Eduserv PSG Blog

Simple IA - Content is still king

john morse — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 12:10:48 +0100

We spend a lot of time considering the technology of a particular site, customers are always keen to point out the fact that they ‘need’ features and functions to make their site ‘useful’ and attract users, plans involve the development and design of forums, blogs and web 2.0 features that are a must for the new site that will move them into the 21st century, and then as a by line there is content …

I forwarded an article from giraffe forums, which was later twittered to the community regarding the importance of content in the procurement of a CMS for any organisation. it suggested that migration of old content into a new CMS and web design, with the added function and features that a new system offers, but the same content, will effectively achieve nothing,

Content makes a site.

It should be thoughtfully written with the reader in mind and use language that they can will understand, use common language, and avoid industry acronyms.

It should be long enough to inform the reader, but not so long that they don’t want to read the piece. Add a ‘contact us’ link so that the reader can get in touch should they need more information.

Structure the content in a sympathetic manner, the reader dies not know your companies internal structure and probably doesn’t care, structure content in way that the reader will expect.

In a recent thread on the information architects institute mail list, the procurement of a CMS was again the subject of discussion, in this thread, one contributor suggested that the IA focus on the ‘Goals’ of the CMS rather than the features, again positioning the procurement away from the technology and more towards the desired effect.

Informing the user, allowing them to interact with the content and thus the organisation,

Web2.0 is about user generated content not technology, so don’t muddy the waters with unnecessary features, moderate them to the user, what they need and how they expect to be able to interact with you.

Simple IA – Information groups

john morse — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:59:27 +0100

Many websites will go to significant lengths to mage sure that their navigation is put grouped in a meaningful and logical way, (not always logical to the user but logical none the less)

Others however just don’t get it.

Amazon, a huge success story and still my favourite online retailer, is on my opinion guilty of two major no no’s.

Firstly the criminal use of massively over complicated Captcha images and secondly information grouping.

Where you place links and how you arrange them is extremely important if you are to avoid the ‘oops’ factor, the accidental clicking on a web link that does the exact opposite to the action the user intended

Take for example the illustration below

the links view your wish list and delete your wish list couldn’t be closer, true a simple are you sure message can help avoid the accidentally deletion of a users data, but why add the risk at all?

The way these links are grouped asks for trouble a user in a rush will see wish list, users don’t read but scan pages so there is a high possibility that they will click the wrong list

click the link (yes I tried, nervously) and you are asked to login, odd as I already logged in to view my wish list, no mention of the action you are about to undergo..(I stopped there, yes chicken)

The logical structure of the links is also odd with delete your wedding list in a complete separate screen area to the view your wedding list,

This make more sense separating ‘delete’ actions from ‘view’ actions but it lacks consistency.

The grouping of these links adds to the potential for user error,

Be aware how you group links, group them order or importance and use, user are more likely to want to view their data than delete they whole lot, so why put them together?

actions shoudl complient each other

Clicks on the won link here and you off the site rather than viewing the security notice, only a minor issue but not what the user expects.

Be consistent; make sure that if you follow a logical group for one area of the site, you continue to use the same logic,

If an action for a link may cause user distress, make sure that it’s clear that this link will delete your profile /data

Finally check, then check again “are you sure?” and “An email will be sent to your profile email address to confirm this action”

Technorati Tags: amazon,Information architecture,links,information groups,user expectations

Aptana studio

john morse — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 12:05:49 +0100

I recently installed Aptana studio (today) just to see what it was, I regularly do this it look at tools and see if they are any good or may help any of the guys here develop richer apps or work in more creative way. usually they FAIL massively and are deleted as quick as they are installed.

Then I found this baby.

Now, I don’t code any more, indeed some of those I have worked with in the dim and distant past may argue I was more of a hack than a coder;) but I still like to dabble occasionally, inspiration being the main problem. So when I installed this I wasn’t expecting to see anything much of interest.

wrong.

Firstly is a code editor extreme, with plug-ins for Ajax, Air, PHP, radrails, iPhone development….it comes with Jaxer a built in Ajax server for local development and the release candidate, (1.2) introduces cloud development with an integrated dashboard and collaborative working tools and a dashboard for keeping up to date with your project progress.

With associated video tutorials, documentation and what seems to be a fairly active community there is a good deal of support for the new user..and we still haven’t upgraded to the pro edition!

We’ve been having a look at this today and so far we are all seriously impressed.

Check out http://www.aptana.com/ for more

Overdue Web Accessibility Guidelines Set For December.

john morse — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:32:04 +0100

source : E-Government Bulletin, 30 September 2008 - Participatory budgeting - astonishing results; web accessibility guidelines update

available from http://www.headstar.com

A long-awaited updated version of the main international standard for making websites accessible to people with disabilities is set to be published in mid-December, E-Government Bulletin has learned.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.0 from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C - http://www.w3c.org) have been in development for several years.

Creators of public sector websites have been using version 1.0 of the guidelines, adherence to which is written into various government guidelines. However they have long been seen as over-technical and complex and unclear in many situations.

Version 2.0 is set to address many of these problems by moving away from rigid technical 'checkpoints' to more flexible 'success criteria.'

This week, the responsible World Wide Web consortium working group is due to meet in Boston, US to finalise the current 'Candidate recommendation' phase of WCAG 2.0 in which the new guidelines have been tested on real web sites to confirm their applicability.

The group will debate which success criteria can be considered sufficiently stable to be implemented, and some of the requirements previously marked as 'At risk' will be reviewed to ensure the guidelines can be met in practice.

A W3C spokesman told E-Government Bulletin this week that publication before Christmas was now expected, and that if the deadline did slip any further it would be a matter of weeks, not months.

Technorati Tags: accessibilty,w3c,wcag

So facebook is dead, huh?

john morse — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:27:37 +0100

I admit I had started to lose interest in Facebook, it was fun to start with but it seemed that, with the latest redesign fiasco and the emerging offerings that twitter et al has to offer who has time to poke superpoke and tag all your virtual friends?

What’s next?

Trouble is I forgot something, as Mike Ellis pointed out ‘ we are not normal (ok slightly out of context but it read well) I / we are immersed in the web, we live there, shop there and play there, and in that respect we are not ‘normal’.

There are vast swathes of people in the real non virtual world who are only vaguely aware that there is a Facebook, have (shock horror) no idea what a tweet is (vague references to an American RnB singer..No? I’ll move on) and check their email, once maybe twice ..a week!!!

People like….my partner.

She, until recently only had a ‘Bodyspace’ profile (social site for fitness professionals and interested others) which she rarely used and to be fair was not really interested in, then as a result of a conversation with a friend in the USA she asked me how she could get a Facebook..

Background, my partner is from Zimbabwe a large (very large) percentage of the Zim population now live abroad, and it seems are extremely active on Facebook.

Within 5 minutes (no literally 5 mins, no word a lie) of setting her page up, adding a few common friends, etc. She was getting requests from old school friends, people she grew up with in Harare, and telephone calls, friends contacting friends calling friends adding friends….

We, the guys and gals that work in this industry forget too easy that we get play with these toys a lot and sooner that real people. Maybe we need to sit down with more grounded folk and watch them discover our world once in a while to remind us that yeah it really is quite cool and clever and fun, and yeah we are lucky really.

Because ultimately it still all about people, ordinary people meeting people, talking to people.

We / I may not like the new Facebook design, and there may be a million users who agree, there is (as pointed out to me by a colleague last week) for each of who don’t like the design 10 who don’t care, as a platform it still works.

And when we, the guys who build and live in this virtual playground get it right, it’s really *really* good.

Technorati Tags: facebook,social networking,web2.0

more Gmail security NOT

Stephen Pope — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 10:40:00 +0100

since my post discussing Gmail security, or the lack of, Google have done, well, nothing to address the situation.

Actually that’s not entirely true they have posted this article stating that users cannot register addresses similar to yours, but with a dot in it

therefore, according to Google

another@gmail.com also regsiters a.n.other@gmail.com

at least that’s what they say…today i received the full details of a purchase someone with a similar but subtly different email address (add a dot) made, with enough information to easily acquire their identity. I have since delete this email and told the intended recipient (assuming Gmail doesn’t just send it back to me).

this seems to be an intermittent fault, I cant believe that uses would continue to use a Gmail account that never received email and I only seem to get partial threads but Google really need to sort this out,

not good enough

post script

it gets better, looking into this a little further it is possible for me to access this persons account and credit details for this purchase by simply using the forgot password link and emailing the password to their email address…which goes into my account!!!

/shakes head

updated, 13/11/08

im am now getting faculty emails from the santa fecommunity college who are discussing AA / AAA accessibilty guidelines and a student from the universisty of maryland who is having trouble enrolling on a course

Technorati Tags: google,security

Higher Education and Content Management

john morse — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:21:51 +0100

We at Eduserv are conducting some research into the needs of Higher education (to be followed by cultural and government) and their demands for Content Management.

We’re not so much looking the solutions that institutions use, what we really a interested in the features, functions and future needs of the institutions and what they look for when they are considering a CMS, and indeed what comprises they are forced to make when choosing.

We’re considering the usual needs for a CMS, ease of editing, compliance, migration, workflow, DM and KM integration. But also thinking about interoperability, VLE's and MLE's and course management, what is needed to support students, staff and partners when using HE facilities.

Content management should be a great enabler but only when it meets the needs of the institution *and* the needs of the users, are HE’s getting what they need, or even need what they are asking for?

Facebook and the user revolt ?

john morse — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:13:49 +0100

So Facebook is going ahead and forcing users to adopt the latest design changes, despite all the criticism from users. Could this be a huge mistake or a fuss over nothing?

Well Facebook is after all about the user generated content, its users aren’t like in ‘traditional’ site part of the model for the site, they are the site model, the content generated by the users is all they have and if you make it harder to use then surely you add barriers to the model?

I use face book and if don’t like the new design, not enough to protest, but its not good, usable or intuitive, and I’m a ‘power user’, I can’t help thinking that this is may be a mistake, the fact that one of the project manager for the site can say “..we really think you'll like the new Facebook once you get used to the changes”. Doesn’t bode well for their approach to their users.

If your users are having issues with a design then is it the design that has a flaw or the user?

One to watch..

Simple IA - Captcha

john morse — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:01:16 +0100

I’ve been away for a while, BSOD and totally destruction of my machine redressed my priorities but all is now well.

As a result I’ve been re- registering for a number of service that I used to automatically log in to, and faced with various forms of Captcha interface, now don’t get me wrong any system that prevents and slows down the spammer is good BUT is Captcha really the best we can do?

I recently worked on a project for the science museum that needed to have a visitor registration system, they defined a Captcha service for that and I decided to have a look around and see if there were better options.

One that really caught my eye was the reverse Captcha method, rather that require the human user fill in a field that copies the obscure image, add a field that absolutely HAS TO BE EMPTY. as the spam bot goes through the form it will fill in useless information including the empty filed. Advantage, inconvenience the spammer not the visitor/user whish is always a good thing, ‘don’t make me think’ right?.

it’s got to better than bizarre cats and dogs wrapped around gothic script ;)

SCA - Audience analysis workshop, 23rd September 2008

john morse — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:47:01 +0100

After attending the SCA Wales forum last month, I was fortunate enough to attend the SCA audience analysis workshop in London which was focused on the report put together by Chris Batt as part of the SCAs program of work.

The SCA are a JISC funded body who are looking at the opportunities and indeed need to share content across public bodies to aid its use and, presumably cut costs.

The workshop was (well) attended and drew some interesting discussions and presentations from Dylan Edgar at the London HUB and Professor David Nicholas, CIBER UCL who introduced his work on deep log analysis, which is all good.

The need to share content is huge, we (everyone) needs to know that, when we get anything from any public body resource it is up to date and factually correct. I don’t need several different sources for the same info. Too many sites throw too much information at the user and expect then to find what they are looking for. And there lies my first minor issue with the SCA activities, whilst they are still only 18months in to a 24month programmed of work; I have yet to see any consideration into how the users will be able to find this shared content.

If I am on site a looking for some information that is shared (syndicated) across many sites, do know that and (more specifically) how do I find it? It’s an important consideration, shared content is useful, extremely important and very worthwhile, but only if people can find it.

during the workshop there where many questions asked, notably around what language is to be used, what do we mean by content, if a school has a collection of learning objects for a module in a particular course, what is the 'content being delivered, the collection the individual Learning objects in the collection, the course?

Who are the audience, teachers, students, VLE admin, school heads?

What is value, how do you measure it and how do you persuade those that control the money the access to digitized content will yield a good ROI

Whilst there was much agreement that these and other discussion need to be asked, there did not seem to be any direction as to who will answer them, or by when. But then that may be the project manager in me

the SCA's work is very worthwhile and defiantly to be supported, and I will be keeping involved as much as I am able to see how it goes forward and integrates with other actives (eGIF for instance)

Technorati Tags: SCA,JISC,audience analysis,deep log analysis,london HUB

So, what are the top5 most hyped technologies that failed to deliver?

john morse — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:40:00 +0100

You know the ones, they come around every once in a while, threaten to change the world...then fizzle out without a trace...

We are interested in finding out which technologies you think fir into this billing, just for fun,

Think WAP, think Sinclair C5, think ...well use your imagination.

This is an anonymous survey purely to gauge general views for a discussion. if you wish to discuss please contact

feedback@eduserv-psg.net

Activities - SCA Forum Wales

john morse — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:45:01 +0100

Managed to break away last week to attend the SCA (strategic content alliance) JISC forum in Cardiff, this forum was only recently pointed out to us as something worth looking into, and it proved to be an interesting insight into some of the activities and issues surrounding public sector concerns and content / information sharing.

Presentations from JISC on their collections activity, Naomi Korn gave a passionate view on IPR issues, barriers and bridges, coupled with an interesting view on business views from CITI banks Chris Oakely-White, where all well received.

But my attention was grabbed by Chris Batts work on audience analysis, from what I understand he (and his team) have been looking at how the audiences for the main parties in the SCA overlap and how this offers opportunities for sharing and reuse of content to enrich their experience as well as helping the organisations in question. there is a follow up workshop later this month to discuss this which I am going try and attend.

Finally breakout groups where asked to discuss business models (with Chris Oakely-White) and standards with Brian Kelly from UKOLN and UK Web Focus ( blogg ) in which I discussed the issues with ever changing standards and how, whilst they are essential for development practices, they also add to the complexity of building and maintaining a compliant service.

All in all it was an interesting trip across the bridge, picked up a few interesting pointers to follow up....and an excellent lunch, which is always nice.

Microsoft Architect Insight Conference - The Future of IT

Matt Johnson — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:36:00 +0100

For the last 3 years Microsoft has run a conference aimed at people who help design and build MS-based solutions in response to organisational needs. Turnout is normally excellent (out of around 250 delegates, there were only 2 no-shows), and Microsoft invite some high-quality speakers to discuss topical events. This year, the theme is "The Future of IT", obviously with a Microsoft slant.

Day 1

9:15 - decent venue, good turnout, keynote topic still to be determined. The main auditorium is packed, with everybody rammed in like sardines, feels like an economy flight!

11:00 - interesting keynote, with Microsoft emphasizing the shift from software to services, and a big push towards Cloud computing - Live Mesh is going to be an important technology over the next few years!

11:30 - "Windows Server - Datacentre Ready?" gets off to a bad start with a non working remote connection, but improves rapidly with an introduction talking about providing IT services to the "Millennial Generation". The conclusion I took from this is that it is a "Yes" - providing you buy into the Microsoft approach to Datacentre management - which is a large commitment, especially for smaller organisations. Really surprised to hear that the "Server Core" configuration doesn't support the .Net Framework, which makes modern web services via IIS7 pretty much useless on the Core platform - seems like a missed opportunity.

Another Microsoft technology, Hyper-V seems about 18 months behind the virtualisation leader VMware, but there are some very interesting integration possibilities for individual desktop apps, and the demonstration of 3 different versions of MS Word running side-by-side with no desktop footprint was impressive.

NB: at this stage, I give up trying to update this blog via an iPhone - updates will therefore depend on my laptop connection!

Lunch - Had an interesting talk with Paul Foster, Microsoft's robotics expert - his aim is to build a working robot (loosely based on an arachnid) during the two day conference, and demonstrate it at the closing keynote; so far, so good!

15:00 - Steve Lamb, an "IT Pro Evangelist" (who definitely seem to have the coolest jobs in MS) gives a very interesting talk on the inherent aspects of security, both good and bad, within virtualisation services. Also showed an excellent video, which I highly recommend you check out: ShiftHappens (YouTube Video).

16:00 - The CIO of Newham City Council gives his perspective on the 10 key principles which he is trying to instil into his organisation. Nothing particularly revolutionary, although it is refreshing to hear his attitude to the use of "social networking" services by staff, which seems to be - providing they meet their goals/objectives, and don't bring the Council into disrepute - they are welcome to get on with it.

Day 2

8:45 - Early start today for review of the "Changing Landscape of IT", which is it was proposed that the organisations that have shown the biggest growth over the past few years have been those that have embraced IT as a key part of the business, and not just as a cost centre. It also highlighted the

9:30 - Keynote speech from Ben Ravani of Microsoft's Global Foundation Services division, which is responsible for delivering Microsoft's key web services, including Live ID (1 billion transactions per day), Live Mail (800 million messages per day) and Live Messenger (2 billion messages per day). He put forward a convincing case for building services as "Pods" capable of running on standardised hardware from multiple datacentres, thereby providing an inbuilt DR capability and removing the need for expensive power infrastructure support services.

10:30 - Next session is a lively and engaging presentation from Dave Coplin, an Enterprise Strategy Consultant with Microsoft, talking about Social Computing at Work. Highlighted the fact that most people have better IT provision (hardware and connectivity) at home than at work. In making use of online services, most users don't care how services are delivered - just the results that are returned from them. In a similar vein, the enterprise mindset will change from a requirement to train users in IT, to accepting that the majority of new users (or Millennials) will be technically proficient, and will be expecting to use technology and services they use at home. A key idea is that you shouldn't think of Social Computing as MySpace and Facebook, but the principles that make them work; for example, your online reputation is an important factor in social networking, whether it is on LinkedIn, Xbox Live, or any other service.

In a related note on how "Social Networking" might evolve, Nova Spivack has done some interesting work that shows the journey from Information to Intelligence:

Web 1.0: The Web - Connects Information
Web 2.0: Social Software - Connects People
Web 3.0: Semantic Web - Connects Knowledge
Web 4.0: The Metaweb - Connects Intelligence

11:45 - The Data-aware Enterprise is the topic of the next presentation. Whilst it is a competent from a technical point of view, most of the content is around the features and functionality that can be delivered within SQL 2005 and 2008, rather than a more strategic approach to data management within the enterprise.

14:00 - Another highly entertaining and informative presentation, Next Generation Datacentres looks at how Software + Services can be delivered, and the demands these services can place in infrastructure. Outlined our current thinking that Datacentre operations is focused on Servers, rather than Services. For services such as Hotmail, the components are based on "rack-units", each of which is non fault-tolerant, and the applications are specifically designed to run within a distributed environment. Outside of a database, there is NO state recovery; if a server fails, it is reinstalled with no further analysis or recovery.

Dynamic Services Platform (DSP) Solution Approach is the (current) name for "Microsoft Service's view of a service-oriented datacentre operating model, providing an end-to-end view and approach to delivering services out of a datacentre." Microsoft currently operate approximately 600,000 servers, and this number is growing at 10,000 per month. In recent reports, Google, Amazon and MS were said to be responsible for 1/3 of ALL server CPUs delivered.

The DSP Solution Approach is based on knowledge of (and focus on) the service, encoded in software models (SML), which can be worked on across the IT Lifecycle, with end-to-end standardisation. SML is being developed via the Common Model Library (CML), which applies real-world examples to a theoretical model. With this approach developers should NOT define the layout or configuration of an O/S, except within a limited scope (CPU/Memory), and users should only be allowed to define the features required, not technical issues that should be hidden from the customer.

At this stage, the discussion got into a level of technical detail that was beyond my (rusty) knowledge of MS management services, however (I believe) the gist of the message is that the DSP model, where possible, allow non-developers to define solutions within Systems Center software, in an object-orientated way.

Simple IA - accessibility is more than tick a boxing excercise (E-access bulletin)

john morse — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:47:15 +0100

I read with interest the post below in the e-access bulletin, the comments from my distinguished friend, Julie Howells regarding accessibility, Julie knows her stuff and I tend to make an effort to read when she writes or gets up to in the big wide world. In this post her thoughts mirror much that I (we) have been saying to our customers (and work colleagues) for some time, Accessibility and compliance are NOT the same thing and I would even go as far as to say that accessibility has little to do with disability at all.

Accessibility is about being able to get to the information available and then doing something useful with it, its less about building in 'features' for disables users and much more about not building barriers to users. Its makes sense therefore, to make sure that the user experience is well designed and clear to all users, their expectations are met with consistent and clear navigation and structures and that they are left feeling confident in the service you, as a supplier, are offering.

Full posting from the E-access Bulletin below, copy right and details on how to subscribe are included as per the copyright agreement

E-Government Bulletin, 28 April 2008: Digital exclusion; Public bodies sell on eBay; Common web accessibility problems.

The need to move beyond pure technical 'accessibility' of websites to the creation of 'fantastic user experiences' for disabled people online was the keynote theme at last week's E-Access '08 conference on access to technology by people with disabilities, hosted by the publishers of E-Government Bulletin.

Julie Howell, Director of Accessibility at digital agency Fortune Cookie and former digital policy manager at blindness charity RNIB, told delegates the simply ensuring the special access technologies such as the text to speech screen readers used by blind people could read information on a website was no longer enough.

"We should be creating rich, engaging, fabulous user experiences for disabled people," Howell said. "It's not about taking text and just having it read out loud."

If accessibility is defined as the ability of any person using any technology in any circumstance to access content, it will mean that for example a blind person's screen reader can find the content and read it out, Howell said. "That, however, is no guarantee that blind person will be able to do their shopping in a reasonable amount of time, or complete their task at the same cost as a sighted person would.

"My definition of equality is the ability of a disabled person to achieve a goal in the same time, at the same time, at the same cost, and at the same convenience as a person who doesn't have a disability. I've never understood why I, who can see, should have it easier on the web than my friend, who is blind."

Howell outlined plans for her work as chair of a new British Standards Institution technical committee to create the first British standard on web accessibility (see E-Government Bulletin issue 257, 18 February 2008).

She said a draft standard would be released for consultation in September and pledged the final version would be published in the first quarter of 2009. The standard will cover key recent developments in internet technology such as 'Web 2.0', rich internet applications and the need for modern websites to work across platforms including mobile phones, Howell said.

NOTE: To view the slides used in Julie Howell's presentation, see the programme page at:
http://www.headstar-events.com/eaccess08/
Further coverage of E-Access '08 including the keynote presentation will appear in our sister publication E-Access Bulletin. To register for this free newsletter see:
http://www.headstar.com/eab

+COPYRIGHT NOTICE.
- Copyright 2008 Headstar Ltd.
Regular circulation or reproduction of the bulletin by third parties is forbidden. Properly accredited articles (always including source details, bulletin subscription details and web address) or entire single issues of the bulletin (including this notice) may be forwarded to individuals or groups of people as long as it is made clear that to receive a regular copy, people must subscribe individually. For queries about article reproduction, syndication or other copyright issues please email copyright@headstar.com .

ICO are getting tough on PHORM

john morse — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:00:25 +0100

As reported on the BBC technology site the ICO have also pointed out that users need to give the option of opting IN not OUT of the PHORM tracking system.

In our previous post we discussed just this, users expect to be asked to opt IN to these types of services they may not understand why opting OUT means (will the Internet break?).

This move is good news for users, it meets their expectations for the way that the Internet works, and causes them less confusion, why PHORM wanted an opt OUT solution, is I guess, known only to them.