Articles by Month: February 2006

Ajax arrives for the enterprise

Christopher Lindquist has written an article discussing the use of Ajax in the enterprise. To quote:

But while clothing trends come and go, Ajax looks like it may stick around, offering Web developers a means to create rich clientlike applications on webpages without resorting to huge amounts of code or forcing users to download plug-ins. However, like every hot new Web technology, CIOs must hold firm against the regular barrage of "if Google is doing it, why can't we?" and find the underlying value in Ajax for their particular companies.

[Thanks to WebWord.]

Posted by jamesr at 09:07 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information management, Intranets

Competitive analysis: understanding the market context

Jason Withrow has written an article on using competitive analysis when designing sites. To quote:

Effective web design, from the simplest brochure website to the most complex web application, needs to involve an understanding of context. While user-centered design focuses on user needs/tasks, and information architecture focuses on content, these two aspects alone offer an incomplete picture. What is missing is the context: the environment in which the website or web application is used as well as the market in which it exists.

Posted by jamesr at 08:57 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Free access to The Rockley Report

The Rockley Group has just announced that they are providing free access to The Rockley Report, a quarterly journal on content management topics. To quote:

"Now everyone can benefit from the insight of the many content professionals that have contributed their knowledge and experience to The Report," Rockley said. "Our guest authors, our customers, and our peers are all represented in The Report. It's a treasure trove of useful information."

I've written a few articles for the Report, and there's lots of other great stuff to browse through...

Posted by jamesr at 08:48 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Intranet questions (KL)

I am currently running another two-day intranet workshop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and just for interest, these are the (unedited) questions from the participants:

• Portals?
• Portals versus CMS?
• Can it be made of different technologies?
• Do we need an intranet yet?
• How do we gain widespread support for the intranet?
• Necessary skillsets?
• Do we need to train users?
• How do we keep the authors in line?
• Do we need an intranet team?
• What to do about staff no longer needed because of the intranet?
• What are the drivers?
• How do we make it more personalised?
• How to convince the organisation that an intranet team is needed?
• Quick wins?
• People are threatened by the intranet?

Posted by jamesr at 07:52 PM | Permalink
Categories:

Social tagging for the enterprise

Patrick Cormier has written an article on social tagging for the enterprise. To quote:

Web 2.0 technologies will promote and enable fundamental changes on intranets. They will alleviate many user "frustrations" with their intranet environment, such as useless search capabilities, email overload, rigid taxonomies, etc.. A peculiar difficulty, however, facing forward-looking IT (or business user) early adopters of Web 2.0 technologies is the fact that Web 2.0 is often "the web as a platform": That web is, currently, mostly the Internet as opposed to intranets. Some resources are only available through an Internet connection. Often, these resources are unavailable due to lack of connectivity to the Internet, corporate firewalls or corporate policy. The larger the corporation, the most likely there will be challenging obstacles.

Posted by jamesr at 08:34 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Intranets

Second generation tag clouds

Joe Lamantia has written another article, exploring the future for tag clouds. To quote:

Lets build on the analysis of tag clouds from Tag Clouds Evolve: Understanding Tag Clouds, and look ahead at what the near future may hold for second generation tag clouds (perhaps over the next 12 to 18 months). As you read these predictions for structural and usage changes, keep two conclusions from the previous post in mind: first, adequate context is critical to sustaining the chain of understanding necessary for successful tag clouds; second, one of the most valuable aspects of tag clouds is as visualizations of semantic fields.

Posted by jamesr at 08:14 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Feedback on Improving Intranet Search

We've started getting some positive feedback on our recently-released Improving Intranet Search report, which is always nice:

As James observes in the introduction to this 115 page report, the inadequacies of search may be doom an intranet as a whole to failure. After all, if staff can't find information on the intranet when they need it, will they even come to the site in the first place. Over the last few years I must have seen several hundred intranets, and in virtually every case the search functionality was poor. I have just been looking at a new intranet where the search functionality does not provide stemming on plurals, so that a search on 'complaint' produces a different set of documents to 'complaints'!

All too often the effort seems to have gone to adding content to the intranet, with significant investments in CMS software and information architecture. Search is seen as an afterthought, and purchased separately with whatever remains from the CMS budget.

Search is now being seen as a crucial success factor in intranet implementation, helped by the vigorous marketing of the Google Search Applicance. This excellent report is therefore very timely, and as with all of the author's reports it is full of very practical guidance and the presentation is faultless. The approach taken is to set out two personas, one for a specialist searcher and one for someone with little search expertise, and then compare the value of various elements of a search engine, especially the way that hits are displayed on the screen. This works well, and shows the benefits of personas at the same time.

The report opens with a section on evaluating search engines, and the process of selecting a new search engine. However most of the report is taken up with advice on refining the search interface (12 pages), refining the search results (24 pages) and search engine tuning/usage logs (25 pages). The report concludes with sections on usability testing and the importance of allocating adequate staff resources to search engine optimization.

I found virtually nothing in the report I would disagree with, but there are perhaps a few areas that might be expanded in a second edition. The report stops at search screen management and I would have liked to see a comment on how to locate a search term within a document, for example by highlighting the term, or providing a few lines of text to show each occurrence of the keyword in context. The aim of any search is to find information, and not just a document. I would also like to have seen more discussion about metadata issues, especially synonym management, and the problems of intranets that contain content in more than one language.

Overall though this is a report that every intranet manager should have in their document collection. It is readable, authoritative, and encapsulates search best practice. It should also be required reading by search engine vendors, most of whose public web sites demonstrate a depressing lack of commitment to search excellence.

Martin White, Intranet Focus

Posted by jamesr at 10:32 AM | Permalink
Categories: Search tools

Tag clouds evolve: understanding tag clouds

Joe Lamantia has written an article that provides a broader framework for understanding tag clouds. To quote:

This first post lays groundwork for predictions about the second generation of tag clouds by looking at what's behind a tag cloud. I'll look at first generation tag clouds in terms of their reliance on a "chain of understanding" that semantically links groups of people tagging and consuming tags, and thus underlies tagging and social metadata efforts in general. I'll begin with structure of first generation tag clouds, and move quickly to the very important way that tag clouds serve as visualizations of semantic fields.

Posted by jamesr at 07:14 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Gilbane San Francisco

I'll also be at the Gilbane San Francisco conference in April. I'll be presenting twice at this conference:

• A pre-conference tutorial on Intranets as a Business Tool, covering intranet strategy and the evolution of intranets towards a more business-focused role.
• A talk during the conference on How to Improve Your Enterprise Search Experience, discussing how even a few days devoted to improving the design and tuning of intranet search can have a dramatic improvement.

San Francisco is a lovely city, and I'm pleased to be returning to it so soon after my first visit late last year...

Posted by jamesr at 01:49 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Flights booked to Vancouver

Well, my flights are booked to Vancouver, so I must be attending the IA Summit. I'll be presenting twice at the conference:

• I'll be running a half-day pre-conference workshop on Strategic Intranet Planning. This will explore new ways of looking at what it means to have a successful intranet, as well as challenging the traditional role of intranet teams.
• I'll also participating in the session on enterprise IA, alongside Dan Brown, Lou Rosenfeld, James Melzer, and Seth Earley. We'll be exploring how to apply information architecture effectively within organisations, recognising the importance of cultural change and business strategy.

I'm greatly looking forward to this conference, and even if you can't make either of these two presentations, track me down to say hi!

Posted by jamesr at 01:35 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

A red card for intranet search

Yesterday I ran a free afternoon session on Improving Intranet Search in Canberra. To get people warmed up, we provided each participant with three sheets of coloured paper, as follows:

• Red: their intranet search is terrible
• White: their intranet search is OK
• Green: their intranet search is great

I then got everyone to hold up their sheet of paper, and this was the result:

Sorry for the blurry, low-resolution photo taken on a mobile phone. But the results are still pretty clear:

• Red: 50%
• White: 50%
• Green: 0%

Pretty funny, but not surprising. As was expected, not a single person held up a green sheet of paper to say that their intranet search was great.

This is why we published the Improving Intranet Search report. We are also running free sessions in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.

Posted by jamesr at 10:41 AM | Permalink
Categories: Search tools

Intranet is a process

Jane McConnell has posted a blog entry highlighting that the intranet is a process. To quote:

I used the slide below in a workshop I ran in London in December on globalisation and large, complex intranets. A participant in the workshop told me I could run an entire workshop around this single slide. Sounds like a good idea.

Posted by jamesr at 08:50 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Avoiding coupling in your portal implementation

Robert Bogue has written an article about avoiding coupling in your portal implementation. To quote:

Portals, which are necessarily at the heart of an ever-changing array of programs and solutions within the organization are especially vulnerable to coupling. It starts out simple at first: the special notice that one application needs, and before long your portal projects are caught behind the schedule of a dozen other applications --- and a dozen different projects are waiting on your portal project to be revised before they can put changes into their products

Posted by jamesr at 08:35 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Information management

Usability for rich internet applications

Donna Maurer has written an article on usability for rich internet applications. To quote:

Rich Internet applications (RIAs) can provide opportunities to design much better user experiences. They can be faster, more engaging and much more usable. However, this improvement is not without its downside --- RIAs are much more difficult to design than the previous generation of page-based applications. The richer interaction requires a better understanding of users and of human-computer interaction (HCI). Although there is a lot of HCI material and research available, it can be difficult to determine how it applies to this new environment.

Posted by jamesr at 08:28 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Federated records management - the next check-off box?

Priscilla Emery has written a blog entry introducing "federated records management", a concept I haven't come across before. To quote:

Federated RM can be extremely useful for those organizations that have a variety of document repositories in place and don't want to have to go through the hassle of migrating the pieces or whole parts of the legacy base to a proprietary RM system. But buyer beware.

Posted by jamesr at 11:31 AM | Permalink
Categories: Document & records management, Information management

Engaged employees deliver the money

Toby Ward has written a blog entry on online idea jars for employees. To quote:

If executed properly, empowering employees as change agents can deliver powerful benefits – both for the company and for individual employees. IBM has a similar program on their intranet called IDEAS -- a heritage program for collecting suggestions online to improve a process or tool or product. Employees are encouraged to submit innovative ideas. All submissions undergo a cost analysis for potential savings. Recommendations good enough to implement are rewarded with cash payouts to employees. IDEAS delivered $17.1M in value in 2001 alone.

Posted by jamesr at 04:06 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, Knowledge management

Why do CMS projects go over budget?

Janus Boye has written an article on the reasons for CMS projects running over budget. To quote:

Still today many senior level executives do not think a website or intranet is something special. To them, applying a CMS is just another project. It's about getting started, getting it over with, and then moving on to another project.

Many executives have family members, often younger ones, who publish their own personal website or blog and happily talk about how easy it is to maintain. When consultants and experts then arrive and claim that it is not so easy after all, it seems strange and hard to understand.

Introducing a content management system is far from an easy process. It causes many changes throughout the organization and affects nearly every department. A new CMS typically needs to be integrated with the existing IT landscape and even with "out-of-the-box" tools, implementation times rarely come in under 6 months.

Posted by jamesr at 12:50 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

A pattern language approach to usability KM

Michael Hughes has written an article on using patterns to capture usability insights. To quote:

Knowledge gained from usability testing is often applied merely to the immediate product under test and then forgotten -- at least at an organizational level. This article describes a usability knowledge management system (KMS) based on principles of pattern language and use-case writing that offers a way to turn lessons learned from usability testing into organizational knowledge that can be leveraged across different projects and different design teams.

Posted by jamesr at 08:43 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Yahoo Design Pattern Library

Yahoo has announced the release of their Design Pattern Library. To quote:

Welcome to the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library. We are very happy to be sharing our library with the design and development community. This is our first drop of what we hope to be a monthly release cycle for the publication of patterns. In many cases we have bundled the patterns with pointers to related code from the Yahoo! User Interface Code Library. We hope this is a useful resource and look forward to your feedback

(And yes, I know that this has already been widely announced...)

Posted by jamesr at 08:37 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Interaction modeling

Matt Queen has written an article on interaction modeling. To quote:

Interaction modeling is a good way to identify and locate usability issues with the use of a tool. Several methods exist (see Olson & Olson 1990 for a review of techniques). Modeling techniques are prescriptive in that they aim to capture what users will likely do, and not descriptive of what users actually did.

Posted by jamesr at 08:22 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Launch of Improving Intranet Search report

I'm excited to announce the launch of the Improving Intranet Search report, the latest of the best-practice guides released by Step Two Designs.

Organisations are now recognising that search is a critical business tool, on their intranet as well as on their websites. More than just a way to find documents, intranet search can directly support staff in their day-to-day work.

The answer is not to automatically replace the search engine currently in place, as most of the modern search products provide more than enough functionality. Instead, the problem is that few search solutions have been effectively designed, in terms of the interfaces provided to staff and the behind-the-scenes improvements needed to make the search work like magic.

Even a few days devoted to improving search can have significant impact. If resources are then allocated to steadily maintaining and enhancing search, it will not take long to deliver an extraordinary search solution.

This 115 page report contains:

• key principles of effective search
• nine step methodology for improving search
• two search 'personas' describing common search users
• guidelines for improving the search interface for general and specialist users
• guidelines for enhancing search results
• options for search engine tuning
• introduction of search usage reports
• exploration of search engine synonyms and 'best bets'
• summary of advanced search techniques
• screenshots and tips throughout

All of the core design guidelines and enhancements contained in this report are within reach of every intranet team, and do not require in-depth technical knowledge or unlimited budgets.

[Full report details]

Posted by jamesr at 01:26 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, Search tools

Global Intranets: the myth of the single entry point

Jane McConnell has written a blog entry about problems with a single entry point on global intranets. To quote:

When a global organisation decides to impose a single home page for all employees worldwide, and that home page will be in English plus perhaps one other language, they are taking a huge risk.

Posted by jamesr at 08:32 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Surveys to assess search experience

Lou Rosenfeld has posted a blog entry on using surveys to assess search. To quote:

A colleague asks: I'm looking for a list of survey questions that can be used to help assess users' search experiences. I need guidance on how to develop a formal, more quantifiable survey.

At first glance, this seems to be such a sweet, innocent question. And if you know of any good examples, please post some links below. I couldn't come up with any off the top of my head.

This was my comment:

Compared to the other techniques, surveys are a much less effective option. While they can be used to reach a large number of staff, it is difficult to construct questions that gain meaningful information about search behaviour.

Most problematically, staff will find it extremely difficult to recollect or describe how (or how often) they search, or the types of information they were looking for. Without this information, anything collected during a survey is unreliable at best, or misleading at worst. For this reason, the use of surveys is not recommended as a method of understanding search behaviour.

In general, we would always recommend field research (interviews, contextual inquiry, workplace observation)...

Posted by jamesr at 01:48 PM | Permalink
Categories: Search tools

Open Publish 2006: call for speakers

We are pleased to announce that the sixth annual Open Publish conference Call for Papers is now open. While the event will continue to discuss topics such as content management and single-source publishing, this year will deliberately focus less on technology and more on human factors. Therefore, we have specific interest in hearing from speakers with expertise in the following areas:

• methodologies for evaluating and implementing content management solutions
• project and risk management for content-related projects
• cost estimation
• effective system and project design
• using existing web infrastructure (mash-ups)
• documenting and managing content requirements
• business perspectives on open content such as Wikipedia
• best practice for content creation and conversion
• frameworks for quality in system development and implementation

More information on presenting a conference session or delivering a tutorial can be found on the conference site. Open Publish 2006 is proudly presented by Allette Systems (AUS) and Step Two Designs (AUS) in conjunction with IDEAlliance (USA).

Posted by jamesr at 10:54 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Seven accessibility mistakes (Part 2)

Christian Heilmann has written the second part of an article on accessibility mistakes. To quote:

This week we'll wrap up with four more scenarios to avoid and how. If budgets or client relationships constrain you, these ideas might at least inspire you to nudge the client in the direction of user-centric development or provide ammunition in meetings.

Posted by jamesr at 05:08 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Can Flash be considered accessible content?

accessible.ie has published an article on the usability of Flash. To quote:

In 2000, Macromedia became aware of its obligation to make their flash player more accessible to all users and developed an accessibility development kit for Flash 5. This became common to all versions with the release of Flash MX in 2004 and was improved with Flash 8 in 2005.

Currently, Flash uses Microsoft Active Accessibility, MSAA, to send information to screen readers and other devices. The Flash player makes a list of the objects being displayed and sends them to the MSAA data tree, which can then be read out when they are encountered onscreen. As screen content changes, the MSAA is updated and the screen reader restarts again.

Posted by jamesr at 04:54 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Alphabetized links are random links

Jared Spool has written about the issues with alphabetic lists of links. To quote:

The moral of the story: Unless you can be absolutely sure that users will know the exact terms in your list, alphabetical order is just random order.

This is particularly relevant for intranets, that can have a large amount of content...

Posted by jamesr at 04:35 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Live by the mockup, die by the mockup

Luke Wroblewski has written an article on the role of mockups. To quote:

Mockup… The term itself brings to mind the duality inherent in this omnipresent design artifact. It's both a direct representation of a product experience and a shallow portrayal of an interactive system at the same time. Perhaps the term originated with engineers or product managers intent on pointing out that the mockup was just that: a superficial representation that could never compare to the real product they had to build.

Posted by jamesr at 03:19 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Eye tracking as silver bullet for usability evaluations?

Mark (don't know his last name) has written an article exploring the strengths and weaknesses of eyetracking. To quote:

When reading articles on usability evaluation, talking to other usability professionals and clients, one can get the impression that eye tracking is perceived as silver bullet for conducting usability evaluations. After all, the method allows us to directly assess how users perceive an interface, which parts they pay attention to and which parts they miss. And all this just by getting them seated in front of the interface and tracking their gaze. Right?

Posted by jamesr at 11:48 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

The value of online writing style guides

Nick Besseling has written an article on the value of online writing style guides. To quote:

I have never come across a successfully managed website or intranet of at least a reasonable size (2,500 pages +) that didn't have at least some guidelines or standards for content. While some style guides may not go into great details of things like spelling/grammar etc they at least covered basics of good online content and how to use hyperlinks/tables etc.

I certainly have no argument with the value of good style guides (like those that Nick produces). In a recent project, I saw things like a 53-page guide to writing, along with a corporate visual style guide and a pile of other similarly weighty documents. In this situation, these documents were causing (or at least worsening) some major cultural problems between the central team and the decentralised authors, to the extent that the site was entirely dead...

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

Why vision documents stink

Scott Berkun has written a short article on why vision documents stink. To quote:

At a talk yesterday I asked an audience of program managers how many of them had read a vision document. Most of the 100+ in the room raised their hands. I then asked how many had read a document they thought was good: about a dozen kept their hands up.

Posted by jamesr at 04:21 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information management, Intranets

Home page goals

Derek Powazek has written an article on goals for home pages. To quote:

Home pages are anxiety-inducing for companies. The home page is your first impression. And like the old saying goes, you only get one chance. So home pages themselves have a unique set of design goals.

Posted by jamesr at 11:09 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Usability & user-centered design

Seven accessibility mistakes (part 1)

Christian Heilmann has written an article on seven common accessibility mistakes. To quote:

There are several reasons inaccessible Web products get published. One we discussed in my last article is that some clients just don't care about accessibility. Their reasons make a lot of sense if you put yourself in their shoes. Another reason is developer mistakes. Making mistakes is natural, and suffering the consequences and learning from them is what makes us better developers and better people.

Posted by jamesr at 11:04 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Intranet managers must be managers

While intranets often have someone appointed as the intranet 'manager', do they spend their time actually managing the site, or publishing pages?

Observing many organisations and intranets, one of the critical success factors is to have an intranet manager who is free to focus solely on the management of the site. The intranet manager should not be writing HTML or publishing pages.

Establishing an intranet team

An intranet 'team' of one is not enough, unless the organisation (or intranet) is very small. In the earlier article Roles needed in an intranet team, a very wide range of skills and responsibilities were identified for a successful team.

The article Intranet teams: survey results and key findings also highlighted that the average size of intranet teams is three, with the team size growing to match the size of the organisation and the intranet. In practice, this means that an intranet team will need to consist of an overall 'manager' (or 'coordinator'), along with several staff to do the actual day-to-day work on the site.

[CM Briefing 2006-02, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 11:28 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, James' articles

Search should work like magic

Thanks to Google, intranet users expect to be able to type in a word (or two) and find the page they are looking for, preferably in the first few results. This is not an unreasonable expectation. At the most fundamental level, search on an intranet is supposed to make it quick and easy for staff to find things, thereby saving them time and improving their productivity.

This can be distilled down to a very simple concept: search should work like magic. As much as is possible, search should always give staff the information they need, somewhere in the first few results. Staff should not have to learn complex search options, or spend time carefully considering the most effective search terms and options. Regardless of what the user is searching on, the right results should be returned.

Usage patterns

With some exception, the goal of most staff when they are searching on an intranet is to quickly find a single piece of information. They are not looking for all of the information on a given topic, just the one page that gives them the answer or fact they need.

In practice, users give search little consideration. They are generally not willing to devote any significant time to learn how to best use the search capabilities, but instead expect the search to 'just work'. While most modern search engines provide many powerful features, few staff know how to use them.

[CM Briefing 2006-01, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 10:27 AM | Permalink
Categories: Search tools

Taking a business-centric approach to portals

Enterprise portals (generally known as just 'portals') rose to prominence several years ago. Complementing or replacing earlier technologies, portals promise to deliver a more coherent information management platform, and a more seamless user experience for staff.

Now that the early hype has died down, it is not surprising to find that portals are not a 'silver bullet' solution to all the information delivery challenges within organisations.

Like all technologies, portals have their strengths and weaknesses. These need to be well understood if they are to be successfully implemented within businesses. This article outlines the characteristics (good and bad) of enterprise portals, and proposes a business-centric approach to selecting and implementing portals.

Two definitions of portals

The word "portal" can mean many things. As recently highlighted by Janus Boye, the Wikipedia entry lists 13 different definitions for portal, not all of which relate to IT.

In practice, there are two main definitions that exist in the marketplace. The first is "portal as a concept", which encapsulates the general principles of providing staff with a single point of access to information. The second is "portal as a technology", which is the IT solution being promoted by a range of vendors.

[January KM Column, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 10:18 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Information management, James' articles

The lazy IA's guide to making sitemaps

Stephen Turbek has written an article on creating site maps, for use during information architecture activities. To quote:

Sitemaps are common deliverables, desired by clients who want a visual representation of a site. Since they are rarely used to make decisions, information architects may not consider them the valuable tools they are. The effort required to make and maintain them requires time that might be better used elsewhere. In fact, I would suggest that making sure the little boxes line up is a waste of an IA's mental abilities.

Posted by jamesr at 08:54 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture