Keith Instone

Things I have written over the years about web usability, information architecture and other topics. Links for the writings go to various places: some go to the original publication, some go to reference pages, and a few go to web archives (because the original site is gone).

Publications

These are my more formal writings - things that have been reviewed and actually published on paper. This is not a complete list, but a sampling from over the years (search hcibib.org for "instone" for more). The research papers from BGSU are co-authored with Barbee Teasley, Laura Leventhal and others.

• An information architecture perspective on personalization, April 2004. Chapter in Designing personalized user experiences for eCommerce, Kluwer Academic Publishers. See IA Personalization.
• A framework for classifying personalization scheme used on e-commerce websites. 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'03), January 6 - 9, 2003, Hawaii.
• Usability Engineering for the Web, WWW Journal, Winter 1997. I think this was the first journal article ever written for web developers specifically about usability. [Web Archive]
• Cultural Diversity in User Interface Design: Are Intuitions Enough?, ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 1994. v.26 n.1 p.36-40. Related: BIT journal article [hcibib.org].
• Sleuthing in HyperHolmes: An Evaluation of Using Hypertext vs. a Book to Answer Questions. Behaviour and Information Technology, 1993. v.12 n.3 p.149-164. [hcibib.org]
• Hypertext or Book: Which is Better for Answering Questions? CHI'92 Proceedings. 1992 p.19-25. [ACM digital library]
• Empirically-Based Re-Design of a Hypertext Encyclopedia. INTERCHI'93 Proceedings. 1993 p.500-506. [ACM digital library]

Professional activities

These are other publications that document various professional activities, such as organizing workshops, panels and conferences.

• HCI & IA: information, interaction, interface and usability architects share deliverables (Workshop). CHI 2002 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2002. v.2 p.927. [ACM digital library]
• Measuring information architecture quality: prove it (or not)! (Panel). CHI 2001 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2001. v.2 p.219-220. [ACM digital library]
• Practicing information architecture (Special interest group). CHI 2001 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2001. Report in SIGCHI Bulletin, November/December 2001, p. 10.
• HCI and the Web (Community / conference report). SIGCHI Bulletin, 1998. v.30 n.4 p.19-21.
• HCI Issues of the World Wide Web (Workshop). CHI 96 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1996. v.2 p.423. [ACM digital library]
  HCI and the Web: A CHI 96 Workshop (Workshop report). ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 1996. v.28 n.4 p.42-45.
• Web Interfaces Live: What's Hot, What's Not? (Panel). CHI 97 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1997. v.2 p.103-104.
• The CHI '95 Conference Electronic Publication: Introduction to an Experiment (Project report). SIGCHI Bulletin, 1996. v.28 n.2 p.62-75.
• Hypermedia Research and the World Wide Web (Workshop). Hypertext '96, March 1996. Report appeared in the SIGLINK Newsletter, June 1996.
• EWHCI '93 (Conference report). SIGCHI Bulletin, 1994. v.26 n.1 p.31-34. EWHCI '93 Conference proceedings: hcibib.org, DBLP bibliography (includes information on Springer version of proceedings).

Argus Center for Information Architecture

I wrote two white papers while I worked at Argus.

• Analyzing the Analysts, April 2001 (with Chiara Fox)
• Information Architecture and Personalization, December 2000 (uses basic library science to take some of the hype out of personalization)

Web Review

I wrote several articles for webreview.com long ago under the theme of Usability Matters

• Site Usability Evaluation, October 1997. Applying heuristic evaluation to web sites. The sidebar Site Usability Heuristics for the Web is what most people still refer to today. [Web Archive]
• User Test Your Web Site, April 1997. This was part 1: how to do usability testing. [Web Archive]
• Conducting Your First User Test, May, 1997. This was part 2: real results from testing the Internet Travel Network. The company whose site we tested is no longer around but the technique is timeless.
• Design to Discourage Wandering, July, 1997. Analyzing the Mars Pathfinder site. [Web Archive]
• In Search of Web Usability Guidelines, July, 1997. Presents findings from UIE research. [Web Archive] Most importantly was the rebuttal, In Defense of Web Graphics: Graphic designers offer more than just flashy graphics. [Web Archive]
• Stress Test Your Site, September, 1997. An early version of the stress test, applied to adobe.com. [Web Archive]