Articles by Month: January 2007

Presentation: Information Online 2007

Yesterday I gave a presentation at the Information Online 2007 conference being held in Sydney, Australia. The topic for my talk was "Intranets as Business Tools", covering the evolution of intranets and the need to find a new metaphor for intranets.

As is usual for me nowadays, the presentations are mostly images, but it will give you a general idea of what I was on about.

Intranets as Business Tools (PDF, 1.25Mb)

Posted by jamesr at 12:09 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

How to hire an intranet manager

Toby Ward has published a job description for an Editor-in-Chief. To quote:

I've helped a few clients hire an intranet manager and here are some of the key duties and skills that I suggest are necessary -- based on a job posting for the slightly more prolific Editor-in-Chief (feel free to take out some duties and skills for a less prolific position).

(Coincidentally, our next monthly article -- due out in a few days -- will also provide a position description for intranet managers.)

Posted by jamesr at 10:50 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

The end-user manifesto

Hugh Macleod has posted an end-user manifesto for web and application design, originally created by Danny V. The first five items:

1. Don't waste my time.

2. Help me do the right thing.

3. Respect my decisions.

4. Design well, and guide me to make the right decisions by that design.

5. Don't lie to me - if I see something in front of me, then I should be able to act on it unless the interface tells me I can't.

[Thanks to Eddie Lopez.]

Posted by jamesr at 10:38 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Testing incentives: the best way to pay

Cliff Anderson has written an article on incentives for test participants. To quote:

Recently, I informally surveyed the members on a popular usability list serv to see how other usability professionals compensate their participants. I heard from 37 respondents. Here’s how you compensate your participants, by the numbers.

Posted by jamesr at 10:19 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Eye gaze patterns while searching vs. browsing a website

Sav Shrestha & Kelsi Lenz have published results of research into eye gaze patterns on websites. To quote:

From this study we have replicated what Nielsen (2006) called the "F" pattern of viewing for a text-based webpage as shown in Figure 8. With a few exceptions, we also found the browsing task elicited this same "F" pattern though it was more dispersed than the search task. This pattern and the exceptions can be seen in Figure 9. The "F" pattern style of viewing does not seem to hold true while browsing or searching a picture-based webpage.

[Thanks to GUUUI.]

Posted by jamesr at 10:09 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Forrester Wave vs. component content management

Ann Rockley and Steve Manning have written an article on component content management. To quote:

The recent discussion on the absence of Component Content Management in the recent Forrester Wave Report: Content Centric Applications, Q1 2006 report was very interesting. It provoked a lot of discussion on whether or not Component Content Management should have been included.

This article highlights the complexity of the "content management" marketplace. Something like "component content management" is a very specialist application in practice, and is best suited to very publication-intensive situations. So that leaves the question: where does this fit into the broader marketplace, which is currently dominated by technically-simpler web content management systems?

Posted by jamesr at 03:49 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Don't let your CMS get a bad rap

Sara Redin has written an excellent article on avoiding CMS implementation problems. To quote:

CMS project managers face a dilemma. For a project to succeed, contributors need to embrace the system. However, when confronted with a new CMS your business colleagues are, understandably, not interested in understanding the system but in getting their job done. When things go wrong, negative experiences can quickly turn into a bad reputation for an entire Web CMS project, diminishing the possibilities for future success.

Posted by jamesr at 03:41 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Bob Boiko tour

Just a quick reminder that the early bird rate for Bob Boiko's Australian tour in March closes in just a few weeks. The dates for the events:

• Melbourne (Crowne Plaza): 15-16 March 2007
• Canberra (Hyatt Hotel): 20-21 March 2007
• Sydney (Mercure Hotel): 22-23 March 2007

Bob rarely gets a chance to visit Australia, so these workshops are not to be missed!

Posted by jamesr at 02:54 PM | Permalink
Categories:

Personalisation survey

We've now had over 420 responses to our 60 second User-driven intranet and portal personalisation survey, with good representation from the US, Europe and Australia. The survey will close in a few days, but it's still not too late to quickly work through the 9 questions (even if you haven't implemented personalisation).

Posted by jamesr at 02:34 PM | Permalink
Categories:

Results of our internal planning session

As I blogged earlier, we've been applying the 6x2 methodology to our own internal planning, to identify what we're going to be delivering over the coming six months.

In the end, it took us two days to work complete the process, which included evaluating 119 different ideas for activities or projects. It's proved to be a good process,and we've now got a clear list of activities, and a clear sense of direction.

As promised, I'm happy to share some of the details from the session...

Criteria

These are some of the criteria we identified to help us guide which activities to select:

• Generates income: as a consulting firm, a key consideration obviously has to be to generate income (to pay our wages!). The best ideas are therefore those that are both profitable for us, and beneficial for our clients.
• Builds our reputation: our success as a business rests on having visibility in the industries we work in, and a good reputation for our work. This includes having visibility on the global stage.
• Builds reputation of whole team: the goal is for every consultant to have a very visible role, beyond just James Robertson as the founder.
• Can be leveraged/built on: good ideas are those that lead onto further activities or opportunities, or support other initiatives we are already running.
• Supports personal growth: our activities must support the needs of our staff, giving them opportunities to further build their experience and expertise.
• Delivers value to clients/industry: a fundamental measure must be that our activities are benefiting or supporting the clients we work with, and the wider industry as a whole.
• Innovative: our business is built around innovating the fields in which we work, and innovating how we work.
• Builds working environment: as a growing business, our challenge is to sustain a productive working environment, while creating an attractive environment for prospective new staff.

Constraints

Here are some of the constraints that limit our activities:

• Staff time: our biggest limiting factor is the lack of staff time inherent in any consulting business.
• Consulting/conference/etc commitments: while client work is obviously crucial, it can make it hard to spend time working on internal projects and initiatives.
• Lack of technology: like most growing businesses, the challenge is to maintain the internal infrastructure in sync with the size of the organisation.
• "Growing pains": we are undergoing huge amounts of internal change, as we take on new challenges and opportunities. This generates "growing pains" for us to work through progressively.
• Lack of support services: without internal IT/comms/graphics staff, we need to build up strong support services to streamline delivery of our activities.
• Lack of desk time/collaboration time: with staff out on site or at conferences, it can be hard to get everyone in the room at the same time.

Chosen activities

Using these criteria and constraints, we evaluated each idea. By the end of this process, we had a long list of activities, with a mix of inwards-focused and outwards-focused items. Just a few of the items we identified (in no particular order):

• Client satisfaction measurement
• Workshop: Effective Information Management
• Build international networks
• Revamp of induction process
• Translation of products into other languages
• 10 year/new office party
• Incremental website improvements
• S2D team blog
• Develop 'chill out' area
• Intranet screenshot library
• Internal mentoring

(Plus much more, to be announced when it's ready. Watch this space!)

Summary

I've just finished writing up a "status sheet" for our internal use, allowing us to tick off items as they're done. The use of the 6x2 methodology has proven to be very effective, and it has given us a strong roadmap to follow for the rest of the year. Now that we've got the initial round out of the way, future planning processes should be both quicker and easier.

Posted by jamesr at 10:59 AM | Permalink
Categories:

Mapping your website redesign strategy

Maish Nichani has written an article on facilitating the creation of a website redesign strategy. To quote:

The Eliminate, Reduce, Raise and Create framework by INSEAD professors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne is a popular technique for analysing business strategy. They have written an entire book -- Blue Ocean Strategy -- on this technique. We’re going to borrow a page from it and map our redesign strategy.

Posted by jamesr at 04:24 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Things that go bump in your CMS project

Rita Warren has published the results of a survey into CMS challenges. The top five were:

• Clarifying business goals
• Gaining and maintaining executive support
• Redesigning/optimizing business processes
• Gaining consensus among stakeholders
• Properly scoping the project

Not a hugely surprising list, but good to see, even if the tiny size of the survey (33 responses) doesn't make it all that meaningful...

Posted by jamesr at 08:29 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Kiwi Intranets group

I posted on this a while back, but there's now a new address for the Kiwi Intranets group. To quote:

Kiwi Intranets is an Online Group for people that reside in New Zealand who manage or maintain intranets.

I think there's huge value to be gained in joining these types of groups, as intranet teams can learn so much from each other, whether via online or face-to-face interractions...

Posted by jamesr at 08:15 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Paper prototyping

Shawn Medero has written an article on paper prototyping. To quote:

As interfaces become ever more complex and development schedules seem to get shorter and shorter, you may find it useful to give up your user-interface modeling software for awhile in favor of something simpler. All you need is paper, pens, scissors, and your imagination.

Posted by jamesr at 08:56 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Planning a European trip (April)

I'm currently in the process of planning a trip to Europe for 16-27 April this year. I have a number of activities already pencilled in (some public workshops, some consulting), but have a few gaps to fill before signing off on the trip.

To that end, drop me a line if you'd be interested in a day or two of my time during the trip, for in-house workshops, consulting or mentoring. Happy to cover intranets, search or content management.

The only challenge is that I need to get things finalised very quickly. So if you'd like to book in some time, please email me in the next few days...

Posted by jamesr at 10:30 AM | Permalink
Categories:

Developing user-centered tools for strategic business planning

Richard I Anderson has posted an entry on user-centred tools for strategic business planning. To quote:

User experience professionals continue to attempt to move their work and impact "upstream" -- to play an earlier and more strategic role in their workplaces' business. But exactly what does that mean? What is it that user experience practitioners or groups thereof should be doing differently or working towards doing (more)?

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

Panorama: Sydney University main hall

Panorama: Sydney University main hall

Photo stitching can be a lot of fun! Here's one of the experimental photos I took this morning, of the Sydney University quadrangle and great hall. I think it worked out pretty well...

Posted by jamesr at 04:21 PM
Categories: Photos

Expand your intranet leadership box

Nick Besseling has written an excellent article on intranet leadership. To quote:

In large organisations networking is obviously key for intranet leadership. The people I have found best for this are the really smart individuals who may or may not be managers (usually lower or mid level if they are) but someone that everyone knows is essential to the running of the place.

These are the people their managers go to for specialised advice and it is these people that suggest others in the organisation who may be useful in a project team. Become one of those people the specialists know and respect.

Posted by jamesr at 03:40 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Shadows in motion

Shadows in motion

This is taken at the Sydney Opera House late in the afternoon. It's one of the photos that comes about from a chance observation, and being in the right place and the right time.

Posted by jamesr at 03:00 PM
Categories: Photos

Wiki your web and intranet guidelines

Nick Besseling has written an article about using wikis for intranet guidelines. To quote:

Those of us that develop or promote web or intranet content and development guidelines within our organisation walk a fine line between help and dictatorship.

If you work in a large federated environment like I do (University) it isn't even possible to force people to follow guidelines and it comes down to advocacy and encouragement and making sure the guidelines meet the expectations of those that may use them.

Being seen as a dictator or 'style nazi' is never a good thing.

This is a beautifully inclusive approach, and one that I would wholeheartedly endorse!

Posted by jamesr at 11:55 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Getting management buy-in for KM

Patrick Lambe has written an article on getting management buy-in for KM, introducing a number of archetypes. To quote:

About 18 months ago we launched a narrative project to collect stories from KM practitioners about their experiences of success and failure in getting management buy-in and support for their KM initiatives. We collected 84 stories, which we took to a series of conferences in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore at the end of 2006, to derive archetypal characters that represent the range of typical attitudes and behaviours that knowledge managers encounter.

Posted by jamesr at 10:52 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

New Canberra dates for Bob Boiko

Oops. It seems we scheduled the Canberra dates for Bob Boiko's Australian Tour without realising that March 20 is "Canberra Day", and is therefore a public holiday...

This has now been fixed. The Canberra masterclass will now be a day later: 20-21 March 2007. Thanks for all those that have rung up, and if this is any indication of interest, it's worth getting registrations in quickly before we run out of spaces!

Posted by jamesr at 09:39 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Yearly planning session

Yesterday we held our very first yearly internal planning day, bringing together the whole team to identify what we will be tackling in the year to come. It was great to devote the time just to ourselves, to position us for the coming year.

The core of the day was using the 6x2 planning methodology on ourselves to:

• pull together all the ideas of what we might do
• identify our criteria for choosing an item
• identify our constraints
• evaluate each idea, to determine what to tackle in the coming six months

First off, it was great to see that we weren't short on ideas! The following photo shows all the sticky notes up on the wall, ranging from ideas for new reports and workshops, through to internal activities to improve systems or processes.

Some observations on the day:

• It's great to having a growing team which allows us to tackle even more of our ideas and projects (such as further reports, workshops, etc).
• It's good to be on the other side of the 6x2 process, so we can better understand how intranet teams feel when we run them through a similar process.
• For example, there were definitely some activities that we all wanted to see happen (primarily related to fixing some internal systems), but we quickly identified that they just weren't practical to schedule for the coming six months. It's tough to let them go, but at least as a team we can see that while they can't immediately be done, they won't be forgotten.
• It's good to have lots of ideas, but even better to have a concrete plan for delivering them.
• We've brought together a bunch of extremely talented and experienced individuals, and a day like this gives them a chance to show off their stuff.
• The challenge is always to meld these individuals into an effective team, and I think these sorts of sessions do a lot to help everyone better understand each other.
• One day was only enough to get started! We've scheduled two further half-day sessions to finish off the planning, which should be enough to get the next 12 months sketched out.
• I'm sure I'll share more of the results of these sessions as we progress, and watch this space over the coming six months for the end-products of our plans...

Posted by jamesr at 03:02 PM | Permalink
Categories:

Predictions for 2007: The elusive quest for simple

The CMSWatch team have published an article on their content management predictions for 2007. To quote:

What does this year hold for content technologies? As the holiday season winds down and we all gear up for 2007, we offer 12 predictions for the next 12 months. On the whole, we expect to see more incremental changes, rather than epochal shifts. Despite all the industry mergers, new product versions, and ceaseless march of acronyms, the content technology industry does not in fact move very fast.

Posted by jamesr at 09:33 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Three-pronged fork in the road

Christina Wodtke has written an article about career options for designers, IAs and usability folks. To quote:

Yogi Berra once said, "When you see a fork in the road, take it." For designers (and engineers and others in the "service" organizations), the fork in the road often comes mid-career, when you finally feel like you are good at what you are doing. Suddenly you are offered -- almost required to -- do something that is 90 degrees away from what you have mastered. And that is pretty scary.

Posted by jamesr at 09:15 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Usability & user-centered design

The BBC's fifteen web principles

Tomski has published a list of the BBC's fifteen web principles. To quote:

We developed these as part of the BBC2.0 project. I've been meaning to publish them for a while since they were signed off by the BBC board. They're perpetually draft.

[Thanks to Brendan Quinn.]

Posted by jamesr at 08:48 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Usability & user-centered design

Speaking at the IA Summit

The initial program has been published for the IA Summit in Las Vegas (22-26 March 2007), and I'm pleased to say that I'll be speaking not once but three times at this conference:

• Full day workshop: Intranets as a Business Tool
• Half-day workshop: Improving the Design of Search
• Conference presentation: Enterprise IA methodologies: starting two steps earlier

Do be sure to drop by to say hi if you're at the conference (or nearby), and don't forget to register for my workshops!

Posted by jamesr at 03:36 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Personalisation survey: 300 and counting

We've had a huge response to our 60-second survey on user-driven intranet and portal personalisation. Over 300 people have responded to the survey, with 47% having implemented personalisation features (and 53% without personalisation). So we're getting a great cross-section of intranets and portals.

I'd still like to get double the responses, so we have a really representative set of result. So please take the minute needed to fill in the survey, even if you don't have personalisation in place.

(The full results of the survey will be released publicly.)

Posted by jamesr at 10:12 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Intranets

Standards for good intranet & extranet design

Dave Pollard has written an article on standards for good intranet design. To quote:

One of the tasks in my current work contract is to assess and make recommendations for improvement to the organization’s Intranet and Extranet sites. To do this assessment, I did some research to identify the characteristics of a well-designed Intranet or Extranet, and then consulted with my brilliant Toronto KM colleagues (Sandra, Howard, Richard, Gordon, Greg and Ted). We came up with these sixteen standards

[Thanks to Shawn Callahan.]

Posted by jamesr at 08:26 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Blogging on enterprise 2.0

I've just started blogging on enterprise 2.0 on the FASTForward blog, leading up to the FASTForward event in San Diego. This should be good fun, as will give me a different forum on which to explore my thoughts on this topic. I've already written a brief entry on gaining adoption, with more to come.

PS. I will be attending the San Diego event (February 7-9), so if you are in the area and would like to catch up for a chat at the end of one of the days, drop me a line.

Posted by jamesr at 09:09 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information management

Good to great intranet

Toby Ward has written an entry exploring the concept of a "good to great" intranet. To quote:

What is the difference between a good intranet and a great intranet? What do you do to get to great? There is no simple answer. In fact, using the Prescient Digital Media intranet methodology of rating and scoring an intranet out of 10, I estimate that to advance a 6 out of 10 intranet to an 8 out of 10 requires twice the effort and much more intelligent thinking.

Posted by jamesr at 08:28 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

A brief history of information (part 2)

Ted Byfield continues his series of articles looking at the history of the word "information". To quote:

In the centuries of use before its modern redefinition, as we've seen in Part 1, "information" had already toted up a formidable list of ambiguities. For example, it's an action in some usages and a thing in others, it's both singular and plural, and it's both an informal assertion of fact as well as a procedure for making a formal statement.

These slippery qualities made "information" a very amenable candidate as cybernetics pioneer Claude Shannon (and others) sought to name their developing, doubly negative idea of the reduction of uncertainty. They also seem to have made the word resistant to efforts to fix it with a precise or stable new meaning. So, in addition to its long-standing contradictory substance, Shannon's efforts added still more paradoxical attributes: information became something abstract yet measurable, significant but not meaningful, and, last but not least, present wherever communication occurs but is nowhere to be found.

Posted by jamesr at 12:39 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information management, Knowledge management

First Intranet Leadership Forum workshop

A date has been set for the very first quarterly workshop of the Intranet Leadership Forum. This will be held in Sydney on Wednesday 7 February, and it will be a half-day session through to lunch.

If you're thinking of joining the Intranet Leadership Forum, now is a good time to do it, so you don't miss out on the first event of the year. Contact Catherine Grenfell if you would like more details.

Posted by jamesr at 08:42 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranet Leadership Forum

Managers say the majority of information obtained for their work is useless

An Accenture study reports on staff's ability to find useful information. To quote:

Half (51 percent) of customer service managers -- more than managers in any other area -- are likely to encounter challenges when trying to obtain information about other parts of the company. In addition, 40 percent of customer service managers -- more than those in any other function -- said that the most difficult aspect of managing information for their job is going to numerous sources of information.

[Thanks to Jack Vinson.]

Posted by jamesr at 08:20 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information management, Intranets, Metrics & ROI

The enterprise search challenge

Lynda Moulton has written an entry on the enterprise search challenge. To quote:

Can you imagine any single search interface or product from the tools you know that would give you the means to find all of these pieces of information? Can you imagine a single search tool that would answer your query in a couple of simple steps, and able to perform the functions right out of the box? Simple solutions that address the complexity of business variables and technology standards in most organizations make any single solution an unlikely candidate at a reasonable cost.

Posted by jamesr at 08:07 AM | Permalink
Categories: Search tools

Blue Mountains panorama

Blue Mountains panorama

This is another panorama of the Blue Mountains, stitched together from half a dozen images. The clouds certainly increase the level of interest, and it looks good at a larger size (click on the image to be taken through to Flickr and then choose "all sizes").

Posted by jamesr at 12:17 PM
Categories: Photos

Survey: User-driven intranet and portal personalisation

Personalisation is seen as a desirable enhancement for intranets, and a major selling point for portals, but the key question is: to what extent do staff actually make use of these features? While there is some level of anecdotal information on the actual adoption of personalisation, there are no hard figures.

This 60-second survey, consisting of 8 questions, looks at the adoption of user-driven "personalisation" on intranets and portals. (Please do fill this out even if you don't currently have personalisation implemented.)

The full results of this survey will be shared publicly, and the aim is to quickly gather valuable figures that can be used by intranet and portal teams when planning product selection and implementation.

Please fill in the survey (even if you haven't implemented personalisation)

(This survey is supported by Step Two Designs, the Intranet Leadership Forum, CMSWatch, Boye IT and CM Forum.)

Posted by jamesr at 08:42 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Intranets

Panorama of the Megalong Valley at sunset

Panorama of the Megalong Valley at sunset

I spent a late afternoon in the Blue Mountains over the break, just spending some time working with my camera. Of the shots taken, I think the panoramas probably turned out the best, including this one. (This is consists of about four images stitched together.)

Posted by jamesr at 06:13 PM
Categories: Photos

ECM Suite is an oxymoron

Alan Pelz-Sharpe has written an entry arguing that the phrase "ECM Suite" is an oxymoron. To quote:

I would like to state for the benefit of anyone considering buying ECM technology that there is really no such thing as an "ECM Suite" -- not beyond product labeling and marketing that is.

Posted by jamesr at 09:14 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

New subscription package for CMS Watch reports

CMSWatch have long published what are the definitive reports on vendors and their products in the content management and information management space. If you are in the US, these are tremendously valuable reports for prospective purchasers and those interested in learning more about the marketplace.

It's therefore very interesting to see that they've now announced a yearly subscription that gives access to the full range of reports. Potentially a good option for those with heavy information needs, particularly as the range of reports is steadily growing...

Posted by jamesr at 08:42 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

The UX Radar – measuring the user experience

Erez Kikin-Gil has written an article introducing his new UX Radar, a way of visualising all the difference facets of experience design. To quote:

Based on the UX Honeycomb, I have designed a UX evaluation tool – the UX Radar. This tool allows evaluating products/services and clearly seeing their similarities and differences from a UX perspective. It also allows seeing changes in the product/service design process and monitoring the UX evolution.

[Thanks to Peter Morville.]

Posted by jamesr at 07:58 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Eight principals for good search suggestions

Avi Rappoport has written an article on search suggestions (aka "best bets"). To quote:

Search suggestion systems complement search engine results with human judgement, providing links to specific landing pages for common search terms where the algorithmic results may be confusing or unavailable. (For more information, see my Search Suggestions analysis). This is a list of eight principals to keep in mind when administering a search suggestions system.

[Thanks to Lou Rosenfeld.]

Posted by jamesr at 12:48 PM | Permalink
Categories: Search tools

A brief history of information

Ted Byfield has written an article that explores the history of the word "information". To quote:

The word seems to stand for everything, and nothing. "Information" describes everything from a precise mathematical property of communication systems, to discrete statements of fact or opinion (for example, the time a film begins or someone's perspective on a situation), to a staple of marketing rhetoric, to a world-historical phenomenon on the order of agriculture or industrialization.

The frequency and disparity of its use, by specialists and lay people alike, to describe countless general and specific aspects of life makes it difficult to analyze; no single academic discipline or method can offer an adequate explanation of the phenomenon.

Posted by jamesr at 02:58 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information management

An overview of CUE

The UPA has published an interview with Rolf Molich, the convener of the CUE tests (Comparative Usability Evaluation). To quote:

That study, the largest to date, was part of a workshop at CHI 2003. It divided up 17 teams, with half doing tests and half doing expert reviews. Rolf notes, “One of the things we wanted to find out was, ‘Is there a difference?’ Tests are more expensive, but do they give better results – more quality, more reliability, more reproducible results? We found that not to be the case.” He continues, “It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to make a distinction based on what the teams came up with. There was one difference though. The teams that used an expert review were a bit more efficient. They invested fewer resources. Otherwise, there were few differences.”

Posted by jamesr at 02:45 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

New Year's resolution for vendors

Tony Byrne has written an entry on his New Year's resolution for CMS vendors. To quote:

When I talk to software vendors about customer projects that got seriously delayed or have failed outright, the response is almost invariably: "implementation problem." That's code-speak for the customer or integrator (or both) screwing up. Sometimes this rings true, though I suspect more commonly implementation troubles result from a poor product fit.

Posted by jamesr at 02:33 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Design Comics Templates 1.0, Part I

Martin Hardee from the Sun.com team have published a set of design comic templates. To quote:

You can use these characters and scenes in storyboards, presentations and brainstorming during product development; they're free for you to use. I do ask that you include a short credit in your finished work (see the slides), but other than that we encourage you to get creative and use them however you like as a base for graphic storytelling in your company or organization. If you enjoy them or have additional ideas, please post a comment to this blog.

These are so cool! I'm very impressed with this work, and the generosity of the Sun team in sharing them so openly...

Posted by jamesr at 10:56 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

From 2006 to 2007

Looking back, 2006 was a good year for us at Step Two Designs. There were many highlights:

• Cairo Walker joined our consulting team, bringing a huge depth of experience in information management.
• Catherine Grenfell also joined our team, to run our new Intranet Leadership Forum.
• Speaking of the Intranet Leadership Forum, it has been great to finally set this up, and it represents the next step in our ongoing efforts to better support intranet teams in all organisations. There has been huge interest, and the first meeting will be held in Sydney in February.
• We continued our self-set discipline of publishing three articles every month, even though the demand for our services has often been overwhelming.
• We travelled the globe in 2006, speaking at conferences and workshops in the US, Canada, UK, the Netherlands, Malaysia and New Zealand.
• Scott Berkun came out for an Australian tour, which was a huge success with lots of positive feedback on his relaxed but insightful style.
• Plenty of very interesting work came our way, from redesigning a large portal-based intranet, creating roadmaps for many intranets, working with high-profile non-profits, developing information management strategies, and advising on the management of large corporate website.
• In short, we had a lot of fun in 2006!

Looking forward, 2007 is going to be a huge year for us:

• Bob Boiko is coming out for a tour in March, which is exciting as Bob literally "wrote the book" on content management. We're also lining up more international speakers for later in the year.
• We're moving offices in early February, to a whole floor that is three times the size of our current offices (still in Chippendale).
• We'll be launching new global awards early in the year, watch this space.
• Several new reports are nearing completion, the first on the 6x2 methodology, the other on collaboration. These will be out in the first few months of 2007, with more to come later in the year.
• We'll very shortly be running a survey on intranet and portal personalisation, which should generate some interesting results.
• The Intranet Leadership Forum will be going strong in 2007, building on the early momentum and enthusiasm.
• We already have a pile of very interesting jobs lined up for 2007, and are looking forward to exploring even more exciting jobs as the year progresses.
• The consulting team will continue to grow. We could do with two extra consultants right now, and if you are very experienced at intranets, information management or information architecture (just one of the three is enough), drop us a line. (We're only looking for those with at least five years hands-on experience, whether in-house or as a consultant.)
• In short, we're just warming up. 2006 was a busy year, but it's just a taste for what's to come in 2007!

As a final note, we'd like to thank all of our clients and supporters for their help in 2006. This is a fascinating and challenging space to be in, and together we're looking forward to exploring it further in the year to come...

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

CMS wishlist for 2007

Apoorv Durga writes about his CMS wishlist for 2007. Just one of his wishlist items:

Vendors will agree that these products form a part of a bigger picture in the enterprise architecture. So they'll make efforts to make it easy to integrate with other products or decouple features so that one can plug-in their choice of products for search, workflow etc.

Posted by jamesr at 07:16 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Ethnography goes mainstream

Todd Warfel has written a piece on the rise of ethnography as part of an overall design process. To quote:

One of my favorite research methods is ethnography. Unfortunately, it is arguably the most time consuming and costly, making it more difficult to sell to clients even when it is the best approach for a project. And while I don't get to do ethnography as often as I'd like to, here is hope. A recent Business Week article has brought Ethnography out of the shadows. Now, the cynic in me is concerned that marketing companies will create an "ethnography bandwagon" and dilute the method the way they've diluted focus groups and surveys.

Posted by jamesr at 07:04 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

The dark side of prototyping

Henrik Olsen has written an article on how to avoid common pitfalls when prototyping. To quote:

Are there any downsides of prototyping? Not really. But as with everything else in life, you might stumble and hurt yourself if you don’t watch your step. This article points out some of the banana skins to steer clear off.

Posted by jamesr at 09:01 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design