Articles by Month: April 2006

Designing information for the me: implications of the 'user illusion'

Susan Harkus has written a very interesting article on the implications of the 'user illusion', when it comes to designing sites. To quote:

Something other than that conscious objective seems to drive browse and engagement decisions. Where do these other drivers come from? In the past, I've 'located' them in the user's agenda and the user's context but neither agenda or context explain the real issue --- what is the relationship between the conscious and unconscious parts of the self, and which part is the most influential?

Posted by jamesr at 03:22 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

What makes an enterprise wiki?

Mark Choate has written an article that asks: what makes an enterprise wiki? To quote:

But if we look at wikis in an enterprise context, we have to confront two important questions: What's the difference between a wiki and a CMS? Couldn't we just press our existing CMS into service as a wiki? Are wiki tools enterprise-ready? That is, would they pass muster before my CIO?

Posted by jamesr at 10:06 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Getting out from behind the podium

There are generally-accepted principles of what it takes to be a good (or even great) presenter. One of these is to get out from behind the podium, to stand in front of (or amongst) the audience. To either project your voice, or to use a wireless microphone if the room is too large.

Having spent a bit of time at several major conferences over the last month, I ask: why do all the rooms always have a podium for the speaker, or a table for the panel to sit behind?

Conference organisers can do more to help people to be better presenters, therefore benefiting participants. My suggestions:

• Eliminate the podium entirely, with its wired microphone.
• Create a place for presenters to place their laptops in front of them, beside the data projector.
• Provide presenters with a simple wireless mouse (or equivalent), allowing them to manage their presentations without having to go to their laptop.
• Eliminate the table for panels. Get everyone to stand, generating greater energy, and allowing the speakers to project better (it's hard when sitting at a desk!).

The nicest approach I saw was at the Act-KM conference in Canberra last year. The keynote speakers were up on a raised podium in front of a large room, and were setup with a wireless microphone. The nice thing was that a large plasma display was setup at the feet of the front row of the audience, allowing the speaker to glance at their presentation without having to turn away from the audience. This worked extremely well, and made presenting much more enjoyable (and hopefully more effective).

So in summary: too many conferences lack energy, and perhaps some of this can be slated to the restrictive setup of the rooms that encourages presenters to hide behind the podium or front table. So how about we take away these props and see how we go?

Posted by jamesr at 04:00 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Presentation: CM Pros Summit (San Francisco)

At the end of the day yesterday I gave a presentation at the CM Pros Summit in San Francisco on "Content management in call centres: delivering a great customer experience", which discussed the call centre environment, needs analysis techniques, common findings, and potential CM solutions. You can download my presentation:

Content management in call centres (PDF, 585kb)

Posted by jamesr at 12:37 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Presentation: Gilbane San Francisco 2006

I gave a presentation today at Gilbane San Francisco on "Improving intranet search", covering some of the key points on how to address the design and implementation of search for intranets (and indirectly, websites). You can download my presentation:

Improving intranet search (PDF, 721kb)

Posted by jamesr at 12:20 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Search tools

Defining "taxonomy"

Patrick Lambe has written an excellent blog post that defines "taxonomy" (including a nice diagram). To quote:

Yesterday I made the claim that a taxonomy cannot be defined by its shape, which is mostly how it does get defined eg "A taxonomy is a hierarchical arrangement of terms blah blah blah...". I argued that taxonomies should be defined more by their purpose and use, less by the structural form they happen to take (which can vary according to circumstance). What would a more useful definition be? To start with, we need to go back beyond Linnaeus and the rather narrow sense of "taxonomy" developed by biologists. Let's go back to the Greek roots and see what they deliver.

Posted by jamesr at 12:36 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Coming of age in ethnography

Dave Rogers has written an article on UX and ethnography. To quote:

With time, I came to my senses. I learned to distinguish design ethnography from its classic, anthropological forebears. I recognized that it could take many forms—from contextual inquiry to task analysis (something I had done many times as an instructional designer). I grew beyond the myth of the do-it-all IA. I chuckled at myself for failing to realize that I had initially reacted to design ethnography from an inadequate "frame of reference."

Posted by jamesr at 10:34 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Content management systems used by public sector websites found lacking

Roger Johansson has reported on a Swedish survey that identified problems with CMS and accessibility. To quote:

Few standards and accessibility aware web professionals will be surprised by the results of this survey. All of the evaluated CMSs were found lacking with respect to web standards and accessibility, some of them severely. The results of the survey and a full report are available in Brister i publiceringsverktyg leder till att information förloras (in Swedish).

Posted by jamesr at 10:24 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Enterprise 2.0 discussion continues

Marcel de Ruiter has written a summary of current Enterprise 2.0 discussions. To quote:

Over the Easter weekend the discussion on Enterprise 2.0, or the use of tools like blogs and wiki's behind the firewall, has been engaging more and more people in the blogosphere. It all started with a rather upbeat post and article on the use of specific tools within companies by Harvard Professor Andrew McAfee. Then Nick Carr stepped into the arena with some words of caution because "workers are just too busy" to contribute to the internal blogoshpere or to wiki’s.

Posted by jamesr at 03:07 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Intranets

Why are intranets stagnant?

Shel Holtz has written an article that asks: why are intranets stagnant? To quote:

The evolution of the World Wide Web over the last five years has been nothing short of astounding. Intranets, on the other hand, haven't progressed an inch since, oh, say 2001. While the web has witnessed the wide-scale adoption of social networking and the early stages of true web-based applications (like Writely and AjaxWrite), the intranet of 2006 looks pretty much the same as it did five years ago.

[Thanks to CMS Watch.]

Posted by jamesr at 02:52 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Evaluating website accessibility

Roger Johansson has written a series of three articles on evaluating website accessibility. To quote:

Many people, web developers as well as website owners, are new to website accessibility and find it difficult to evaluate. This three-part article series is intended to make it easier for non-experts to perform a basic accessibility check. I hope it will be helpful enough to make at least a few websites more accessible.

[Thanks to elearningpost.]

Posted by jamesr at 12:06 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Launch of UX Magazine

UX Magazine has just been launched as the latest online-only user experience magazine, published under a Creative Commons license. To quote:

UX Magazine was created to deliver a central place to discuss the critical disciplines that all enhance user experience. Extraordinary user experiences should be the goal of every interaction you deliver to your users at any level. All too often, businesses (large and small) get it horribly wrong. It's painful to watch and even worse when it happens to you.

Every month we combine original articles with the best from blogs and online media to deliver an online magazine that covers the best new thinking on design, strategy, technology and common sense. We believe that the more businesses can bring ideas from these 4 critical disciplines inside their business the better the user experiences they deliver will be.

[Thanks to UsabilityNews.]

Posted by jamesr at 10:49 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

BBC reports users lose patience with poor search

Jared Spool has written a blog entry discussing BBC results on search, extending the discussion with his own research results. To quote:

No results are the worst offenders. When studying users using on-site Search, we saw, when shopping for clothes, they abandoned their shopping 55% of the time queries returned no results. For shoppers of Books, CDs, and DVDs, they abandoned 100% of the time they encountered a no results screen. In almost all cases, what they were shopping for was on the site, so the sites lost the sales because their search didn’t work effectively.

Posted by jamesr at 10:40 AM | Permalink
Categories: Search tools

More enterprise tagging articles

Bill Ives lists a number of recent enterprise tagging articles, pulled together as part of research he is currently doing. To quote:

I am writing an article on enterprise social bookmarking or tagging behind the firewall. As part of my research I have looked at a few other works on the topic, including the CIO article I commented on in yesterday's post. Here are some more that I want to share. If you have any other sugegstions please leave me a comment to this post. Thanks in advance.

Posted by jamesr at 10:29 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Information architecture, Intranets

Don't forget to add the tax(onomy)

Cathy McKnight has written an article on intranet taxonomies. To quote:

Now with that said, you still ask "What do I need a taxonomy for?" In a word -- savings -- savings of time, money and effort. These savings were shown at a conference where Microsoft's Knowledge Architect Manager stated that even at the early stages of a taxonomy project the company saw a 62 percent reduction in the number of clicks, an average of 16 seconds saved per task and an 11 per cent increase in task success rate. That translates into a lot of time that can be allocated to other tasks … revenue generating tasks.

Posted by jamesr at 07:03 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Intranets

Us versus them - vocabulary makes a difference

Jane McConnell has written a blog entry discussing the vocabulary of global intranets. To quote:

Vocabulary used when talking about intranets reveals a lot about an organisation's model and approach to becoming more international, or global. Which raises the question: what's the difference between global and international? I've included a snapshot of a slide on this point which I use in workshops.

Posted by jamesr at 06:27 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Reinventing the intranet

Jon Udell has written an article on the use of social software on intranets. To quote:

Shared bookmarking, coupled with tagging, is another piece of low-hanging fruit. Sprinkling Web 2.0 pixie dust won't solve every problem, but the benefits of public services such as del.icio.us and Furl can be realized within the enterprise, too. That's true because they benefit the individual first, and then, as a useful side effect, the community.

[Thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick.]

Posted by jamesr at 06:16 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

List of intranet blogs

I've just added a list of intranet weblogs to the Intranet Review Toolkit. It's not a long list so far (only 9 entries), so if you know of others, please send across your suggestions.

Posted by jamesr at 11:50 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Free: Improving Intranet Search (Brisbane + Perth + Melbourne)

This is just a reminder about the upcoming free sessions we have planned on "Improving Intranet Search". We had 70+ people at both the Sydney and Canberra gatherings, making them a tremendous opportunity to network and make contacts with other intranet teams.

The Brisbane and Perth events are coming up quite soon, with a Melbourne date organised for a few months later:

• Brisbane (3 May 2006)
• Perth (16 May 2006)
• Melbourne (19 July 2006)

Topics covered in the session include:

• best-practice design of search and result pages
• simple versus advanced search
• synonyms, taxonomies, and 'best bets'
• search engine usage reports
• tuning search engine configuration

Drink and snacks will be provided after the presentation, giving an opportunity for informal discussions and networking amongst participants.

Note: numbers are strictly limited, and all participants must register in advance (walk-ins on the day will not be admitted). This is also a vendor-neutral event, and there is no third-party sponsorship, presentations or displays.

Attendees on the day will also receive 10-50% discount codes for all of the Step Two Designs reports and products, including the Intranet Roadmap, Improving Intranet Search, Staff Directories report and the Content Management Requirements Toolkit.

Posted by jamesr at 01:19 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Enterprise portals: tip of which iceberg?

Janus Boye has written an article on enterprise portals, discussing the good, bad and ugly. To quote:

Today's enterprise sets ambitious goals for content and service integration. Following nearly ubiquitous advice from the trade press and conference circuit, IT departments and business units frequently turn to portal software to help them achieve those goals. But many customers find to their great frustration that their portal package is much less out-of-the-box than they hoped.

Meanwhile, the much mis-used term "portal" can describe solutions to a variety of disparate business needs, from workgroup project collaboration to customer self-service extranets.

Posted by jamesr at 12:31 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Ten questions about content management systems

David Moore has written an article that answers ten questions about CMS products. The ten questions are:

• OK, so what is a Content Management System?
• What are the benefits?
• OK, I'm sold – how much will it cost?
• But the expensive ones are better, right?
• Aren't many of those products blogging tools?
• So how do I decide?
• Once I've settled on a CMS, that's all my content problems solved then?
• Do CMSs produce standards-compliant pages? Or accessible ones?
• But once all that’s squared away, I can let my staff loose on the system?
• This is a big topic, where can I go for more information?

[Thanks to the eGovernment Resource Centre.]

Posted by jamesr at 10:51 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Information Online 2007 (Sydney)

At the request of the conference organisers, I'm just spreading the word about the upcoming Information Online 2007 to be held in Sydney on January 30 - February 1, 2007. The call for papers is still out, with the due date extended to April 14. They are looking for speakers on a marvellously wide range of interesting topics:

• Changing face of service delivery
• Content management
• Copyright & digital rights management
• E-learning and information literacy
• Information architecture (including folksonomies, intranets, usability and taxonomy)
• Information management (including digital asset management)
• Information metrics
• Information quality/integrity
• Information security
• Knowledge management
• New technologies (including podcasting, wikis and XML)
• Professional development
• Search tools & techniques

So if you are interested in speaking, visit the speakers page.

Posted by jamesr at 10:31 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

CMS vendors are evaluating us

When organisations are looking for a new content management system (CMS), the selection process is designed to evaluate all the offerings in the marketplace to find the product that is the best fit to the organisation's needs.

Requirements are documented, and vendors asked to provide written responses, give demonstrations, and provide whatever other information is required. All of these activities are designed to assess the quality and effectiveness of the solutions on offer.

What is rarely recognised, however, is that while we are evaluating vendors, CMS vendors are also evaluating us.

Submitting a tender response

While we are looking for the best products in the marketplace, we don't stop to think that these vendors might also be in the most demand, and therefore the busiest. In practice, even a moderately successful CMS vendor will be receiving more than a half-dozen tender requests every week.

It costs real money for vendors to submit a tender response, as well as a significant amount of time. It is therefore not possible (or financially viable) for vendors to pursue every opportunity, as that would be a short road to bankruptcy.

Instead, vendors must pick which battles they will fight, with the primary goal being to win the highest percentage of tenders that they submit.

[CM Briefing 2006-06, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 09:49 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, James' articles

Obtain search in your CMS?

Organisations are looking for a wide range of capabilities when selecting a new content management system (CMS), and search is often one of the desired features.

Almost every site requires a search tool, whether it’s a website or intranet. In most cases, there is frustration with the current search, leading to the desire to bundle search as part of the new CMS solution. The question is: how good are the search capabilities built into CMS products, and when should you make use of them?

Three possibilities

There are three main ways in which search functionality can be obtained when purchasing a content management system:

• The CMS has search built into the package, developed in-house by the CMS vendor.
• A search tool is licensed by the CMS vendor, and tightly integrated into the overall solution.
• A third-party search engine is implemented separately, either purchased from the CMS vendor or obtained elsewhere.

Each of these possibilities is discussed in the following sections.

[CM Briefing 2006-05, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 09:40 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, James' articles, Search tools

Accessibility tips for website construction

We all know accessibility is important, but precisely how does one make a website or intranet more accessible?

There is a great deal of hype on this topic and a lot of discussion too, yet vagueness and confusion persist. Web teams face a considerable amount of political pressure to 'be compliant', but often don't know where to start. This can result in aggravation, misdirection of effort and ultimately a failure to make the website any more accessible.

Often what is needed is a pragmatic view based on real experience, to reveal what is really important and what should be tackled first.

This paper provides ten key tips to help improve the accessibility of any website, or intranet. It's not intended to be an introduction to web accessibility (instead see the earlier article Introduction to web accessibility for a brief overview of the topic).

Nor is this intended to be an exhaustive manual covering every detail of every accessibility technique. Besides being counter-productive and far from helpful as a starting point, it is just not possible to do this. Best practice changes constantly and one must focus on the underlying approach rather than specific details.

These tips cover the basics, getting code quality up to scratch, for instance. Higher levels of accessibility can be explored once these sanity factors are addressed. Readers are encouraged to make use of the many links to further information sources, provided throughout this paper, from which more detail can be obtained.

[April KM Column written by Patrick Kennedy, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 09:32 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Rethinking EIA: becoming information ecologists

Rob Fay has written an interesting article on rethinking enterprise IA. To quote:

This post attempts to rethink EIA and argues that information architecture need not be constrained to designing structures and managing content as it relates to the Web or for any electronic system for that matter. Instead, I argue that an enterprise information architect might also be called, as Thomas Davenport coins it, an "Information Ecologist."

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

Measure twice, cut once: content management metrics

Brian Manning & Caleb Brown have written an article that discusses common content management metrics. To quote:

Often, when companies choose to implement a content management (CM) strategy they do so in an attempt to alleviate the operational inefficiencies associated with maintaining multiple content repositories. The documents in these repositories typically overlap each other, or fail to accurately represent true business processes. So it's not surprising to find that most businesses strive to minimize these effects and, when they think about measuring the impact of their CM, tend to favor operational efficiency. But the way User Experience Consultants, Brian Manning & Caleb Brown see it, productivity wins are mostly illusory. Businesses are only looking at half of the CM metrics picture.

[Thanks to Scott Abel.]

Posted by jamesr at 09:30 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Metrics & ROI

Ajax and your CMS

Jonathan Downes and Joe Walker have written an article on Ajax and CMS products. To quote:

For the Web CMS world, Ajax offers the possibility for a better user experience for content authors as well as site visitors. But what of its limitations? While Ajax delivers many benefits, it also creates a few challenges. This article will look at some of the benefits and limitations of Ajax for managing web content.

Posted by jamesr at 04:44 PM | Permalink
Categories:

Spring 2006 CM Pros Summit

I've just extended my trip to San Francisco at the end of April so I can participate in the Spring 2006 CM Pros Summit. It looks to be a good few days, and I'll giving a closing keynote on day one on "Content Management in Call Centres: Delivering a Great Customer Experience". To quote:

Delivering a great customer experience is the goal of all successful organisations. With calls centers increasingly becoming the main point of contact with customers, effort must be taken to ensure that the call center is quickly delivering the right information and advice.

Call centers are a uniquely challenging environment, where staff are expected to (accurately) answer calls within 30 seconds, while being monitored on performance and call duration. To meet these expectations, call center staff must be provided with effective information sources, with content management processes put in place to sustain and grow these resources.

This talk will explore the call center environment, and will give many real-world examples drawn from call center reviews conducted in high-profile public and private sector organisations.

(I'll also be presenting at the Gilbane conference that follows.)

Posted by jamesr at 01:00 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Content management

Future of UK usability consultancy

UsabilityNews has published an interview with Ashley Friedlein about the future of UK usability consultancy. To quote:

There will always be a need for external, independent and impartial usability testing. And, as things continue to evolve, there will always be a need for specialist skills. For example, at the moment, those might be eyetracking capabilities, specialist labs, online forms optimisation, on-site search optimisation, accreditation, compliance auditing, or deep sector expertise. However, I believe there are three main ways in which usability and accessibility specialists will be able to differentiate themselves in future

Posted by jamesr at 09:22 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Identifying missing trigger words from search logs

Jared Spool has written a blog entry on identifying trigger words from search logs. To quote:

Our research has shown that on most (not all) sites, only about 14% of search queries are issued from the home page. The vast majority of queries come after visiting lower level pages, such as galleries and content pages. From this, we infer that many users are making a stab at trying to find what they are seeking by using the categories and links. Only when the scent trail dries up do they turn to Search.

Posted by jamesr at 07:57 AM | Permalink
Categories: Search tools