Good article on using a combination of InDesign and Illustrator for creating design documents. I also prefer this approach, as I find Illustrator and InDesign to be more flexible and much easier to use than Visio. Plus, coming from a visual design background, creating designs in Illustrator and InDesign is almost second nature for me.

I saw Rolf Molich speak at the UIE conference in October, 2006. He spoke extensively about his studies on usability testing. I agree with his point about usability testing being used as a political tool. He emphasizes that no amount of user testing will eliminate all usability problems, as he has found in his research on usability testing. Usability problems should be eliminated early by doing proper user research and adhering to good usability heuristics, while usability testing is best used to drive iterations of the prototype design.

Web trends to watch for in 2007. I agree with their prediction that RSS will become mainstream this year, with Vista and IE 7 finally embracing it. What will be funny is watching the organization that I work for once again scramble to embrace this ‘new’ technology! I have some great ideas on how to use RSS in our Learning Management System. Feeds to inform students of announcement postings, conference board activity, and other occurrences in the online classroom would be a great way to increase the interaction in the online classroom. Blackboard already has an RSS building block that allows instructors to bring feeds into classrooms. I am not sure if it supports RSS as a way to push classroom activity directly to the student. This is what I would find useful, and is the type of functionality I plan to implement in my Master’s Thesis Project.

This is a great way to document interactions. I like the way Todd has condensed all the necessary information into a one page deliverable. This diagram looks to be very effective in communicating what needs to be built to both stakeholders and design team members. I will have to add this one to my arsenal of design documents. In fact, it looks like it could replace two or three I already use. Thanks Todd!

Great Flash interface for picking a color scheme. You can even create your own theme and submit it. Since I am not much of an artist, so I like being able to just pick from a collection of themes that have been put together by people who are more adept at such activities. This should be very useful.

A google map mashup that shows various demographic data, including politics, crime, home price, cost of living, etc.

Ben Shneiderman