Articles by Month: November 2002

Consumers start to demand usability

Patrick Thibodeau writes about the growing role of Common Industry Format for Usability Test Reports when organisations make enterprise software purchasing decisions. To quote:

The Boeing Co. is changing the way it buys software and is making a product's usability—the ease with which end users can be trained on and operate the product—a fundamental purchasing criterion. It's a move the aerospace giant sees as an essential means of controlling IT costs.

Posted by jamesr at 11:43 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Future of content management?

On the cms-list, Hari M asked the following question:

I was wondering if posters have a road map on where they think CMS is going. What features will be added, will it be more open, standardized protocols?

This was my quick response to the list:

• Content Management Systems will become a "commodity" over next couple of years, leading to falling prices and standardised features.
• Many of the current CMSs will go out of business in the process.
• Many of the current projects will fail, due to the current poor standard of implementation, and lack of understanding of usability, information architecture, knowledge management and content issues.
• The field of "content management" will continue to mature over the next few years, to (hopefully) achieve a higher level of consistency, repeatability and professionalism.
• The move to open (or industry) standars for CMSs is obviously desirable, but there seems few immediate moves towards this. I would guess that this will take at least 5 years to occur.
• Sooner or later, there will have to be a merging and rationalisation between content management, document management and records management.

Your thoughts?

Posted by jamesr at 11:27 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

New RDF resources

Shelley Powers provides an excellent summary of the new RDF documents published by the W3C. (RDF, the Resource Description Framework, is the W3C method for managing complex metadata, amongst other things.) To quote:

The W3C working group tasked to update and clarify the RDF specification recently released six new working drafts.

...

However, rather than signalling an increase in complexity of the RDF specification, the documents actually clarify it, primarily by separating its different aspects instead of keeping them bundled together in a confusing jumble of syntax, concept, and semantics. Additionally, two of the documents were written with very specific goals in mind: the Test Cases document aids RDF tool developers; the RDF Primer provides an introduction to RDF which is less formal than the specification itself.

Posted by jamesr at 08:41 AM | Permalink
Categories: XML

Practical strategies for creating a successful intranet

Shiv Singh writes about some key activities and approaches for ensuring a successful intranet development. He argues that there needs to be a balance between meting user needs and delivering business benefits. (I agree with him.) His five main strategies:

1. Your users sit next to you; use that to your advantage, but be careful
2. Measure quantifiable results, not just user satisfaction
3. Use fewer vendors and take them more seriously
4. Deploy your features with your users in mind… but you can’t please everyone
5. Cultivate multidisciplinary collaboration

Posted by jamesr at 08:23 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Resources on building an XML-based website

Catching up on a backlog of stories: John E. Simpson has written an article on learning to build websites using XML. In it, he points to a comprehensive set of websites, books and articles which help to sort out the tangle of useful XML technologies.

Posted by jamesr at 04:17 PM | Permalink
Categories: Web development, XML

Updated HTML and XHTML validator

The W3C has released an updated HTML and XHTML validator, which includes support for XHTML 1.1, MathML 2.0, additional character encodings, and more. You can either validate a URL, or directly upload the page to be checked.

(Read Robin Cover's news item for a good summary.)

Posted by jamesr at 04:12 PM | Permalink
Categories: Web development, XML

Ideas for marketing an intranet

Here's what the participants at our recent Intranet Peers in Government forum brainstormed regarding marketing an intranet:

Posted by jamesr at 03:12 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

KM Quest

Someone recently made reference to a new knowledge management game called KM Quest. This looks very interesting, and a lot of work has been spent on it, although I still don't know how it works. To quote:

KM Quest has been developed through the KITS project which is part-funded by the EU. The overall objective of the KITS project, which started in May 2000, is to develop and evaluate a learning environment that comprises an educationally supported, distributed business game in the domain of knowledge management.

Has anyone tried this?

Posted by jamesr at 10:18 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Lorem Ipsum generator

I have just stumbled across a website offering a Lorem Ipsum generator. What is this? Well, it's the dummy text that you will often see in interface design mockups, and this website will generate as much of it as you need. To explain:

Lorem Ipsum, or Lipsum for short, is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only four centuries, but now the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lipsum.

[Thanks to John McCrory.]

Posted by jamesr at 09:21 AM | Permalink
Categories: Interface design

ROI for intranet communication?

Gerry McGovern has written about assessing the impact of communication via an intranet, looking specifically on the business benefits it delivers. To quote:

A way to measure return on investment (ROI) for your intranet is to answer two basic questions. How does the intranet increase the level and quality of communication? How does it replace traditional forms of communication? To develop such an ROI model, you need to be clear on the current level and type of communication within your organization.

Posted by jamesr at 08:31 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, Metrics & ROI

SAP Design Guild

A recent thread on one of the usability lists pointed me to the SAP Design Guild, which provides a pretty extensive set of design resources.

I keep stumbling across this (it's been around for a while), so I'm blogging it now so I don't lose it again.

Posted by jamesr at 05:06 PM | Permalink
Categories: Design & usability guidelines

Australian CMS marketplace (updated)

A while ago, I pulled together a comprehensive list of locally (Australian) produced content management systems (CMSs).

This has now been expanded to include international CMSs which are sold and supported within Australia.

As yet, the new list is still pretty incomplete, and I would appreciate any help you can provide to fill in the gaps.

Hopefully this will be of some use...

Posted by jamesr at 03:35 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Intranet ROI survey

Toby Ward writes about the results from a recent survey into intranet ROI, which looked at which measures were considered to be most important. These were the top five categories of benefits to be identified:

1. Enhanced competitiveness
2. Content management
3. Enhanced communications
4. Hard cost reduction
5. Enhanced customer service

Of the specific ROI metrics, these were the top six:

1. Improved information sharing (customer svc.)
2. Enhanced communications and information sharing (communications)
3. Increased consistency of info (customer svc.)
4. Increased accuracy of info (customer svc.)
5. Reduced or eliminated processing
6. Easier organizational publishing

Apparently, there will be a second phase to this research, and it will be interesting to see what comes out of that.

Posted by jamesr at 02:52 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, Metrics & ROI

What is a learning object?

Glenn Millar has written a very good primer on learning objects, that walks through what they are, how they are constructed, and what they are used for. To quote:

First, many educators see learning objects as a viable alternative to the traditional instructor-led course format. The problem with the "course" is that it is not very flexible and it is difficult to re-purpose. Learning objects stored in a database and properly tagged for easy searches, are designed specifically for flexibility and re-use.

I found this article very useful. Recently, I've been getting a few questions about the relationship of content management to learning, so now I am a little clearer...

Posted by jamesr at 08:14 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, E-learning, Knowledge management

Plenty of intranet goals

The starting point for our recent Intranet Peers in Government forum was a discussion of possible intranet goals. Here is what the group brainstormed (in no particular order, and fairly unedited):

I think that's a very impressive list, and it shows the diversity of ways that an intranet can be used, beyond the usual "deliver timely and accurate information to staff".

Posted by jamesr at 03:30 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Intranets

OASIS Open Office XML

The Register reports on the recent establishment of the OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee. The aim is to further develop a common set of XML standards for interoperability between Office packages (notable is the lack of Microsoft involvement).

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) has a reputation for driving practical efforts forward, standing in contrast with W3C's recent lack of direction. We may well see something come of this, and it certainly can't hurt...

Posted by jamesr at 01:54 PM | Permalink
Categories: XML

A-Z of Knowledge Technology

David J. Skyrme presents a brief wander through the A-Z of knowledge technology. In the first part he covers A-M, including entries for artificial intelligence, content management, intelligent agents and learning objects.

The next issue he covers the rest of the alphabet, including natural language processing, taxonomy, and XML topic maps.

Posted by jamesr at 08:28 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Topic maps in content management

Lars Marius Garshol recently e-mailed me, and pointed me his very interesting article on topic maps and content management. This talks about using an Integrated Topic Management System (ITMS) to provide a much more powerful management interface to the normal CMS repository. To quote:

The traditional CMS (Content Management System) has succeeded in solving some of the problems of managing content in a multi-user environment, but several aspects of such systems leave much to be desired. In particular, the organization of the information within a CMS has generally been its weakest point. Generally, CMS systems have used various ad-hoc models for organizing the content, which has tended to make their functionality less flexible than it might have been. In part for the same reason they have tended to make maintenance of the content unnecessarily difficult.

Topic maps [ISO13250] provide just what is needed: a model for organizing and describing information resources that is well designed, stable, and infinitely flexible. Adopting topic maps as the organizing principle of the CMS instead of an ad-hoc solution simplifies implementation of the CMS while greatly improving its utility and usability. The rest of this paper will be devoted to exploring how CMSs may make use of topic maps to build ITMSs.

This is certainly an issue that I've been wrestling with. Metadata management in a CMS typically ranges from woeful to merely ordinary, and what is needed is a "global view" of metadata.

The question is: what would this look like? I don't know. I will strike up a conversation with Lars and try to find out...

Posted by jamesr at 04:35 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Information architecture, XML

A future for the Resource Description Framework (RDF)?

Kendall Grant Clark writes about the very mottled history of RDF, and where it might be going in the future. This draws on recent discussions on the XML-dev mailing list, sparked an earlier RDF article.

I finished reading this article with my current views reinforced: perhaps it could be useful, but it is still too ugly for me to spend time learning it ...

Posted by jamesr at 01:29 PM | Permalink
Categories: XML

Open-source CMS summary

John McGrath reviews a number of notable open-source content management systems, as a followup to the recent OSCOM (Open-Source Content Management) conference. Four products are briefly touched upon: Zope, Midgard, OpenCms, and Red Hat CCM. To quote:

Cash-strapped, and looking for new options, IT managers are warming to open-source content management products. Customizable and free, open-source is becoming serious competition to the "big iron" CMS vendors like Interwoven and Vignette.

[Thanks to cmsInfo.org.]

Posted by jamesr at 01:21 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

KM in Australia's financial sector

IDM reports on a recent survey of KM in the Australian financial sector, which was run by Monash University in conjunction with Fuji Xerox Australia. Some interesting results:

Knowledge Management in Australian Financial Institutions surveyed 130 Australian financial institutions following a similar report in Europe. The survey found that 92 per cent of Australian companies had ongoing plans to "exploit their knowledge bases." Of these, 76 per cent were aware of their internal knowledge resources. European financial institutes did not compare as well, only 41 per cent said they were setting up a knowledge management (KM) program and less than 30 per cent were assessing the need for KM, the survey reports.

Posted by jamesr at 12:53 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Search results: no more than first two pages

NUA has reported on recent study results which looked at how internet search engines are being used. Some very interesting (but not hugely surprising) results:

According to a recent study from iProspect, three-quarters of Internet users use search engines. However, 16 percent of Internet users only look at the first few search results, while 32 percent will read through to the bottom of the first page. Only 23 percent of searchers go beyond the second page, and the numbers drop for every page thereafter. Only 10.3 percent of Internet users will look through the first three pages of results, while just 8.7 percent will look through more than three pages.

[Thanks to ia/.]

Posted by jamesr at 08:59 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Search tools

ROI: Results Often Immeasurable?

Norm Alster writes about the challenges in determining ROI (Return on Investment). To quote:

Little wonder, then, that most corporate buyers are searching for new ways to gauge the payback from IT investments. Eager to oblige, vendors and consultants have trotted out a variety of tools that purport to more precisely measure return on investment. The approaches range from self-service Web sites that cough up an ROI calculation based on two or three inputs all the way up to new software programs costing as much as $200,000. Indeed, the mad rush to ROI is beginning to look like a tour bus unloading blackjack players in Las Vegas: everybody's got a system.

I found this gem at the end of the article particularly interesting:

Productivity gains don't necessarily boost revenue or cut cost, because people don't necessarily apply freed-up time to work -- particularly in the executive suite. Ian Campbell, vice president of research at Nucleus Research Inc., says that, generally speaking, lower-level employees are more likely to turn extra time into more work. "It's the VP who says, 'I can close my door and practice putting,'" says Campbell. "If you're a line worker, there's no chance to goof off."

This reality, Campbell says, needs to be factored into ROI equations. Here are his rule-of- thumb calculations on the percent of freed-up time various workers convert into increased output:

• Assembly-line workers: 95-100%
• Call-center support: 90-95%
• Administrative and support help: 70-80%
• Engineering (technical): 75%
• Engineering (nontech): 65-75%
• General staff within a group (marketing, PR, accounting): 60%
• Companywide general staff: 50%
• Middle management (large corporations): 40-55%

Posted by jamesr at 08:45 AM | Permalink
Categories: Metrics & ROI

Design really does matter

Sean Carton writes about the value of good design when it comes to websites, particularly focusing on both appearance and information architecture. He explores attitudes and approaches, and presents a very interesting piece of recent research:

Over 2,600 people participated in a study that asked them to rank and comment on the credibility of Web sites. People were randomly assigned two sites in any of 10 different categories, then asked to concentrate on whether they found the sites credible. Results were initially astounding, though not at all for those who recognize the value of design.

Overall, the two most important factors consumers indicated when trying to determine whether a site was "credible" were: "Design Look" (46.1 percent) and "Information Design/Structure" (28.5 percent). "Name Recognition and Reputation" trailed at 14.1 percent. "Identity of Site Operator" accounted for 8.8 percent of the credibility measure.

[Thanks to IDblog.]

Posted by jamesr at 08:28 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Interface design

Intranet ROI case studies

Gerry McGovern has posted a few intranet ROI case studies on his site, primarily from PeopleSoft, Cisco Systems and Hewlett Packard. To quote:

An intranet can deliver return on investment (ROI) by either reducing the cost, or expanding the ability, to communicate. By shifting manual processes to the intranet, the cost of accessing and processing information is reduced. The intranet speedily delivers information to large numbers of people. This gives the organization a greater capacity to change.

Posted by jamesr at 08:23 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, Metrics & ROI

Knowledge isn't power?

A recent Xerox research report has found that high-performing employees don't tend to hoard information. According to the news summary:

The idea that knowledge is power has been knocked on the head by researchers who claim that high-performing employees are more likely to be ones who proactively share information with their colleagues.

High-flyers consistently recognise the value of sharing knowledge. In contrast, employees rated as 'low performers' tend to be hoarders who avoid contributing to the knowledge pool, according to research commissioned by Xerox.

Posted by jamesr at 08:16 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Optimal web design

The Software Usability Research Laboratory has recently updated it's set of criteria for optimal web design. Written by Michael L Bernard, this resources addresses a range of common issues, including:

• How should information be positioned in a typical website?
• How can I make my website's structure more navigable?
• How should text be presented within a website?
• How can I effectively use images on my website?
• Are frames ever appropriate?

Plus much more. What is particularly good is that most of the recommendations are backed up by solid research, which is presented in a clear and compelling way.

Posted by jamesr at 12:58 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Papers from KMWorld and Intranets 2002

A selection of papers and presentations has been published from the recent KMWorld & Intranets 2002 conferences held October 28-31, 2002 in Santa Clara, California. This will continue to grow as presenters get round to uploading their files.

Posted by jamesr at 12:44 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, Knowledge management

Selling structured writing to authors

Mark Baker writes an excellent article about implementing structured authoring, particularly focusing on XML-based tools. Mark has been around for a long time, and as a fellow Omnimark developer, I've a lot of respect for where he is coming from. To quote:

The truth is, writers will use any tool that makes their task easier. If the task is to create a formatted document for print, then a WYSIWYG word processor is a task- appropriate tool. But if you are contributing a structured information object to a single-sourcing system, a forms- based interface combined with the use of XML or SGML markup certainly becomes the right tool. I have hired writers with a really strong prejudice in favor of Frame Maker. However, when they used our custom in-house single sourcing system they were converted very quickly -- not because our system was inherently superior to Frame in any general sense -- but because it was highly specific to the task they had to perform and thus it made their lives easier.

This directly matches my experiences. I've written a similar custom-developed authoring tool, and within a day of using it, most tech writers rave about it. Sure, it's not pretty, but it is perfectly tailored for the task at hand...

In summary, this article presents the argument that authors will only use an environment if it benefits them, which is fair enough. Take the time to spell out the benefits, and the project will be a success.

Posted by jamesr at 08:22 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, XML

Creating a vision prototype

Laura S. Quinn has written an article on using a vision prototype to determine functional requirements. This is an interesting approach:

... over the years I've put together a method to translate a conceptual vision into a set of concrete functional requirements, by way of what I call a Vision Prototype. The Vision Prototype allows the user-centered vision to be seen—and discussed—by all team members. Because the prototype serves as an explicit visual representation of the project's needs, it can be easily translated into a set of functional requirements.

Posted by jamesr at 04:19 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Best of chi-web & sigia-l

Scott Berkun has drawn together his favourite (and most useful) threads on the chi-web (usability) and sigia-l (information architecture) lists. This is a tremendously useful resource. To quote:

Using the archives for each mailing list, I've compiled a list of the summary postings from useful threads, and a few personally selected favorite postings. Please note: my list below is not an exhaustive list of summary postings. I just picked the ones I found most salient and valuable for reference. Also, these summaries are collections of contributing posts: they are a mixture of opinions and commentary, with some references to reports, usability data, websites or books.

Thanks Scott!

Posted by jamesr at 03:32 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Usability & user-centered design

Back in the office

Life starts to return to normal, or at least, I finally have chance to catch up on my backlog of e-mails...

The seminars I ran last week went well, the first day ("Intranet Peers in Government") particularly so. I had 18 different organisations attend on the day (27 people in total), and a lot of good stuff was shared. I'll post some of the outcomes over the following week.

Now, back to the regular programming...

Posted by jamesr at 03:28 PM | Permalink
Categories:

Search and CMS

Carl Sutter has written about integrating search with a CMS. He explores different searching technologies and approaches, and outlines how a CMS can improve search results. To quote:

Adding search to your site involves a few key technology decisions, but the market offers a number of products that make implementation simpler. Once you add site search, providing quality results and enhancing Internet search engine rankings can require extensive manual effort. Fortunately, using a CMS not only streamlines your content creation and deployment, but also enables you to automate some of the Meta tagging chores for your content pages, yielding effortless improvements in your site’s knowledge base.

Posted by jamesr at 03:30 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Off running seminars

Well, I wont be posting any blog entries over the next two days, as I'll be running my two seminars. Having just finished the preparation, I'm going to have a quiet night, and gather my energy.

It's been a lot of hard work, but I think this is going to be fun...

Posted by jamesr at 03:28 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

The Trillion-Dollar Question

Jakob Nielsen has released another alertbox, this time discussing the value of a usable intranet. To quote:

The average mid-sized company could gain $5 million per year in employee productivity by improving its intranet design to the top quartile level of a cross-company intranet usability study. The return on investment? One thousand percent or more.

There are some good guidelines in this article, although they are pretty generic. I also have an issue with making generalised "pronouncements" about intranet design; in my experience, every intranet has a unique set of challenges and needs.

The numbers mentioned are also poorly justified, with the "impact on the global economy" being little more than a joke. I also find it sad that Jakob no longer seems to write anything but alertboxes that directly promote one of his products...

Posted by jamesr at 09:05 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Web Ontology Language (OWL)

Robin Cover has written a news article on the release of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) Guide, which "is intended to provide a language that can be used to describe the classes and relations between them that are inherent in Web documents and applications". To quote from the Working Draft:

To support [intelligent computation in Web applications], it is necessary to go beyond keywords and specify the meaning of the resources described on the web. This additional layer of interpretation captures the semantics of the data.

OWL is a language for defining Web ontologies and their associated knowledge bases. Ontology is a term borrowed from philosophy that refers to the science of describing the kinds of entities in the world and how they are related. In OWL, an ontology is a set of definitions of classes and properties, and constraints on the way those classes and properties can be employed. An OWL ontology may include the following elements:

• taxonomic relations between classes
• datatype properties, descriptions of attributes of elements of classes
• object properties, descriptions of relations between elements of classes

This is part of the whole "semantic web" thing, which I'm not a fan of. And in case you were wondering, I have no idea how this relates to other specifications such as topic maps, RDF, the various taxonomy languages, and the like... it's all very confusing.

Posted by jamesr at 08:59 AM | Permalink
Categories: XML

How Idiots Track Success (HITS)

Martin White has written a blog entry discussing ways of measuring intranet success, such as usage stats or surveys. This is certainly a difficult area, one that I think we are all still struggling with. To quote Martin:

Web page stats for intranets can be very misleading. You can often get high page hits on pages that people have found in error as a result of poor information architecture. The hits need to be analysed in context, taking account of the paths through the site (i.e. was the page found by a search, hyperlink, or another navigation option). Often a page might be used very infrequently, but the low hit rate is not a measure of the value of that page, which might be an important policy document, for example.

What is missing from this weblog entry is reference to search engine statistics. Unlike hits, this tracks what users were looking for, not merely what they found...

Posted by jamesr at 08:38 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, Metrics & ROI

Accessibility and the law in Australia

Following on from the last two entries, I've come across a report on a legal case in Australia: Maguire vs. SOCOG (Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games). To quote:

In Australia in June 1999, Bruce Maguire lodged a complaint with the Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) under a law called the Disability Discrimination Act. (News article.) His complaint concerned the Web site of the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG), which Maguire alleged was inaccessible to him as a blind person.

[snip]

On 24 August 2000, the HREOC released its decision and supported Maguire’s complaint, ordering certain access provisions to be in place on the Olympics.com site by 15 September 2000. SOCOG ignored the ruling and was subsequently fined A$20,000.

You will want to visit this page to get the full details. (Thanks to NUBlog for bringing a lot of information together on this news item.)

Posted by jamesr at 03:31 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Disabilities Act doesn't reach Net

In direct contradiction to the previous weblog entry, there has been another ruling that the Southwest Airlines website doesn't have to comply with ADA. To quote:

In the first case of its kind, U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz said the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies only to physical spaces such as restaurants and movie theaters and not to the Internet.

"To expand the ADA to cover 'virtual' spaces would be to create new rights without well-defined standards," Seitz wrote in a 12-page opinion dismissing the case. "The plain and unambiguous language of the statute and relevant regulations does not include Internet Web sites."

What's going on here?

Posted by jamesr at 03:24 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Judge rules that inaccessible website violates ADA

A recent news item talks about a federal ruling in the US that the Atlanta mass transit agency violated the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) by by constructing a website that was inaccessible for people with visual disabilities. This has the potential to change a lot of things in the US...

Posted by jamesr at 03:15 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Guerrilla knowledge management

I've just become aware of a website created by Greg Searle devoted to Guerrilla Knowledge Management. This consists of a weblog, articles and other resources around growing the use of Communities of Practice.

There's a fair bit of good stuff here...

Posted by jamesr at 02:07 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Handbook of user-centred design

The NECTAR project has released INUSE 6.2, a handbook of user-centred design. This provides extensive resources for those applying usability as part of the development of interactive systems. It is divided into five chapters:

• Chapter 1: A user-centred approach to design and assessment
• Chapter 2: Introduction to usability methods
• Chapter 3: Individual method descriptions
• Chapter 4: Selecting an appropriate method
• Chapter 5: Standards and guidelines in user-centred design

Posted by jamesr at 01:08 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Tackling maintenance projects

Dan Saffer writes about applying information architecture skills in maintenance projects, consisting of the ongoing changes that are required for all sites. To quote:

By maintenance project, I’m referring to altering an existing website or application, one that you likely had nothing to do with creating that comes loaded with technical and organizational baggage. It can be as small as adding a link to a page, or as large as restructuring the entire site. For in-house IAs like myself, these can make up the majority of work of you do. But more and more, consultants (since the collapse of the New Economy and the dearth of new web projects) are being asked to deal with them as well.

Posted by jamesr at 10:03 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Knowledge management and brands

David Rymer has written a brief article about the role of knowledge management in relation to brand identity in marketing. To quote:

Now, as we all know, marketers are obsessive control freaks with an apparently inexhaustible fascination with visual identity standards and logos. KM, by contrast, is a people- and relationship-centric discipline. Normally, putting these two disciplines in one room would be guaranteed to generate much hissing and spitting. So why do marketing and KM need to work together?

Posted by jamesr at 09:52 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Doing Business on the Internet (DBI) Survey

Yankee Group has released its 2002 Doing Business on the Internet (DBI) Survey, looking at the use of web management software. The results are interesting, for example:

The DBI Survey shows that 60% of businesses continue to manage Web content using homegrown tools and applications. Homegrown WCM systems are typically limited content management applications that have rudimentary workflow, security and access control.

The recommendations, however, are pretty poor, and not very well considered. Still, it's good to see some numbers...

Posted by jamesr at 10:39 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Act-KM meeting (Canberra, Australia)

From Amanda Lee:

Topic: "The purpose of knowledge management is competitive intelligence".
Speaker: Babette Bensoussan
Date: Tuesday 12 November October 2002
Time: 5:30-7pm ( we will be starting on time this month!!)
Location : National Library of Australia - Main Conference Room 4th floor.
$4 donation for wine and cheese.

Outline

The meeting will explore the links between KM and competitive intelligence(CI) and discuss how CI can work in a Government agency, its role in policy development and implementation etc.

Babette Bensoussan B.Bus (UTS), MBA (Macq.)

As Managing Director and founder of The Mindshifts Group, Babette specialises in the rapidly growing field of competitive intelligence. Babette consults both domestically and internationally and has worked with some of the top 100 in Australia and the Fortune 500 companies. Babette is also a founder and Vice President for the Society of Competitive Intelligence in Australia. Babette has published numerous articles on strategic planning, competitive intelligence and strategic marketing and has co-written a text on strategic and competitive intelligence analysis. She is a Fellow of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals in the US and has taught both domestically as well as in the US and SE Asia.

Posted by jamesr at 02:48 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Web credibility

Consumers International has released a report on web credibility, which looked at key health, financial and price-comparison sites. The results are worrying:

• 49 percent of health and financial sites failed to give warnings about the appropriate use of their information. For example, they did not warn consumers searching for health or financial advice that they should consult a professional before acting on advice given.
• At least 50 percent of sites giving advice on medical and financial matters failed to provide full information about the authority and credentials of the people behind that advice.
• Only 57 percent of general advice sites gave sources for that advice.
• 39 percent of sites that collected personal information did not have a privacy policy.
• 62 percent of sites contained claims that were vague and unspecific.
• 55 percent of sites said nothing about how up-to-date their content was.
• 30 percent of sites provided no address or telephone number.
• Only 41 percent of the sites that recommended products gave sources for their prices.
• 26 percent of sites gave no clear information about who owned them.
• 60 percent of sites provided no information that indicated whether or not their content was influenced by commercial interests (e.g. partners, sponsors or advertisers).

[Thanks to Content Matters.]

Posted by jamesr at 08:21 AM | Permalink
Categories: Web development

Conducting a competitive analysis

Thomas Myer writes about how to conduct a website competitive analysis, from a usability perspective. To quote:

Conducting a competitive analysis is an important part of the job if you're a usability engineer or information architect. A good competitive analysis not only produces usability metrics but also aids decision makers in their strategic goal-setting and planning. Done right, a good competitive analysis can steer a Web development project in the right direction.

Posted by jamesr at 08:13 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design, Web development

Advice for a Request for Proposal (RFP)

James E. Powell has written a detailed article on running a Request for Proposal (RFP). To quote:

A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a simple concept, but its execution can be anything but. On the surface, an RFP is simply an invitation to external vendors, service providers or consultants (collectively referred to as offerors) to propose a solution to your organization's problem, either complex or critical -- or both.

The execution of an RFP, however, is where the real challenge lies. A badly designed RFP can scare away potential offerors ... or worse, mislead them into providing inappropriate solutions.

This is a very useful article, and is as applicable to content management systems as it is to any other large software purchase.

Posted by jamesr at 03:31 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0

The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) has just released a new draft version of their Content Accessibility Guidelines. While this has not been finalised, there are some interesting goals:

• Ensure that requirements may be applied across technologies
• Ensure that the conformance requirements are clear
• Ensure that the deliverables are easy to use
• Write to a more diverse audience
• Clearly identify who benefits from accessible content
• Ensure that the revision is "backward compatible" with WCAG 1.0

Posted by jamesr at 02:55 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Human-readable URLs

I've always been a believer in human readable URLS ("/products/xyz" instead of "page.asp?id=236"), and this was only strengthened by the article by Jesse James Garrett recently. This is not just a usability problem however.

In recent times, I've been visiting the local Australian content management system vendors, just to introduce myself, and to find out where they are at. I was surprised when several of the vendors listed human readable URLs as one of their biggest selling points.

Why is this such a big deal? Internet search engines. In general, all of the major search engines do not index sites which have dynamically-generated pages, due to a range of technical problems. To say this again: if you have a site with URLs like "ID=66", your pages will not appear in Yahoo, Altavista, etc, etc!

While Google does index one page into dynamic sites, this doesn't make much of a difference.

This was really brought home when I did a Google search for a CMS product that a client mentioned. I scanned through page after page, but no vendor site emerged. Eventually, I worked out what the company name was, and guessed the website address. Sure enough, the site was there, but the dynamic pages prevented the site from appearing in Google.

Not a good thing for marketing.

Coming back to content management systems, then, there would seem to be an important marketing benefit to having human readable URLs. More importantly, it will actually drive traffic to your site.

Something to thing about...

Posted by jamesr at 02:48 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Usability & user-centered design

NSW KM Forum evening this Thursday (Sydney, Australia)

The next NSW KM Forum evening is this Thursday. Details as follows:

When
Thursday 7th November (this Thursday)
5:30pm (talks start at 6pm)
Finishes at 7pm, and then down the road for drinks and chats
If you arrive after 5:30pm, ring me on 0416 054 213, and I'll organise someone to come down and let you in.

Where
Standards Australia
Level 6
286 Sussex St
(Corner of Bathurst St)

Who

Speaker 1:
Eric Tsui
Chief Science Officer at CSC

Eric will be talking about technologies for personal and peer-to-peer knowledge management. There has been numerous articles published on the role of IT and KM systems in organisations but there is a lack of research into server-less KM tools/systems at the individual and group levels. Eric has been undertaking research, funded by a CSC LEF Technology Grant, on tools that assist the Individual Knowledge Worker (IKW) who, in today's competitive knowledge-based society, has a constant need to capture, categorise and share/distribute knowledge on multiple devices and with multiple parties. This presentation delivers a holistic view of the KM technologies at three key levels of focusses individual, group and organisational.

Speaker 2:
Jenepher Surbey
Manager IT and Knowledge Strategy
Equal Opportunity for Woman in the Workplace Agency

This small federal government statutory Authority is moving from an ad-hoc to a strategic approach to KM. Jenepher will present the challenges to the audience which will be asked to discuss how they would move forward with KM.

How much
Absolutely free!

I hope to see you all there.

Posted by jamesr at 08:48 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

New information architecture organisation

A new non-profit information architecture organisation has just come into being: AIfIA (Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture). From their mission statement:

The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture ("AIfIA") serves to advance the design of shared information environments. We support a global community infrastructure that connects people, ideas, content, and tools. Through research, education, advocacy and community service, we promote excellence within our field and build bridges to related disciplines and organizations.

Founded by a dedicated, multi-national group of people volunteering our own resources, we aspire to build bridges to related disciplines and organizations. We invite you to join us in advancing the state of information architecture through research, education, advocacy and community service.

I may well join up...

[Thanks to IDblog.]

Posted by jamesr at 08:23 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

CIBA intranet survey

CIBA Solutions has released a free report detailing the results of their recent intranet benchmark survey. The main findings:

• The most important issue for users is that intranets are accurate and up-to-date
• One of the least endearing qualities of intranets is that they are not accurate and are out-of-date
• Content duplication on the intranet is a major problem
• Redundant content is also a major problem
• Finding content on the intranet is a frustrating experience for many users
• Intranets have little or no logical structure
• There is a significant amount of organisational content missing from intranets
• It is difficult for the typical intranet user to get information onto the intranet

Posted by jamesr at 08:05 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Last chance for seminars

There is now less than two weeks until our Sydney seminars. There are a few places left, but time is running out.

Intranet peers in government: more than just a "talk-fest", this will be a fun and thought-provoking day, and much effort has been put into making sure that we all walk away with something of real value. We already have an excellent and varied list of participants, with more on the way.

Choosing the right CMS for your intranet or website: specifically designed to address large corporate needs, this seminar is also valuable for public-sector sites. Looking from a business focus, this seminar walks step-by-step though the entire process of choosing a content management system.

Posted by jamesr at 02:51 PM | Permalink
Categories:

Information architecture in balance

Jeff Lash has written an article on The myth of User-Centered Information Architecture. To make sure everyone is awake, Jeff starts with:

One of the first things you learn about information architecture is that your Web site needs to be organized the way users think it should be organized. Unfortunately, this never happens. In fact, it should never happen. User- centered information architecture is a myth.

What follows, though, is a well-considered exploration of the balance between user needs and business goals, ending with:

Information architecture goes beyond deciding what content should go where and how it should be labeled. It's more than just blindly listening to what users say. It's more than just making the client happy. Giving all of your attention to only one of these three aspects of account service is irrational, irresponsible, and impractical. The key to successful information architecture is understanding all of the variables involved in meeting project goals, and coming up with an appropriate balance.

Posted by jamesr at 02:44 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

ACT-KM conference papers

Most of the papers from the recent ACT KM conference in Canberra have been published online. There's some good stuff here.

Posted by jamesr at 10:33 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Intranet seminars in Melbourne

I've been talking recently with CAVAL, and it looks like I will be running several one day seminars in Melbourne, based on the very popular article Sixteen steps to a renewed corporate intranet.

More details to come, but keep one of these dates free:

• 16 April 2003
• 25 June 2003

Posted by jamesr at 04:09 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Case study: Re-focusing the Hunter Health intranet

Yet again, it is time to publish the next article in my regular KM Column series:

Case study: Re-focusing the Hunter Health intranet
Review of the Hunter Health intranet, which generated a wealth of strategic and tactical recommendations.

Related articles:

Sixteen steps to a renewed corporate intranet
Outlines a disciplined approach to re-invigorating a corporate intranet, making it deliver real business benefits.

Keeping your intranet healthy and effective
The real challenge is to maintain the quality, consistency and value of an intranet, well into the future. This article shows you how.

Don't forget that you can sign up to the papers announce list, to be the first to find out when new articles are released.

(You can also browse the full archive of KM Column papers.)

Posted by jamesr at 02:26 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Intranets, James' articles, Usability & user-centered design

Back from Melbourne

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last three days, I've been visiting Melbourne. The main reason for the trip was to sit in on the IIM Vendor Showcase, which was interesting. It was certainly a good opportunity to see a very broad range of information management products, and to chat with people.

I also went down a day earlier than the showcase, to visit some of the local CMS vendors situated in Melbourne. The aim, as per all my other vendors visits, was to get a sense of what their solutions offer, and where they fit in the marketplace. That way, I can give my customers better advice (without specifically recommending any one product, of course).

Just catching up on the 500+ e-mails in my inbox, so expect some more entries shortly...

Posted by jamesr at 02:16 PM | Permalink
Categories: