There is an entire book on the creation of Explorapedia, I sing the body electronic: A year with Microsoft on the multimedia frontier by Fred Moody (my copy is ISBN 0-340-64927-5). It's fascinating for its insights not only on the messiness of the design process, but also the process and deadline constraints that the team were working under (which feel like a general rather than a specific set of lessons).
While I have heard good things about the book itself, it is tainted by the fact that Moody was its author. The man literally and viscerally hated Linux, and went to great lengths to paint it in as poor a light as he could -- and then seemed surprised when people took issue with that. [Note that I neither condone not participate in flaming, but the man's tone really necessitated entire asbestos wardrobes.] I was neither surprised nor saddened when he and his column parted ways.
Interesting. I haven't read his column, and that really isn't something I would have guessed from the book. It's nuanced on Microsoft as a company and pretty empathetic towards the people working on the project who are the characters in his story.
