When I broadened my interest from IA to UX, I found the need for a new diagram to illustrate the facets of user experience - especially to help clients understand why they must move beyond usability - and so with a little help from my friends developed the user experience honeycomb.
The is a value centered description of the different aspects of the user experience (unlike the , with ux-as-user-process, or JJG’s ). The UX facets Peter describes are useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, and credible - and these all contribute to the central facet - valuable As a value-centered design booster, I think this is the key, and builds a bridge between business and user value - projects need to produce both ROI and Return on Experience.

Harry Beck's is an info design classic (thanks ). Martin Kay has used the . The results are luscious and engaging in a way that vanilla boxes and arrows can't rival. More than just sample deliverables, Martin offers a short explanation, a 7 page guide on creating your own, and a PowerPoint template of map components. (thanks )

Of course, with any deliverable, there's usually the tradeoff between making it quickly and making it pretty. For the most part, I prefer fast diagrams over pretty. That works great for internal team communication, or for clients who are directly engaged in the process as team members. Reserve the effort of pretty deliverables for final versions or other things that need to do a sales job within the organization. The selling power of a large format color diagram shouldn't be overlooked, even if the pencil sketch version tells the same story.

has done a great job distilling complete with quirky characters. Fun, and hopefully useful in explaining what IAs can offer.

is an interesting visualization of metadata initiatives.

With the exponential development of the World Wide Web, there are so many metadata initiatives, so many organisations involved, and so many new standards that it's hard to get our bearings in this new environment.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the names of most of these new standards are represented by acronyms. The MetaMap exists to help gather in one place information about these metadata initiatives, to try to show relationships among them, and to connect them with the various players involved in their creation and use.

The MetaMap takes the form of a subway map, using the metaphor of helping users navigate in "metaspace", the environment of metadata.

Keith Instone pointed me to this great poster from CHI:
. Clever, humorous, and good for explaining IA to people who have no idea what a sitemap is, but have bought or received a dozen roses.

There's also a (280kb PDF) that Keith sent by email. If you know where the "official" location of the write-up is, please let me know in the comments.

to this page showing a bunch of . The tablet, now a hybrid tablet/laptop thing looks a little bit on the bulky side.

On the slightly less bulky side of the new hardware offerings this season is the , which I got to check out when I met with . The thing has me drooling with gearlust. It looks like a nicely designed mobile device. Nice form factor. A few simple buttons and a nice jog wheel. The web surfing and IM experience seems to be done right. When a color version is available, I may seriously consider getting one. There is a good .

Peter Morville's -- a model for IA -- on Peterme.

found showing 12,647 WiFi access points in Manhattan. The data was compiled by wardriving every street! Pretty cool. Indicates access points with red dots. Occurence of access points is dense where you might expect -- commercial areas and middle to high income residential areas.

Note that this includes private, secured, private unsecured, commercial open and public open points. It was compiled by the . Also cool is the WiFi access finder on .

xblog found these. Don't share them with your technology team.

I have a . I've used these in the recent past for wireframing various interfaces.

I created a set of small utilitarian icons for an X-Windows CRM application I worked on. I'm not an icon designer, so these may not be the best icons, but perhaps someone will find them useful for mocking up pages or something. You can . -Michael (aka jibbajabba)