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James Kalbach

http://twitter.com/Pivo1

User Experience Design Expert


Areas of Expertise:
  • Experience Design
  • Information Architecture
  • Usability
  • Interaction Design
  • consulting
  • speaking
  • training
  • writing

Biography

James Kalbach has a degree in library science from Rutgers University, as well as a master's in music theory and composition. He is currently a User Experience Designer with LexisNexis and previously served as head of information architecture with Razorfish Germany. He is an active speaker and author on information architecture and usability in Germany, where he helped co-found an IA community.

Books

Designing Web Navigation Designing Web Navigation
by James Kalbach
August 2007
Print: $49.99
Ebook: $39.99
Bundle: $64.99
starstarstarstarstar (4)
(Read Reviews)

Blog

James's blog posts are hosted at:
http://experiencinginformation.wordpress.com/

20 User Experience Books You Should Own

July 03 2009

UX By Design has a list of 20 UX books they feel every designer should own. See their post 20 User Experience Books You Should Own. Designing Web Navigation is #4 on the list. I’m not sure if this is a ranked list or not, but it’s still nice to appear… read more

Breaking The Rules of Web Design

June 20 2009

via The Hot Strudel… Interesting article over at Web Designer Depot called “10 Web Design Rules You Can Break.” The examples are quite interesting and inspiring. Horizontal scrolling and mystery meat navigation? Why not! I disagree with the fundamental premise of the article though: ALL so-called design rules can be broken–not just… read more

The Myth of the Compromised Need?

June 17 2009

Jeppe Nicolaisen, from the Royal School of Library and Information Science, has an interesting forthcoming article in JASIST: Nicolaisen, J. (in press). Compromised need and the label effect: An examination of claims and evidence Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 1-6 DOI: 10.1002/asi.21129 In a nutshell, he puts… read more

Experience Strategy @ Johnny Holland

June 06 2009

I previously reviewed Subject To Change on this blog. Steve Baty now has a good summary of experience stragtegy in a recent article on Johnny Holland. He takes the definition of experience strategy from Adaptive Path’s Subject To Change and dissects it, phrase for phrase. From the book: An experience strategy is… read more

Designing Web Navigation – In Chinese!

June 03 2009

Just after I got the Japanese edition of my book, I learned that it’s also available in Chinese. Apparently it’s been out since March 2009, but I didn’t even know they were working on a translation of it. This is good news, though, so I’m not going to complain. read more

pivo1

June 02 2009

The Japanese version of Designing Web Navigation is out. Here are some photos on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/securecat/3578594476/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/kazuhito/3571197567/ Thanks to everyone who made that possible! read more

C-Inspector: Task-Based Category Testing

May 12 2009

Steffen Schilb is at it again. First came CardSort. Now he’s developed another interesting tool to test your information architecture called C-Inspector: “C–Inspector is a web–based application that helps you to test the information architecture of your website. By analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data collected through the remote test, you… read more

Fast Company on Info Viz

May 08 2009

Fast Company has an interesting piece on information visualization: Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design? Author Michael Cannell is placing big bets on the future of info viz: Designers have historically excelled at finding insightful ways of looking at complex problems. Visualization will likely play a prominent role as… read more

Journal of Information Architecture, Issue 1, Volume 1

May 05 2009

The first issue of the Journal of Information Architecture (JofIA) has finally arrived. I contributed a piece on uncertainty. Here’s the table of contents: Dorte Madsen Editorial: Shall We Dance? pp. 1-5 Gianluca Brugnoli Connecting the Dots of User Experience pp. 6-15 Helena Francke Towards an Architectural Document Analysis pp. 16-36 Andrew Hinton The Machineries of Context pp.… read more

Auftritt im Fools Garden - Sa. 2.5.

May 01 2009

Hallo an alle, die in Hamburg sind. Meine Band–Helmut and the Lampshades–wird morgen am Samstag den 2.5. mit unserem neuen Programm im Fools Garden auftreten. -> Spoken-Word: Jazz-Arrangements zu den Erzählungen, so wie Songs von Neil Young und eigene Stücke. Mehr Details auf unserer Website: http://lampshadejazz.wordpress.com/ read more

European Commission: Design as a driver of user-centred innovation

April 27 2009

Jan over at The Hot Strudel pointed this out. Thanks, Jan. As a term and concept in business, “design thinking” has been around for a while. See for instance Victor Lombardi’s collection of design thinking-related materials. In the Spring of 2008, the Harvard Business Review finally picked up on the topic.… read more

3D Tag Clouds

April 13 2009

The 3D tag cloud isn’t new, but I came across one in real life on a Sydney tours site. WordPress has been offering a 3D tag cloud for a while now, developed by Roy Tanck. I’m not a huge fan of tag clouds as a navigation mechanism in general. They’ll probably… read more

Commercial Ethnography - My Presentation at Walden U.

April 07 2009

Tricia Ryan, an instructional designer at Laureate Higher Education Group, Inc. where she develops courses for Walden University, picked up my Commercial Ethnography presentation from the Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam and used it for a class. Here’s the online synched slideshow of my presentation. Those of you who know me… read more

Workshops in Hamburg - Extended Early Bird

April 06 2009

If you haven’t registered for Lou Rosenfeld’s or my workshops in Hamburg in May, you can still do it at the early bird price, which has been extended to April 30, 2009. See more details and register at http://www.uxworkshops.com Or see a previous blog post summarizing the event on this blog. [...] read more

Modern Sitemap Examples

March 31 2009

In my workshops on navigation design, I relate sitemaps to eating eggs: first they were bad for, then they were good for you, then bad, and then good in small doses. So what’s the deal: are sitemaps as a navigation mechanism good or bad? Back in the day, we used to… read more
James Kalbach

"This book is chock full of the right material that belongs on your shelf for when you need it, and you will. "
--Brett Merkey, Amazon.com