Business case for deleting content
Gerry McGovern on why it is necessary to get rid of redundant, outdated or trivial (ROT) content:"Instead, many web managers-particularly the newly appointed ones-want to do a redesign. This is much more fun. It involves hiring latte-drinking, cool-haircut web designers, who will eulogize the brand and dress up the first couple of levels of the website in shiny new graphics. But the rot of out-of-date, badly organized content remains. The organization feels good because it has 'done something'. But what has it done? It has engaged in the classic, ever-popular pastime of putting lipstick on a pig."
Permalink | Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Newspaper website design
Smashing Magazine has another fantastic collection: designs and trends in newspaper design. The article lists header and sidebar banners, navigation, tabbed content areas, etc. Interesting to note that tabbed content is part-and-parcel of newspaper sites.Permalink | Friday, November 14, 2008
Teach the People- Facebook app for creating learning communities
From techcrunch:
"Teach the People is a Facebook application that provides a platform for online education. The application lets anyone with specific subject knowledge or a useful skill set share it by setting up a Teach the People learning communities with 1gig of free storage. The learning communities provide educators and students with all the standard learning management system tools that are standard on existing systems (Blackboard, Moodle), and some not so standard like video chat and VOIP."
Permalink | Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Blog on Design Research
Sam Ladner teaches the Research Design and Qualitative Methods course at Ryerson University. She uploads her slides on SlideShare regularly and blogs about different research topics. Check out posts like, Qualitative versus quantitative research, Design research, step by step. Nice stuff.
Permalink | Friday, October 31, 2008
Intranet metrics and measurement
When doing intranet projects, you either face situations where there are too many requests for metrics or where there aren’t any. I fear the latter. It means that there is no real pain guiding the project. In such cases it is usually playing catchup with another agency’s “cool social app” or with one person’s ideology that “everything should be wiki”.
What we need in situations where metrics are discussed is a dose of “business value thinking”. It is about discussing how to take what we know now and raise it a level or two to provide greater business value. James Robertson has written two excellent articles that point in this direction.
Business value thinking is not a separate process; it is a mindset that must be embedded during the project. It is about seeing the need for real improvement. And this can be done quickly with few resources as James mentions in his article.
Permalink | Thursday, October 30, 2008
Wisdom from Woodrow Wilson
"If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now."
Now, let's go for that 3-6pm meeting.
Permalink | Monday, October 27, 2008
We’re hiring - User Experience Lead
My company PebbleRoad is actively looking for a User Experience Lead to join the team in Singapore. PebbleRoad is a design firm specializing in design research and strategy. Projects include intranet redesigns, large corporate websites, web applications and e-learning.
The person should be able to:
Plan and conduct design research activities
Sketch and brainstorm ideas and scenarios
Create prototypes and test them out
Present design to clients
Experience in information architecture and interaction design is definitely a plus. But what is more important is having a passion for problem solving and learning and taking the responsibility to engage the client and deliver a quality service.
If you are in Singapore or even in the US or Europe and looking for a fast-paced and exciting stint, send a message to maish-at-pebbleroad.com. Here's more about Singapore.
Permalink | Saturday, October 25, 2008
What did you use the intranet for today?
The review and study phase of an intranet design project is the most grueling. We meet many staff from different departments and locations. One activity we find useful in this phase is to ask every staff we meet: What did you use the intranet for today? After a week or so we can get a good understanding of how the intranet is being used. Really!
Permalink | Thursday, October 23, 2008
Design methods for everyone
John Chris Jones gives insightful answers to this list of questions:
- designing your design process
- what to do first?
- what if I can't think of a solution?
- what if I have too many ideas?
- what if my ideas seem good but do not fit 'the problem'?
- what if my perception of the problem changes?
- what if I get into a muddle?
- how can a first attempt be improved?
[Via Perspective 2.0]
Permalink | Sunday, October 19, 2008
Metadata fundamentals for intranets and websites
James Robertson has written a simple and clear article on the use of metadata for intranets and websites.
Metadata is one of the key elements of site design and management, and is often a driving factor for the purchase of a content management system (or other similar publishing tools).
While metadata can be used in many complex and powerful ways, most sites benefit from keeping it pretty simple.
Only capture the metadata you need, and make it very simple for authors to enter it. Recognise that there is a cost (in effort and usability) for every metadata field established, and therefore focus efforts on clear business or site needs.
Permalink | Sunday, October 19, 2008
New way of storytelling
Check this page out. It involves an interesting way to weave a story. "The 21 Steps is told by following the story as it unfolds across a map of the world. Follow the trail by clicking on the link at the bottom of each bubble."
Permalink | Sunday, October 12, 2008
Don Norman on Service Design
Transcript of a talk Don Norman gave at the Institute of Design in Chicago.
"I started thinking about services. We all know about product design, we all know how to do it, so therefore it’s boring to me. I mean, most people still do it wrong, but it’s boring because we know how to do it. Services, we don’t really know much about. I can’t find any decent literature about services. It’s amazing. A lot of people study it, but the operations people: ha, they want to make it more efficient. They look at it from the point of view of the company. Which means it’s often miserable from the point of view of the customer."
Permalink | Sunday, October 12, 2008
When to Use Which User Experience Research Methods
An Alertbox article by Christian Rohrer:
"Modern day user experience research methods can now answer a wide range of questions. Knowing when to use each method can be understood by mapping them in 3 key dimensions and across typical product development phases."
Nothing new here, but interesting classification:
- Attitudinal vs. Behavioral
- Qualitative vs. Quantitative
- Context of Website or Product Use
Permalink | Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Block reading: how we read on the Web
Gerry McGovern says that we don't scan a page, we scan blocks or sections of it.
"Over the years, I have found that people don’t really scan an entire webpage. Rather, they break the page up into various sections or blocks and then scan within these areas. The left column is where people expect to find the core navigation for the area they are searching for. So, for example, if they are searching for a product, and they are on the products homepage, they expect to find the main products listed in the left column."
Permalink | Sunday, October 05, 2008
Concept Design Tools
Victor Lombardi writes about developing design concepts early on in the process.
"Designers of digital products and services like ourselves can dramatically improve our work by generating more concepts early in our projects. In this article, I’ll try to make concept design easier to learn by illustrating three simple tools for generating concepts."
Permalink | Thursday, October 02, 2008
How to manage out of date content
Gerry McGovern urges the need to have a review process to check published content:
"Anything that does get published must have an identifiable owner. That owner must commit to regularly (every six months at least) checking their published content. It is absolutely no excuse for them to say they don’t have time. Don’t let them publish if they don’t have time to review and remove."
Permalink | Monday, September 29, 2008
Creating user-centered taxonomies
James Kelway from User Pathways tackles the creation and use of navigational taxonomies.
"This two-part article is a step-by-step guide for those wishing to create new taxonomies for their business unit or client. It will outline the many different elements that make up a quality taxonomy and the pitfalls you should be aware of when starting a new project."
Permalink | Thursday, September 25, 2008
Study on edubloggers
Kristina Schneider has just completed her Master's thesis on edu-bloggers and their motivations and perspectives on blogging. And yours truly was one of the bloggers Kristina interviewed. Cool!
"This study analyzed what it means to be a blogger in the field of training and development—an edublogger—as well as the credibility of blogs intended for the training community. The specific research questions were posed from the insider’s or emic perspective. The objective of this study was to attempt to paint a portrait of an edublogger and uncover areas for further research."
Permalink | Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Consumers Shun Companies With Poor Websites
From Rawnet:
"Some 78 per cent of British consumers have been put off by a company because of poor usability of its website, according to digital consultancy Rawnet."
Permalink | Monday, September 22, 2008
IDEO blogs
Two new blogs from IDEO
Permalink | Thursday, September 18, 2008
The Joy of Sketch : explorations in hand-crafted visuals
An inspirational article by Kate Rutter. She writes on the use of hand drawn visuals to capture or think-through ideas. Kate also mentions Mark Baskinger, who has written a good primer on sketching for ideas.
Permalink | Monday, September 15, 2008
Doing KM right
The Kinokuniya bookstore in Singapore is not known for their correct categorization, but guess they got this one right -- Running a Bar For Dummies in the KM section. Cool!
Permalink | Saturday, September 13, 2008
ASIS&T’s special issue on IA
ASIS&T's Aug/Sep issue is on IA. Some nice articles here including Gene Smith's Emerging Trends in Tagging and Nathan Curtis's Audiences & Artifacts.
Permalink | Thursday, September 11, 2008
40 Creative Design Layouts
"In the showcase below we present 40 creative out-of-the-box layouts that break the boring 2- and 3-columned, boxed layouts. We have collected pure CSS -designs, CSS+JavaScript -layouts as well as Flash -designs. Most designs presented below risk their site structure and content presentation with unusual approaches. That’s what makes them different. Hopefully you will find some creative ideas that you can develop further in your future projects."
Permalink | Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Areva infographic film
Areva, a company involved in nuclear energy, has created a new film to help users understand how nuclear energy is produced and used. Nice isometric drawings. [via Information Design Watch]
Permalink | Sunday, September 07, 2008