Lean intranets - part 2
Patrick Walsh continues his analysis of managing intranets the lean way and comparing it to how car manufacturers manage their factories the lean way.
"So, there you have it. Basically, in the Lean Intranet, information professionals will be removing barriers, minimising and assessing content and continually improving their intranet using a customer-focused approach. Hard to achieve? I won't say that the transition to a lean approach in intranets will be without problems but I know it's possible. I've seen ‘lean' working for many years in the automotive sector helping to produce better cars through more efficient processes. Why not better, more efficient intranets?"
Permalink | Friday, May 08, 2009
Issue 1, Volume 1 of the Journal of IA
Issue 1 of the Journal of IA is now available for download. Here are the contents:
- Dorte Madsen's Editorial - Shall We Dance?
- Gianluca Brugnoli - Connecting the Dots of User Experience
- Helena Francke - Towards an Architectural Document Analysis
- Andrew Hinton - The Machineries of Context
- James Kalbach - On Uncertainty in Information Architecture
Permalink | Wednesday, May 06, 2009
The Elements of Social Architecture
An article by Christina Wodkte published in A List Apart on the 3 attributes of social architecture and how to cater for it: Identity, Relationships; and Activity.
"While your designs can never control people, they can encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior. The psychologist Kurt Lewin developed an equation that explains why people do the crazy things they do. Lewin asserts that behavior is a function of a person and his environment: B=f(P,E). You can’t change a person’s nature, but you can design the environment he moves around in. Let’s explore some of Alexander’s patterns I’ve observed in my work and the design work of my fellow practitioners."
Permalink | Monday, May 04, 2009
Conducting a Knowledge Audit
Here’s another in our series of video tutorials to different practical knowledge management techniques. It’s taken from a workshop we conducted last week on knowledge audits and knowledge mapping. For ease of use it’s split into three short parts: Different types of knowledge; Different strategies for different knowledge types; and conducting a knowledge audit and building knowledge maps.
Permalink | Monday, May 04, 2009
Designing for Faceted Search
A UIE article by Stephanie Lemiux:
"Faceted search lets users refine or navigate a collection of information by using a number of discrete attributes – the so-called facets. A facet represents a specific perspective on content that is typically clearly bounded and mutually exclusive. The values within a facet can be a flat list that allows only one choice (e.g. a list of possible shoe sizes) or a hierarchical list that allow you to drill-down through multiple levels (e.g. product types, Computers > Laptops). The combination of all facets and values are often called a faceted taxonomy. These faceted values can be added directly to content as metadata or extracted automatically using text mining software."
Permalink | Thursday, April 30, 2009
The House That Ogilvy Built
Interesting read from Strategy+Business. In this piece author Kenneth Roman describes the business genius of David Ogilvy and the principles he used to build the enduring firm.
More than anything else, the glue that held together the organization as it grew around the world was training. Ogilvy used the metaphor of a teaching hospital. “Great hospitals do two things,” he said. “They look after patients, and they teach young doctors. Ogilvy & Mather does two things: We look after clients, and we teach young advertising people. Ogilvy & Mather is the teaching hospital of the advertising world. And as such, it is to be respected above all other agencies.”
Permalink | Thursday, April 30, 2009
IDEO’s Ten Tips For Creating a 21st–Century Classroom Experience
Metropolis magazine lists 10 tips that IDEO has learnt creating the Ormondale Elementary School in Portola Valley, California. It seems the items in this list have been around for many years now. So the problem is not about knowing what to do, but how to do it. Jay Mathews's book, Work Hard. Be Nice.: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America is a much better read on how to bring change to the classroom.
Here are some items from IDEO's list:
Change the discourse.
If you want to drive new behavior, you have to measure new things. Skills such as creativity and collaboration can’t be measured on a bubble chart. We need to create new assessments that help us understand and talk about the developmental progress of 21st-century skills. This is not just about measuring outcomes, but also measuring process. We need formative assessments that are just as important as numeric ones. And here’s the trick: we can’t just have the measures. We actually have to value them.
Teachers are designers.
Let them create. Build an environment where your teachers are actively engaged in learning by doing. Shift the conversation from prescriptive rules to permissive guidance. Even though the resulting environment may be more complicated to manage, the teachers will produce amazing results.
Permalink | Monday, April 27, 2009
IA Task Failures Remain Costly
"Although usability has improved overall, IA is becoming a sore thumb that's preventing websites from meeting their business goals... Bad IA is now the greatest cause of task failures because it's the stumbling block for getting anywhere on a site. Users try to find their way around a site, and if they're particularly motivated, they might even try again if they fail. But if users are repeatedly led in circles or dumped into no-man's land by weak search, they give up and leave for another site. That's why deficiencies in your IA are costing you a lot of money, right now. "
Permalink | Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Problem Solving 101
Every now and then comes a book that makes me think about my practice and shines a light on how to do it better. Ken Watanabe's Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People is one such book. Initially written to teach kids problem-solving approaches, this book became the most popular business book in Japan in 2007. In 120 pages Ken brilliantly describes explorative and iterative problem-solving approaches that make so much sense. Here is his approach:
- Understand the current situation
- Identify the root cause of the problem
- Develop an effective action plan
- Execute until the problem is solved, making modifications as necessary
He describes this approach in 3 fun-filled stories:
- Mushroom Lovers, a kids rock band, trying to get more people to attend their monthly concert
- John Octopus on figuring out how to save enough money to buy a computer to pursue his dream to become a CGI artist in Hollywood
- Kiwi on deciding which soccer school to attend
One thing is quite clear: this needs a rapid or iterative approach and will not fit well into a prescriptive approach.
The problem that I see is that most clients demand a prescriptive approach. For example, clients want to know upfront the number of interviews that will be done or the number of usability tests that will be conducted in the research study. Such decisions I think are to be made in context and only if there is a need for them. But I also acknowledge that clients need some indication of effort to plan for resources needed. So we have a problem. The rapid development approach seems to be a possible solution (a hypothesis) but I'll need to test it out on a few projects to see if it works!
Permalink | Saturday, April 18, 2009
Toward Content Quality
Continuing on the content strategy thread, here is a bunch of checklists that can be used to evaluate the quality of content on the website or intranet.
"In my experience, a common misperception of the evaluation of content quality is that its scope is limited to the correction of typos and grammatical errors. Correcting spelling and grammar only scratches the surface. To truly consider content quality, we need to examine its quality along several dimensions."
Permalink | Thursday, April 16, 2009
Content strategy articles
Business week has put up a useful list of content strategy links. Good starting points to the growing awareness of content strategy. In addition here is a link to content strategy presentations made during the last IA Summit.
Permalink | Sunday, April 12, 2009
IA Summit 09- Jesse James Garrett
Jesses James Garrett delivered the IA Summit 09 closing plenary. Some nice pointers.
"With perception covered by visual designers, sound designers, and industrial designers, cognition and emotion are the manifest destiny of IA. User experience is not about information, rather, it is always about people and how they relate to information.
By structuring the information, User Experience Designers structure the tools that humanity uses. And, as a result, we influence how people think and feel. The final result is that those tools, in turn, shape humanity. We should embrace that responsibility."
Permalink | Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Reviewing intranet-based collaboration setups
My new article at PebbleRoad: Reviewing intranet-based collaboration setups
"The ability to form groups and collaborate on the intranet is key to making the intranet a place for ‘doing work’. A well-planned collaboration setup allows staff to use the setup easily and effectively. Here are 7 heuristics that can help review existing collaboration setups in organizations."
Permalink | Saturday, April 04, 2009
History of HCI
John Caroll explains how HCI came into being:
"In the early 1980s, HCI was a small and focused specialty area. It was a cabal trying to establish what was then a heretical view of computing. Today, largely due to the success of that endeavor, HCI is a vast and multifaceted community, loosely bound by the evolving concept of usability, and the integrating commitment to value human concerns as the primary consideration in creating interactive systems."
Permalink | Saturday, April 04, 2009
When Internal Collaboration Is Bad for Your Company
Key idea from the latest HBR article on internal collaboration:
"The problem here wasn’t collaboration per se; our statistical analysis found that novice teams at the firm actually benefited from exchanging ideas with their peers. Rather, the problem was determining when it makes sense and, crucially, when it doesn’t. Too often a business leader asks, How can we get people to collaborate more? That’s the wrong question. It should be, Will collaboration on this project create or destroy value? In fact, to collaborate well is to know when not to do it. "
Permalink | Thursday, April 02, 2009
Donation Usability: Increasing Online Giving to Non-Profits and Charities
Jakob Nielsen's new piece tackles donation usability. I'm not surprised at his findings. We found similar themes when we did the redesign for the National University of Singapore Giving website. We found that there was a need to inform donors on why their gifts were needed and how they will be used (the LEARN section). Also we found that there was a need to pay-back in kind by honouring donors (the HONOUR section). It goes without saying the the DONATE section had to be without flaws. So glad to know that the findings are similar across continents.
Permalink | Monday, March 30, 2009
Jeff Bezos Works In Kentucky Distribution Center For A Week
I just wish this was mandatory for CEOs.
"Jeff Bezos is spending this week working in an Amazon distribution center in Lexington, Kentucky. He apparently wants to see what it's like to be a rank-and-file Amazon employee. More CEOs should try that once in a while."
Permalink | Friday, March 27, 2009
YouTube EDU
After Academic Earth we now have YouTube EDU. This is a initiative to gather and group all academic content on YouTube. There aren't too many videos on the site now but that should improve soon.
Permalink | Friday, March 27, 2009
A Photo Essay of Classic Instruction Manuals
"How do you run the A/C on a spy plane? Where's the Start button on a nuclear power plant? Don't try to wing it—read the directions! A portfolio of classic instruction manuals."
Another related site: The Product Manual Archive.
Permalink | Tuesday, March 24, 2009
IA Summit 09 presentations
Here are the IA Summit 09 presentations on SlideShare. Many of these presos are difficult to follow because they have no notes. Nevertheless, we can get a feel for the topics that were discussed.
Permalink | Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Handbook of emerging technologies for learning
Peter Tittenberger and George Siemens have crafted the Handbook of emerging technologies for learning wiki with a goal of helping educators use new technologies in their teaching and learning activities.
Permalink | Sunday, March 15, 2009
A model for work collaboration
Matthew Clark writes about the components of a web collaboration model:
- Collaboration is action-oriented. People must do something to collaborate. They may exchange ideas, arrange an event, write a report, lay bricks, or design some software. To collaborate is to act together and it is the combined set of actions that constitutes collaboration.
- Collaboration is goal-oriented. The reason for working together is to achieve something. There is some purpose behind the actions: to create a web site, to build an office block, to support each other through grief, or some other human goal. The collaborators may have varying motivations, but the collaboration per se focuses on a goal that is shared.
- Collaboration involves a team. No-one can collaborate alone. Collaboration requires a group of people working together. The team may be any size, may be geographically co-located or dispersed, membership may be voluntary or imposed, but there is at least some essence of being part of the team.
- Collaboration is co-ordinated. That is, the team is working together in some sense. The co-ordination may follow some formal methodology, but can equally well be implicit and informal. There needs to be some sense at least that there are a number of things to be done, some sequences of actions, some allocation of tasks within the group, and some way to combine the contributions of different team members.
Permalink | Friday, March 13, 2009
Write for Reuse
Jakob Nielsen provides timeless advice for online writing:
- Assume your information will be used out of context. Content might be either displayed in different contexts or users might read only a selected bit of the full page. (The hints above can help you determine whether your information works out of context.)
- Modularize your information, so that each content chunk addresses a single issue. If you cover two things in one chunk, the second will often be overlooked.
- Use specific language. Concrete terms are more likely to help people who have a different perspective on the content. Generic or broad terms can be misinterpreted — or overlooked, as we saw in the example.
Permalink | Monday, March 09, 2009
Deconstructing analysis techniques
Steve Baty has written a detailed article on analyzing research findings. I do agree with him that we don't have many analysis techniques in the interaction design literature. Here are the analysis techniques he describes.
- Deconstruction
- Manipulation
- Transformation
- Summarization
- Aggregation
- Generalization
- Abstraction
- Synthesis
Permalink | Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Sir Ken Robinson - The Element
A wealth of ideas in this talk by Sir Ken Robinson on personal talent, education and more. Wonderful stuff. [Via e-wot].
Permalink | Thursday, February 26, 2009