Articles by Month: August 2006

cmf2006 coming up in Denmark

Today I received a beautifully laid out flier for cmf2006, the upcoming content management conference in Aarhus, Denmark. I was lucky enough to be one of the keynote presenters at the inaugural event last year, and I must say, it still stands as one of my most enjoyable conferences ever.

As an Australian, I received a warm welcome in Denmark, and not just from Janus and his team. The conference was also first-rate, and superbly organised. Janus is passionate about content management, is committed to delivering events of the highest quality, and this is apparent in every detail of the conference.

While I will be elsewhere this year (the UK and The Netherlands), I can strongly recommend this conference to anyone in Europe (or elsewhere!).

Posted by jamesr at 09:27 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Refining data tables

Luke Wroblewski has written an article on how to present data tables. To quote:

Many articles have been written on what is probably the single most ubiquitous interface element within Web applications today: the form. Forms justifiably get a lot of attention because their design is critical to successfully gathering input from users. Registration forms are the gatekeepers to community membership. Checkout forms are how eCommerce vendors close deals. But what goes in must eventually come out, and the information users provide to Web applications often makes its way back to users in the form of tabular data.

Posted by jamesr at 06:15 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Usability & user-centered design

So you want to be an interaction designer 2006

Dan Saffer has written an article on becoming an interaction designer. To quote:

Five years ago, Robert Reimann wrote a seminal article for the Cooper Newsletter called "So You Want To Be an Interaction Designer." Like many people, I read the article and said, yep, that's what I want to be. I took Reimann’s (good) advice and found both work and training as an interaction designer.

Now, thanks to my book, I find myself in the odd position of people asking me how to become an interaction designer, what it means to be an interaction designer, and what do I really do all day? And while Reimann's essay is still a great place to start, I want to embellish on to his advice with some of my own.

Posted by jamesr at 04:53 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Searching kills employee productivity

Toby Ward has written an article summarising recent research on search productivity. To quote:

The Center for Media Research reports that professional workers are spending more and more time searching for information. The survey, HotTopics: 2001 vs. 2005: Research Study Reveals Dramatic Changes Among Information Consumers, commissioned by Outsell, reveals that professionals on average spend 11 hours per week gathering information -- up from 8 hours per week in 2001.

Posted by jamesr at 12:09 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information management, Intranets, Search tools

Tips for CMS vendor demos

I'm sure I've written about this before, but I'm spending a lot of time at present helping organisations to select a CMS, and other than the sessions to document requirements the single biggest block of time is sitting in on vendor demos.

Based on the past few years of experience, here are some tips for vendors on how to present a good session:

• Introduce yourselves. Start with a brief (!) introduction of who you are and what your product is. Aim to give us some useful background and context for the detail to come.
• Stick to the script. Follow closely the scenarios that we have provided.
• Be interesting! There is nothing more boring that someone talking through their product in a monotone voice. It doesn't have to be a song-and-dance, but it should be interesting and engaging, particularly since we are stuck listening to you for 2+ hours.
• Talk us through. Explain what you are doing, to allow us to understand what the product is doing and how it work.
• Pace yourself. Rushing through the product ("point-and-click frenzy") will leave us dazed and disoriented.
• Prepare well for the demo. Make sure everything is setup so that the key features can be shown in the simplest and clearest way.
• Run off a laptop. Relying on our internet connection is a great way of tearing out a lot of hair.
• Use our actual site. Loading up (or mocking up) our actual site (including the page layout and site structure) will only take a few hours but will make a huge impact on the effectiveness of the demo.
• Keep it simple. Our biggest concern is not lack of power, it's product complexity. At at least one point, show us how simple things will be for the average author, and don't just work in super-user mode where every possible option is displayed.
• Re-read the RFP. I know this sounds simple, but you really need to re-read the RFP (and their response) before the session, so they can answer all the questions and have all the details at your fingertips.
• Put yourself in our shoes. You have lived and breathed the product and its jargon, but we are looking at 3 products in 3 days. Try not to get caught up in your way of doing things, and talk through stuff from our perspective.
• Be upfront. You will gain more respect for saying "we don't do that", rather than promising everything in a future version (which we don't believe anyway).
• Prepare well. I'm mentioning this again, because if we are going to give you $100k, we expect you to spend at least a few hours preparing for the demo. Failure to do so is a good way of wasting your one chance.

Posted by jamesr at 04:19 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

The paradox of choice: an interview with Barry Schwartz

Jared Spool has published an interview with Barry Schwartz, the author of The Paradox of Choice. To quote:

Then this psychologist at Columbia did a study when she was a graduate student at Stanford that's now become quite famous, the jam study, that showed when you present 30 flavors of jam at a gourmet food store, you get more interest but less purchasing than when you only show six flavors of jam. All of a sudden, it became an issue, or at least a possibility, that adding options could actually decrease the likelihood that people would actually choose any of them. More and more, because of that study, people have actually tried to study it in the wild, in the field, by getting companies to vary the variety that they offer and tracking both purchasing and also satisfaction. So that's starting to happen, but there are not very many papers that are actually published on that. This whole line of work is only about five years old.

Posted by jamesr at 03:53 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Usability & user-centered design

Intranet questions (Melbourne, Australia)

I ran one of our Intranet Planning Day workshops in Melbourne last week, and these were the (unedited) questions that participants had about intranets:

• What is an intranet?
• Intranet roles?
• Intranet versus ECM?
• Radical solutions?
• Portals?
• Business case?
• Feral forums?
• Tools for collaboration?
• Workflow?
• Increasing engagement of stakeholders?
• Killer apps?
• Intranet versus website?
• Governance and policies?
• How to educate staff?
• How to get staff to use it in a frontline environment?
• Is the intranet the best tool? Is it relevant?
• Measuring success?
• When is it finished?
• Effective navigation?
• Social interaction?
• How best to resource an intranet?
• How do you justify the cost?
• How much should we be spending (inc resources)?
• Is it all things to all people?

I also introduced a brand new methodology for planning and managing intranets (developed only a week ago), and this was very well received. (According to the feedback forms, this was the best bit.) I'll write more about this over the coming months...

Posted by jamesr at 08:23 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Intranets

Design methods

The Design Council in the UK has published a site describing a range of design methods. To quote:

A collection of easy-to-use design tools, methods and processes for you to use and download.

[Thanks to elearningpost.]

Posted by jamesr at 02:21 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

A web 2.0 tour for the enterprise

Shiv Singh has written an article on web 2.0 tour for the enterprise. To quote:

Thanks to the hype generated by Business Week, The New York Times, Fortune, and Newsweek (among others), Web 2.0 has captured the imagination of consumers and businesses alike. But knowing how to leverage Web 2.0 concepts to fuel collaboration and innovation among employees, partners, and customers is another story. Web 2.0 can change an enterprise but recognizing how, and determining whether you should, do so is confusing. This article aims to dispel some of the myths surrounding Web 2.0 while discussing its practical applications within organizations. Then the enterprise -- businesses and their practices -- can embrace and extend Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0.

Posted by jamesr at 06:58 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information management, Intranets

Competitive Analysis

Dan Brown has written an article on how to document a competitive analysis. To quote:

Because competitive analyses vary along only two dimensions -- competitors and criteria -- you'll always see some mechanism for showing two or more sites side-by-side with the differences highlighted. The specific nature of those differences will vary depending on the criteria selected. At the same time, these documents can also vary by quantity -- some are larger than others because they show more contexts or more competitors.

Posted by jamesr at 06:43 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Usability & user-centered design

How do you analyse your user research data?

Leisa Reichelt has written a post on analysing user research data. To quote:

Of course I've just finished a week of asking users lots of interesting questions and getting a vast amount of even more interesting information in response. On this particular project we asked quite a few people (15) lots of questions over quite a broad spread of topics. So, now I'm trying to work out what I've learned. Over the years, I've used a range of different methods for analysing data. The 'simplest' yet least able to be reproduced/backed up is a combination of memory and gut feel (not recommended), then there are a range of more or less physical tools from Excel Spreadsheets, to Post It Notes (which seem to be in vogue at the moment), to Mind Mapping (my current pet approach).

Posted by jamesr at 06:33 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

The importance of intranet leadership

Paul Chin has written an article on intranet leadership. To quote:

Intranets are ruled by committee, not by a single person or department. But, in most high-volume, enterprise-wide intranets, there's still a hierarchy to this committee with two distinct leaders: The intranet overseer and the subsite leaders (see table below).

Many people in the corporate world pay a lot of attention to the hard skills and resources required to build and manage an IT system without giving enough thought to the soft skills -- the people who put it all together. Those in leadership positions know how to manage not only projects and system, but also the people who work on them.

Posted by jamesr at 01:55 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Presentation: Strategic Intranets and Portals (Auckland)

Today I gave the opening keynote presentation at the 6th Annual Strategic Intranet & Enterprise Portal Management Conference in Auckland, New Zealand. This was on the "Hottest intranet trends for 2006", covering a range of topics:

• Enterprise 2.0
• Enterprise IA
• Portals
• Web content management
• Collaboration
• Search
• Intranets as a business tool

Hottest intranet trends for 2006 (PDF, 928kb)

Posted by jamesr at 10:49 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Intranet search questions (Auckland, New Zealand)

Yesterday I ran a one-day workshop on Designing Intranet Search in Auckland, New Zealand. This was a good fun day, with lots of vigorous discussion regarding different search strategies. As part of this, participants nominated their "big search questions", and this is the unedited list:

• Metadata? (vs search?)
• What is everyone doing?
• What makes search work great?
• Ongoing commitment (over 5 years)?
• Folksonomy?
• Looking for specific results?
• Sitemap versus search?
• Spell-checking?
• Separate structured searches?
• Query relaxation?
• Search is only as good as the content?
• How do you prioritise results from multiple source?
• "Correct" results without users thinking?
• Great search results?
• Search statistics
  • how much to capture?
  • what can we gain?
  • 80/20 rule?
• Are the results what the users wanted? (valuable?)
• Advanced search versus simple search?
• What is an ontology?

Posted by jamesr at 10:38 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Intranets, Search tools

Intranets: six months at a time

We've recently started some mentoring with a large corporate client, who has offices (and factories) throughout Australia and into Asia. They've had an intranet for a long time now, and it suffers from the most of the common issues:

• the intranet is little more than a collection of unconnected sub-sites
• information is unstructured, out-of-date and duplicated
• publishing processes are fragmentary and ineffective
• there is little executive sponsorship
• resources are very limited
• little technology underpins the intranet (no site-wide CMS)
• there is an intranet team of one (who is not even full-time on intranet work)

All that being said, various corners of the intranet are well-used and greatly appreciated, and there is a general desire to deliver a site that better supports the organisation's needs. The question is: where to start?

First day of mentoring

The first (whole day) mentoring session focused on building an understanding of the current situation, allowing us to get immersed in the organisation and its culture. Out of this session came a number of topics for further discussion:

• Designing and implementing search.
• Information architecture needs to be developed for the site as a whole.
• Web content management system.
• Standardisation of look-and-feel across all sites and applications.
• How to create an centralised intranet team.
• Developing a business case/getting extra resources.
• Putting new processes and platforms for establishing new subsites, and supporting authors.
• "The Sharepoint question."
• Design of the home page.
• New A-Z index.
• Intranet project (process) objectives, ie where do we want to be in 6 months?
• Intranet strategy docs, comms messages.
• The (desired) role of the intranet manager.
• Creating a roadmap/identifying priorities/identifying opportunities.

Second day of mentoring

The objective of the second day was to create a plan of attack, and an overall roadmap for what to tackle and in what order. Armed with brightly-coloured post-it notes, we used the initial list of ideas (outlined above) as the basis for brainstorming a much bigger list. This produced 40-50 individual activities quite quickly.

The question remained: how to order (and prioritise) these?

To answer this, we used the very simple scoping technique that we developed a little while back. This starts by identifying the criteria for why we would include something in the initial scope of work. We brainstormed a long list, with these being the top six criteria:

• increases intranet usage
• value to the business/end users (impact)
• high visibility
• success stories (can be communicated)
• helps build momentum for the intranet (and team)
• builds trust in the intranet team

We then talked through our constraints, with these as the top six:

• business culture (regionalism, silos, etc)
• staff resources
• budget limits ($)
• no executive sponsorship
• current lack of trust in the intranet (and team)
• lack of clarity around the role of the intranet

With these in hand, we then worked through each of the activities, assessing them critically against the criteria and constraints. Many items expected to be included quickly fell, while a few unexpected items made the cut.

Documenting as we went, a few hours of work generated a quite short list of in-scope items (the first photo), and a much longer list of items that were out of scope (second photo).

The items that ended up in scope were the following:

• Search
• HR site
• A-Z index
• Redesign home page
• Sharepoint for projects
• Needs analysis
• Key intranet policies
• Reposition intranet manager role
• Visibility and exec level
• Intranet message/comms plan
• Promote intranet
• Promote existing success stories
• Develop relationships with other teams

Six months at a time

Perhaps most importantly, we defined our scope of work as being the next six months. Based this, we could then come up with a clear plan of action, consisting of:

• list of activities
• reasons/criteria/directions
• detailed project plan (including resource requirements)
• communications message (a single page)
• executive briefing (PowerPoint presentation)

We will then do a similar activity to sketch out what might be included in the following six months, allowing this to be listed in the comms message and executive briefing, and giving us a full year's roadmap.

There's all the actual hard work to be done, but in two days, we've taken an overwhelming problem and have converted it into a concrete (and achievable) action plan, within the current resource constraints.

A few comments

There's much more to be written about this, and I'll endeavour to report on progress as we go, but a few quick points I think are worth highlighting:

• The chosen activities are designed as much to build the trust in (and resources of) the intranet team, as they are to fix the intranet itself.
• We are starting very small, but have selected the activities to build up momentum (following the upwards spiral model).
• Strategic aspects (such as intranet scope and goals) become just another activity that is scheduled into the roadmap (and in this case, all of these things will fall into the second 6 months or later).
• This is a very repeatable process that can be used in different situations, and at different levels.
• It's fascinating to see what comes out when you step back for a second, and take a critical look at what we are doing regarding intranets, and why.

Again, apologies for the lack of commenting, but you would be most welcome to email me any thoughts on all of this.

Posted by jamesr at 08:18 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

The changing face of university websites

Maish Nichani has written an article on the changing face of university websites. To quote:

Many university websites are in redesign mode. And that's good news for the web standards and user experience communities. It signifies not only that the community initiatives are bearing fruit, but also that we can now expect to see a much faster and wider adoption of these initiatives, especially in the public sector. This article lists some important areas of focus of these redesigns.

Posted by jamesr at 03:08 PM | Permalink
Categories: Area Health Service project, Book & product reviews, Conferences & presentations, Content management, Design & usability guidelines, Document & records management, E-learning, Information architecture, Information architecture, Information management, Interface design, Intranets, James' articles, Knowledge management, Metrics & ROI, Search tools, Usability & user-centered design, Web development, Weblogs, XML

Presentation: KM Australia (Sydney)

This week I gave a keynote presentation at the KM Australia conference on "The 10 principles for effective information management", which explored what hasn't worked, and introduced some key principles against to measure IM projects against. You can download my presentation:

10 principles for effective information management (PDF, 692kb)

(You can also read the original article the presentation was based on.)

Posted by jamesr at 12:45 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information management

Design intranets all the way to the bottom

Intranet redesigns are not small projects. There is a significant amount of design, usability and information architecture work, not to mention the laborious content migration process. What is launched is almost certainly an improvement on the old intranet, but the question must be asked: how much of an improvement?

In too many cases, the vast majority of effort is devoted to the intranet home page, the overall information architecture and the page layout. Lower pages in the site are often migrated more- or-less unchanged, with much of the internal structure within sections only slightly updated from the old intranet.

This concentrated focus on just the global elements of the site, however, may not be enough to deliver real benefits to staff. Instead, the design process must be continued all the way to the bottom of the intranet.

This briefing will explore this idea, giving examples of where efforts in the design process could be focused.

Global intranet elements

The design of the intranet home page is undoubtedly very important, as outlined in the earlier briefing Full site redesign? Start by addressing the home page.

It is also important to create an effective and consistent page layout that can be used throughout the site, underpinned by a vastly improved information architecture (site structure). These are the areas that typically receive the greatest attention during an intranet redesign. Once finalised, the existing intranet content is then migrated into this new structure.

There are a few weak points in this approach...

[CM Briefing 2006-14, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 08:13 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Intranets, James' articles

Login to the intranet

A very simple but very effective improvement to the intranet is to ensure that all staff login to the site in order to use it. This allows a number of immediate benefits to be offered, as well as providing a foundation for future enhancements.

That this is worth mentioning is an indication that many intranets are run on a shoestring, or have grown incrementally over time. These 'ad-hoc' intranets are often supported by a minimal (or non-existent) IT platform with no one positioned to implement these types of core features.

This article explores the benefits of implementing staff logins, and outlines how to make it work in practice.

Knowing your users

Having staff login to the intranet has almost nothing to do with security; it's all about knowing your users. Once you know who has logged in, it then becomes possible to deliver functionality that is specifically targeted or tailored to that staff member.

This opens up the door to many time-saving features on the intranet, most of which can be implemented incrementally with only a modest investment in technology and time. If an intranet redesign is being planned, one element of this should certainly be implementing staff login, if this is not already available on the site.

[CM Briefing 2006-13, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 12:33 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, James' articles

Understanding the requirement for a portal

There is no doubt that fuelled by a compelling business need, a portal solution can provide real business advantage. However provisioning a portal when it is a content-managed site that is required, will result in the most expensive website or intranet that an organisation can build. What then should those organisations keen on entering the portal space consider? Using two case studies this article explores portals and seeks to answer this question by taking a look at:

• the difference between 'portal as a concept' and 'portal as a technology'
• the types of business initiatives that are well-suited to a portal
• the importance of aligning business users' thinking with that of those working in the information technology (IT) or information systems (IS) departments
• working out whether the business requirement is for a portal or a content-managed site

Enterprise information portals defined

Gaining an understanding of what exactly an enterprise information portal is can be difficult; in part because portals are completely invisible to the end user and in part because there is little agreement as to what exactly constitutes a portal. The earlier article Taking a business-centric approach to portals differentiated between 'portal as a concept', and 'portal as a technology.'

[August KM Column written by Cairo Walker, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 12:09 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Information management, Intranets

Selling information architecture: getting executives to say "yes"

Samantha Starmer has written an article on how to sell information architecture to executives. To quote:

Does the word salesman seem as repugnant to you as it often does to me? The funny thing is that I recently realized that I was actually selling all of the time -- selling my ideas, selling my perspective, selling my friends on the plan to get pizza instead of enchiladas. Selling doesn't just involve money. Even for used car salesmen, selling involves a lot of psychology, sociology and personal dynamics before they get to the money transaction. Many of us would say that one of the things we like most about a job is working with smart people and enjoying other people’s diverse perspectives. Selling is just understanding other people's perspectives and helping them understand how your perspective can be beneficial.

Posted by jamesr at 04:58 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Red lantern, Chinese gate

Red lantern, Chinese gate

Walking through Hoi An at night we came across this gate in front of a small temple. I was quite taken by the rich red colours, even if it took a lot of waiting for the lantern to stop swinging in the wind...

Posted by jamesr at 10:59 PM
Categories:

Conference program for the Oz-IA Retreat

The Oz-IA Retreat is rapidly coming together, with the release of a draft conference program. While the details will be filled in over the coming weeks, we've already got an exciting range of speakers lined up. This is going to be a fun event!

Posted by jamesr at 09:27 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

The quiet death of the major re-launch

Jared Spool has written an article discussing the death of the major re-launch. To quote:

With this knowledge, I recommended to the Marketing VP and her design team that they focus on a small portion of the site, such as the presentation of the mortgage interest rates. They needed to thoroughly research the different goals users had for this information.

Then they could try redesigns in usability testing, experimenting with different page designs. Once they have a design that is doing well in the lab, I suggested they put on the site, carefully monitoring it's acceptance (maybe even using the same technique as eBay did with their seller's forms).

Posted by jamesr at 10:55 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Sanskrit carvings

Sanskrit carvings

The ruins of My Son are still magnificent, even after the Vietnam War bombings by the Americans. It was certainly the first time that I'd seen Sanskrit writing in the flesh. (See the rest of the My Son photo set.)

Posted by jamesr at 10:01 PM
Categories:

Writing for translation: Don't miss the opportunity!

Susan Harkus and Tomoko Gondow have written an article on how to write for translation, focusing on how to assist automated translation tools. To quote:

Most people think that a good translation depends on using the correct words of the second language. That assumption is incorrect. Vocabulary is important, and the dictionaries of most translation products can be extended by user dictionaries, but the first task of translation software is to parse the text structure.

That's where the text really influences the result. If you write for translation, you help the translation software understand how your meaning is constructed! And there's a bonus. Think. Don't your readers have the same objective as the software? To find meaning in what you write? Won't they also benefit if you write for translation?

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

Disgraceful portals "article"

Ok, normally I'm pretty mild-mannered on my blog, focusing just on practical articles and (hopefully) useful thoughts. But I've just come across something that makes me really mad.

It's this supposed article on portals published by Portals Magazine. I just don't know where to start, but here are a few issues:

• This is actually a vendor whitepaper, which they state up-front, but nonetheless still present it as an article that is part of their "exclusive Portals coverage".
• The "research" on the "state of the market" is conducted by a vendor. Needless to say, the results are nothing but good (apparently there are no issues with portals!).
• Much of it is just baseless spin such as: "Portals are allowing business users to become more active participants in shaping solutions to challenges that directly affect them, and helping IT ultimately deliver more value to the business, on time and on target."
• Not to mention: "This varied and formidable list of business and technology drivers refutes the market's naysayers, and recent analyst research further confirms the portal market's rebound."

Now I haven't come across Portals Magazine before, so I don't know if they're a real magazine or just an advertising site. I'm also not sure whether they are being unethical or just plain stupid. Anyway, I this is disgraceful.

(Note that I'm not saying anything about BEA. After all, good for them to get their marketing out to such a wide audience. I don't think BEA has done anything wrong, nor am I expressing opinions about their products. This is all about Portals "Magazine", and their apparent lack of understanding of journalistic principles.)

Sorry, I'll get off my high horse now, and get back to real work. (Since commenting is still broken, feel free to email me if you have thoughts on this.)

(Update: apparently the print version of the magazine has been discontinued, leaving just the website. So maybe the whole site is just one big sponsored ad?)

Posted by jamesr at 02:50 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Sunset over the Perfume River

Sunset over the Perfume River

One evening we hired motorbikes to take us out to a temple near Hue in time for the sunset. The view out over the Perfume River was spectacular, especially as the rays up into the sky became apparent.

I particularly liked this photo, with the kids playing in the water in the foreground, but there are plenty of other nice shots in the Hue photo set.

Posted by jamesr at 12:07 AM
Categories:

Utilising the cut-off look to encourage users to scroll

Jared Spool has written an article on how to encourage users to scroll long pages. To quote:

If our clients are finding their users aren't scrolling, we suggest they look for a reason beyond "Users don't expect to scroll" and see if maybe the design of the page is preventing it. By going for that Cut-off look, they might find their users are suddenly happy to scroll.

Posted by jamesr at 04:01 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Intranet structures: it's not easy to be in the middle

Jane McConnell has written a blog entry about the role of divisional intranet sites. To quote:

The challenge in these projects will be to define solutions that are user-oriented, yet let the different stake-holders provide their vision and content. Both the concepts of "core business" and "subsidiarity" make sense to me. But both make the role of the divisional and middle level intranets difficult to define.

Posted by jamesr at 10:35 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets