Iain Barker with an excellent primer on information scent.

Enabling people to find the specific information they require amongst the hundreds and thousands of other pieces of content available on a site can be a difficult task.

…It is interesting to note that the Orange homepage doesn’t actually contain the global navigation that appears on all other pages of the site. This is a point often forgotten on many sites, the homepage is the only page that doesn’t need to employ the same global navigation as the rest of a site.

The principle roles of the homepage are to confirm to users that they have in fact arrived at the right place and provide them with a clear and simple first step towards the information they require.

Campaign Monitor just posted their Email Design Guidelines for 2006. Excellent, real-world tips. The Apple iTunes email example is shockingly bad. How could they get that soooooo wrong?

Just spotted the SMH home page redesign. Much cleaner, much easier to use. One of the best newspaper homepage designs I’ve seen. Looks like their recent switch to standards has paid off…

I wish I was in Melbourne for these. Jay, Joi, and Larry are all there. Update: and Lance! It would be awesome to hear them talk. Is there a podcast in the works? (Given the quality of the website, I doubt it…)

May 1 is Reboot day - I missed the boat with this site, but loads of others didn’t. Lots of eye candy in the submissions. Check ‘em out.

I really like this logo. Not the glassy “Tiger” look, the actual logo design itself.

Stopdesign: Multiple Design Directions. Sage advice - certainly matches my experience. And not just for graphic design - any kind of UI design. The times I hate most are when I show a highly developed UI prototype to the client and then they point out another way of dealing with something that is more effective at meeting the objective because they weren’t involved in the process earlier. Sometimes you can’t avoid this kind of scenario, but if you can it pays huge dividends.

Coming soon: Professional CSS. The book that is. Might have to grab a copy… [via SimpleBits]

Design Eye for the Idea Guy was a panel at SXSW. The link is to the notes/finished product. A great demonstration of approaches to different aspects of a design to produce a stunning result. As I’m known to say: Noice!

This eyetracking stuff is fascinating. More results from a recent study of news sites.