We’re back with a new series for those of you practicing in the trenches, perhaps as UX, IA, Visual or Interaction Designers, BAs or developers. It will provide you with practical and reusable techniques that even experienced professionals seldom get exposed to.
You are the ones responsible for designing information rich solutions, where information has to be found, shared, managed, and used.
When it is done right, everyone is a hero. But it is not that easy. You have heard the stories: we can’t share information across business units, our users can’t find stuff on the intranet, our clients can’t find what they need online.
This series uses real-world examples to show the techniques in action. Even more, you will learn the thought processes needed to apply these skills in messy and problematical situations.
Hopefully, you will become one of the heroes.
Check out the what we will be covering in the first couple of topics, each a few posts in length, to gauge if they would be useful to you. If so, stay tuned for a new post every couple of days.
1. Building a Richly Connected Microsite
Given the task of designing a micro-site that showcases a consulting group’s capabilities and track record, the marketing department has a number of case study brochures, and wonders if they could just put them online.
We blow holes in this approach. By considering the structure of the content, and the user’s goals, we can create a microsite which is much more engaging, informative and sticky.
Topics Involved: user goals, information analysis, information modelling, evaluating user interaction, wireframes.
2. Recipes for Success
On-line recipes sound simple enough, but there are many design considerations at play. A variety of tasty examples show how we need to consider site goals and audiences, and how these are reflected in the structure of the recipes, access methods, terminology, and their relationships to other entities in their information ecosystem.
Topics Involved: site and user goals, information modelling, access methods, curated content, reusability considerations.