templatedata

Boing Boing correspondent Xeni Jardin has posted a rough transcript of the Google CEO's remarks at the 35th Internet Anniversary. It's worth a read. I particularly liked the last paragraph:

The other thing to remember is that the average person does not want to debug their computer. We prefer instead the idea of a person typing something in and Google -- or someone else -- figuring things out for you. But very few things are organized around that principle of simplicity; we love and appreciate the complexity in technology but people using the internet really don't want that. When you see an ease of use breakthrough, it's such a wonderful thing.

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A couple of days ago I noticed a post on YourTotalSite about the argument that templates are killing creativity on the web.

I am so absolutely sick of hearing, "It's nice, but it still looks like a blog." I can understand everybody's desire to see the limits pushed, but let's be logical about this. Have you ever said, "I love all these new books being published, but they all look like books." Or maybe, "That's a beautiful car, but why does it have 4 round wheels?" How about, "It's so boring to always have the door knob on the outside edge of the door about waist high.

People need to use websites. People need to get information from websites. Websites are unique in that they are a lot like newspapers but they're also a lot like software. The SMH doesn't let it's layout people change the layout everyday, nor do software companies allow their interface people to change the colours and positions of icons every time they schedule a new release. Perhaps the word "allow" is not the right one here. It's not a matter of the 'management' telling the 'creatives' that they can't strut their stuff, it's a matter of providing a paper or piece of software that people can use. The same goes for websites. Enforcing the use of templates and styles isn't done because someone gets a kick out of telling people what to do, it's done so that University websites are easily identified as belonging to the Uni, so that they are professional, and most of all, so that they are EASY TO USE.

There will always be a place for Flash, for weird layouts and unconventional colour and font types, but it is identifying these places that makes all the difference. Sites that conduct basic University business are not the place.

Addition: Why Practical Web Design magazine is not. A quick anecdote concerning how the world sees Web design.

I heard about this on the stupendous NewsRadio a couple of days ago and thought at the time, isn't the web great, now it's saving people's lives! I have finally found a link to a story about how Google 'saved' the Australian hostage in Iraq. The SBS journo was kidnapped and used Google to verify his indentity and prove to his captors that he wasn't a spy.

Also, I thought I would sneak this in at the bottom of this post: If architects had to work like web designers. So accurate it hurts.

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Ok, this is REALLY silly stuff but this quiz will tell you which file extension you are. Apparently I am

Doing the hard yards to make your site accessible has multiple 'secret' benefits, according to Trenton Moss, over at Sitepoint. As well as better usability:

Web accessibility has so many benefits that I really do wonder why such a large number of Websites have such diabolically bad accessibility. One of the main benefits is increased usability, which, according to usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, can increase the sales/conversion rate of a Website by 100%, and traffic by 150%.

One of the main benefits of Web accessibility is that a Website that's more accessible to people is also usually more accessible to search engines. The more accessible your site is to search engines, the more confidently they can guess what the site's about, giving your site a better chance at the top spot in the search engine rankings.

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Louis Rosenfeld has published the analysis of his IA trends survey.

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Content guru Gerry McGovern has written about the temptation to build a site when you have nothing to say, or can't say it well. As with many of Gerry's columns I agree in a big way. Unless you have a firm idea of what you want your website to do and say and are willing to allocate time and resources to the development AND maintenance of the site you should not undertake to build one. As McGovern notes, the poor impression created by a badly designed and written website is far worse than the impression given by not having a website. He says:

When establishing websites, some organizations make the serious mistake of thinking that something is better than nothing. Many managers see a website as a project. They measure success based on things done. The website has an online application form, it has a search engine, and it has content. The form and search engine may not work well, the content may be badly written, but that's not what's important. What is important is that the project is completed.

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Yes, it's been put in the too-hard basket for a while but at some stage it comes back to bite you. It is being addressed, quite well from what I hear, at the University in relation to the CMS and the management of online content in general, so this is a good start. To Metadata or not to Metadata looks at the basic issues and how groups and software vendors are tackling the problem.

A couple of things have become increasingly clear: Metadata is not going away and there is no one simple solution to how to add metadata and maximize its value. Consequently, what we are going to do in this article is take a look at some of the basic issues around adding metadata to unstructured content and explore a range of approaches that various groups and software vendors are trying. We will then examine how a broader view of metadata, beyond simply adding keywords to documents, is leading to a more sophisticated, multi-dimensional or infrastructure-based approach to metadata that supports a smarter balance of both more and less metadata.

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At the moment I am working on the design of several internally-focussed University sites. In doing so I am trying to develop a base intranet interface that can serve as a template for internal Uni sites. Specifically I am focussing on the difference between information delivery and interaction and how this affects page layout. So...I am interested in any ideas from anyone (and I mean anyone, you don't even have to part of Sydney Uni) especially on the following:

- Effective, usable page layouts for interactive functions
- Layouts that provide fast-access to much used content that are also usable
- Features that you would consider to be 'value-adding' for example, a forms repository

Use the comments or get in touch via email.

Some reading material:

- Sixteen steps to a renewed corporate intranet
- Intranet trends to watch for
- Improving your intranet task by task
- Ten best Government intranets
- Value-driven intranet design

Not directly related but interesting: Movable Type for policies and procedures

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Google have released the beta of their desktop search.

It's a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, computer files, chats, and the web pages you've viewed.

Haven't had a chance to give it a complete workout yet, it's indexing the files on my machine as I type. Will post an analysis when I have really got it working.

Read more. Check out the screenshots. Read what searchenginewatch has to say about it.

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Interwoven's developer network has reached 10000 members. As cmswatch points out:

Of course, TeamSite developers can use all the help they can get, when performing even simple administrative tasks in the CMS requires invoking obscure perl scripts from a command line. But a large, committed community can make the obscure more transparent. And Interwoven has built such a community -- even out of necessity. We laud them for it...

- Cornell are discussing their web redesign project on a blog. Think it would ever work here? Nah...

- 10 CSS tricks you may not know

- Usability isn't only about the front end, sexy, 'beautifying' work, it's also about the back end. Some things you can do to ensure server side usability.

- Instead of using 'Click here' why not give it a proper name? Now you too can write effective link text. Your users will love you for it.

- Having an office argument about grammar? Solve the problem quickly by sending out some spam email requesting an answer. That's what some English teachers in Hong Kong did.

For all those struggling to come to terms with the weekend's events, feel comforted in the knowledge that you are not alone. For all those over the moon at the weekend's events, I don't want to know who you are...

So, straight down to business with a couple of links:

- Cheap and cheerful usability testing
Sitepoint explains why you don't need to build a whizz-bang usability lab in order to achieve quality testing. Obviously very pertinent for us at the Uni.

- Layout of search results
Via Column Two, an article on the optimal layout of search result pages by Henrik Olsen. He says:

The authors of this article have studied the optimal layout of search result pages. Their findings suggest that categorizing search results improve users' performance significantly.

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I have noticed around the Uni that there seems to be a hole in the design and development of things like websites and applications. (I am speaking here of small to medium projects, not large ones). Usually the design and dev process goes something like this:

1. Someone comes up with an idea for a new website or application
2. Talks to someone about building it for them
3. Gives them an idea of what they want it to do/say, which may or may not include technical specifications.
4. Developer takes these ideas and builds a system.
5. System does roughly what it is supposed to be but is hard to use or slow, etc etc

This is by no means always the case but there is definitely a problem in the development cycle that I think is related to specifications, or the lack of them.

Most people who ask for something to be built don’t really know how to write a spec that will get what they actually want. They usually have a very good idea about what they want the thing to do but this does not necessarily mean that they know the best way to make it do it. The job of the person building the thing, as I see it, is to take whatever rough ‘specifications’ that the client is providing and find the best solution, not just a solution that fits the spec. This involves build AND design. Someone generally goes to someone else to build something because they don’t know how to do it. This is generally accepted when it comes to technical things, but when it comes to design this isn’t as readily acknowledged.

The nature of the Uni means that often it will be the same person building and designing. We do not have the resources available in the private sector. Often though the design suffers at the expense of the build. The build may be technically correct, or close to, and fulfill the client’s needs, but the resulting system or site is difficult to use and frustrating. I think this is a failure to deliver the best system or site possible to the client. It’s a cop-out.

At some stage we have to realise that for small applications and websites there is often a need for someone to sit between the builder and the client. Ideally this person should be able to write a detailed spec that answers the functional needs of the client but also comes up with solutions that will make the site or application easy to use. I’m not necessarily advocating the employment of a heap of spec writers, I know in this climate that is unreasonable. What could be done though is that builders realise that the client’s spec doesn’t usually spell out the design of their request, it usually spells out the functionality, but that is all. It is up to the builder/designer to actually take that spec, and sometimes it will be a verbal spec, and design the solution before they build, not just solve the problem technically. To blame any resulting interface or design problems on the client’s spec is just lazy.

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First you could use GMail as a mountable filesystem for yer Linux box, now there is a tool that allows you to use your GMail account as an extra storage space on your PC. If you fancy prettying up your account you can reskin it with a custom stylesheet. Find a lot more at Aimless words, the unofficial gmail blog. And if you want a GMail account I'm givin' 'em away. Email me, I'm in the phonebook.

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No comment this morning, just some interesting articles:

- For those interested in intranet development, Shiv Singh details his predicted intranet trends

- Ryan Singer has written a very practical article about designing individual web pages using patterns.

- Snap, a new search engine was launched at the Web 2.0 conference. Boing Boing has pointed out the ridiculous linking policy of Snap, and I have to admit I found it very difficult to believe. They have now updated their policy and are sucking up to the bloggers who pointed out the problem and "suggesting this great change". Oh dear.

- Content management isn't just about the system says Asterisk. Those yet to embrace the CMS at the Uni may wish to take a look at this article and for those already using it, there's no harm in taking a look too.

- Amy Gahran talks about using RSS feeds on your intranet as a way to give people chuncks of information without them having to dig deep into the intranet. I particularly like the idea applied to internal feeds.

- At the University of Missouri a student is going to graduate via satellite from Iraq after completing his degree online while on service. (Just ignore the Bush-esque last paragraph of this story).

- And the SMH reports on a boom in Christian computer games.

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Donna Maurer of Step Two has written a short article on intranets that are "under construction". Some of you will know my feelings towards the dreaded "under construction" signs, I have always felt that if you don't have content you don't publish. No exceptions. The reasons I have felt this way are similar to Maurer's 'disadvantages" to going live while under construction: erosion of trust in the site, the fact that site owners are pointing to their own inadequacies and in 2004, it's just plain unprofessional. (Via Maurer, check out this page dedicated to under construction icons, it's a pearler).

While generally I agree with Maurer's reasons for not going live while under construction, I am not convinced of her 'advantages.' I admit that sometimes you just have to go live before the content of a site is complete. Often this is due to political pressure or budget constraints, for example. Instead of going live and pointing to the lack of content, I would prefer to adjust the architecture to accommodate new content as it arrives. Way back in the design stage of a site, content can be prioritised and phased so that there is a general agreement as to what absolutely must be there when the site first goes live. This could be done in an across-the-board fashion where every section of the site has a minimum amount of content so that the bare bones of the architecture go live at the first go. One other way is to concentrate on selected sections of the site and put all energy into getting content complete for the first go. If the architecture is designed in 'chunks' that relate to each other but are simulataneously self-contained, this will work.

The decision on which way to go is affected by many factors, some of which don't directly relate to the mechanics of the site itself: political pressure to put certain information online first, availability of resources, for example, subject experts, where the money is, time frames, the list could go on. I see the job of the IA as balancing all these concerns and trying to come up with a design that will be usable. Sometimes this will mean doing something you don't want but as long as the focus remains on the usability of the design the site will ultimately work.

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