Articles by Month: March 2007

Question CMS consolidation

Graham Oakes has written an article that questions whether to consolidate websites. To quote:

Many organizations are looking at a portfolio of dozens of content management systems running somewhere on their network. From sheer tidiness alone, it'd be nice to have a shorter list. And such tidiness can have real benefits: better negotiating leverage with vendors, reduced overhead to manage contracts, reductions in the number of servers and hence in datacenter space (with attendant power and operational costs), and so on. Finally, increased demands for compliance and control are placing a premium on simplifying information management. That oil company was looking at a return on investment running well into eight figures based on such benefits.

But dig a little deeper and things aren't so clear.

Posted by jamesr at 06:33 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Setting up business stakeholder interviews

Michael Beavers has written an article on setting up stakeholder interviews. To quote:

Interviewing is both art and science, and it is something that any UE practitioner with a little additional time and moderation skills can employ to extract clear business requirements. Without this foundation, business requirements can be unclear and deadlines for launching new sites, features, and content can be unrealistic. Worse, companies may launch features that users do not really want. Early and effectively gathered stakeholder input is also valuable for determining directions for user research during new site and product design.

Posted by jamesr at 06:20 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Leaving Las Vegas

Experimental panorama: flamingo neon

I've been in Las Vegas for the last 5 days for the IA Summit. It's a mad, bizarre place, packed with people, slot machines and neon lights. The sensory overload frankly makes it hard to sleep at night, so I'm looking forward to heading out for some sightseeing in the desert tomorrow...

Posted by jamesr at 03:56 PM
Categories: Photos

Presentation: IA Summit 2007

As ever, the IA Summit (held this year in Las Vegas) has been a hugely enjoyable event, mostly due to the conversations held in the corridors. I gave a presentation on "Enterprise IA methodologies: starting two steps earlier", which covered the use of ethnographic techniques within organisations.

Enterprise IA methodologies: starting two steps earlier (1.3Mb PDF)

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

Unanswered search questions: areas for further study

Yesterday I ran a half-day workshop on designing search at the IA Summit in Las Vegas, and today I listened to a talk on search analytics by Lou Rosenfeld and Rich Wiggins.

We are all saying the same things. Namely, to make search work a lot better:

• track most popular searches and failed searches
• check the popular searches yourself, and fix the results if required
• use search engine synonyms
• implement search engine 'best bets'

These are all practical approaches that are easy to implement and they will dramatically improve the effectiveness of search results. (See my earlier article for more on this.)

At the end of the day, these are all very simple (even simplistic) approaches. They cover the basics, but there is still a lot of work (and thinking) to be done before we have really cracked search.

What's become apparent to me is that beyond the basics, we quickly run short of experience and answers, across the whole search industry. There are few practical projects to draw experience from, and what results there are haven't been widely or efficiently shared with others.

So in the spirit of encouraging further research and discussion, here are my big unanswered questions of search (in no particular order):

• How do we understand the context of users' searches? Depending on the context, users searching for 'disposal' may mean completely different things (are they looking for recordkeeping information or garbage bins). These are also called 'ambiguous terms', and they are a real problem to be overcome if search is to work really well. How do we solve this problem?
• How do we blend search and browse? Search vendors offer an incredibly rich set of tools that can be included on search and results pages for filtering, navigating, and refining. When should these tools be used, and how should they be presented?
• How do we process and cluster search usage reports? There are different possible search terms for the same search, but at present the "most popular searches" report simply adds up the number of times the same (exact) search string is used. We need better algorithms for processing, cleaning up and clustering search usage reports, to make them more useful.
• How do we more intelligently match 'best bets'? As above, 'best bets' are typically matched very simply, with a specific search string giving a pre-selected list of matches. As usage of this grows, we often end up not giving any best bets, or presenting too many. What are the algorithms for better matching best bets?
• How should we display best bets? Should we present best bets in its own section at the start of the results, or just as the first few hits?
• How effective are automated clustering tools? Search engines now offer many automated ways of analysing text, providing recommend links, terms and clusters. How well do they work, when should they be used, and how should they be presented?
• How do we create a dialogue between users and search? We know that users often don't get what they want with their first search, but it's proving very difficult to get users to then "work with" the search engine to obtain better results. We know it's not Ms Dewey, so how do we create this dialogue?
• Can we use social software to improve search? Google works very well because of "pagerank", using the cross-linking between sites to improve search. On our sites, and within the enterprise, we don't have this information. Will web 2.0, enterprise 2.0 or social software give us this valuable context to help with search, and if so, how?
• How do we make enterprise search work? While vendors are madly selling enterprise search products at present, the reality is that few (if any) know how to make this work in practice. The fundamental challenge is: how do we determine relevance and give meaningful results when searching across such a wide range of information and formats?
• Are their other good search interfaces, beyond just a search box? There is some experimentation now with a variety of different search interfaces, including "speedsearch" that displays possible search terms while the user is still typing. Which of these new ideas work, and when should we be using them?
• How do we best meet the needs of specialist search users? Specialist search users (lawyers, engineers, researchers, etc) have very different needs from general searchers. Are there "best practices" about how to best design search for these users?

If nothing else, this list may help people to say: "hey, the nifty solution I've been told to implement is on this list, maybe there's some hard thinking to be done". The questions can also be a good foil for vendor over-enthusiasm and feature-obsession...

Note that this is just a list written off the top of my head, and I'm sure I'll think of a dozen more questions before the end of the day. Email me with your big questions, and I'll synthesise all of them into a single list.

Posted by jamesr at 08:18 AM | Permalink
Categories: Search tools

Launch of the global Intranet Innovation Awards

I am extremely excited to announce the launch of our new global Intranet Innovation Awards. These are now open for submissions, which must be received by 15 May 2007.

The Intranet Innovation Awards are global awards that celebrate new ideas and innovative approaches to the design and delivery of intranets. The goal is to find these ideas (whether large or small), and to share them with the wider community.

Uniquely, these awards recognise individual intranet improvements, and not intranets as a whole.

Intranets must innovate in order to prosper; they must constantly grow and evolve to better meet the needs of the organisations they serve. While there can be no single 'best intranet', there are innovative ideas and approaches that warrant recognition.

The Intranet Innovation Awards have therefore been established to celebrate the great work done by intranet teams across the globe, to give them the recognition they deserve. Gold Awards are given across four different categories, each focusing on a specific aspect of intranets. Platinum Award winners are then chosen to recognise the most extraordinary entries for the year.

These awards are about improving all intranets, by increasing the pace of innovation across the whole of the intranet community. Every idea, no matter how small, adds to our understanding of what it means to have a successful intranet.

The Intranet Innovation Awards have been created by Step Two Designs, a recognised thought-leader in intranet strategy and design. These are also truly global awards, supported by a network of intranet-savvy organisations from the US to the UK, Europe and beyond.

Visit the awards page to read more and to download the entry form.

On a personal note:

I've worked with a lot of organisations, looking at how to further improve their intranets. I've also been lucky enough to travel around the globe, and have seen intranets in many different countries.

In all cases, intranet teams have implemented at least a few great features on their sites. Even if the site as a whole is struggling, these innovations stand out. These awards are designed to bring these small innovations out into the light, and to give teams the recognition they deserve.

So even if you don't think your intranet is great overall, I strongly encourage you to enter those aspects that are working well. Other intranet teams can then benefit from your good ideas, and you get some much-needed recognition.

Posted by jamesr at 11:35 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Podcast interview on intranets

Last week, Seth Gottlieb and Bryant Shea interviewed Toby Ward and myself regarding intranets. The podcast covered a wide range of topics, from broad intranet strategy to where the latest generation of collaboration tools fit in. We had a lot of fun making it, hopefully you'll enjoy listening to it.

(PS. due a technical problem, I wasn't able to get into the podcast recording session until it had already started, so you'll first hear from me about 15mins in.)

Posted by jamesr at 09:33 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Why [some] tech writers don't like content management

Rahel Bailie has written an entry on why some tech writers don't like CMS. To quote:

Moving to content management means a big shift in the way technical communicators work and the way they think about their work. With some sweeping generalizations (because the very nature of "top ten" lists require such generalizations), here are my five top reasons that technical communicators don't like content management.

Posted by jamesr at 12:42 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

State of the art for enterprise portals

Janus Boye has written an article on the state of the art for enterprise portals. To quote:

As our understanding of portal technology has evolved we've elaborated a set of common, sometimes decisive, portal scenarios that describe different business problems. These scenarios, however, range widely from the simple to the more complex.

While we favor scenario-based analysis, it still begs a question: can we generalize more broadly about features and attributes that are universally essential to successful portal projects? Have we learned enough to identify a current "state of the art" in portal functionality across all types of enterprise scenarios? I think so.

Posted by jamesr at 12:29 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Design Comics Templates 1.0: Meet AnaLi

The Sun.com team have published another set of design comics 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 under a Creative Commons Public Domain license. We 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.

Posted by jamesr at 04:31 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Web 2.0 adoption within intranets

Jane McConnell discusses the adoption of web 2.0 within intranets. To quote:

The slide you see here is from my 2006 Global Intranet Survey results about the integration of blogs into intranets. They confirm that the integration of new tools such as blogs is progressive, certainly not yet the norm. (You can read background on the survey on my post Global Intranet Strategies Survey Results written in October when I released the report. The data was collected between June and August 2006. Send me an email if you want the link to download the report, which is free. )

Posted by jamesr at 04:18 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Text clouds: a new form of tag cloud?

Joe Lamantia has written an article exploring the concept of text clouds (versus tag clouds). To quote:

"Text cloud" might be a more accurate label for these visualizations than tag cloud. In addition to recognizing fundamental differences - text clouds differ from tag clouds in composition (no tags at all) and purpose (predominantly comprehension, rather than access or navigation) - distinguishing the two types of clouds will make it much easier to assess their abilities to support user experience needs and business goals.

Posted by jamesr at 10:24 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Leading up to the 2007 Global Intranets Survey

Last year, Jane McConnell in France ran the first Global Intranets Survey. This was almost certainly the most comprehensive survey ever conducted on intranet strategy and management, and unique in its focus on global and complex organisations. There is huge value to be gained from the survey results, which can be obtained free of charge on Jane's site.

The 2007 survey is soon to be open for submissions, and for more information on this or to participate, contact Jane.

Posted by jamesr at 09:21 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Content analysis heuristics

Fred Leise has written an article on content analysis heuristics. To quote:

So doing a content inventory is all well and good, but what exactly is it about the content that we are supposed to understand? What are we supposed to tell our client, other than that the website has 4,321 pages, of which 358 are dead-ends, 427 have no page titles, 27 have content that has expired, there are 432 different document templates in use, and there are 17 distinct document types?

Posted by jamesr at 09:02 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Deep Context

Jorge Arango has written an article on deep context, relating to the practice of information architecture. To quote:

In Hall's model, High context (HC) communications convey much of the meaning of a message in information that is pre-programmed beforehand in the speakers and the setting of the communication. In other words, much of the message implied by who the speakers are, their relationship to one another, where they are communicating, etc. A typical HC situation would be your family's holiday dinner party: the way you communicate with the other people there, the manner in which jokes are told and interpreted, and the special places reserved at the table for certain members of the family are all "rules" that are agreed to by all, yet not written down in any formal manner beforehand. The bounds of these relationships have emerged naturally through the interactions of these people -- and you -- over the years.

Posted by jamesr at 07:45 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Improving the user experience with in-page navigation

Maish Nichani has written an article on designing in-page navigation. To quote:

In-page navigation techniques are used to layout web content on a page. When used properly they improve the user experience. But when misused they just add to the anxiety. This article chalks out the different in-page navigation options available to us and offers some tips on using them effectively.

Posted by jamesr at 08:44 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Usability & user-centered design

Better content management through information architecture

Masood Nasser has written an article on content management and information architecture. To quote:

To implement a successful content management system, we have to go beyond business process and technology and understand how the organization, as an organism, interacts with and uses its content. Four factors are crucial to ensuring an organization can successfully manage its content.

Posted by jamesr at 08:26 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

FastForwarding to a better understanding, part 3

Andrew McAfee has written another insightful piece about enterprise 2.0. To quote:

My skepticism about any wildfire spread of E2.0 stems from the fact that the new tools and approaches will succeed over time only in environments that have a set of characteristics. Technical characteristics are the most obvious of these. As the IWeek survey highlighted, security and access control remain key concerns among technologists, and they'll have to be addressed before most IT departments give their blessings to Enterprise 2.0. In addition, the user interfaces of many (most?) current tools will also need to be improved. A student told me last week that employees at a large tech company she's familiar with used to use wikis heavily, but now they just use Google Docs for group-level collaboration. The Docs are trivially easy to set up and edit, and even though they don't offer full wiki functionality (yet) they work well enough for many purposes.

Posted by jamesr at 07:59 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information management

Understanding the 6x2 methodology

When we recently released the 6x2 methodology for intranets report, we fully realised that this was something completely new, never-before seen in the world. While there have been a lot of purchases (thanks!), I'm sure quite a few organisations are still hesitating, not quite sure what they will get.

Probably the best way to communicate what the 6x2 methodology is all about is in the words of other intranet experts who have provided feedback on the report:

"Lack of senior management attention, and being swamped with daily business, are the biggest challenges for intranet managers throughout the world. Step Two's 6x2 methodology gives intranet managers a powerful tool to breach these barriers by continually improving the intranet with tangible, visible results, and thus creating value for the enterprise. Riding on this powerful upwards spiral, intranet teams ready themselves for the next level of corporate intranet success."

Lukas Karrer, Stimmt AG (Switzerland)

"From the best intranet firm of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere is a new methodology on enhancing an existing intranet. The 6x2 methodology from Step Two Designs is a highly, pragmatic, activity focused process for improving the intranet in 6-month chunks. Simple to digest and understand, this methodology is a particularly solid do-it-yourself approach for small and medium-size organizations."

Toby Ward, Founder and CEO of Prescient Digital Media (Canada)

"Intranet teams are constantly confronted with many business needs and yet never seem to have insufficient resources and support to solve them. With little recognition of the value of the intranet, it is often very difficult to gain the required resources, and maintain the energy levels and enthusiasm of the intranet team. How can intranets be developed under these circumstances?

"James Robertson, the MD of Step Two Designs has developed a very pragmatic approach to the resolution of these problems. His new report, entitled '6x2 methodology for intranets' works round a six month planning cycle, with a focus on what can be achieved in the next six months, and what might lie ahead for the following six months. The methodology is based on a ten-step process, of which only the final two steps are about implementation. There is a strong message here that good planning and preparation are essential if tangible and visible results are to be achieved. The key messages are about setting realistic objectives and then delivering on them.

"As with all Step Two Designs reports there is the strong feeling of a synthesis of experience from a wide range of client projects. The clarity of writing and the design of the 104pp report ensure that it could be used within hours of downloading it. Before very long the 6x2 methodology will be the intranet equivalent of the Balanced Scorecard. Simple but very powerful. I strongly recommend that you purchase a copy. The price is $189, a small price to pay for transforming your organisation. If you still have to make a business case to spend the money divide the price by the number of employees, each of whom will see a significant improvement to the intranet within six months. My only reservation is the title, which does not bring out the purpose of the report as a planning tool. The report can be downloaded from the Step Two Designs web site."

Martin White, Intranet Focus (UK)

All in all, I'm very proud of the report. Our best and most powerful thinking has gone into it, and it is a natural extension of the Intranet Roadmap. (Full details on the report)

Posted by jamesr at 02:40 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Bob Boiko's workshop is rapidly approaching

It's now only a week or so until the first of Bob Boiko's workshops in Australia. While Canberra is almost completely full, there are still places in Sydney and Melbourne. About the workshop in brief:

Web managers face real challenges: their sites are being deluged by content that is out of control and of dubious value. IT managers are struggling too: they can't prove the value of their web systems to their leaders and so get inadequate funding to deal with the ever increasing content load.

The solution is a two-pronged approach: first, figure out the types of information that are really worth distributing; and second, model those information types so they can be effectively collected, stored and published to the intranet, web and beyond.

This two-day masterclass by Bob Boiko, author of the Content Management Bible, will provide proven solutions to the hardest of content management challenges. Out from the US, this will be Bob's only visit to Australia in 2007, so don't miss out!

And the dates:

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

(Full workshop details)

Posted by jamesr at 02:18 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Intranet benchmarking for free

It can often be hard to assess where your own intranet is up to. By definition, other organisations" intranets cannot be seen, and there are few absolute measures to assess intranets against.

A strong desire remains, however, to clearly assess the intranet"s strengths and weaknesses, and to gain some insight into how the site is progressing against general "best practice". To help meet these needs, this briefing will explore the Intranet Review Toolkit, a free way of benchmarking intranets against commonly accepted standards.

Intranet Review Toolkit

The Intranet Review Toolkit provides intranet managers and designers with an easy-to-use method of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their intranet. It contains a substantial set of heuristics (guidelines or criteria), allowing a detailed intranet review to be conducted that focuses on a wide range of functionality, design and strategy.

While there are a number of published heuristics for reviewing public websites, up to now there has been no equivalent set for corporate intranets. Initially supported by an IA Institute Progress Grant, the Intranet Review Toolkit was drawn from experiences running expert reviews in many different organisations.

The Toolkit was then developed and published as a comprehensive set of intranet heuristics. It has been published under a Creative Commons license, allowing it to be freely downloaded and used (as long as certain conditions are met).

[CM Briefing 2007-04, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 01:42 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Intranets, James' articles, Usability & user-centered design

There are no "KM systems"

With the rise of knowledge management as a discipline, vendors increasingly rebranded their products as 'knowledge management systems' (KMS). While this was a convenient label to cover a broad range of functionality, the use of 'KMS' as a term has caused considerable confusion.

For this reason, this briefing will argue that organisations should abandon the search for a 'KMS', and instead focus more closely on the specific capabilities required. Vendors are similarly encouraged to more clearly define their product capabilities, and to let go use of the catch-all 'KMS' label.

Technology and KM

As defined by the Australian Standard on knowledge management (AS 5037-2005), knowledge management can be considered to consist of:

• people
• process
• technology
• content

In this way, it can be seen that while KM is not a technology discipline, technology plays a key role in delivering and supporting KM services. Within any organisation, there will almost certainly be the need for some technology (new or existing) to support overall knowledge management initiatives.

Quite naturally, some organisations are therefore going to the marketplace in search of 'knowledge management systems', as part of the KM projects.

[CM Briefing 2007-03, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 11:43 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information management, James' articles, Knowledge management

The importance of 'tangible' and 'visible'

Intranets are often invisible tools within organisations. While staff rely on the intranet to help them complete common tasks, the site itself is taken for granted. The intranet team is similarly low in visibility, with little senior management recognition of the team or its role.

The net effect is that intranet teams work hard from month to month, but struggle to gain the support and resources required to deliver a truly great site. While this is perhaps a natural by-product of the role of intranets within organisations, intranet teams can do much to increase their level of recognition (and therefore their budget and resources).

To achieve this, intranet teams should be guided by two words when planning intranet activities: tangible and visible.

Tangible means that the intranet team can demonstrate the value that the activity delivers to the organisation. Visible means that the benefits can be clearly seen, or communicated throughout the organisation.

At any given point, intranet teams should be conducting enough activities that are both tangible and visible to ensure that they sustain enthusiasm and support for the site. While there are behind-the-scenes improvements to be made to intranets, these should be paired with activities that are tangible and visible.

This article explores this concept, providing practical examples of activities that range across the whole spectrum.

[March KM Column, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 10:58 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information management, Intranets, James' articles

Enterprise 2.0 may require 'nudge 2.0'

Joe McKendrick reports on the latest edition of InformationWeek covering enterprise 2.0. To quote:

InformationWeek commissioned a survey of 250 IT executives, which found that close to a third, 32%, already have active Web 2.0 initiatives underway -- such as blogs, wikis, search, or mashups. Wikis are widely used at six percent of companies in the survey and used effectively by a few employees at 25% of companies. Mashups are widely used at about seven percent.

Posted by jamesr at 04:43 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information management, Intranets

Usability testing. Oh, the things you can learn.

Jared Spool has written an article on applying usability testing in real-life projects. To quote:

If you trace any usability problem to its inception -- the point where the problem was introduced into the design -- you'll find the same underlying cause: someone on the design team didn't have a key piece of information. Had they had that information, they would've made a different design decision. That design decision would, subsequently, have resulted in a different design -- one without the usability problem.

The most successful teams have learned that the best way to produce a usable product is to make informed decisions from the outset. They don't look at usability testing as a final validation tool. Instead, they see the technique as a method to learn the necessary information to create great designs in the first place.

Posted by jamesr at 04:23 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

More thoughts on the impending death of information architecture

Joshua Porter has written further on the impending death of information architecture. To quote:

The danger of infoprefixation is that it recasts human problems in terms of information. It's a subtle, but detrimental, shift because we risk losing sight of the reasons why people wanted or needed the information in the first place. If we see the world as a whole lot of information that needs to be catalogued, shared, and organized, then the problem becomes one of organization, not one that is based on the lives of the people we design for. It also moves us away from the rigor of design, which is to continually ask: Why do people do what they do?

Posted by jamesr at 03:45 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

How to write good FAQs

Caroline Jarrett has written an article on FAQs. To quote:

FAQs don't have that great a reputation, but recently, I've been working on FAQs for a client. Their computer help desk was annoyed about answering the same things again and again. Why not divert potential callers to a FAQ instead? Sounded reasonable, so we did the usual: created a prototype, ran some usability tests, did the necessary pile of changes and launched the revised version, rather quietly. And bingo: a modest success. Calls to the help desk are down 10% and users are rating the FAQ answers highly, on the whole.

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

Some IT problems on our end

As per my previous post, we moved offices on Friday. Needless to say, we had some technical problems as a result, which we've only just polished off today.

So: if you sent us a fax or email between last Friday and today, and you haven't heard back from us, it's probably best to resend it. It's always frustrating when these things occur, but they seem to be unavoidable in this day and age...

Posted by jamesr at 08:44 AM | Permalink
Categories: