Another benefit of collaborative work: It allows to fix errors without having to make a drama out of it.
You can fix your own errors, because your publications are always open for editing and it will be nothing unusual that there is a new version out from time to time. (more…)
Categories: applied collaboration · collective experience
Tagged: errors, trouble
There is collaboration, there is userexperience and there are many more: semiscientific disciplines that describe what we can do and where we can twist and turn something to succeed.
And there are a few common basics:it’s all happening in a community; it is always a collective experience. (more…)
Categories: collective experience · communication · social media
Tagged: lazy, who is talking
User experience is a thing with a whole lot of facets.
Designer Niko Nyman presented some great ideas in his Web2Expo-speech
* You can add good user experience to software and use that to sell it to your customers.
* You can add good user experience in the experience between the user and the screen.
* You can add good user experience in the processes and interactions you design.
The latter is probably the most intensive, but also the must productive way of using good experience, good vibrations. It takes a lot of creativity and a lot of power to shape these interactions, connect them to the user’s offline needs, add that kind of value that allows you to address and solve the most important problems, and to become an important part of the user’s life.
Sounds great.
But I think there is even more: In my eyes, the biggest benefit would come from a chain the keeps all three steps together and allows you to have full control.
* Build software (or have developers) that follow(s) the rules of user experience
* Work with designers, who follow, develop and use the rules and elements of user experience.
* Have these two steps prepared in a way so that
* you can reuse them
* you can draw a line from the software to the output and explain how it helps the experience
* you can draw a line back from the interface to the software and explain how it helps to handle that issue easily
* you can prove that your software and your designs follow consistent ideas – and those ideas are based on common problems in the real world.
I like this idea, because
* I like new thoughts and productive ideas
* ideas should be connected to solutions; at least as a guess – visions are not enough
* that shapes a product, that can be offered, discussed and sold
An important prerequisite is, that you can measure user experience. This is where we need new and reliable criteria. What do people consider as a good experience?
* It may be very simple things – even if they are not good for anything
* it may be something very important – even if it’s very complicated to achieve
* or it may be something in the middle.
That doesn’t answer a lot, but I understand it as a hint: We should probably look for pairs to describe what it’s about. Very simple and very important would be great, very simple and a little important would be as good as very important and not so simple or quite simple and quite important.
That requires some more thoughts.
Categories: design · information architecture · interaction · user experience
Some ten to fifteen years ago when tech- and ebusiness-journalism evolved also in Austria we were frantically writing about new eras, great technologies and killer applications.
Well, the beginning was more moderated; the main topics were curiosity, content and communication.
As business pressure started to rise and advertising customers wanted to sell something (I still believe that they did not know what they wanted to sell, but they tried anyway), we also had to sell something in our stories.
In 1997 Bertelsmann started a digital tv project – we hyped interactive tv, ecommerce merged with soap operas and a revolution on the living room sofas. Nothing happened; just some boring technical tests. In 1999, the 3G-umts-licenses were auctioned in Europe. Telco companies paid tremendous money, we wrote stories on location based services, mobile tv, mobile commerce, mobile dating services and video conferencing. Nothing at all happened. In 2000, Telekom Austria and ORF closed a deal that did not mean anything – just some vague cooperation. And againg, nothing at all happened.
We were doing some more stories, were heavy users of some pilot applications (I especially enjoyed the mobile public toilet finder for London and Paris) and then got bored and went to something new.
Yesterday my wife who does not care at all about technology, told me that she will buy a new n-Generation 3G mobile phone, because she wants to use the gps navigation tool, use the phone as a mobile video camera and because she wants to use the mobile shopping guide features: “It doesnt matter in which city I am, it can always tell me the address of the next drugstore and show me a way with some satellite-pictures.”
I had not spent a thought on these services for years. I’m a heavy user of mobile email, sometimes I’m quickly browsing the mobile web for exchange rates, travel schedules or footballl results, but I don’t spend any money in the mobile world.
I’ve just been making up my story. And it seems to be up to others to live it. – No problem; Im always finding new stories. We just should not forget that what seems like looking back may be a great outlook in the future: Ok, we invented the stuff, we’ve been there, done that. But others live it. And they tell us, if it works, if what we’ve made up makes sense.
And it’s been a while since she has been asking for the ip-based tv-service of Telekom Austria, which finally had come out in 2006 (without much ORF-participation). Fortunately, it still does not work outside of big cities.
Categories: communication · interaction · social media · strategy
I had a long discussion on prediction markets today. I’m convinced that internal markets are a great tool for intranets: Test products, test ideas brought up through innovation management, give employees a sense of participation, gambling and of a chance to get in the spotlight ( – “I was right”).
Mandatory prerequisites are:
The preprocess – how to find the right questions to treat on the markets – is even trickier to me than the market itself (especially regarding innovation management, bringing up, evaluating and trading ideas). I’m still looking for great examples in that area.
Categories: communication · intranet · social media · usermanagement
I tried to present some designs for the new intranet in a project I’m currently working on to the boss of the communication department. I just wanted to get some feedback on colours, use of logos, the general look and feel and maybe some discussion on the top level menu.
Not even the first sentence was finished as we were in the middle of a discussion on content details, wether to put tables of content on the top or on the bottom of a page, on how to remodel the voluminous pieces of content that made up large parts of the intranet and on about which new interaction schemes should be designed and how that would influence the organisation.
As regarding the look and feel, she just made an ugly face at the beginning, but at the end of our discussion she said something like “Well, the longer, I look at it, the better I like it, somehow.”
We think we’re focused clear and precise when we go into a presentation. “I want to discuss our new designs with you, just to give you an overall impression of what it could feel like.” – But even artifical terms like design allow such a wide variety of understanding.
Two me, we need two things to cope with that:
1) More definitions, which means more artificial terms. Concerning design, that could be Information Design, Interaction Design, Identity Design, Graphic Design
2) Nobodx will listen while we are trying to explain that stuff. we should have explanations ready and we should be prepared to discuss it with everybody, but it is even more important that we are prepared to understnd who is talking to us about what, to categorie the inputs todeal with everything at it’s time, but to stay focused enough to get now the decisions we want now.
This could be something like agile presentation mode.
Categories: design · information architecture · interaction · project management
The good thing about intranet users is that you know them, that you know how many they are and that you know, which infrastructure they use.
The not so good thing is, that they also know you – and they will come and get you if they dont like what you do. The expectations are a lot higher; everything needs to be simple and great.
That’s the way it should be; but dont forget: you cannot gain as much reputation through great features as you can lose through inconveniences with the basics.
Nobody will be proud to say “I’m in, I made it”, if they just went through a painful registration process, you can’t give them gimmicks and you cannot really reward them – so you have to make a good job.
Thats really challenging when you have to create a new usermanagement for several countries and companies that have acutally not been working together up to now.
It’s kind of hard to decide when the challenge is out and the madness begins if you are talking about 60000 users, 9 languages and some really business critical applications.
There are a lot of Best Practices dealing with intranets, features, contents – but I did not find anything helpful dealing with the setup of a big usermanagement – any suggestions?
Categories: intranet · usermanagement
I talked to my boss and she told me our new intranet should be amazing, it should user make say “wooow”.
The first idea of course is to create a lot of additional features, user web2.0 goodies, multimedia, interactivity etc.
But will this help solve people’s problems? And will make people forget their current problems with using intranet and make them say wow instead? Well, maybe it’s the most stunning feature to bring simplicity, easyness and great usability. It would be a big success to make people say “wooooow” because the begin to understand how things work without having to think about it…
