Password Politics: What happens when you enter your password online in front of strangers

(via John Fass)

I Read Where I Am

The book launch last week of I Read Where I Am is accompanied by this wonderful collection of critical notes and observations about how we daily consume and produce our information.

We are street readers. Look at us, info junk dealers, as we zip through the telephone, scan a newspaper we’ve just read, leaf through a magazine. We are the new generation of readers. Not dumber, just faster. We whiz through three lives at once. Let’s be honest: reading has become a different experience. Reading has become looking and vice versa. Information has become tactile. You don’t have to remember anything, you just look it up.

A diverse bunch of authors, journalists, artists, designers and philosophers discuss how new information formats, technologies and platforms are transforming both reading behaviour — into a continuous process of scanning, assessing, sharing, learning, noting, talking, uploading, adding, watching, writing, reacting, et cetera — and the reader’s experience of the written word.

(Feel free to read, browse, scan, skim, bookmark or share at your leisure! Via ellenLupton and Graphic Design Museum)

Deductive approach to explanation

I stumbled across the flow chart above in the opening chapter of Elementary Statistics for Geographers (1996, Guilford Press). The diagram illustrates a research modus operandi (based on scientific method) for quantification and verification of real world spatial structures and patterns.

UK Radioplayer — UX/Design Guidelines

Radioplayer is a partnership between the BBC and UK commercial radio, to provide radio audiences with easy online listening and to improve discovery of digital radio content. The result? — an excellent audio web app with an ambitious agenda.

I stumbled upon the minimal design standards for the Radioplayer console while I was doing some background reading. UX/UI designers may be familiar with the document format: brand application, user interface, typography, and common page elements are formally prescribed to bring a consistency to both visual design and user experience.

The Radioplayer guide is remarkably detailed and thorough. The great deal of design content and interaction which is packed into the relatively small console area (665 x 380 pixels), and the number of partner stations alongside — further branded content will be overlaid on to the player — no doubt required careful mediation and design consideration.

Go check the latest Style Guide here (maintained by Radioplayer project leader Michael Hill).

(Here is an early concept video showing ways in which users might search and naviagte across the web app — great idea! Via Radioplayer blog.)