Yet another great new issue of Boxes and Arrows is out. This time we get a Summary of the 2003 Dublin Core Conference from Madonnalisa Gonzales-Chan and Sarah Rice. Next we have John Zapolski and Jared Braiterman telling us about Designing Customer-Centered Organizations and lastly Alex Kirtland writes about Executive Dashboards.

Three great new articles up at Boxes & Arrows:

Designing Customer-Centered Organizations by John Zapolski and Jared Braiterman
Even with the present downturn in the economy, more companies, from new media to established banks, have larger usability and design teams than ever before. Should we be content that we have come so far?

We Are All Connected: The Path from Architecture to Information Architecture by Fu-Tien Chiou
We’ve all seen blueprints— formally known as contract documents —which architects produce and builders use to construct. No one person knows all the details of the design; the end result is entirely a product of teamwork. But there is one axiom: architects do not build.

Forgotten Forefather: Paul Otlet by Alex Wright
In 1934, years before Vannevar Bush dreamed of the memex, decades before Ted Nelson coined the term “hypertext,” Paul Otlet envisioned a new kind of scholar's workstation: a mechanical desk that would let users search, read, and write their way through a vast database stored on millions of 3x5 index cards.

An Interview with Joe Clark is a very good read for anyone who is interested in Accessibility. The interview focuses on the current state of accessibility in the US, Canada and around the world. He makes some very compelling points and discusses issues that everyone working on the Web should be interested in. If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of Building Accessible Websites I would highly recommend it.

From Digital Web.

From GUUUI. Henrik Olsen makes some great points and presents a case study on yet another interesting and useful way to use personas.

Read Personas and the customer decision-making process.

Today AIfIA launched it's Translation Project. There are quite a few great resources there that have been translated and I'm sure much more to come. From the press release:

The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture (AIfIA) Translation Project is translating information architecture (IA) resources and articles to and from eight languages. Today, the initiative provides resources in Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish on the AIfIA website.

Read the press release.

Boxes and Arrows publishes two great features this week. First, Dan Brown with Special Deliverables #8 - Deliverables and Methods.

Next we have one I found particularly interesting and useful, Remote Online Usability Testing: Why, How, and When to Use It by Dabney Gough and Holly Phillips.

As always great stuff from B&A.

Dirk Knemeyer writes a great primer on Information Design and how it relates to Web design and development.

From the article:

More than its value to business, information is also the principle component to human knowledge and progress. By experiencing information -- through any of the available senses -- people are able to build knowledge. Particularly when the information is relevant and good, people are able to make better decisions, to be more effective, to be happier and to increase their well-being.

(Via Digital Web)

Just over one years old, Boxes and Arrows continues to kick out great content. This week we have Expanding the Approaches to User Experience by George Olsen. Here George takes Jesse James Garrett�s The Elements of User Experience diagram (PDF) and expands upon it to include interactive multimedia. It's an interesting read, I'm sure to be a bit controversial, but I think he makes some good points. I'd love to hear what others think about this.

For those of you who might be new to the field of IA or user experience design, or almost anything related really, Marcus Haid has written a nice primer on breaking into the industry for Adaptive Path.

In A User-Centered Approach to Selling Information Architecture, over at Digital-Web, Jeff Lash gives a great article on not only the selling of IA, but in effect putting the goals and needs of the client first.

AIFIA is starting an initiative, managed by Peter Van Dijck, to try and promote, educate and generally talk about IA in an international context. If you would like to get involved with the discussion, point your browser to the Aifia-translation -- international information architecture discussion list.