In a world of sophisticated search engines and machine learning (ML), it might seem like investing in a taxonomy is overkill. After all, can’t those ML-enabled search engines find everything? Sometimes even technology needs an assist. Let’s look at why you might want a taxonomy. What Taxonomies Are Good For Taxonomies enable three main digital … Read more A Good Taxonomy Can Make the Difference
World Usability Day was established in 2005 by the Usability Professionals Association. Each year, design professionals come together to discuss how to “develop technologies in a way that serves people first.” On November 8, 2018, professionals met at almost 100 locations around the world to discuss the how to “Make Life Easy.” I attended World Usability … Read more What Can Usability Teach Us About Working Together?
Let’s face it: Content governance is hard. It requires a great commitment to long-term strategy and a willingness to insulate your content from the vagaries of corporate pressure. But it is worth it. Your content is a key corporate asset. Your content strategy establishes the direction to ensure that your key corporate asset will meet … Read more Content Governance: 8 Things to Know When Planning for Success
“Gamification” has become a bad, bad word in a lot of circles. If you are getting an MA in Serious Games, for example, your fellow students will likely be horrified that game elements have been co-opted in pursuit of commercial gain. (Except, perhaps, when it is a game design company designing games in pursuit of … Read more Gamification: Not Always Evil
The idea of using games for journalism isn’t intuitive — games feel inherently biased and sometimes frivolous. But games can be an ideal way of teaching about complex concepts. Wired Magazine developed Cutthroat Capitalism a few years ago at the height of headlines regarding piracy in the Gulf of Aden. The game has pretty simple … Read more Games as Journalism
I’ve been fascinated about the potential for crowdsourcing to facilitate human rights and humanitarian work, ever since I read about Ushahidi following the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. Ushahidi, an open source mapping project, allowed anyone to pinpoint trapped people, unsafe buildings, people in need of treatment and more. Anyone with a mobile phone could … Read more Crowdsourcing Crime
I recently spent some time playing the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board’s game, Into the Book. The game, developed in conjunction with Wisconsin Public TV and others, is designed to increase reading comprehension among K-3 students. It is a well-done series of fun activities (even for me, and I’m way outside the K-3 range) crafted around … Read more Gettin’ Into the Book
In this TEDx talk by Simon Rogers of the Guardian, one of the real exemplars in data journalism (see their Datablog, including their nice approach to Dr. Who villains and many weightier subjects), Rogers compares the ease of data journalism to punk: anyone can do it. The ease of new tools, such as Many Eyes, … Read more Democratization of Journalism
I’m inclined to love the flipped classroom, which is convenient since it is the hot thing in education. Really, what’s not to like? Short, entertaining videos that can be watched at home, and thoughtful discussion and meaningful project work in the classroom. It sounds perfect. Classwork becomes a fun experience for kids, making them more … Read more Flippin’ Out
At the Meaningful Play conference last week I had the pleasure of seeing the game Don’t Kill the Cow. Don’t Kill the Cow is a serious game developed by students at the University of Miami in Ohio. It is really simple, but raises some interesting moral questions since the game goal and good moral behavior … Read more Thinkers
