAwiki: “This idea of a different role particularly resonates with me, as I


Things that annoy me

Every once in a while I feel the need to scream. Chronic fustration rears it’s ugly head.

Things that annoy me

  • The absolute lack of speed in OS 10.2.
  • Font management in OS 10.2.
  • How editing on line of text in Flash has apparently caused the audio and visuals of the whole piece to be totally out of sync which will undoubtedly result in another days work.
  • How politics rule product development to the detriment of quality and everyones sanity.
  • 3 1/2 days at work last week of which 1 /1/2 days were spent in meetings. Most of which were poiltical.
  • The phrase “I must insist you change this text because I am the author”. 200 pages of mediocre writing for a corporate website, 1 line of text set in bold to enhance usability and this is what we will meet for hours to argue over changing. Forget about the multitude of other issues that need to be addressed.
  • The fact that I am sure there is a person responsible for the variations in the amount of hot water we have in our apartment but I don’t know who it is.
  • The fact that I forgot to bring a URL home from work and now I must drive my motorcycle in the rain, on Sunday, in Hsinchu traffic, in order to retrieve it from my workstation.
  • My increasing apathy.

Aspen Magazine

Lifted straight from Coudal Partners: Jen Sharpe writes, “A countercultural multimedia magazine that was around from the 1950s-70s called “Aspen.” It came in a box filled with flexi discs, art prints, super 8 films, etc., and it had a different editor and designer every time.”

Great, great stuff: Aspen Magazine


25 Thesis – Mainfesto for AIfIA

The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture (AIfIA) is a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to advancing and promoting information architecture. My favourite quote:

“The emergence of Information Architecture (IA) as a formal discipline has gathered key areas of expertise together to provide a framework for the rational design of content-rich sites. IA provides the glue that allows content and services to work in tandem to satisfy user requirements, and the structure necessary to evaluate success in meeting those needs. Without IA, both users and creators of information-intensive applications are likely to suffer from wasted resources, time and effort; even worse, they won’t know where to start to make things better the next time.”

Read: AIFIA | 25 Theses


Auditory Information Design

“Although there is a well developed practice and culture of movie sound, computer applications are a new challenge because of the types of information to be conveyed and the interactivity between the user and the sounds. This thesis develops an approach to the design of sounds to support information processing activities. The design approach is supported by a system of case-based and rule-based methods and tools. This hybrid system addresses key design issues in a flexible manner necessary for real world design practice. The approach, methods and tools are demonstrated in a series of scenarios that show how sounds can provide information that is difficult to obtain visually, and how they can provide extra affordances in the human-computer interface.”

Read: Auditory Information Design