contextia

Wiki mark-up

2008-02-21T12:26:00.003+13:00

James Robertson has written a post stating that wiki mark-up has no future and that the future lies in WYSIWYG style editing.

James mentions that wiki fanatics are likely to take exception to the post but I can't see any reason why a true wiki fan would.

Surely the whole Idea of wikis are to open content creation up to the masses and wiki mark-up has to-date kept wiki editing limited to those that know it. It is plainly annoying. I liken it to a nineteenth century version of HTML but with all the variations making the old Microsoft vs Netscape vs W3C battles look like teddy bear picnics.

So James you're absolutlely right and with some of the newer tools I've seen the market agrees with you (no matter what those unwashed, friendless wiki hooligans may say).

Malaysian intranet and portal conference

2008-01-16T12:51:00.000+13:00

I am pleased to have been invited to speak at the
"2nd Annual Portals, Content Management ande Collaboration Conference".
being run by DZ Hampton and being held in Kula Lumpur, Malaysia 21-24 April 2008.

My slot will be on the 23rd and is titled "Discovering effective content management strategies".

I will also be running a post-conference IA workshop:

Post-Conference Workshop 3
24 April 2008 (09:00 – 12:00)
"Creating user-focused information
architecture for intranets and portals".

The conference has a great SE-Asian and international speaker line-up and I'm really looking forward to meeting delegates from across the region.

Users have common goals, fears and hates

2007-12-04T10:15:00.000+13:00

A great recent post from Gerry McGovern in which he highlights that every website is NOT different and that he is tired of the associated babble (my word) that goes with defining sites e.g. "emotional branding".

Right there with you Gerry.

Obviously everything has an emotional attachment to some degree but most websites are about task completion, as plain and boring as that sounds. Over the 11 years I worked on websites and intranets without any exception any site that doesn't deliver on basic task focus and completion fails.

This applies across all sorts of sites to any site, intranet, e-commerce, government, video sharing, forum, search, Users want to do something quickly, easily and get a quick result (and as Gerry amusingly points out for free...).

It's unfortunate that web professionals are still having to fight the fight against excessive marketing vernacular. I have recently (unsuccessfully) tried to argue against the automatic playing of unrelated audio for site visitors to a non entertainment site.

Same battles I was fighting back in the 90's and unfortunately still losing the occasional one.

So despite all the growing awareness of usability, user focused design, IA, accessibility etc etc there's still exisits fundamnetal ignorance about websites even with those that actuallly manage them.

Cool is not always good. Wow factor is as fleeting and fickle as your users are.

End result is frustrated users, bad business opuibicity and eventual effect on a company or organisation's bottom line.

The way forward is to continue to educate clients, users and manages. Stop trying to convince them with best practice and gurus and focus on reports, stats, clickthroughs, research, MONEY. Hard data.

Convince them with business logic not website logic eventhough they generally lead to the same place.

Intranet Innovation Award winners

2007-10-23T12:25:00.000+13:00

James Robertson has published an article announcing the winners of the inaugural Intranet Innovation Awards.

Congrats to all the winners. Special mention to NZ winners Dorje McKinnon at Sungard (gold) and to the folks up at Northland Region for getting a special mention.

Intranet management evolution - independence for intranet teams

2007-10-02T13:34:00.000+13:00

In most organisations where intranets and portals have been following an ongoing iterative evolution model (not out of any good modelling practice but more on budget imperatives) they have generally started off in IT or IS departments.

As intranet strategy and maturity has grown many have had the day to day management and strategy moved out of the technology arena moving into a less techy focused areas (communications, knowledge management, marketing, HR etc) while IT keep looking after the infrastructure.

I have (until recently) always thought this was a good thing.

Everybody is the problem

I have found numerous issues with the above approach across some of the intranets I myself have managed or been involved in.

(Quotes displayed are paraphrasing of actual statements heard over the last few years. Some creative licence used in places for greater effect).

Communications and marketing are poor usability people (don't get me started with IT)
Having seen a search box moved from a logical top right location because the communications/marketing managers wanted "more images in that location instead to make the site look better " (despite the fact that 50% of site traffic went to the two searches located there...), I simply do not think most communications and marketing managers do not yet have the capability to truly understand the online user paradigm. They see it as a campaign or 'communications tool' which it is but it is so much more.

Or in an intranet where the news had had 20,000 views in one year ( less 5 news views over one year per user - with a user base of 4,000 and probably about 150 stories, Biggest story got about a 500 views) "What? open up the 2nd level navigation on the homepage so users can access work related information better... no I want more news and images to build the news area instead."

IT sometimes çonfuse online terminology (still)
Information architecture? ''Yes we have a Microsoft IIS server box cabled to a Oracle backend db linked through to Peoplesoft 9 all behind a supa douper triple authenticated Firewall etc etc.

Usability testing - "Yeah that manager said it seemed to work fine during our UAT. He signed the release."

Silo-ed business groups do not care about other units
The training people want all courses linked on the homepage, procurement want little visited links on the homepage, as does every other team.

"Share a content area with another business unit. No we want our own with all our pictures".

"Put those pages under Finance and purchasing? But we are called the 'Corporate business asset accounting procurement systems and management sub-division'...."

IT think everyone else are Luddites
IT think communications and marketing people focus mostly on words, pictures and perceptions (and yes they do:) ). But this view can neglect the value of utilising the user and business engagement skills that many communications and marketing people may have. A lot of the web 2.0 for business features that I am seeing put to good use are being pushed by the non-IT areas (eventhough it tends to be IT staff being early adopters of these areas).

Communications and other units think IT are business unfriendly
IT push technology directions - "Sharepoint will solve all our problems" or "Open-source! open-source! open-source!" without considering business or more often USER needs.

Without true governance pet schemes can go ridiculous
"Second life is the new thing. Lets invest half our budget to work out how we can leverage Second life as our new intranet."

Essentially these types of internal politics have meant that many intranets are static and caught in between responsibilities and expertise and without the proper resolution of these issues they are basically just sitting there rotting with a few dedicated professionals looking around for ways to extract themselves from the mire.

Standalone operational teams with consultative governance structures are optimal

The optimal solution is an intranet team that is independent of the direct line management of either of the two. I see no issues with it being part of a wider online team (I think the whole web/ intranet models are starting to converge more and more and the sharing of resources can only mean a good thing for the normally 'ugly sister' of the intranet).

If a standalone team is not organisationally possible than a strong governance and operational structure (with input from all key stakeholder groups) should be in place (should be in place regardless) to ensure:

True organisational ownership of the intranet
Shared insight to business issues and objectives
Brand/technology/pet project and ideology influence is kept to a minimum and diluted when progressed
A true reporting and accountability direction for the intranet manager and team
Allow for cross organisational budget financing and direction

Evolution of management models

As intranets evolve, so do governance models, and I think its time to start considering the independence of online and intranet teams from all the traditional areas to ensure true business accountability, transparency and business and user responsibility is taken. The other groups have provided their expertise at the right time to help the development of the intranet and obviously ongoing expertise and involvement is still required in respective areas of expertise.

Even if it is just a single person (putting aside line management) the intranet should still be managed'' outside these areas and reporting to a governance, and if need be, an operational group as well.

In organisations that have already done this I have seen a much more robust , professional and user focused approach to the intranet which for end users means a true organisational intranet not an organisational one with a specific business unit bias.

Virtual user research in Second Life

2007-09-28T09:10:00.000+12:00

Just reading a write-up User testing in Second Life by Lisa Herrod at Sitepoint, of a presenattion at the recent OZ-IA confernece in Sydney, User Research in Virtual Worlds from Gary Bunker and Gabriele Hermansson, both from Hyro.

Interesting indeed.

I am a slight cynic of the whole Second Life virtual world model especially when users are flocking to webpage models of social interaction like facebook, mySpace and leaving second life to a slightly faddish geek set at the moment.

I am currently playing around with a few online card sorting tools and think they are great tools for IA validation and wide spread quantative research but not replacements for good live person exercises.

I do not believe good focus groups can be run in a virtual environment as one can not view the side looks, or comments, the physical reponse to a comment from other participants where real value can be produced. It's not what they say but what they do. Valid for actually user testing but equally valid for focus groups and interviews.

The whole point of focus groups is person to person interaction and discussion. The presentation of avatars and digital represenation of discussion items does not truly do this justice.

Also its ridiculous to think that second life represents a wide enough user base for most websites. Second life is well overrepresented by narrow audiences and age groups. We don't even know that an avatar is actually a 45 year old white female, or a 15 year old etc etc.

Real people skills are the key the success in user research. The need to talk and engage with actual users represented as they truly are. We need to move away from technology itself to make technolofgy more friendly and intuitive for users not the other way round.

Wiki in the enterprise

2007-09-18T13:31:00.000+12:00

Shiv Singh has written a post on the evolution and issues for the wiki at his well known online agency Avenue A/Razorfish.

He shares an informative and useful presentation with screenshots and usage figures.
Very worthwhile if you're currnetly managing or looking at wikis internally.

Web analytic standards

2007-09-12T09:00:00.000+12:00

The Web Analytics Association (yes there is one) have released a groups of 26 standard definitions for web analytic measurements.

By recommending standards, definitions and terminology, we can collectively enable common ways of looking at data measurement and methodologies—resulting in:
More meaningful industry benchmarking
Comparability of results among different tools
Better understanding of the metrics terms we all use

I think that while any move to standardise the language and definitions of web statistics will be a difficult one, the idea is sound. The Association is looking for feedback on their initial recommendations.

Intranets ''07

2007-09-05T09:53:00.000+12:00

Due to a recent change of employer I will no longer be able to chair or present at the upcoming Sydney Intranets '07 event.

It is always a great event with some excellent speakers and organisations involved.
I hope to be attending next year.

Users 'see' simple things

2007-09-05T09:40:00.000+12:00

Jakob Nielsen is at his best when he produces clear and simple results of his research.

His latest alertbox, 'Fancy Formatting, Fancy Words = Looks Like a Promotion = Ignored' is a good example. Despite the number being clearly 'visible' (in bold red large font) on the homepage many users couldn't find the US population on the US Census site.

The reasons? The popluation stat was called a 'population clock' rather than just 'The US population is ....' and that the location and style of the population made users think it could be and ad 'banner blindness'.

Great article for content people, IAs and designers.

Full code press

2007-09-01T09:44:00.000+12:00

One of the coolest events I've heard about in a while is Full code press.

The concept is simple. Web teams take each other on, at the same location, to build a complete website in 24 hours. No excuse, no extensions, no budget overruns.

It was first held a few weeks ago in Sydney and involves a team from Australia and New Zealand. The teams build sites for two different charities and involve an IA/usability person, coders, designers and a project manager.

This year NZ (the 'codeblacks') won. Congrats to everyone involved.

Next year it's in Wellington.

Auckland intranet and portal conference

2007-09-01T09:36:00.000+12:00

The 2007 Brightstar intranet and portal conference went really well last week. Or so I heard/read, unfortunately at the last minute I couldn't make it. My presenattion slides will still be made available to those people that attended through their conference login.

Michael Sampson has written up detailed coverage (as he did last year).

Hope for intranet managers?

2007-09-01T09:31:00.000+12:00

Gerry McGovern has written a post 'Hope for intranet Managers' and includes a link to his recent intranet survey.

I meet a lot of intranet managers who are frustrated with their jobs. It's easy to understand why. But we need to be clever here. We need to get things in perspective. We need to think long-term.

NZ intranet forum information sessions

2007-08-14T16:15:00.000+12:00

A great free networking event for Intranet folk in Auckland and Wellington NZ.

Sure Step Two will be selling their leadership forum but they'll also be providing some great expert information on the day including examples from the recent intranet innovation awards.

From Catherine at Step Two:

The Intranet Leadership Forum is about to launch two new chapters in Auckland and Wellington.

We are an active community of intranet professionals who share and learn from each other at regular workshops and informal meetings.

This is a facilitated forum that is all about improving the effectiveness of intranets, by providing knowledge and resources to build on site strengths and to address current weaknesses.

We will be holding free information sessions in Auckland and Wellington,

-Wellington:
Friday, 24th August, 1-3pm, followed by afternoon tea

Location: Reserve Bank of New Zealand, 2 The Terrace, Wellington

- Auckland:
Monday, 27th August, 1-3pm, followed by afternoon tea

Location: University of Auckland, Alfred Street City Campus, Auckland

Each session will cover:
How the Intranet Leadership Forum works
Special presentation on how to build innovative intranets, with
screenshots and out takes from the 2007 Intranet Innovation Awards
see the intranets of companies from around the world
learn howintranets are the center of organisational change initiatives
see the best of the best staff directories, calendars and on-line
sharing

Come along, meet up with other intranet mangers in your area and see
examples of what is happening around the world with intranets.

To register for a session send an email to
catherine@steptwo.com.au
stating which city you are in.

http://www.intranetleadership.com.au/
http://www.steptwo.com.au/

Are portals like death and taxes...inevitable?

2007-08-08T16:20:00.000+12:00

In-house development vs out of the box

Ever since I learnt HTML in 1997 from a couple of printed out sheets of A$ I have supported more of a DIY approach to things and at the same time been a keen advocate for good best practice. around development standards, and accessibility/usability etc.

My feeling was always around why spend millions on something you can build yourself?

As I have worked with and for increasingly larger organistations this approach has started to seem unmanagable and increasingly invalid.

The key issues:

Inhouse development seems to take just as long and cost just as much as 'out of the box' (or out of the b=box with a bit of customisation.
Just because you have standards doesn't always mean inhouse development meets them
Inhouse development involves a degree of wheel reinvention if the proper structures and development practices are not in place or followed. (even in very large software houses this is not always the case).
'Portal like' software is getting increasingly flexible and functional (and IT people really love them).

It's the last point I'd like to expand further.

Enterpise protals vs portal development platforms

Now putting aside the contentious use of the word portal (an any actual meaning), in my experience there are two types of portal software.

Proprietary enterprise
The big enterprise type of systems (Peoplesoft portal, Sharepopoint being two of these). They are characterised by being integrated or developed around previous proeducts in a vendors catalogue and tend to do a lot out of the box (not all of it well) and also tend to be less flexible around the presentation layer (look and feel, site structure, accessibility standards etc). It does generally mean there is less need to employ developers as most functionality is already built. They are starting to offer SOA type of approaches but they are still more restricted than other approaches.
Flexible development platforms
The other type is the more development platform (BEA weblogic). These tend to require developers to develop base artifacts to be reused. The systems come with already inbuilt functionality but it is relatively easy to build new functionality as they tend to be built around an open web services approach.

My organisation is currently exploring several different platforms (as well as using several... which of course poses many difficult scenarios) but for the 'intranet' I really see approach 2 being far more effective (given my general stance as mentioned at the start of owning and controlling development).

It gives organisations more flexiblity in displaying and managing content and functionality and also the ability to control the base code of development (thus accessibility) more than the proprietary systems.

User demands not being met

User demands are increasing (mostly around workflow, intregration with existing data systems, personalisation of content) more rapidly than most organisations have the ability to meet those demansd and thus in terms of good buisness it seems logical to take on board at least good solid SOA portal development approaches to be able to better meet these demands.

So while I still hate the misuse of the word 'portal', and dislike that the multinationals have hijacked the word, and hate that vendors oversell their products, the 'portal solution' of any colour/format/platform is likely to be part of the enterprise of the future if not fully realised as of yet.

I also see open SOA standards being a key player in this development.

I also realise that 'portal' hype has decreased over the past couple of years (generally it has been migrated into the wider enterprise 2.0 hype) I think this is because many organisations have simply changed their web development practices to be 'portal'/SOA like, rather than from scratch as had to be done in the past.

I think the postives of moving in this direction have started to outweigh the negatives.

News feeds for intranet teams

2007-08-02T16:07:00.000+12:00

James from Step Two has published a comprehensive list of must read feeds for intranet teams.

Just a reminder if you'd like to add contextia to your news feed visit Feedburner or use the feed links on the right.

Intranets '07, Sydney

2007-07-19T10:11:00.000+12:00

The Intranets '07 event has been finalised for Sydney for Wednesday, 19 September.

It is a focused one day conference with two workshops on the following day.

The previous couple of years have been great. Lots of great views from intranet managers and this year presentations include Telstra, National Australia Bank and Heinz.

To its credit it has little vendor involvement.

I will be chairperson of the event as well as presenting on content strategy and management.

Strategic Intranet and Portal Management conference - Auckland

2007-07-12T11:05:00.000+12:00

The Auckland Strategic Intranet and Portal management conference has been finalised for th 28 and 29 of August at The Rydges in the city.

As always it features lots of great speakers and case studies, some usual faces and some new ones.

Cairo Walker from Step Two will be running a separate workshop on the 30th on a new model of theirs 'Intranet Honeycomb'.

I'll be doing a presentation on content management strategy focusing on users and governance and will also participate as a panelist in the open panel discussions at the end of day two.

Hope to see you there.

Blogs ARE the new information medium

2007-07-11T10:55:00.000+12:00

Jakob Nielsen is starting to show his age.

I've been a big fan of his since his 'Designing Web Usability' book and have on occasion defended the fellow from detractors.

But his latest article Write articles not blogs is one of the most boring reactionary things I've read around online communication for quite some time.

I'm sure all those big graphs in the article are all valid and the research behind it perfectly fine.

The problem is that it's boring, not engaging and I don't have time to read big long boring online article (no matter how valid) on a particular subject, especially when I'm at work and I tend to avoid getting online at home.

I like blogs as they provide 'snippets' of good information (if of course they are good blogs) or links to other information. It helps build a collective and wide personal knowledge of a subject over time without the need to do in-depth study.

The social and interaction aspects of blogs should not be overlooked for the valid value they provide which articles do not.

Articles certainly have their place and there are people that do both but blogs have opened up knowledge sharing beyond what traditional articles have and shouldn't be compared with something as structured as an article.

Donna Maurer IA workshops in Auckland

2007-07-05T10:02:00.000+12:00

Well known IA expert Donna Maurer will be in Auckland running two one-day session covering aspects of IA. She is being brought to Auckland by the good people at Optimal Usability.

This full day workshop will provide you with a thorough overview and
understanding of information architecture theory & practice.

It will cover a wide range of information architecture issues, including an
understanding of how it fits into a project, fundamental skills & knowledge required for information architecture work and current information architecture issues.

It will be theoretical and practical and allow you to immediately apply ideas to your projects.

Great opportunity to get expert advice and upgrade your skills.

Search engine optimisation and content searchability

2007-07-03T15:48:00.000+12:00

Demise of the meta keyword

I am still working with a lot of content authors who think buy stuffing words into their meta keyword fields and writing massive page descriptions are somehow going to increase their site/page searchability and ranking within search engines. They don't.

As mentioned in a previous post even my CMS vendor believes (even in this day and age) that somehow managing meta keywords is the key to SEO.

When Search Engines first kicked off (dark ole' pre-Google days) meta tags were the key information used by search engines to identify page content. This lead to all sorts of e-marketing scammers making millions spamming keywords and page descriptions.

Obviously the sophistication of SEO has greatly improved with the advent of Google style Page ranking, link popularity and the actual searching of content and not just meat fields and titles.
This too has lead to all sorts of e-marketing scammers but Google really has done a great deal to protect the integrity of its ranking technology to avoid these types of things (i.e. the white text on white background, domain name squatters using link pages etc etc).

Perhaps the only good use of meta keywords these days is a general indicator for other content authors in your organisation as to what the target keywords are and thus that they should be used in your keyword maps.

Good content - good searchability

With more internal search engines following more of a Google model (indeed many are now adopting the Google app) this applies to web content and intranet content in equal measure.

I'll reinforce my position that good web content and intranet content is fundamentally structured the same way (leaving aside to a degree social/ web/enterprise 2.0 collaborative stuff).

Accessible sites are searchable sites
Well written web content is searchable content
User-focused content is searchable content

SEO marketing and natural searches

It's important to highlight the difference between search engine marketing (Google adwords etc) and natural search optimisation (free listings).

What I'm concerned about here is natural search engine optimisation for websites and intranets and I'll leave the e-marketing stuff to someone else.

Searchability and Findability

I'll highlight the separation between searchability and findability here also.

When I mean 'searchability' I'm talking specifically about a search engine (either internally or externally) indexing a site and producing relevant results for users of that search engine. 'Findability' is a larger concept.

Basics of good SEO

Use keyword maps - Page titles, headings and keywords in first paragraphs need a common thread. The link/navigation to the page has the keyword focus.
Links should not be images, not Flash, not Javascript. Simple accessible text links is the way to go.
key content is in text. Text! not flash, not image not fancy java apps. Good ole plain HTML/XHTML rendered text. Otherwise forget about indexing.
CSS can be utilised to great effect for good SEO. Use it to structure your site in divs. Don't use tables.
Pages are coded following W3C standards and guidelines. It is generally web developers themselves that keep pages from being indexed and ranked. Crappy code means unsearchable content.
Content is of a quality that makes other people want to link to it. Links are good.
Link to content don't duplicate it. Really important especially internally. Have a single source and provide links through. This also benefits users as they are presented with multiple locations of exactly the same content. See CMS container issues.
URLs are clear.Most search engines can index URLs with variables but they do tend to avoid them on occasion. Do URL rewrites to form nice readable URLs if you've got a dynamic content site. Again it's also good for your users.
Content is written for users and uses user-focused words and language (for intranets as well).
Forget short-cut scams. Follow good development and content basics. Focus on natural search optimisation not marketing optimisation. Get free listings!
Write lots of good content that people want to read. This is what gets indexed highly.

SEO links:

Intranet and portal personalisation

2007-06-21T09:26:00.001+12:00

Step Two Designs, through their KM Column, have published two new articles around intranet and portal personalisation.

James Robertson - Personalisation vs Segementation and
Catherine Grenfell - Do staff make use of personalisation features?

Catherine's article reports on a survey Step Two did around personalisation features of intranets and portals.

The results illustrate that:
adoption of personalisation is far from guaranteed, the survey shows that no
significant spike of usage at the high end of acceptance
personalisation includes bookmarks, portlets/dashboard elements, news and
documents
management perception of personalisation benefits is a key factor
in getting a personalisation project off the ground
technology available within the organisation has a significant impact on an
organisation's ability to deliver personalisation
measurement of adoption and effectiveness of personalisation is undertaken
by fewer than 20% of respondents

Intranet branding

2007-06-20T09:50:00.000+12:00

Garth Buchholz at Digital Web Magazine has written an article on 'Intranbranding: why your intranet needs its own personality'.

I'm generally a fan of branded intranets except I've found that there are lots of cheesy names out there. The ones I dislike the most tend to be names of people created from acronyms. Sure intranets need 'personalities' but they aren't people .

My organistion is currently looking at a similar process noty sure of what will come out of that.
Being at a University the scepticism and cynicism level is extreme.

I read a very intersting article/textbook on branding names sometime back and it oulined a history of brand name development. Early 20c it was family names i.e Ford, later abbreviations were popular IBM, then the 70's, 80's techy names i.e Microsoft then in the 90's and the 00's the web opened up names that meant nothing about the company or product... Yahoo!, Google, Bebo, De.li.cio.us etc etc .

Have the names and brands of intranets also evolved? Have we moved on from the ubiquitous something -'net' to the little direct association names? The company in-jokes?

Anyway a quote from Garth's article:

By creating an IntraBrand for the intranet you:
Give design elements a site-wide consistency, creating a
strongly unified look and feel—this develops a sense of teamwork and
equality among different departments.
Create a dynamic identity and community for the workforce.
Even if elements of the intranet include prominent corporate messaging, goals,
etc., this is the employees‘ environment, and if they don’t use the site, it
quickly diminishes in value.
Define the intranet’s main objectives and intended use.
Intranet branding can help communicate to employees how the organization expects them to use it, and what they can use it for.
Provide a benefit to current and prospective employees. An
intranet that has an integrated social networking value will appeal to new
generations of employees whose internet experiences have made them expect
higher standards from web communities.
Build a permanent foundation for employees. An intranet’s
lifespan can extend even further than the careers of many employees. While
the organization itself may be buffeted by external forces, be restructured,
or even be sold to another corporation, the intranet may provide a sense of
stability and community.

Global intranet survey

2007-06-20T09:04:00.000+12:00

Jane McConnell is now running the 2007 version of The Global Intranet Strategies Survey. The previous survey has been well received the world over.

The study is designed to understand how intranets are being used in
organisations that fulfill one of the following three characteristics:
large, global, complex.

The survey profiles the participating organisations and identifies issues, approaches and trends. All participants receive the standard which includes analysis by NetStrategy/JMC.

Participants are invited to contribute ideas and topics for the survey
of the following year.

The survey is open until the 15th of August.

Content management requirements and vendor sales jobs

2007-06-18T16:27:00.000+12:00

A lot has been written about Content management System (CMS) requirements and working out the best CMS for your organisation. I don't waat to rehash any of that stuff.

What I want to highlight and rant about right now are issues with vendors and the salesmanship of solutions.

My organisation is in a position to work with a local vendor for a CMS which provides the tool to a number of large organisations of similar type and is now supplying their CMS internationally.

In theory working closely with a CMS vendor means you can get functionality built into upgrades and hopefully get bugs and other issues resolved painlessly. In practice I'd take an out of box solution that has been fully tested, anytime. Or open source when at least you can understand when things don't work.

Things to consider when talking or working with vendors about CMS solutions (so you don't have to deal with it after the fact) :

Just because they say 'Yes it can do that' does not mean 'Yes it can do that' :)
Remember vendors are software salespeople and software developers. They are not web content people, or intranet mangers etc etc. A very important point to keep in mind.
Focus on key functionality and not get distracted by the whizz bang in their Marketing material.
Be concerned if your vendor thinks making big Flash applications increase'Accessibility'. They need to understand basic Accessibility issues and the increasing comliance issues arising in many countries.
Don't specify it can handle HTML in your requirements and/or RFP. All CMS's can handle 'some' HTML. Specify a standard of HTML or XHTML. i.e. must meet HTML 4.0 validated standard. This'll keep you away from dreaded proprietary tags and a situation where basic HTML tags do not work or are rendered incorrectly.
No matter what they say you are likely not to need 'a dynamic enterprise 2.0 collaborative Flash Application development environment' before getting an edit function that works.
Be concerned that they test/and or develop in Firefox but fundamental functionality doesn't work in Firefox...
Check Accessibility and Usability- not just of the output but of the tool itself. My vendor just tried to sneak a Flash based tool bar into the application. For no reason whatsover except they are on a Flash 'bender' at the moment.
10 steps to get to page editing is TOO much. Make it a single click from an actual page or a 3 step process max. anything else will suck time from your authors. if they can't do this find something taht does. There are many.
Beware of 'Search Engine Marketing' functionality. My vendor is selling an SEO tool (as part of an updrade) to manage meta keywords across a site. Problem is Google does not use meta keywrods for anything thus the tool is useless. Simply write good serach engine content (see forthcomiung post on good SEO.)
If you want your vendor to do real fixes you'll likely have them more money. Like builders pay them AFTER they've done it properly.
Don't let IT manage the process. It is a tool for Content authoring and content management.
Make sure end-users are the key focus of any developent or RFP.
You have lot's of choice. Don't get blinded by technology preferences or some sort of misguided jingoistic worldview.
Be concerned if the vendor keeps ignoring basic user requirements and help and keeps developing uneeded new functionality. Tell them to fix what they've already created first.

NZ Intranet Leadership Forum

2007-05-25T16:39:00.000+12:00

The good people at Step Two Designs have announced the dates for their first New Zealand Intranet Leadership Forums.

From Catherine Grenfell Step Two's Leadership Forum Manager:

Week commencing 27th August, 2007
Cairo Walker, Senior Consultant and CatherineGrenfell, Manager Intranet Leadership Forum meeting with intranet teams in Wellington and Auckland. First members only session will be held in Wellington and Auckland to introduce members, finalise workshops dates and decide on future workshop topics.

Week commencing 1st October, 2007
First Intranet Leadership Forum workshops held in Auckland and Wellington.
Dates to be decided by members, possibly Auckland on Tuesdays and Wellington on
Thursdays.Any member that joins now will have their membership extended
until October 2008. By joining now you will have immediate access to:
workshop reports from Sydney and Melbourne (topics include, information
architecture, working effectively with content owners and authors, effective
information management planning, skills needed in an intranet team etc)
how to guides (CMS requirements, card based classification etc)* your
selected Step Two Designs reports (search, 6x2 planning, staff directories
etc)
email list
other members and your forum manager

The cost has been finalised at $3400NZ per member.

Regular readers will no doubt be aware of Step Two's excellent reputation in the intranet field.

Thus this is a great opportunity to get involved in a regular support and devlopment mechanism for your intranet and exchange ideas with other intranet folk.

Second lifers need a first life

2007-05-15T15:35:00.000+12:00

Numerous articles have started to appear (including in the in the mainstream press) around the dodgier side of 'life' with the virtual world of second life.

Dark side of second life - Business week
Virtual rape is it a crime - Wired
Virtual crime - LJworld.com

These include issues of money laundering, illegal porn and even cases of 'virtual rape' (yes even cartoon character can be violated with a bit of nifty scripting language).

Personally if people want to get together and hang out as cartoons then that's fine... leaving aside obvious illegal material that should be dealt with as harsh as it is anywhere else.

What concerns me is the seemingly big marketing trend of setting up virtual travel agencies and real esatate agencies etc.

Now correct me if I'm wrong but don't websites already do that?

Is there actually an attraction of logging into second life.,walking or travelling in a virtual car or train as a cartoon avatar, 'virtually' walking into a cartoon shop and clunkily dealing with a cartoon shop assistant? Why not simply go to a business website do your business and spend the rest of your time doing something worthwhile like watching TV or something :). Even better go outside. See that tree. Real. That person say hello. Yes real interaction with no bandwidth delay.

Why I raise this issue is that there have been proposals of using second life as an enagement area for for my organisation. Now the heavy adult focus of much of second life is probably enough to snuff this out but am I just reactionary in finding wasting time on trying to develop startegies for one of many virtual worls a complete waste of thinking?

Keeping in mind that the majority of users are actually fairly old. These figures are a little out of date and I know the European figures are now much higher but I think the point is made. There are a lot of creepy middle to older aged people hanging out in second life.

Its also interested to know that while a lot of users have signed up regular user numbers are far lower.

Basically I don't think second life is revolutionary at all.

It is the web reincarnated in a hellish world of clunky graphical characters that all have hair transplants and heftier bodies. A place for lonely middle aged people to try and forget mundance exsitences.

Gen Y's and the You Tube generation are far too interested in engaging with themselves on a real level then pretending to be cartoon characters.
They like playing games but not living them.

Get out and live a real life people.

By the way I have never used second life or any other virtual cartoon character world so this can all be considered an uneducated, unresearched and opinionated rant. Gotta love the web.

Auckland intranet and portal conference

2007-04-26T16:19:00.000+12:00

Michael Earley ( mike(at)brightstar.co.nz ) over at Brightstar conferences is looking for input into the next Intranet and portal conference in Auckland (draft date 28th & 29th August).

It is the key event for this area in New Zealand so if you're interested in particpating or are interested in hearing about some specific events drop him an email.

I'll be posting more details of this as they come through.

If you want to read about last year's event check some live-blogging notes by Michael Sampson at last year's event which included some excellent presentations including one by myself :).

Blogging anti-code of conduct

2007-04-12T13:08:00.000+12:00

Tim O'Reilly of web 2.0 phrase coinage (supposedly) and the animal tech books' fame together with the Inventor of wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, are promoting a blogger's code of conduct.

The idea has got plenty of media coverage this week.

Now having been called a style Nazi in the past and a promoter of good online content guidelines within organisations you may think that I'd support such a move.

However my main response to this is 'what a load of rubbish'.

Half of it seems to be legal issues. If I defame someone... sue me. I don't need a code to avoid that one. The other half is hippy nonsense.

The whole idea of having a code goes against the whole point of blogging and the fact that they are promoting a 'code of conduct' just goes to show that even people profiteering from open content are now trying to reign it in when it doesn't fit with their own frameworks.

If you have a code of conduct for internal blogs or blogs that stem from your organisation then that makes complete sense but simply following a code of conduct because a few wealthy blog geeks think its a good idea because few gutless bloggers can't take the heat if someone disagrees with them? It's laughable.

So on a lighter note here's an independent blogger's anti-code of conduct:

I will criticise anyone, group of people or any organisation anyway I want until they get their lawyer to say otherwise (even then there better be a damn good reason)....
If someone leaves a comment I don't like. Then I won't cry about it I'll just delete it or make them out to be a fool (if possible otherwise the first is taken and hope that noone else reads the comment...).
I'll write whatever I want without any regard to whether I'll say it in person or even back it up if questioned.
I reserve the right to not have any concern or regard about anyone else's beliefs, physical characteristics or hobbies etc etc (see point 1).
Public slanging matches are preferred to private conversations as it makes life far more interesting and boosts google rankings.
Anonymity is to be supported - 'On the Internet no one knows you're a dog' is a motto that should be promoted. The free exchange of ideas should not be tied to one's name (although I think you're pretty gutless doing this...).
'Trolls' are to be supported, encouraged and vilified where necessary (see point 5).

Wisdom of crowds is ultimately flawed

2007-04-02T15:59:00.000+12:00

Gerry McGovern has a new post on the wisdon of crowds and associated things.

To a degree I agree that the user generated web is pretty nifty thing at the moment and it fills a gap previously being ignored.

But it is limited by the taste or opinion of what the majority think is valuable or interesting or ultimately useful. I'd hazard anything of pushing too far and basing the future of the web on some percived notion that just because the majority says it's ok then it must me.

The Nazi party were voted in, Britney Spears sells more records than Joy Division and millions of people think that being a cartoon in their 'Second life' is preferable to improving and living in their first one ...

Personally as a moderate libertarian type I believe in the wisdom of the indvidual.

In an online context every indivdual user is important and the more we can let each and every user tailor their web (or intranet) experience, the better.

Even if the majority of the world can read 9pt fonts on a computer screen doesn't mean those that need 12pt should be cast aside because thwisdom of crowds dictates that only the majority ruloe the way forward.

Wisdom of crowds - wikipedia mentions the 'wisdon of crowds' but also where the so called wisdon of crowds fails.

Don't believe the hype people.

I like the very nifty 'blink' approach better. It suggests that generally it your gut instinct or first impression which is the best. No need to wait until something's been voted cool on You Tube or iTunes you either think its good straight away or it's rubbish.

Sure it not as considered as some things should be but for me it's a lot 'racier'.

Intranet Innovation Awards

2007-03-21T15:46:00.000+12:00

Supported by some of the most well known intranet consultancies and agencies around the world, the Intranet innovation Awards (coordinated by Step Two Designs) have been announced.

The awards will be based around actual improvements and functionality rather than an intranet overall, which opens the possibility of being considered for an award to just about every intranet around.

So get it into gear and apply for a category (or all of them). This year's awards close on 15 May.

Apart from international recognition of your work, plus free reports, you'll get a certficiate and a trophy!

Content management and information architecture

2007-03-09T13:08:00.000+13:00

Masood Nasser has written an excellent article "Better Content Management through Information Architecture" on boxes and arrows.

“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.”

As many people have been sayong for a while it is time to start thinking strategically about Content Management and move away from talking about it as a techmnology issue.

Watch your blogging - and build your 'Google webography'

2007-02-12T11:00:00.000+13:00

Gerry McGovern has published another article, " Don't let yopur blog come back and haunt you " with the good common sense advice his readers have come to expect.

The article in question is around blogging as an available personal record and thus the need for careful consideration when writing so things don't come back to bite you.

But this needs to extend past just blogging to feedback, forum posts, blog comments anything that has your name on it and is availble online.

I do believe in open and frank discussion around the professional issues we all face but I have always been careful not to get personal or to criticise certain companies too directly. I also tend not to mention my employers directly where possible to allevaite any concerns that may raise in the future.

'Google webography'

While 'censoring your writing' could be considered a cop-out I have found that blogging has been a strong professional marketing tool that helps build a 'Google webography' (mine has been mostly positive to date) and in terms of developing my career I take the perception of a potential employer/client very seriously.

I would highlight that the mere fact of writing a blog or having a good 'Google webography' (a distinct name helps) does not mean what I have to say is any better or worthwhile than those people that don't, but the perception is definitely far stronger. It has got me invited to speak at conferences (thus adding to my profile) and it is always a welcome surprise to have someone come up and say they read (and like) my blog.

In his excellent book, 'Ambient Findability', Peter Morville mentions that Google has become the defacto answer base for many users who now tend to ignore other sources of data (to the dread of many librarians). Essentially for these users if its not on Google it doesn't exist. Obviously this should be considered nonsense (the user's perception not Morville) but in terms of online marketing Google is basically the beginning, end and the majority in-between.

Other great ideas to build your webography are commenting on articles, partcipating in forums, link classification and sharing sites such as de.li.cio.us and providing links through to other relevant sites and articles.

Essentially the basics of SEO should be followed.

In the end this means that what you have to say needs to be interesting and of value to your readers who will hopefully (yes that means you) bookmark and link to your site and subscribe to your RSS feed.

Nielsen's top usability problems

2007-02-12T10:52:00.000+13:00

Informit.com has published a full chapter of Hoa Loranger and Jakob Nielsen's new book Prioritizing Web Usability.

It's handy as unlike Nielsen's own site it has full examples and links to the problems the chapter mentions.

Admittedly none of the things mentioned will be new to most of us but it could be a handy few pages to keep to use as a good introductory article for those in your own organisation that need some pointers around basic usability and accessibility standards and guidelines.

RSS feed

2007-01-22T11:00:00.000+13:00

My RSS feed has been mucking up (or was never set-up properly in the first place!)

Note for easy sign-up you can now click on the orange Feedburner icon under 'Feed' in the right side bar.

Wiki your web and intranet guidelines

2007-01-19T10:46:00.000+13:00

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.

If you've read previous posts of mine you'll see I'm a big fan of providing good solid guidelines to support best web and intranet best practice in areas such as content, accessibility, usability and front-end coding.

The whole social media and collaboration revolution currently occurring (some useful functionality to organisations some not) has risen the expectations of interacting with users and users being able to openly comment and instigate change when necessary.

My organisation is currently in the process of redeveloping web guidelines into a firmer policy framework to be made up of various areas including stand alone content and accessibility and usability guidelines.

The process we have taken for the development of new guidelines has been to reverse the standard practice from developing them (or getting an external agency to develop them), and then enforcing, to getting the users of the guidelines to determine what is appropriate and what is not (but keeping some top level editorial and management approval).

The process:

Develop base framework for guidelines
Meet with key stakeholders to introduce the standards and the reasoning behind them
Post guidelines into a wiki accessible by all interested parties and potentially the entire organisation
Monitor changes to wiki version
Post initial 'official' version on the intranet based on appropriate material from the wiki
Continue to monitor wiki changes and update official version when appropriate
changes occur

While I have seen and heard of guidelines remaining in the wiki format I'm not convinced that wikis should be replaced more formal intranet publishing for these areas.

There are several reasons including the lack of consistency of language in a wiki, the possibility that user changes are not ideal for the organisation or meeting the expectation of a professional web/intranet environment and even becoming stuck with competing interests rewriting each others input (yes even in a professional environment).

The wiki is great for collecting a variety of ideas and input from across an organisation but because of the potential problems I still the need for a formal approved version published on the intranet. This may change depending as the maturity of wiki use, and the understanding of how users interact with wikis within an organisation, grows.

Both the wiki and intranet versions should be linked and the relationship explained to users.

So the positives of 'wiking' your web and intranet guidelines:

Raises the level of engagement through the intranet
Identifies hidden pockets of knowledge within the organisation
Develops an innovative way to collect opinion and input on a variety of subjects (people like something new especially if it related to them)
Provides a bottom -up approach for the further development of your website or intranet and other online environments.

It's just early days and at this stage because it the first time outside of dedicated IT teams that have been engaged to use the wiki there hasn't been too changes (which may also mean the initial guidelines are quite acceptable) but as we move to promote the use of the wiki in a variety of situations, and make others aware of the possibilities, I see the use of the wiki increasing across a multitude of areas of my organisation.

'Best' intranets for 2007

2007-01-16T08:48:00.000+13:00

Jakob Nielsen has announced his annual intranets of the year (2007).

The intranets are selected after an application and evaluation periuod but doesn't actually include any hands on evaluation by the judges which last year prompted Toby Ward to criticise the reporting process (although noting some value in the report).

I like when this report is announced. It gives you an insight to what major organisation are doing with their intranets. Although I haven't seen a full report for a couple of years (gets hard to justify year after year to look at cool screenshots) but even the write-up has some interesting info.

I do feel there was no need to pander to the anti-Microsoft crowd with his defence of mentioning that MS products are used. Of course they are and by more than Microsoft itself. Seems silly.

He notes that organisations are starting to use 'web 2.0' functionality for specific purposes and not just having it because it is currently well hyped. A good development in my book. Web standards etc are also being followed more regularly.

One trend with the report from previous is that it seems more an more large organisations are being included while in the past there were many smaller organisations getting a look in. I remember a winner a few years ago was a college intranet developed by a single person and today we have Microsoft and Infosys and last year was IBM etc. Perhpas it points to the growing entries for the report from large organisations or organisations taking their intranet seriously or maybe that there's more mileage to be made by highlighting multinationals rather than some small obscure college somewhere. Jakob does have a business to run.

If you do get the report remember that while ideas will easily be generated there is no value in copoying other intranets especially design. Each organisation is different and thus each intranet is different. It's those that try and be something else that tend to be problematic.

Interaction with virtual 'help' characters on the web or intranet

2007-01-10T10:22:00.000+13:00

Jane McConnell has written an interesting post about 'spleak' a virtual character interface for knowledge base type of questions.

Now the idea of using instant messaging software to interact with a company knowledge base is fantastic (on a website or intranet).

But why do we need some cheesy cartoon character to help us do it?

If the spleak guys lose the fluff then I think they're on to something good.

I can see it being great with kids or young teens on commercial or character driven sites but am unsure of whether adult users will not find it somewhat silly. Reactionary me would not deal with a business that made me interact with a cartoon.

Jane mentions a few 'characters' she's seen on company intranets (too much time on internal comms hands I'd say) and thinks the concept can be a good one.

I'd agree the concept of the interaction is a good one but think the characterisation of the interface is flawed. Keeping in mind that it is simply a character placed over what would be a standard knowledge base type of tool with answers generated from a database.

I'm sure some organisations would love it but it opens lots of room for cynicism and criticisim in an area that generally has a hard time building credibility with the wider organisation anyway.

One thing it does highlight is that there are an increasingly growing number of tools and devices becoming available as the enterprise jumps on the web 2.0 bandwagon.

It sure will keep things interesting for those of dealing with it at ground level.

Expand your intranet leadership box

2007-01-08T14:35:00.000+13:00

Your intranet is STILL unimportant

It’s tough working on intranets. Much of your organisation may not understated what the intranet is, hate using it if they do know what it is and even though everyone wants it improved you are likely to see much of the potential budget or resourcing being diverted off into some nifty new web 2.0 folly for the external website.

So we all know the negatives no respect, no cash, no people…

What about the positives? Well it is likely that you (or if your really lucky your team) are pretty smart (based on the purely ad hoc experience of attending intranet conferences) with some good communications/IT/information management/usability/organisational/design etc skills and it is also likely that you (or your team) have a foothold at various levels across the organisation even if in some areas it’s only at an administrator content editor level.

How can you best utilise those skills and connections?

Now at the moment the intranet I’m managing isn’t fantastic (the reasons too vast and painful to go into here) but the problems are slowly being rectified as time and resources permit.

However instead of keeping quiet (or improve the same thing over and over again) while the work continues I’m laying the groundwork for the future by getting involved in projects across the organisation which will have some future bearing on the intranet or on things that will.

Intranet ideas go across internal borders and job descriptions

Basically if you don’t get yourself involved it is likely some nasty surprises may be forced on you at a future date and intranet focuses need to get beyond content and new functionality.

Most of the improvements to an organisation I’ve seen intranets make are actually not directly related to the site itself but on processes or problems that have been revealed because of the intranet.

Example 1 - source organisational structure, administration and employee data issues where all revealed because of a new intranet staff directory. The problems weren’t caused or will be resolved by the intranet but it was the intranet that clearly exposed the issues which have led to a major project of improvement in the area.

Example 2 - fundamental holes in the way policies were being managed and developed were exposed by the intranet and again the resolution of the problem had very little to do with the intranet but the improvements were fundamental to the organisation (government sector).

Don’t wait to be invited to participate - tips on expanding intranet leadership

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.

Get into IT projects such as enterprise software – link everything to how the intranet can help (even if it is just a ‘link’).
Make sure the web/marketing team aren’t the only ones driving online style guides that also affect the intranet
Become a strong broad advocate for things others may not be touching such as accessibility, usability and good information architecture processes. These areas are still surprisingly under advocated in most organisations. Remember they apply equally to the intranet as they do the external site so don’t just sit back and watch them happen without you.
Don’t just harp on about things in an intranet context but take a best practice viewpoint that can set standards for various tools and systems. If people can see you making linkages across the organisation they are likely to see you as worthwhile in those things not directly related.
Say sensible things at sensible times in front of the right people. The intranet will languish unless someone is being a leader.
Set-up your own communities of practice if one doesn’t already exist in areas that are related to the intranet.
It’s not about being liked but about getting things done. Because intranets are tough you need a thick skin. Having said that being negative, dismissive or arrogant isn’t going to help you. Be positive, firm and useful. Say I can help you with that.
Meet regularly with those in the know and meet-up with newcomers who may become them.
Work for an organisation that understands that strict job descriptions and boxing employees into certain areas is not really a productive process in this day and age.

Stop the moaning and get out there

Yes working on intranets is a hell unbeknown to most and you have the visibility of the ivory-billed woodpecker. But so what? Toilets are essential to the running of all organisations (don’t tell me they aren’t). Do you know the manager of the building services team? Probably not.

If you want the intranet to be at the centre of the organisational universe (and we all know it should be somewhere near there) we need to network enthusiastically, boost the user and communities of practice connections and swallow a lot of crap while continually working behind the scenes with the real influencers and decision makers.

Intranet and portal personalisation

2007-01-08T12:29:00.000+13:00

Step Two Designs are running a quick survey around the implementation and usage of intranet and portal personalisation.

It's only 9 very quick questions and it's very worthwhile doing the survey as the results will be publicly released by Step Two in their tradition of openly sharing much of the information they collect as well as the great ideas that they develop from it.

Intranet teams need usability skills

2006-12-15T15:37:00.000+13:00

James Robertson has written an article 'Usability and IA are core skills for intranet teams' .

Surprisingly I have come across few dedicated intranet professionals with good skills in these areas to-date with them either being heavily technology or IT focused or at the other end and heavily internal/corporate comms focused.

James says:

The primary focus of usability and information architecture activities is
normally on the major redesign of the intranet. Taking many months, this
redesign should (and often does) follow best-practice user-centred design
principles.

Beyond this major piece of work however, it is not as widely
recognised that there is an ongoing need for usability and IA expertise relating
to the intranet.

If nothing else, once the consultants have finished
their work, it is left to the intranet team to actually put the designs into
practice. Since there is a limit to what the delivered designs can cover every
issue, there will be many small (and sometimes large) decisions yet to make.

Intranet IA

2006-12-01T12:23:00.000+13:00

Toby Ward has published a post on card sorting with a link to another article published through his consultancy.

"Firstly, build a full intranet plan or blueprint – including strategic directives such as a mission and goals – and then have a professional craft the first draft of an information architecture based upon that plan (and the preceding intranet assessment). Once you’ve made your first attempt at an IA, and then take the IA to working sessions with your key stakeholders to focus on their areas (e.g. HR for the human resources section or site). It is at this point, when you’re engaging stakeholder groups that it is most valuable to undertake a card sorting exercise."

As usual some good ideas to consider and put into practice.

While you are there also check out his post on Intranet ROI.

"How does understanding employee requirements relate to ROI? The intranet has to deliver value for employees to use it. If you build it... and employees don't see value in using the intranet, they will not come. If they don't come, you won't get the ROI."

Using method acting for personas

2006-12-01T12:16:00.000+13:00

Zef Fugaz has published an article, 'Bring your personas to life' , which describes using method acting techniques to help use personas within a user-centred design environment. He talks about how his team have adopted the approaches with good results.

Not not sure if it would work with a lot of teams but the idea ia an interesting one and worth considering to beef up your use of personas.

Intranet leadership forum

2006-11-21T09:03:00.000+13:00

Step Two have annocunced the details for the Intranet Leadership Forum for Australia and New Zealand.

It offers members regular workshops and reports as well as access to expert advice and solutions and networking wioth a wider community of members.

For the benefits the price looks very cost-effective.

CMS containers and content quality

2006-11-20T10:59:00.000+13:00

A feature of most CMS platforms is the ability to break up content into 'containers' (or similarly named blocks) and then resue these containers in other areas of the site.

Container reuse can be highly beneficial as it allows for a single point of updates and/or correction etc.

However in a highliy decentralised and federated environment (for both intranet and/or web content) without good policies and direction around container reuse (or 'linking') the benefits of container reuse become nullified by major problems.

Context

The main problem around poor use of containers is context as containers can be (and generally are) used out of context. An author on one page has used a container in context with the other containers on the page. Another author then takes a partciular container to use on their page.

The potential problems here are obvious.

The content is written in a different style (and potentially a different look) no matter how strong a style guide you have.
The container has been written only for the context of the original page and thus does not take into consideration the context of any reusing page.
The container of the original author may change without regard to any pages that reuse the container.

In terms of your site you may have several similar pages duplicating content making it very difficult for a user to navigate.

I feel it is also important to try and stop site-section or sub-site owners from taking the 'I want to keep all visitors within my own section and thus will republish other sections content to keep them there, wether this is good for the user or not' type of thinking.

What's wrong with a nice clear link to the relevant original page?

Search engines

Take a container published on a page. A search engine (internal or external) will not recognise that the content is within a container (unless your CMS is directly integrated into your internal search. This doesn't solve external search engines though).

Thus the search engine will index the container for every page it has been used on.

A user searching for the content within that container will be provided with a result to each container and depending on the page it may not provide them with the original context or because the search engine result is quite narrow the user has no idea of what result they should go for, thus breaking the content usability 101 rule of 'Don't waste your user's time'.

Avoiding problems

Content authors should have better consideration of context in regard to container reuse and ideally should let the originating author know that they have (or would like to) resue the original authors container within their page.
Ensure your CMS has good container control including container level security and ideally automate processes as suggested in the first point.
Provide support and guidelines around good use of containers (where they are appropriate and where they are not).
Consider major clean-ups of content and consider that users are still using your site/site on a page by page process and rather than simply republishing all containers provide logical related links and keep container reuse to obvious examples rather than an open slater policy of any author being able to do it.
Review your use of conatiners and question where the traditional model of a page by page structure is best until your use of containers in terms of content quality is reviewed.

Conclusion

While I think it is impractical and a bad idea to end the practice of container reuse I think it is important to ensure that strong guidance around it is in place to ensure that content is kept clean and focused and you don't end up with a mess of duplicated and republisjed content making it near impossible for a user to understand and navigate (especially across a large site).

It can be a highly sensitive subject in less controlled decentralised environments but the foucs should be on ease of use, content quality and findability rather than just provide a quick and nasty way for publishers to knock-up pages.

If anyone has any thoughts they'd like to share on their use of containers (and any ideas on how to implment them to avoid the problems above) please leave a comment.

Left-hand navigation

2006-11-08T10:01:00.000+13:00

James Robertson has written a post that asks 'Is left-hand navigation evil?'

In practice, however, the poor use of the left-hand sidebar keeps coming up
as one of the major usability issues on intranets. Even when completely
redesigning sites, the ad-hoc use of the sidebar seems to creep back in even
before all the content has been migrated, lessening (or even entirely
eliminating) many of the intended benefits of the redesign.

James poses a good question and his points are really valid. This one is key:

The issue is not with the design of the left-hand navigation, but how it's used.
In particular, how it ends up being used in a decentralised authoring
environment for a large and organically-growing intranet.

I agree with this but as left-hand navigation is a tried and true web standard poor use of it is a symtom of poor decentralised control over IA. Thus the decentralisation of IA needs to be looked at first before what I would see as a radical depature from convention (for sites that have always used it anyway).

In my experience left-hand navigation within CMS sites gets messy very quickly. To alleviate this a few things need to be considered:

decentralise content not IA
make templates and guidelines stronger in terms of navigation
educate around good IA
provide in-page navigation within sections and leave the left hand nav as an 'overall structure' navigation only. This allows users to keep focused on the content without moving around too much for next steps. This also provides a bit of flexibility when the left nav does get over-extended.

Accessibility and user research

2006-10-30T14:03:00.000+13:00

Maurizio Boscarol has published an article 'Working with others: Accessibility and User Research'.

The artilke discusses some of the current recommendations through WCAG (and how they were established) and some of his own observations regarding users with disabilities.

Maurizio has called for a lot more research into Accessibility rather than just following the standard guidelines which may have been established without full regard of how users (with impairments) actually navigated websites.

"In short, we need less discussion and more user research. Especially when
our guidelines form the basis of national laws, we need to ensure that they’re
founded on real user experience. And in the meantime, accessibility experts,
let’s conduct—and publish—more user research to support our
recommendations."

Intranet leadership forum

2006-10-27T08:52:00.000+13:00

James Robertson from Step Two has annouced some details of their new intranet leadership forum which will provide members a number of benefits.

It's an interesting business approach from Step Two and I'm sure membership will produce some real long term results for members.

Benefits include regular workshops, Step Two reports, members only websites and information sharing, ongoing support from a dedicated forum manager (Catherine from Step Two).

Wikis on the intranet: British Council case study

2006-10-20T09:41:00.000+13:00

Maish Nichani at Pebble Road has an written a case study of the British Council using Wikis on their intranet.

"it wouldn’t have taken off if it were not for the ‘culture of negotiation’ that already existed within the organization. It is in this culture of negotiation that people are aware that they don’t know everything; that others know different things; and through dialogue and negotiation, they can together create better things."

Web accessibility in trouble?

2006-10-11T14:36:00.000+13:00

Isolani has published a series of posts on Web accessibility in trouble which discuss the way accessibility has moved away from ensuring sites are accessible for users with disabilities to an idea that accessibility is an all encompassing field for all users.

I think the posts cover some really valid points but they become a little self-righteous themselves when attacking the self-rightenousness of others.

I myself believe that accessibility is for all users and that sites or software that dismiss this notion are simply putting potential users or customers off.

The posts also come down hard on the 'zealots' who don't support Flash as an accessible technology.

This defense of Flash is pretty superficial. Like all technology Flash is great and effective when used in the proper context but a potential disaster when not.

Anyway a great series of posts to stir up a bit of debate.

Building leadership support

2006-10-10T10:26:00.000+13:00

Toby Ward has published a post on building sustainable leadership support for intranets.

"The greatest barrier to an intranet’s potential is politics. Technology and
budget are secondary barriers. The intranet is a political football and you
need an executive linebacker on your team."

'Linebacker' for those of us geographically and 'football' code challenged is an American football position.

Global intranet report

2006-10-04T10:59:00.000+13:00

Jane McConnell has published her global intranet report comprising of data collected from 101 organisations worldwide.

Jane will publish a short version of the report soon and make it available through her site.
The initial findings look great and I look forward to the report.

Key findings:

1. The intranet is still in its infancy. It has achieved a first milestone of being a primary information tool. Its benefits as a collaboration platform and productivity tool have not yet been fully achieved. More importantly, it is rarely perceived to be a tool to bring business value to the organisation.

2. The intranet is moving towards the individual. This is clear seeing trends in personalisable portals, feeds to hand-held devices, implementation of web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, and initiatives in the area of PKM (personal knowledge management).

3. Senior management has a stronger role to play in the intranet. Numbers and comments throughout this report repeatedly show that senior management in most organisations is not yet fully aware of the role and potential of the intranet nor of their own responsibilities regarding the intranet.

Staff-centric intranets

2006-10-02T09:08:00.000+13:00

Gerry McGovern has written an article on the importance of having task-driven (staff-centric)intranets rather than organisational driven ones.

"A task-centric intranet will work for everyone who comes to the intranet to
complete tasks. It will prove challenging, though, to those who are responsible
for creating the content and applications that are needed to complete these
tasks."

Buzzwords

2006-09-27T14:52:00.000+12:00

The 37 signals blog Signal vs. Noise has a great post on the uselessness of 'Buzzwords'.

"Tech folks often use terms that imply we’re part of some secret club. It’s as if
we’re saying, “We can speak in a code that those other people can’t understand.”
It’s a way to build a wall that separates us from them. It’s a form of exclusion.

You don’t need to build walls or exclude people when you’re confident in your message though. When you’re confident in your message, you want everyone to understand.

When you really have a point, you want to say it sharp so it can penetrate deep."

2006 conferences wrap-up

2006-09-27T14:24:00.000+12:00

The intranet/web conference season is over for myself this year and I have had the opportunity to speak at various events in Auckland, Christchurch and Sydney.

A few highlights:

Northland Regional Council - setting up an intranet within a 5 week project that provides a lot of great community functionality for its 130 staff. A great example of focusing your intranet on your users and their needs, and the culture of the organisation they work for.
New Zealand local government - Great to see usability and accessibility starting to get taken seriously at a local government level.
James Robertson - Providing details of a great approach to developing and setting intranet goals and also for announcing the establishment of an Intranet Leadership Forum for Australasia. Good to see someone keeping the thinking moving forward.
Telstra (Australia) - Great robust intranet which for a large and innovative company is something that should be expected
Vodafone (NZ) - Great approaches to developing and setting up an intranet team. Including a dedicated person coordinating implemnnation of the intranet 'roadmap'.
Why can't we all have teams like that?
Blogs and wikis - starting to be used sensibly within organisations to add value not just to create more contenbt (This doesn't conflict with my Web 2.0 statement below by the way).

Lowlights

Technology - CMS's, portal solutions, vendors, marketing material posing as research. All of it continues to over promise and under deliver. Just give us something that works as it says it does.
Web 2.0 for the enterprise - Linked to above. More hyperbole to distract senior management from making real decisions to help intranets and intranet teams. If we can't get users to remember logins, can we expect them to develop social bookmarking for the enterprise? Not all organisations are made up of IT folk or web gurus. Don't get me wrong I like all the Web 2.0 stuff and I think it's really cool. I just haven't seen how it's helping with the problems organisations have or helping the bottom line.

Simple words for search engines

2006-08-29T09:01:00.000+12:00

Jakob Nielsen has written an article 'Use old words when writing for finability'. As per usual it brings everything down to the basics of focusing on what users actually do and how they think.

All good sensible stuff.

There are many elements to search engine optimization, but SEO guideline #1
is our old friend, "speak the user's language." Or, more precisely, when you
write, use keywords that match users' search queries.

When an intranet case study is actually a portal sell job

2006-08-25T13:30:00.000+12:00

The process of conferences is an interesting one. The financial pressures of involving sponsors and exhibitors is important so that events actually proceed and let's face it without conferences or events many of us will not have the chance to meet other intranet or portal professionals.

What I find somewhat annoying is when a highlighted case study is actually turned into a chance for a company to focus on selling software to what is essentially a captive audience (difficult to get up and walk out in the middle of 60 people in a conference).

So let's look at the actual 'case study'. I won't mention the company (yeah pretty gutless of me) or conference involved as that will be pretty easy (for the few readers I have) to identify themselves.

Things to look out for:

The presenter is not an intranet/knowledge/web etc manager but a 'Sales Leader' (Sure it's really obvious to me now...)
There are lots of screenshots of said 'portal' but the focus is on cost savings and 'enterprise solutions' rather than processes and users
Content and the actual intranet /portal team are not mentioned
On question of 'So what problems do you have with the site ?'- answer is 'none' (is there really an intranet or portal in the world that really has no problems?? Come on do I really look that stupid?)
The presentation is really really slick and the presenter is defensive and cannot handle questions during the presentation
There is a big sign of the said company up the front of the room
Functionality presented is pretty much out of the reality realm of most organisations
The presenter dismisses comments from previous presenter who is a vendor-neutral free thinking and idea sharing sort of bloke
Presenter talks about white paper marketing material from his company as 'free IP'.

To be fair the site looked really good and said company really has put their software to great use internally and they have some great figures to back them up. But they are a slick multinational IT company with lots of innovators and early adopters. This doesn't apply to the majority of companies or people in the audience.

When I see a case study from one of the world's leading organisations I really want to hear about the site not the software that drives it. If you want to do a sales job leave it for the next room.

Next time get your intranet manager to front up and talk about the realities of managing intranets and portals. They'll be far more appreciated by those of us that are in the operational trenches and simply won't buy your perfect world view. We'll probably also be more likely to actually go and investigate your software rather than feeling they've already watched an hour long commercial.

Intranet and Portal conference write-up

2006-08-25T10:31:00.000+12:00

Michael Sampson has kindly written up the entire Strategic Intranet and Enterprise Portal Management conference held over the last few days in Auckland including my own presentation on Intranet Content: Accessible, Usable and Useful.

Intranet access

2006-08-18T16:37:00.000+12:00

James Robertson has written an article on intranet log-in.

The focus is 'future proofing' your intranet to deliver personalised services in the future as well as security.

The point about the intranet log-in being based on the network or PC login is very apt.

Forcing users to log into the intranet when they have already logged into their PC is redundant and a usability block.

This usually means that a users log-in is based on a browser session, so once the browser is closed the session is lost and they will have to login again when reopening the browser. This makes it difficult to get users to set their browser homepage to the intranet (if they have a choice) and using the intranet as a central staff communications channel becomes difficult if people have to log-in everytime.

These issues get more complex depending on the organisation and environment the intranet is located in.

I am currently working on a system where single sign-on has yet to be implemented and we are moving from a free access staff directory to one behind a log-in. This change in user access (despite the new directory being superior) is likely to be a huge issue on launch and it will not be resolved until the single sign-on capability has been implemented in the future.

Basic line here is to make it as simple as possible for users to access the intranet, can identify users specifically, and to make sure that security is also being looked after.

Web 2.0 - just meaningless marketing hyperbole?

2006-08-16T08:48:00.000+12:00

Joshua Greenbaum has written a funny but apt article at Intelliegent Enterprise titled Application Insight: Why I Hate Web 2.0 .

"the fact that Web 2.0 is hard to pin down is one of the reasons I hate it--my need for precise terminology is aggrieved by the ease with which Web 2.0 is used to describe everything from next-generation social computing to dynamic, interactive Web sites to whatever Wired thinks is cool this week.

But the real reason I hate Web 2.0 is because hidden beneath all the new stuff that is collecting under the Web 2.0 umbrella is a simple fact: All that coolness exists to do an even better and more invasive job of marketing goods and services to Web users. "

Flash - 10 years of wow-wee

2006-08-15T14:08:00.000+12:00

Wired has an interview with Adobe discussing the 10 years of Flash.

Adobe's line on accessibility issues with Flash is 'don't blame the tools'.

Fair enough and I'm pretty much over and tired of the whole 'value of Flash' debate.

If you want to waste time with Flash animations go ahead. Same with navigation menus.
Even develop forms in Flash if you wish (one of the more crappy things that Flash is being used for. I have even seen this done on public sector websites !).

But let's be honest unless you are using Flash purely for interactive visual content (supported by non Flash content) and are using it to actually create sites/applications for a wide marketplace then you are doing your company a disservice and are ignoring your users.

There's a place for gratuitous use of Flash on design sites and targeted sites for marketing purposes but informational sites for a wide audience need to be simple and focused on the content that users come to your site for.

Elements of Style

2006-08-11T12:53:00.000+12:00

Chritina Wodtke has written an article at Boxes and Arrows on using the writing reminders from seminal E.B White book 'The elements of style' (1959) in relation to user experience design.

It's a good article along similar 'checklist' lines as Web Dogma.

It's great to see something so simple (but important) such as the reminders from that book still highly relevant today and the practical ability to apply them to other areas.

Style should not just be considered an individual opinion/perception. It is vital that designers, writers and developers understand the needs of end users and their key objectives.
This obviously should be taken within the context of application in a business environment rather than an artistic or open creative forum where they should apply their skills whatever way they wish.

Iterative design vs large scale projects

2006-08-10T16:15:00.000+12:00

Jared Spool at uie.com has written an article on the 'Quiet death of the major re-launch' (thanks to James Robertson for the pointer).

It's a great article and highlights that iterative improvements and changes are generally far more effective than large one off redesign/re-launches.

On many occasions the redesign/relaunch is just a makeover and fails to tackle any of the real issues affecting a site and I have found that these tend to be better handled and fixed with a step by step approach.

Jakob Nielsen interview and the usability culture clash

2006-08-08T14:40:00.000+12:00

Sitepoiint has published an interview with Jakob Nielsen.

It's an interesting interview as Sitepoint tends to be read mostly by freelance web designers and developers including many that run their own sites dependent on adwords and by reviewing the forums a lot of crappy little links sites with little regard for quality content. (Sitepoint itself however gives great coverage of the web development and design sector)

The comments on the article reflect this with many people dismissing Nielsen out of hand and rubbishing his opinions. For the guy who brought usability out to the masses, has written several successful books on the subject and most likely has made a good deal of cash from it all I find this somewhat strange if not plainly ridiculous.

I agree that sometimes his opinions are a little reactionary and negative (and on occasion worng) but the man is a researcher. His opinions are based on evidence he has collected. So he is mostly evidence driven apart from the occasional guru marketing that he gets caught up in.

The comments to the article raise a kind of 'culture clash' around usability. In my experience usability seems only to be discussed positively in medium to larger sized organisations while at a local developer/ designer level it seems to be considered something that gets in the way of 'creative control' and the designers/developer's usually well developed but brittle ego.

For those of us that have tried to promote and advocate usability and accessibility to designers and developers we know how hard it can be and without the research of people like Jakob Nielsen I think this task would be even harder.

Portal spin, fact and fiction

2006-08-07T09:23:00.000+12:00

Just a pointer to a James Robertson 'critque' on a recent 'article' about portals.

I fully agree with James in what he has to say and it is good to see a good old rant coming from him.

Most portal material I read always seems to be advertorial or just plain marketing hyperbole rather than any objective discussion around what portal software can do and if the benefits are actually there.

It's not that the functioinalty of portal software is bad, in fact I have seen some pretty nifty stuff, it's more around the idea that portals are being presented as the final word in document/information/content/communication/intranet/website management solutions and I believe this to be disingenious.

There is so little critical comment on portal software that it is very difficult to get good free advice. There is a whole swag of information however on portal software promoting it without any objective commentary.

So if you're looking at purchasing any portal software ensure that the marketing blurbs are considered just that and that you do extensive critical evaluations between different products and support models. There are a number of reports and consultants around to help in this area.

Even before that consider whether your issues are really about software or are actually about processes, people or business support. Software only runs as good as the processes in place to manage it and there are many stories out there about massive failures in the 'one software solution to rule them all' approach.

ALGIM Web Symposium 2006 - Christchurch

2006-08-01T12:48:00.000+12:00

I will be speaking on Intranet Management (September 4) at this year's ALGIM Web Symposium to be held in Christchurch on September 4 and 5.

User focused language for intranets and websites

2006-07-07T14:21:00.000+12:00

Despite the growing awareness of content quality and usability, there are still many organisations and online content producers that can’t get out of their headspace and silos. (See user driven culture).

Why are some still continuing to develop intranet and website content focused on what we or our managers think users may want/

A summary:

Find out what users do, need and want and give it to them
Use the language your users understand
Use simple, focused plain English when possible
Use active language based on task or actions
Structure IA's based on card sorting and other IA methodolgies
Don't make assumptions about certain groups without testing
Undertake user research as a matter of course

Use simple active language

The growing use of simple active language has been a great move for many sites.
I am currently working on a large intranet section that uses simple “How do I…” style questions broken into categories based on the verb...

How do I find….?
How do I order….?
How do I book….?

This isn’t the only way to get this information on the site but it provides users with a relatively simple and quick way to find information on key tasks and processes within the organisation.

This has been well recieved by users tested so far.

Organisation-wide intranets

Stop using terms focused on the group/department/section etc. If content is for the entire organisation or even just a few users outside of the content writer’s group ensure that the language used can be understood by all.

Never assume that all users have been in the organisation for a long enough time to learn acronyms. I have recently worked for a government sector organisation where acronyms were rife to the point of being silly.

Every project, every training programme, even strategic policy documents were named with a bunch of meaningless letters. The main reason for this is most likely internal branding. But information or content titled by a bunch of letters is not going to help users find relevant information.

At least make sure acronyms have the full title in headings links and introductions
i.e. LTSP (Long Term Strategic Plan).

There is no business reason why plain English terminology cannot be used in general intranet content.

For technical documentation, legal policy etc plain English is not always possible or preferable but make sure that a summary is provided in simplified and focused language and give users the choice whether they want the detail or not.

Much of the reasoning against the use of simple focused language is the ego of the writer or departmental manager and the mindless consideration of ‘our department’s profile/image/presence etc’.

Intranets are generally cross-organisational business tools thus ‘siloist’ egos need to be left at the login screen.

Accountants understand the same language but navigate differently

An interesting example of ‘siloist’ thought I experienced recently was around why a certain section on the intranet had completely different navigation (in terms of layout as opposed to wording) from other sections. The reason was ‘they are accountants’ and will understand…

Never assume that because only accountants (for example) may be using your content that they will navigate and ‘read’ the same way. They will most likely all understand your terminology but accountants will differ in their online skills as much as any other group.

Follow consistent standards to support all levels of users.

Websites

Never use your organisation’s terminology or structure to make your IA for external users. Users are on your site to make a decision or take an action. Your IA and content should be based around supporting this.

This is where card sorting with external users becomes essential. Invest in research and usability testing. It will save you many headaches and potentially lost revenue later on.

If your site is for teenagers make sure you test with teenagers, the same for businesspeople, sportspeople, the elderly… whoever your site’s primary users are. If it’s a broad focus of people then test with a broad range of users.

A good example I heard recently was for a tertiary education site. When describing ‘facilities’ many students, when tested, saw the word as ‘faculties’ which was well used throughout the site.

Instead of using ‘facilities’, simplified and focused language such as ‘things to do on campus’, ‘where to eat’, ‘shops on campus’, sports and recreation’ etc were used instead rather than one word to try and hold them all.

Intranet policies

2006-07-06T10:03:00.000+12:00

James Robertson has published a new article 'Five key intranet policies'.
As usual, top-notch expert advice.

The five key policies :

Intranet homepage
First source publishing
Information management policy
Induction for intranet authors
Intranet ownership

I would include in policy 3 something delineating what is published on central as opposed to 'group' intranets, to ensure consistency of location and avoid duplicated or potentially conflicting messages.

Intranet Communications

2006-06-23T13:39:00.000+12:00

Toby Ward has published a big post, with some intranet screenshots, Intranet communications: improving HR service and communications, covering what content and services an intranet needs to meet employee requirements.

" Four types of principal communications should be captured
and delivered via the intranet:

• Those required by law
- Health safety, regulation, …
• HR Related
- Benefits, compensation, career, social, …
• Business Related
- News, competitive arena, knowledge-share, …
• Informal
- Watercooler, coffee break, “grapevine”, ….
- Most common information/knowledge share vehicle "

The last point is key for the continued development of user-focused intranet environments.

If you've been reading some of the key intranet bloggers such as Toby and James Roberston over recent times there's been some good pointers on successful use of these tools for knowledge management and sharing.

I have implemented similar intranet functionality that has worked for some groups but has been ineffective for others. Project teams for example have found it useful. Other groups tend to be wary especially those with little web experience.

The key is not just to provide the technological framework for the knowledge sharing to occur but to provide the employee drivers so they see direct benefits for themselves.

Essentially users need to use to the technology in an emergent way and not be forced to suddenly imput all their tacit knowledge into the various tools.

As I have mentioned before these tools shouldn't be seen as some magic content bullet but need to be used in conjunction with effective and well written content for key organisational information.

Email newsletters

2006-06-22T10:14:00.000+12:00

As we all know email newsletters have been around for sometime and despite the growing use of blogs, RSS etc many companies are still using email newsletters as a communication and marketing device, either internally of externally.

I'm personally not a big fan but they can still be used effectively if the content is what the user has opted-in for. Generally I find they work better as providing drivers into web (or intranet) content rather than regurgitating content that is availble elsewhere. Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox is an email newsletter/reminder that works very effectively without the need for HTML.

But from branding point of view it really doesn't do much.

One of the major issues continues to be the inability for email programmes to display HTML (or CSS) in consistent ways. While browser compatibility issues are slowly being resolved the same hasn't happen for email.

Having worked on HTML email newsletters for numerous companies, despite testing and testing for a whole variety of email programs, it has been near impossible to get a consistent display across different programs and environments.

Web development and design site sitepoint has recently published an up-to-date article by Tim Slavin on the current state of email newsletters. it focuses on differences between some programs and what HTML and CSS issues to look out for.

The article also has numerous links to other supporting information.

The key for success, as always, is 'simplicity'.

UIE - Gerry McGovern interview

2006-06-15T09:28:00.000+12:00

UIE have published an interview with content guru Gerry McGovern.

"Being customer focused is not some ‘nice thing to do.’ Customer focus is about hard-edged business. Customers are hugely impatient on the Web. They don’t need to hang around a website that is not directly focused on them. Customer focus is the beginning, middle and end of a successful web strategy."

Replace web with intranet and customer with user and it would equally apply to intranets.
See 'User driven culture' post below.

Managing and Maintaining a Decentralised Intranet - Sydney

2006-06-14T15:44:00.000+12:00

The Managing and Maintaining a Decentralised Intranet conference line-up has been finalised.

The event is taking place at the North Sydney Harbourview Hotel on September 13 and 14.,

It features presenters from some great organisations including: Wachovia Bank (US), Vodafone New Zealand, Telstra, KPMG and several Australian local, state and federal government agencies.

James Robertson from Step Two Designs will be running an interactive workshop on intranet growth (looking forward to that) and I'll be presenting on topics related to 'content control and ownership'.

Hope to see you there.

Establish a user driven culture

2006-06-14T15:11:00.000+12:00

Jane McConnell has published a great article on the importance of user logic in developing large site structures.

To add to this user logic should be fundamental in all aspects of web or intranet design, content and management.

One of my ongoing battles is with content 'producers' who fail to see the logic behind writing for users rather than writing something for themselves, or their managers, and that a silo mentality is bad for the site, bad for the organisation, bad for the user and bad for themselves. Just plain bad.

If you aren't focused towards your users then you are failing to reach the full potential of what you are doing.

Sure it can't all be done at once but establishing a 'User driven culture' with those who work on and contribute to your site is important. It can include formalised usability testing and card-sorting exercises or just constant user advocacy in everything you do.

Ask 'will our users understand this" everytime something new is developed or published and continue to educate the organisation in the importance of user focus.

As an organisation's key user advocate you should fight for them. Become the unsung champion of the poor abused user, the 'Che Guevara' of your organisation's online culture. You may not win too many friends within some quarters but your users will appreciate your efforts, acknowledged or not.

Top eight ongoing usability issues

2006-06-14T14:50:00.001+12:00

Webmonkey has a new article by Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger which highlights eight key issues for web and intranet usability that haven't 'gone away'.

The issues are an excerpt from their new book 'Prioritizing Web Usability'.

The eight are:

Links that don't change color when visited
Breaking the back button
Opening new browser windows
Pop-up windows
Design elements that look like advertisements
Violating Web-wide conventions
Vaporous content and empty hype
Dense content and unscannable text

Strategic Intranet & Enterprise Portal Management conference

2006-06-06T10:23:00.000+12:00

The line-up and details for the upcoming 'Strategic Intranet & Enterprise Portal Management' conference, in Auckland on August 23 and 24, have been finalised.

Featured are presentations from IBM Australia/NZ and intranet guru James Robertson (who is also running a pre-conference intranet search workshop on the 22nd).

Other presenters come from across several sectors with a few consultants and vendors in there as well.

I will be chairing the event as well as presenting on some ideas around intranet content best practice.

Web Dogma

2006-06-02T13:29:00.000+12:00

Liz Danzico at Boxes and Arrows has published an article and interview with Eric Reiss 'Dogmas Are Meant to be Broken' about Eric's 'Web Dogma ‘06' set of ten points for usable websites.

The 'dogma' is based on the ideas of the Eurpoean Dogma filmakers.
While I personally find most of the Dogma films art-cliquey borefests I like these points for the web.

To quote:

Web Dogma ‘06

Anything that exists only to satisfy the internal politics of the site owner
must be eliminated.
Anything that exists only to satisfy the ego of the designer must be
eliminated.
Anything that is irrelevant within the context of the page must be
eliminated.
Any feature or technique that reduces the visitor’s ability to navigate
freely must be reworked or eliminated.
Any interactive object that forces the visitor to guess its meaning must be
reworked or eliminated.
No software, apart from the browser itself, must be required to get the site
to work correctly.
Content must be readable first, printable second, downloadable third.
Usability must never be sacrificed for the sake of a style guide.
No visitor must be forced to register or surrender personal data unless the
site owner is unable to provide a service or complete a transaction without it.
Break any of these rules sooner than do anything outright barbarous.

Intranet ownership

2006-06-01T12:11:00.000+12:00

Just a bit of a follow on from the previous Intranet politics post.

James Robertson has written a post on IT ownership of the intranet. It is a great read and comes down to that it doesn't really matter where ownership sits as long as the intranet is being looked after as a whole.

In my experience most IT departments simply do not have the organisational-wide viewpoint or content management skills (in terms of content rather than CMS implementation) or dedication to simplicity (over-engineering is rife among IT folk) and end users to really manage intranets at the top level. Of course they should be directing technology and code development but I think that dedicated intranet mangers should be more closely aligned with an organisation's Communications team rather than sit in IT.

But this all really depends on the organisation. Some intranet teams sit away from both Communications and IT (probably best compromise if the org structure will alllow for it).

It is also important that the intranet isn't being dictated by an external web focused team.
It needs to be managed independently from the external site but utlising common expertise.

Intranet politics

2006-05-26T15:50:00.000+12:00

Top intranet blogger Toby Ward recently published an article on the politics of intranets.
The article has some great further reading links as well.

As all of us involved in intranet management know for some reason intranets tend to be far more political than their external website cousins.

Guess the idea is that if the public don't get to see it then everyone wants it their way.

A recent intranet I was involved in had the ominpresent intranet steering committee made up of key high level management from the usual areas, Communications, IT, HR etc. (read Jane McConnell's article 'Abolish the Intranet Steering Committee?'. I would say abolish it if they aren't creating postive progression.)

The problem was that the group had little input from actual operations and it tended to become a soap box for the CIO whose department incidently did not 'manage' the intranet day to day.
The steering committee meetings I attended were perhaps the most political of my time at that organisation and I quickly formed the opinion that unless the politics could be removed that the committee was indeed a waste of time.

Interestingly enough an intranet I'm currently involved in doesn't have a permanent steering committee and there's not a full on desire to have one. I do see a need for an occasional high level review and support committee though.

It is important that for a successful intranet internal politics need to be consigned to the bin. Internal politics are simply a waste of time and energy and are largely the product of managers being too focused on their own ambitions rather than the organisationa as a whole.

As Toby points out internal politics can simply lead to an intranet that becomes bogged down and stale.

For an intranet shared governance, direction, strategy, resourcing etc are all good things but the real 'owners' need to be users. It is their needs and desires that should be looked after not upper management internal political ambitions.

A successful intranet needs people from across the organisation to come together and really focus on a 'one organisation' approach, share a vision of success for the intranet and share the belief that successful intranets provide true value to their workplace.

Completely unrealistic I know but I hold high hopes.

What is good intranet content?

2006-05-22T15:38:00.000+12:00

Yep more of the same 'content is important' carry on. You know you love it.

Three principles of intranet content

Accessible

Your users can actually read content without squinting or getting OOS (occupational overuse syndrome).
There is good colour contrast of fonts with background colours.
Fonts are resizable and sans-serif.
Content can be found through well labeled navigation or search.
Location within the IA is logical and user focused.

Usable

Content is broken down logically from general to specific. Summary first, detail later Content follows 'information triangle' or inverted pyramid models.
Content has good use of headings, bullet points and tables to break up content in readable chunks.
In-page navigation is easily and logically displayed and links match subheadings.
Consistent naming, spelling and grammatical conventions are used.
Page is not overloaded with irrelevant fluff or gratuitous use of images.
Further information/ page contact is easily found. Don't leave users hanging.
Plain English is followed and little content owner jargon is used.

Useful

Is it actually the information your users want and need for their job or is it the information you or your manager want them to read?
If you don't talk to your users much there's a good chance that you aren't meeting their needs and are wasting their and your own time. Generally there is no excuse in this area as your users are your colleagues.
Talk to your users to find out what they actually need from you and what they currently use. You'll probably be surprised.
Content is not rehashing or competing with other pages on the intranet.
An overall organisational viewpoint is considered when publishing content. How does thgis affect other parts of the business or organisation decisions? Users do use the intranet as a source of record so makes sure messages are consistent.
Get rid of old crappy content. Get the cricket bat out swinging for the 'some may want to use it in the future so let's just stick it up somewhere' position.

'Stickability' for intranets is a load of rubbish

One dangerous idea I have seen expressed at intranet conferences is the idea of making your content 'sticky' i.e. creating content that makes your users stay around (or waste time) on a page.

This type of web carry over is one of the reasons why intranet and websites need to be considered and managed separately. For more differences, James Robertson has written, what I consider a seminal article, on the differences between intranets and websites.

Your intranet sucks up users time either positively or negatively.
Most users are frustrated with intranets regardless of how well designed or implemented they are and many dread going into the intranet as they feel direct time wastage.

Your company pays users money to do a job. More time spent on a 'sticky' page = less time spent doing their jobs = less work for your company = less value of the intranet.

You should aim that your users to go to a page find the information they want and then leave.

Making pages 'sticky' with irrelevant material does little to help you achieve your goals as an intranet (i.e value to the organisation) and does little to support the users themselves. There are some areas for less work focused content such as news/ social community areas but content approaches to these areas should not encroach on your key operational and informational content.

Aim for less time per page not more

In an intranet I previously worked on I managed to achieve a 40% increase in page views over a period of months based on some content reworking and restructuring based on the above three principles (accessible, usable and useful)..

While pages views were well up there was another interesting stat, time spent per page, which decreased over the same period and went on doing so. Why? Users were quickly able to get the idea of the page navigate to the area they needed and then leave rather than hunt through miles of unneeded content to find what they want.

As with all stats be careful... as you may be getting the flip side that there's nothing of value on the page thus users leave. So the stats need to be looked at in context of changes you make and obviously user feedback and analysis also adds to the value you get out of web stats.

Stop carrying over old 'web marketing hack ideas' and start considering intranets as the key organisational work and communication tools they should and need to be.

Reading, fonts and typography

2006-05-10T10:07:00.000+12:00

John Downs has written a blog entry on reading, fonts and typography which has a presentation he gave recently to a Usability Professionals Association meeting in Auckland.

The post also contains a lot of great links to typeface and font research and some interesting material from Microsoft experts on the 'physiology and psychology of reading'.

Future Auckland and Sydney intranet events

2006-05-07T14:44:00.000+12:00

Initial dates have been set for two annual intranet gatherings in Auckland and Sydney.

Auckland -
6th Annual Strategic Intranet & Enterprise Portal Management Conference
23 and 24 August
Organiser - Brightstar

Sydney -
Managing and Maintaining a Decentralised Intranet
13 and 14 September
Organiser - Key Forums

I will be chairing the Auckland event and presenting at both.

The events are a key opportunity for those working in the intranet space to hear from leading organisations and consultants, as well as network with other intranet professionals.

Full details to follow when the events have been finalised.

Information architecture summit

2006-04-20T10:24:00.000+12:00

Boxes and arrows has published a great write-up and breakdown of the recent IA summit held in Vancouver.

Lots of interesting insights into what is happening in the world of IA and related areas.

The 'F pattern' for online content

2006-04-18T13:20:00.000+12:00

Jakon Nielsen has written an article on his recent eye-tracking research involving tracking users eye patterns.

The 'heat map' patterns that occurred while eye-tracking users, revealed that users followed a basic 'F-shaped pattern' when 'reading' a site.

The research can equally be applied to an intranet or external web site.

Jakob says the research confirms some basic conventions of online content :

Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won't.
The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.
Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.

Basically this reinforces the idea of short, scannable, well broken up content following the 'information triangle' or 'reverse pyramid' content model.

Excellent research and conclusions which are relatively simple to implement on your site
with some solid content guidelines and training.

Intranet blog list

2006-04-12T13:17:00.000+12:00

James Robertson has published a list of intranet blogs on the Intranet Review Toolkit site.

The IRT site is really starting to come together with a lot of resources for intranet related topics.

Web navigation - free choice or force?

2006-04-04T13:18:00.000+12:00

An interesting article by Gerry McGovern on web navigation.

I must say that I disagree with his position that:

"Forward-looking navigation options should dominate"

Basically this position is based on the premise that a website/intranet is a linear system and that users only use it as a linear system. His example using notebook computers negates the fact that most users don't know if they want an 'ultralight' or a 'multimedia' one or what the differences are. So offering several selections would be the best way to help the user.

Forwards, backwards, sideways does it matter?

Content in a variety of locations of a site can also be linked and that it is logical that users be given the opportunity to navigate to a new page or section without following a specific 'direction'.
I agree that avoiding cluttered websites should be a key goal for all online environments but we need to understand that not all users navigate in the same way and that sometimes going backwards or sideways is just as important as going 'forwards'.

Where am I?

Basic navigation aids as 'where you are' in a site or at least some pointer to it is simple usability necessity and should definitely be part of whatever primary purpose your navigation has.

Let users choose their direction

It is important to think that as online developers or designers we shouldn't need to force users in a direction but provide them the options to support their purposes. Maybe they are just after some information, maybe they want to purchase or perhaps they are just looking around.

All these users would therefore require different options and it is our job to help understand and support them, not to force them.

Intranet Review Toolkit website launched

2006-03-23T15:56:00.000+12:00

The Intranet Review Toolkit, as discussed in a previous post, has now been launched with its own website. It has links to resources on intranet design, development and content, as well as the actual toolkit itself.

It's a great product developed with the expertise of James Robertson and his team at Step Two Designs with support from The Information Architecture Institute.
The toolkit is offered for free under a creative commons license.

I recommend that you keep the link handy for future use especially as it develops into a comprehensive resource for all things intranet.

Huge kudos to both organisations involved.

Crazy egg - click monitoring software

2006-03-17T09:27:00.000+13:00

A potentially great simple user monitoring tool is being developed by Crazy Egg.

It offers an overlay of pages so you know where users are clicking (and how many times users have) including a 'heat map' display. It seems that it will only register clicks on elements that are actually links but hopefullythey will make it so it also registers clicks on items users 'thought' were links. Clear up a few link usability problems pretty quickly.

Another thing that would be great is for it to register mouse movements, basically a cheap version of eye tracking software, for those of use with little or no budget for fancy usability testing or software.

Also it will be a free tool when released.

Can't really speculate too much on how good it will be until the product is actually launched but it sure has potential.

Some articles discussing it:

http://www.sr-ultimate.com
http://www.bmtutorials.com
http://mashable.com/

Card sorting for intranet information architecture

2006-03-14T16:34:00.000+13:00

Problem:
A relatively large navigation list (about 50 content areas) of ‘un-substructured’ finance related material. The intranet in question uses single menu pages for each of 8 main information groups and the above list was part of the wider finance information group. Some work had already be done on other subsections (i.e purchasing). But the rest of the content, which included policies, procedures and other reference material, was all in the same sub-section. The list was structured by alphabetical order only.

Solution:
Break up into smaller sub-sections based on broad user group input from card sorting exercises and well as key business owners.

Process

1. Meet with area business owner/intranet champion to discuss probable breakdown

This helps get a general picture of a possible breakdown and a ‘super user/ content provider’ framework for comparison with user group information. The champion may also be able to help identify users from throughout the organisation. It is possible to get a general idea of the possible solution (n this case some basic areas were apparent i.e. tax, payments etc).

2. Create user groups from throughout the organisation

Small groups can sometimes work better than single users, as not all users understand or have used every bit of content within the section. Using a collaborative user approach helps develop a wider understanding of the content, provides a wider organisation viewpoint, and promotes discussion and a collaborative approach to solving intranet issues (reinforces the idea of it being an organisational tool).

It is important that users come from a wide range of backgrounds including level of use, group or department and position type (administrators, analysts, managers etc).

3. Run the sessions

These are probably best run separately but I ran two groups (4 participants each) at either ends of the room (good sized room where groups weren’t getting overheard). This also meant the possibility for each group to be able to discuss and comment on the other group’s results.

Participants were encouraged to see from a ‘generalist’ point of view. While subjectivity will always play a part, I usually take the opportunity to push for an ‘idiots guide’ understanding and structure.

How would you group finance content for a non-finance person?

Sessions used numbered cards (for easy recording). User groups were instructed to sort the cards into logical content groupings. They were also asked to name each sub-section and write it on a new card.

For more information of running card-sorting exercises, see the simple but excellent reference material from information and design.

4. Collate and compare results

After collating the results into a comparison excel spreadsheet showing the initial draft framework and the results from each user group.

Results were generally quite similar between the groups as well as the initial ‘heuristic’ framework. Obviously the bigger the differences the more work involved in collating, comparison and analysis.

Results were then grouped together into one framework, first based on similarities and the on a in a ‘best merge approach’. This was done in conjunction with the business owner and some key users.

The resulting structure was sent out to all participants for any final comments.

From the single group of 50 areas we managed to create 8 (I suggested that below 10 sub-sections was something to aim for if possible) differing sub-sections (of about 5 -6 areas each). We also managed to identify some areas that were no longer relevant or needed urgent changes.

5. Confirm groupings and get managerial input/ sign off

On finalising of the new IA I then had it confirmed with a manager/s from the area (in this case finance) to agree to the approach and results. This avoided any possible political issues (I never cease to be amazed at what gets people upset and how naming of a section or grouping of information can be a political issue!).

6. Implement the new IA

Some points

Make it enjoyable (or at least interesting). Provide participants with some lunch and refreshments and create an atmosphere where people feel comfortable discussing and working collaboratively. Keep the IA/ usability rhetoric to a low level.
Avoid domination by certain subject matter experts.
Stress and focus on collaboration and get everyone involved. Everyone’s opinion is worthwhile. It is the user’s perspective that helps define successful IA.
If resources and time provided running individual sessions (or more groups in a larger organisation) would be useful. Many practitioners prefer a more individual user approach but this takes more time and resources.
Develop a process that works and utilise it for future exercises. The above process is by no means the only way to achieve a successful outcome so do you research and test out a few ideas.

Use the groups/sessions for additional information gathering

Related content linkages

An additional exercise was run after the card sorting and implementation of the new IA. The same users indicated usage linkages between material.
This formed the basis of ‘related links’ areas at the bottom of each of the pages involved in the card sorting.

User feedback

Use the opportunity of the card-sorting group’s discussion to take note of any interesting viewpoints even if unrelated to the exercise (how many opportunities do you get to listen to users openly discuss intranet content issues in a relaxed environment?).

Social bookmarking and intranet personalisation

2006-03-03T13:17:00.000+13:00

Toby Ward has written a good post on Dogear (great name) the social bookmarking tool on the IBM intranet.

Toby writes:

" From the intranet perspective, social bookmarking is a taxonomy
system developed and maintained by employees. A taxonomy that is always
updating and refreshing as a living, breathing business system. You may have
heard such a taxonomy referred to as a folksonomy. "

It sounds alike a great tool for user perspective IA and continues on the idea of site and information personalisation. As we all know content should be structured around users not the organisation;s perspective (in my expereince hardly ever the same) and to do this we have traditionallly employed methods such as card sorting.

It will be interesting to see where these types of developments go to in the future as while many organisations are offering certain types of personalisation, take-up of these developments are usually limited to a number of keen super-users rather than just standard employees.

Personalisation is one the big selling points of 'portals' but is this personalisation really offering benefits to the wider organisation or does it actually create more information silos?

At a conference I attended last year I heard from a usability expert from Boeing where only 15% of users used the personalisation features their portal offered.

Basically if many general users can't understand how to use their browser favourites (and yes many users can't) anything else is just too far for them at the moment.

Of course like all intranets it comes down to organisational culture, industry, size of the site, number of employees and the expertise and investment in the intranet. It would be right up IBM's alley but other orgsanisations who focus on a more 'single organisation viewpoint' it would very difficult if not impossible to get these types of innovations past the front door.

In-page navigation

2006-02-22T08:55:00.000+13:00

One of the flaws of having strong viewpoints (see previous posts on writing style guides) is the failure to move on from ideological positions when they should have evolved long ago.

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox on in-page links:

"On the Web, users have a clear mental model for a hypertext link: it should
bring up a new page. Within-page links violate this model and thus cause
confusion. "

I humbly disagree. With the growing complexity of site structures the idea that all links should operate in the same way is simply living in the past.

The key thing here is consistency. If you use across page links use them and display them in the same way. The same for in-page bookmarked links.

The way I split these is to usually have section navigation across the top (or to the side) and have bookmark links in a list at the top of the page (I only use them when a page is longer that a screen length and where content has logical sectioning) under a page header linking down to consistently displayed sub-headings with a back to top to allow users to go back to the list if need be.

This may be similar to Jakob's rider of 'using them for contents'.

The user can quickly understand the structure of the different navigation elements as long as you consistently use links in the same way and provide supporting elements such as clear indication of section/ page breakdown and good use of headers and sub headers.

I think the 'mental model' is somewhat broader than Jakob makes out and the way you use links on your site may be determined by who your users are. I agree that following the basic 'mental model' as suggested by Jakob is good practice but sometimes it needs to be stretched... just as long as you are doing the stretching in a consistent logical way.

Econtent 100 companies that matter - report's good but display is a shocker

2006-02-09T09:29:00.000+13:00

Econtent have released the digital version of their 100 companies that matter report.

First congratulations to James Robertson and Step Two designs for making it on the list alongside huge multinationals in the 'digital content industry'. Great to see a small Aussie consultancy being recognised internationally for their excellent work.

The second more interesting thing is the actual display of the report utilising nxtbook 'technology' from innodata-isogen. It is a fancy use of Flash which according to the company is helping the value chain of print publishing meet digital publishing or some sort of marketing hyperbole blah blah blah.

The fact is that it goes against standard accessibility features already built into our browsers (they do have fancy resizing zoom features etc which are pretty nifty to look at though!) and is simply is trying to bridge a gap that can't be breached with mere Flash reproductions no matter how fancy it is.

Printed material will never be effective online unchanged for the medium.

For effective online content you need to think in terms of online structures, user interaction. Utilising anything to republish printed material exactly will fail online and once you get over the cool flash effects and actually try and navigate the tool fails.

Why? Because as users we are used to navigating websites online not books or print magazines, and why as a user should I bother to try and learn yet another technology trying to create an entirely new web interface system?

The technology is fancy looking but will it solve any user issues? Doubtful.

I think for a magazine such as Econtent (supposedly a leader in digital content thinking) to not even follow basic accessibility and usability conventions and standards is simply embarrassing.

The value of online writing style guides

2006-02-02T09:36:00.000+13:00

My previous post on training intranet content providers generated some welcome repostings and quotes but also some comments like 'take the style guide and shove it' type of thing, as well as questions around how to quantify the value of style guides.

Is there any major organisation intranet or website that doesn't have a style guide for their intranet or website?

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.

Quantifying content value

I think the value of content guidelines is really hard to to quantify.

There has been research to show that users can use (and make decisions based) well structured and written content more quickly and more effectively than content that is not.

Again I use the excellent research (yes it's old but it still applies) by Jakob Nielsen to highlight this. It's important to stress that this is actual results from research not just overblown hyperbole (and I refuse get into another 'worth of Jakob Nielsen discussion' :) ).

Good reasons for a writing style guide:

Some organisations are required by law to communicate in clear plain English.
Consistent writing styles allows for easier reuse of content in different areas meaning costs savings for organisations.
Customers are presented with consistent writing styles and content is written at a level where all customers will understand.
Same point above for staff using an intranet.
Style guides help create the notion that the user is the focus not the writer.
Most people are not good writers.
Growing diversity means that English is a second language for many workers thus plain English is essential.
Saves time (see below for more)

Consistency, consistency, consistency

Anyone who's ever done any usability testing understands that if your site doesn't have consistent layout/navigation schemes/headings/in page links even colours and fonts fails miserably and delivers a horrid user experience.

This is a given and if anyone who actually has research to disprove it then it will be huge eye opener for all online professionals around the world. Please send it through.

The ideal of libertarian content

With the advent of more user contributed content applications such as forums, blogs and wikis (including every other name used for these) I don't believe that style guide works as well or should necessarily be used at all. (i..e my own blog doesn't follow a style guide... although my mistakes probably means that it should!).

Technology focused people must've been rubbing their hands at the idea that they can finally get rid of those pesky intranet/web editors or managers who structure and edit their writing. But like most libertarian 'principles' they fail to grasp the general populace and simply ignore the reality of written material.

The important factor is that the user understands the purpose and source of the content. Most online users of websites and intranets don't want to hunt down through waffle or poor sentences, no layout, no paragraphs etc to get simple pieces of information to make decisions or to do their job.

They don't have time.

So let's put it into really simple terms for an intranet:

---------
user time = organisation money(cost)
poor content = more user time
thus
poor content = more organisation money (cost)
-----------

(Again I refer to Jakob's report above)

Wikis. blogs and forums etc all have their place within a defined context like discussions, feedback, project teams, where ideas need to be elicited from a broad range of users, single person monologues (CEO blog) etc.

They do not and will not replace standard well structured and written material to do business. They will support it, but never replace.

If you believe that you haven't gone out and talked to the administrators, secretaries, receptionists etc who just need to understand policy or process not the background, reasoning or some poor writer harping on about something that may be of interest to someone (or so they hope).

Also I think it is important to note that style guides not neceassrily apply the same to all content. But it is essential that it is applied to the content that needs it.

Toby Ward discusses this in his valuable post 'Not all content is created nor need be equal' which discusses James Robertson's equally valuable post (commented on in a previous post).

The dangers of not having a style guide

Imagine policy content in a public sector or financial organisation that had no style applied to it.

The banker, analyst, bureaucrat who developed it would just write as they wanted and guess/ hope that someone will understands it. The legal and business implications of someone making a decision on something they can't understand could prove costly for an organisation.

Its simple risk analysis.

So it simply astounds me that people actually stand up and say 'shove the style guide'. They obviously have never had to trawl though a 30 page document written by someone who can't understand the concept of subheadings.

We should have content standards to help the users fight against waffle and people who think everyone reads and learns like they do.

These are probably the same people who think writing style doesn't matter.

Training intranet content providers

2006-01-13T14:51:00.000+13:00

With the increasing implementation of distributed publishing throughout organisations there is an increasing need to train content providers to help develop a more consistent approach and style for their online content, not just train people on how to use the software.

While there are many agencies that provide specialised ‘Writing for online’ workshops it is possible to develop an effective training programme (and I believe in-house provides far longer lasting benefits).

What you need to start

Essential things to have before developing and running intranet content workshops:

Management and stakeholder support for the idea of content standards and guidelines and the need to train content providers in these areas.
Staff members who already edit and write online content to run and develop the workshops.
Published content standards and guidelines and/or writing/communication style guides.

7 points to consider for an effective intranet content workshop

Before the workshop
Send out pre-workshop questions and an online content article to help get participants into the online content ‘head space’ and start them thinking about issues/problems.
Audience and purpose
Emphasise that the user of the information is the focus of content not the provider or the provider’s manager. This can be a major sticking point to get effective and useful content.
Intranet and online content concepts
Cover concepts such as the idea that online readers skim/scan, the content triangle/inverse pyramid concept etc. Keep in mind that some of your content providers may have very limited knowledge of what makes online content successful.
Writing/online style guidelines
Cover specific guidelines such as writing short sentences, ‘one idea’ paragraphs, use of tables, images, file types etc. Also cover thefundamentals in your organisation’s writing/communication style guide (get one developed if you don’t have one!).
Be sure to highlight anything in the style guide that may clash with effective online content.
Discussion and exercises
Emphasise discussion and hands-on exercises. Get people talking about online content and working together to share ideas and approaches and use these discussions to help understand where your content providers are currently at. Exercises should be based on current intranet content and cover both concepts and specifics as discussed above.
Managing participants
Mix participants up across different business groups and keep numbers limited to a manageable numbers (10 or less), Get people working in pairs during the exercises and avoid domination of the workshop by more experienced participants (but be sure to use them when needed to elicit responses).
Cover editing/collating as well as writing
If (as in many organisations) a lot content comes from existing sources rather than being produced initially for an online environment, put more focus on ‘editing for online’ rather than just writing.

Here is where the content triangle becomes more apparent and an emphasis on clarity and a strong ‘less is more’ approach.

Also it is important to cover collating material from various people and how to edit the various pieces into a logical format with smooth transitions should also be covered.

Revolutions take time

Running intranet content workshops won’t revolutionise your intranet immediately. But what tends to happen is that workshop participants become champions of the intranet and better understand how effective online content can achieve their objectives.

In the longer term this filters down within an organisation to help create a' content culture' within your organisation and ensure that your intranet is better placed to help achieve and develop business value.

Automated web accessibility checks

2006-01-05T13:03:00.000+13:00

Trenton Moss has published a concise article on sitepoint about the dangers of relying too much on automated web accessibility checking.

He rightly points out that the mere process of getting a successful result from an automated tool doesn't necessarily mean that your site is accessible especially in terms of content.

I would stretch this further to include things like good use of fonts, images, colours etc which are not necessarily looked at by web accessibility tools which tend to focus more on the quality of the underlining code and how this code would render for users with impairment.

Basically don't think that just because your site passes an automated validation test your site is accessible. You need to do manual readability and usability tests, as well as colour and contrast tests, to ensure users can read and use your site successfully.

But the best long term solution is for all online professionals (from programmers through to marketers) to build up a knowledge of accessibility issues and implement that knowledge from the start of a project without having to rely on testing to reveal problems.

Another expert not following what he preaches?

2005-12-15T16:36:00.000+13:00

I think Gerry McGovern has a lot of good things to say. In fact I was quite impressed by the majority of his book content critical.

But he has recently revised his website a bit and has made one of the crucial errors of poor web design - unneeded or irrelevant images.

For those who have never visited his site before it used to be the same without all those ad style images (still pretty ugly but at least focusing on his content). Now it seems full of poor marketing slogans and silly images.

Another example of an 'expert' simply not practicing what he preaches?

Intranet Review Toolkit released

2005-12-09T15:24:00.000+13:00

The Intranet Review Toolkit is a great new development from the good folks at Step Two Designs with some support from the IA Institute.

James from Step Two says the tookit is designed to:

"To help intranet managers assess the state of their own intranets, to identify potential improvements, and to build a stronger business case for further intranet improvement.

To help the intranet community as a whole define and refine the concept of the "best practice" intranet, and to provide a basis for constructive discussion and consideration. "

The toolkit is released under an open licence which means you can use it for free!

I think the tookit is a great first step in developing an industry definition of "best practice" for intranets as explained by James above.

It is also great to see that content guidelines and standards are well covered.

Nielsen - 'Accessibility is not enough'

2005-11-22T09:24:00.000+13:00

Jakob Nielsen has posted some good points on how accessibility compliance and testing needs to be more than good code. Usability also needs to be taken into consideration.

He also mentions a few things I have written about in the past couple of weeks including Alt tags (everyone knows they are needed but how do you write them?) and portal usability and accessibility problems.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/accessibility.html

BBC accessibility standards

2005-11-18T13:39:00.000+13:00

I have always liked the BBC websites.

They seem to be able to answer the age old question (as in internet age) of "How do I cram as much information and links into a page as possible but still make it accessible, look good and provide good quality information at the same time?"

One of the keys must be their extensive and detailed accessibility standards and guidelines.

To quote:

"Accessibility should not be seen as an "optional extra", but must be
considered as a fundamental consideration at every stage of site development
work. "

Absolutely. Accessibility should never be an option. If it is an option in your organisation then you simply aren't designing or developing at a modern professional standard.

It's nice to see things like colour blindness and contrast tests in their guidelines as I think this is a very basic but overlooked area of information/online design.

I'm a big stickler for accessible design, and content, guidelines and standards as huge value is lost or unrealised without them. This goes for both websites and intranets.

Guidelines should be both big picture conceptual and specific with examples and have links to supporting tools or references (such as code/colour validators).

All major organisations will have these types of guidelines but any business with a website or intranet can have even simple ones without too much effort

Even single pages of links to online references is better than nothing.

Alt tags and new accessibility research

2005-11-17T16:35:00.000+13:00

A new article in netimperative has some interesting up to date research on accessibility from consultancy firm User Vision. (User vision has some great stuff on their site so have a look).

It lays out the well known fundamentals of accessibility/ia that any skilled practioner involved in online development has already been following for years, but the interesting thing for me was the figure about alt tags (considered vital by accessibility advocates) based on feedback from visually impaired users (25% didn't rate them important at all).

Why are alt tags not considered important by some visually impaired users?

Rather than rating alt tags as not important I wonder if the respondants had become so fed up with the poor use of alt tags that they no longer had any faith that they would add value to them and therefore they simply ignored them.

I myself have always thought that no matter how good an alt tag was it never really provides the type of information that would replace textual information for a visually impaired user using screen reading technology or other accessibility tools.

The lesson?
Always provide textual information in addition to information contained within an image (if you really need to have that information contained in an image in the first place).

Do intranet content standards and guidelines matter?

2005-11-11T10:04:00.000+13:00

Of course they do

Coming from a writing and publishing background one of my primary focuses in both web and intranet development has been quality content so the answer from my perspective (and bias) is a resounding YES.

I am a firm believer that everyone in an organisation can be trained to write good accessible content for a website/intranet.

The focus needs to be less on actually ‘how to write for the web’ but more on how to edit and structure what you already have to work in a consistent manner in an online environment as content providers usually adapt content from other sources rather than start from scratch. This doesn’t however discount the importance of grammar, spelling and plain English.

Intranet guru says ‘I don’t care’!

One of the speakers and experts in the intranet field that I always have appreciated and taken a lot from, is James Robertson from Step two designs in Australia. A great advocate and evangelist for quality intranets.

I was a little taken aback by one of his recent posts commenting on several content focused presentations at the intranets ’05 event in Sydney. Mostly because one of them was mine!

James says that he ‘just doesn’t care’ and feels that the focus of intranets needs to be on other challenges that intranets face.

On bringing this up with James in a courteous email he clarified to say that it was more about ‘too much emphasis’ of the conference on content rather than intranet strategy and that content was important.

I can appreciate where he's coming from but I think content quality and training are far more important than he makes out.

Some comments in response to on James’ posting...

Developing guidelines need not be time wasting

Intranet content guidelines are not difficult to implement there are tonnes of material on the web around plain English, writing style guides and guidelines around writing for the web. It’s not difficult to adopt and develop guidelines from these.

As from intranet team time get some Communications/marketing people involved from the organisation. In fact I’d suggest it’s just plain silly to develop intranet content guidelines in isolation from the rest of the communication guidelines of the organisation.

If you don’t have these then start advocating for them as having a solid corporate style guide will save you bundles in writing and editing time not to mention presenting clear and consistent messages to your customers and/or users.

Training users

I certainly don’t advocate mass large training programmes to train authors. I feel it’s an evolving process. You set up some guidelines, communicate them out, give feedback on key content and the run training sessions for key providers.

These key providers should then be in a position to advocate the guidelines to others in their business groups/areas. It’s about centralising quality but decentralising provision. Not a hugely difficult goal and one , despite James’s comments, that is very practical.

Content value and quality is tangible

The value, and supporting evidence, of well written content is huge. Most of the value comes from time savings for users which in an organisation translates in cost savings.

In fact I’d say that poor written and structured communication is probably one of the easiest things to improve within an organisation to get good ROI not to mention the kudos from clients, customers and staff that get clear, consistent messages and can scan content quickly and effectively.

Having good navigation or search to find content is not enough, the content itself also has to be accessible, usable and useful.