Chris Radcliffe

Okay, so its been a really long time...

Not that I think too many people were ever really following this blog, but I've had a crazy couple years with a new baby in my life, and a couple significant changes at work that have taken my eye off the blog... 

KWizCom has some pretty compelling features

Pretty impressed to see two features within the suite of KWizCom tools that so many of our customers have asked for...

It seems everyone today is looking to develop a rating system in their SharePoint portals to help provide a social feedback loop on content that really makes a difference in people's work life... As well, KWizCom has a great cascading form feature that allows users to select one field of meta-data and have the system then pre-populate a secondary field. This is a great feature for companies that have leverage MOSS for large document stores in the Document Centre template and have a rich taxonomy for tagging and classifying records.

Check it out here. 

Long time no post...

Okay, so its been a while since I've posted anything...

I just came across two sites that are worth making some time to chat about... NY Times and Subtaction.com... Both share in my mind, one common thread - great design!

Check out subtraction.com for a great blog user experience and see how easy it is to get lost in someone's well constructed thoughts presented through a very nicely designed site.

NYTimes on the other hand is an example of a pretty big org that has got one thing right - that is of course long page design... What I love at first glance is their three page spread on one page... No longer does the limitation of 'above the fold' really matter, in fact I'm pleasantly drawn down into the next fold and the next with each scroll. Two thumbs up for sure...

What I'm really curious about now is whether or not they've hooked up a categorization/prioritization engine to drive content onto the homepage a-la google or diggnation.com...

If you haven't considered what's new in the information design space lately, check out these sites.

Great Example of Going Beyond the Online User Experience

I was pleasantly surprised tonight to find an example of what I consider to be a strategy that supports the 'customer experience' as opposed to just the online 'user experience'. I generally consider both worlds to be pretty similar, with lots of overlapping strategies, but the good people at PC Tools have impressed me!

About 5 minutes ago I received an email from 'Element 5' on behalf of their Customer Service department to present me with a 'Credit Card Billing Reminder'... They reminded me that I'd see a purchase on my credit card shortly billed to Element 5, not PC Tools whom I purchased some software online from last week.

Check out the email:

Two thumbs-up for this proactive email! It definitely will save me from a few phone calls (and headache) trying to figure out who element5 is... Great example of how to maximize the Customer Experience outside of the purchase process online!

Changing User Behaviour in Sharepoint

Over the past 4 years, I've seen a lot of companies adopt MS SharePoint into their organization to improve the collaboration and communication that occurs among their employees. Like any application or technology, there are natural learning curves that need time to overcome if the tool is going to truly make an impact on people's day-to-day lives.

One area that I've seen particularly challenging with SharePoint is the change in behaviour that is required to improve communication and document management. Many people (including myself) find it difficult to change their behavior when it comes to emailing documents!

The problem is that it is faster to attach a document right into the email (by pressing 'one' button), than instead loading the document into a document library, copying the URL and then inserting the URL into your email. I know, sounds silly, but its true.

Generally anyone that struggles with a huge InBox feels the pain of email mismanagement (or poor info mgmt practices), and would in theory be ready to change their behavior - but this isn't always the case.

I'm curious if anyone else has experienced any 'user behavior adoption' challenges with SharePoint and what they've done to solve the issue. Comments encouraged!

Technorati

Lots of people have asked lately if there is any secret listing of great blogs out there that would be good places to glean new ideas from... While there are lots out there, I find them too general and not focused on the exact area that I'm trying to research. What works well instead is to start at Technorati , search based on the topic and then hop across blog contacts that are listed on a site that you like.

Technorati does have an interesting Top 100 list though that has introduced me to some new blogs worth revisiting...

World Usability Day

UPA (Usability Professionals Association) has created a World Usability Day for November 3rd, 2005.

This Earth-Day-style event, focused on easy-to-use technology, currently involves plans in more than 70 cities in 30 countries. The day is focused on raising awareness through local events, web presentations and stories.

Stay tuned, it doesn't look like there is anything set for Vancouverites just yet, but that could change!

Google Maps Mashing

There's been a lot of chatter lately in the web community about RIAs, AJAX and Web 2.0 - and for good reasons... We seem to be embarking on a new era where designers and developers will be once again pushing the boundaries to create better web experiences.

One commonly referred to example is Google Maps. As the user drags the map, the grid squares are downloaded from the server and displayed to the user. When a user searches for a business, the location is pin-pointed with a red pin, which is actually a transparent PNG placed over the map. The technique of providing greater user-interactivity by performing asynchronous network requests with Javascript and XML has recently become known as AJAX.

People not only speak to the power of its model, but also love to highlight how its spawned a whole new area of innovative development with Google Map Mashing. Map mashing refers to when someone creates an alternate application using the maps/data provided by google. You can see a ton of examples on this site - Google Map Mashing ...

Make sure you check this one out too, kinda odd that they promote it - Google Stalker.

A New Model for Enterprise Information Architecture Design

Looks like Lou has updated his Enterprise IA Roadmap!

This is very exciting as it gives me some more time to procrastinate on developing an integrated model or approach for designing enterprise info architectures that includes concepts from the IA Roadmap, Sharepoint IA components and the Zachman Framework ...

On a related note, I'm also going to address the concept of 'information management maturity' in the model - I started to write some ideas down that related to some recent experiences I've had personally and also related to some past intranet information design work. After some rough editing, I decided to google the topic and came across a pretty insightful article about Information Lifecycle Management Maturity by the good people at StorageTek. Looks like I can't take credit for this concept afterall...

These concepts are very good food for thought though if you are attempting to take on any enterprise information design project...

Forget Banner Blindness - Users are Blinded by Underlined Links

I certainly haven't conducted enough usability testing to be bold enough to say "underlined links are bad" - but I have seen a growing trend in our testing that makes me challenge the application of underlined links...

I think most would agree that the most important component of the interaction a user has on a page is their ability to identify links. We've come a long way from the classic red, blue and green - but I've found lately in testing that most users scan the page for their trigger words that identify a possible navigation route and they then look for the closest actionable link.

A trend I've noticed is that users are not impacted when links are not underlined, provided there is still some differientation or perceived affordance through colour, bolding or symbols to give them a hint that there is a link.

What bothers me most about underlining links is the fact that its often completely unnecessary and can actually negatively impact usability. Take a sidebar or left hand navigation - most users know instantly because of its relative location on the page that it is a site navigation area. Underlining sidebar or left-nav links only adds more clutter to the page, especially when you indent the navigation to illustrate sub-levels.

What's even worse is when links wrap multiple lines - in these scenarios I've seen testers completely miss trigger words that are in the middle of the link because they are blinded by the underline!

If you know of any research out there that speaks to the effectiveness of readability with underlined text, please let me know!