templatedata

Hi Everyone!

It's been a while since I've posted, but after some news I heard last week I thought I'd inject a bit of geek into templatedata and share it with you.

In a nutshell, the news is this. Real mashups are now possible, and easy. And if we take advantage properly, and early, then we've got the potential to add some really useful functions to our websites.

Some days make you realise that there are some old battles that IAs and the like are still fighting, years after you had dared to wish that they had been won.

One of these is the organisation-based website. You know, the ones that reflect the structure of the organisation, the internal politics and turf wars. Sometimes you have a number of sites fighting each other and the needs of the user are completely ignored. Also, there was no thought put into how a user may approach a large and varied instituion's website and make sense of all the little subsites. Five or six years ago a great proportion of sites were structured in this manner and I sometimes believe those days are gone, but alas, they are still with us.

So, a few things to remember when building a site, especially if that site has a relationship to other sites in a large institution:

1. Your users don't know who looks after what
They don't know which site to visit to get specific information, they don't know which department is responsible for the answer, they just want an answer. Quickly.

2. If a user is external to the organisation they usually don't distinguish between different sites in an overall web presence, especially if those sites use a standard template. They view it all as "University of XX's website".

3. The web is not the place to stake a political claim for your part of an organisation.
You will end up not fulfilling your user's needs and looking a little silly.

4. The web is not a change management catalyst for departmental restructures.
Changing the structure of an organisation and using a restructured website to try to introduce and enforce this change is not a good idea. A website should not reflect the structure of your organisation, it should reflect the information needs of your users and the way in which they think about this set of information.

On other matters, I have been seconded to the Marketing and Student Recruitment Unit for six months, this is my last day at Web Services for a while. I'll no doubt still haunt Templatedata like a ghost that just won't give up...

For those interested in information architecture, some of the presentations given at the recent IA Summit in Las Vegas are now available for all those of us who couldn't make it.

At the inaugural University Web Forum yesterday several people mentioned that they would like to see case studies on higher ed websites, especially examples of 'good' design.

I have posted about this one before but just as a reminder, eduStyle is well worth a look if you want to see what's happening in Higher Ed web design and development. Registered users submit their sites and other users can appraise the sites, voting for or against them and leave comments. Most examples are from the US but there some Australian candidates.

Another site to check out is Design Meltdown that has featured two articles on higher ed web design, accompanied by copius examples. Read the first part here, and the second part here.

Anyone can set one up but it's easy to get wrong. Check out Tom Johnson's 20 tips to find out how to get it right.

Ok, so I had a whinge about Twitter a couple of weeks ago but since then I have had time to use it a little more, even if sporadically. I have been thinking that there must be some kind of way in which higher ed people can use this. It's simple and easy and free.

I noticed on the weekend that the BBC is using it to send out news headlines so I signed up to their sports updates. I have long admired the ability of the BBC's web people to integrate new technologies into their online offerings, they usually do it in a very user-friendly manner that actually delivers interesting content. So, I was intrigued.

The BBC uses Twitter to deliver a very slim amount of content in the form of a headline and a link. They use Tiny URL to make their 'Twitters' even shorter (there's a 140 char limit) and not burdened by a long URL that can be hard on a reader's eye. I have Twitter delivered to my IM client so accessing anything that interests me is easy. If you were receiving via SMS you would obviously need web access via your phone to get the full benefit from it.

In terms of delivering short messages there is potential. This morning I read the Shifted Librarian's take on Twitter for libraries. Like me, Jenny's been thinking that there must be some useful application for it, besides a vanity publishing tool. She came up with the distribution of library alerts and one of the big attractions of using Twitter for such messages is that it's free and would require little technical work to make it happen.

"So here's my theory and the reason for this post. I've already thought out loud about one possible way for a library (or consortium of libraries) to use Twitter, but I think an enterprising library that wants to test out a texting service, especially with teens, could create a free Twitter account and publicize it as an alert notification system. In fact, I think a library could create multiple Twitter accounts and offer a variety of alert services this way."

UPDATE: Deep and sincere apologies to The Shifted Librarian. I had used a quote from your blog and not marked it as such. This may have led people to believe they were my own words. I have now corrected this error.

A quick referral: Read/WriteWeb on the future of one of my favourite things, RSS.