information
Interactive Information Design Patterns for RIAs
Designing applications which convey rich information to users is difficult. We now have at our hands the ability to display massive amounts of data using rich graphics in a web browser. Unfortunately, most designs end up as a series of line charts or data grids. We need to develop and learn a new library of interactive information design patterns that facilitate a two-way conversation between users and the application.
I started programming on my TI-99/4A in the mid-80s, upgraded to a Commodore 64 with a floppy drive "Rad, now I can save my programs.", then to a 286 "20Mb hard drive, that's so tubular!" (authentic 80s expressions courtesy of In the 80s). I was so tired of programming in BASIC that I switched straight to x86 Assembly using good ol' MASM. This I did for a few years until I took a course at a local university and discovered that "most people" use higher-level programming languages like Pascal and C/C++.
Resources on usability, user interface, interaction, design, design patterns, data visualization and more:
Edward Tufte
Inventor of sparklines.
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/
Books/Essays:
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
- Envisioning Information
- Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative
- Beautiful Evidence
- The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint