#31840
A Team Approach to Information Architecture
A case study of a team approach to information architecture at Duke University by graduates of the Duke Continuing Studies Technical Communication Certificate program.
Olson, Amy, Sangita Koli and Dino Ruggiero. Carolina Communique (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Information Design>Content Management
#27044
If a modern day Rip van Winkle woke up after just a year's sleep, he would be stunned by the buzz around Ajax today. Technology is moving very quickly in this space and whether you are a web author, a CMS developer, or a regular web user, Ajax will make some exciting changes to your world.
Downes, Jonathan and Joe Walker. CMSwatch (2006). Articles>Content Management>Web Design>Ajax
#23607
Architects of Knowledge: An Emerging Hybrid Profession for Educational Communications 
Knowledge architecture is a nascent, hybrid field with significant potential as an innovative, cross-disciplinary design profession for 'value-added' technical communications and instructional technology. However, the emergence of a comprehensive, coherent, grounded theory and a corresponding problem-oriented, practice-based curriculum is progressing slowly. By contrast, other professional specialties for information architects, multi-media designers and software interface designers are better established. Scholars and practioners interested in fostering the development of knowledge architecture as a legitimate and evolving profession are at the forefront in defining the essential performance skills and academic training needed in the core subfields of information design, interactivity design, media design, and instructional design.
Lasnik, Vincent E. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Information Design>Knowledge Management
#28359
It's true: even simple projects get messy. Christina Wodtke comes clean on Swiss Army knives, the writing on the wall, and the untidy glory of the Boxes and Arrows redesign contest.
Wodtke, Christina. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Web Design>Project Management>Case Studies
#30604
ATAG (Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines) Assessment of WordPress
This document assesses WordPress 2.01 against the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.
Clark, Joe. JoeClark.org (2006). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Content Management
#28933
Better Content Management through Information Architecture
Content Management Systems promise so much: content is easier to publish, easier to update, and easier to find and use. Lots of promises, but do CMSs really deliver? Masood Nasser examines why Content Management Systems often fail and shows how Information Architecture can come to the rescue.
Nasser, Masood. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy
#21727
Big Architect, Little Architect
First came the primordial soup. Thousands of relatively simple single-celled web sites appeared on the scene, and each one was quickly claimed by a multi-functional organism called a "webmaster." A symbiotic relationship quickly became apparent. Webmaster fed web site. Web site got bigger and more important. So did the role of the webmaster. Life was good. Then, bad things started to happen. The size and complexity and importance of the web sites began to spiral out of control. Mutations started cropping up. Strange new organisms with names like interaction designer, usability engineer, customer experience analyst, and information architect began competing with the webmaster and each other for responsibilities and rewards. Equilibrium had been punctuated and we entered the current era of rapid speciation and specialization.
Morville, Peter. Argus Center (2000). Articles>Web Design>Interaction Design>Project Management
#29742
Blog 101: An Overview of Weblog Technologies
A weblog or 'blog' is a Web site with content consisting of a series of discrete postings added sequentially and presented in reverse chronological order. Historically used for personal Web sites, blogs in fact represent a form of lightweight content management that can be adapted to virtually any topic, including technical communication. The recent explosion of blogs is in part a result of the availability of publishing tools that simplify their creation. These tools vary significantly in capability, setup, and ease of use, and each offers advantages and disadvantages.
Berry, Robert R. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Blogging
#23622
This paper identifies challenges for obtaining managerial buy-in for a user-centered design process using performance tasks. Initially, it presents lessons learned from a case study. Next, it provides strategies (leadership, persuasion, organizational conflict, active listening, and teamwork) for obtaining buy-in from work team and their constituencies. Last, it concludes with recommendations for obtaining buy-in from managers.
Carey, Jennifer and Gloria A. Reece. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Project Management>User Centered Design
#28553
A Case of Exhaustive Documentation: Re-centering System-oriented Organizations Around User Need 
Braun Corporation's home-grown documentation processes served the organization well for its first 50 years as it grew from a local to a nationally-competitive producer of mobility and accessibility products. Now poised to become a global leader in its field, this corporation found its efforts hampered by ineffective and outdated documentation practices, which were hurting the company's competitive advantage. This article describes Braun Corporation's curious mixture of global reach and local isolation. By bringing in a technical communicator with expertise in user-centered design, Braun has begun reforming its formerly exhaustive documentation and communication practices. While technical communicators have incorporated a variety of strategies to develop user-centered and task-based documentation, less attention has been placed on changing the cultures of these organizations. The case presented here represents a shift from establishing documentation procedures to critically assessing and reforming existing procedures for the global workplace, describing the shift from ineffective and exhaustive processes to effective processes with defined goals and measurable outcomes. The article concludes with an inventory for determining whether other organizations are over-documenting processes and products, and offers suggestions for creating better documentation procedures.
Salvo, Michael J., Meredith W. Zoetewey and Kate Agena. Technical Communication Online (2007). Articles>Documentation>Management>User Centered Design
#25064
Characteristics of Web Site Content
Web site content must be recrudescent, repositorial, refluent, and rectilinear. What? Here's an innovative treatment of the essential attributes of online text. Find out why great web site content generally has these 14 characteristics that start with a "R".
Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2005). Articles>Web Design>Content Management>Usability
#14225
Choices and Challenges: Considerations for Designing Electronic Performance Support Systems
Introduces the breadth of decision-making required in EPSS design. Explores choices and challenges facing designers in the design process, performance cycle, technology constraints, use of storytelling techniques, evaluation, and success factors.
Carliner, Saul. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Content Management>Web Design>EPSS
#22648
In this White Paper, we examine the benefits of automated content management, and demonstrate where efficiencies can be gained within your organization. Web sites with more than a few information pages may benefit from content management systems (CMS). Content management systems are automated tools that allow for web site content to be created and administered on a recurring basis. The result puts the responsibility for content development into the hands of the authors (where it belongs) and out of the hands of the programmers.
Sloan, Brian and Scott Duffy. XGuru (2002). Articles>Content Management>Web Design
#23992
Content Management Systems: Don't Automate the Misery
Few organizations have seen much good come of content-management BPR initiatives so far. Of the many reasons for these failures, one stands out: these BPR initiatives—and the systems they spawn—are focused on realizing organizational objectives without sufficient regard for the context, habits, and goals of the people who will actually use the system.
Fore, David. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Articles>Content Management>User Centered Design
#14219
CoRR: A Computing Research Repository
This paper describes the decisions by which the Association for Computing Machinery integrated good features from the Los Alamos e-print (physics) archive and from Cornell University's Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library to form their own open, permanent, online “computing research repository” (CoRR). Submitted papers are not refereed and anyone can browse and extract CoRR material for free, so CoRR's eventual success could revolutionize computer science publishing. But several serious challenges remain: some journals forbid online preprints, the CoRR user interface is cumbersome, submissions are only self-indexed, (no professional library staff manages the archive) and long-term funding is uncertain.
Halpern, Joseph Y. Journal of Computer Documentation (2000). Articles>Content Management>Web Design
#27853
Dealing with Images in Content Management Systems, Part 1
Most web-based content management systems offer a variety of tools to help contributors enter text. When it comes to graphics, content contributors are usually expected to provide web-ready images to the system. This means that either editorial users needs to know about image optimisation and web image formats, or additional staff are required to make web-ready images out of raw materials. This article demonstrates a technical solution to this problem.
Crane, Tom. Code Project, The (2006). Articles>Content Management>Graphic Design>ASP
#27289
The Design and Development of a Project-Oriented Information System
In this paper, the idea of building a project-oriented information system based upon a specialized information database was discussed. It attempts to provide tools for helping researchers use Internet resources effectively in the course of their research. Based on this idea, a web-based project-oriented information system was constructed. The paper systematically expounds the design and development process of the project-oriented information system. Furthermore, examples of utilizing the project-oriented information system to obtain useful information and suggestions for specific projects were described. According to our discussion and utilization of the system, we believe that building a project-oriented information system can help researchers with their research projects.
Zhao, Yuehong, Chao Liu, Hao Wen, Hezhen Zhang and Zhihong Xu. Data Science Journal (2003). Articles>Project Management>User Centered Design
#25382
Unanticipated events on building sites are inevitable. The frequency of unanticipated events is usually high due to the inherent complexity and dynamics of construction projects.
Magdic, Ales, Danijel Rebolj and Natasa Suman. ITcon (2005). Articles>Knowledge Management>User Centered Design
#30199
Ensuring A Successful CMS Implementation
The single most important factor in a successful CMS implementation lies with you and your people. Your staff members are the principal users of the system, and the SMEs in your organization are the secondary users. It is their adoption of the new processes and governance structures that makes or breaks a CMS implementation. According to some, process and cultural change accounts for 90%, while technology contributes only 10% to the success of a CMS.
Hamer, Emma C. Rockley Bulletin (2007). Articles>Content Management>User Centered Design>Collaboration
#26733
Enterprise Agility: SOX and Enterprise Information Integration
The intent of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) can be characterized as risk reduction: reduce errors, inhibit fraud, and provide shareholders with transparent equal-access to material knowledge. But implementation is principally procedural controls and documentation, under threat of penalty. The vague parts of SOX are where the real leverage lies: principles of intent, and corporate transparency.
Dove, Rick. Paradigm Shift International (2005). Articles>Knowledge Management>Information Design>Documentation
#30258
Enterprise Architecture Essentials, Part 6: Manageability
Organizations today face the challenge of two important enterprise architecture requirements: the need for agility and the overhead of regulatory governance. These requirements can be seen as mutually antagonistic -- if business processes must be flexible, then governance of those processes may be difficult. This article, part six in a six-part series, explores the notion of using manageability as a key enterprise architecture (EA) quality attribute to solve this problem. EA development is an ongoing process, and the central idea of this article is that by applying manageability as an EA attribute, the organizational processes, systems, and software become manageable.
Morris, Stephen B. IBM (2007). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Regulation
#28131
Enterprise Portals: Tip of Which Iceberg?
Summarizing recent CMS Watch research on portal software, Janus Boye finds that portal technology represents just the tip of the enterprise information iceberg. But given the diversity of portal scenarios, you should ask yourself which iceberg you're on.
Boye, Janus. CMSwatch (2006). Articles>Web Design>Content Management
#30269
An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Automated Templates
Automated templates are an alternative to traditional supporting information for helping users perform complex tasks. In this study users performed tasks with and without wizard to trial and error, printed manuals, and online the use of automated templates. Results suggest that if fakes help, and examined the use of supporting information some time for users to learn to use automated templates, but in performing complex tasks. We also considered once they do, the templates help users perform tasks more whether automated templates serve an educational successfully and more quickly.
Bayer, Nancy L., R. Darren Carleton, Susan Goetchus, Robert Krull and Rick S. Sapir. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Document Design>Content Management
#23135
How to extract content from a portion of a PDF document.
Baker, Donna L. PlanetPDF (2004). Articles>Content Management>Document Design>Adobe Acrobat
#28551
Facets Are Fundamental: Rethinking Information Architecture Frameworks
This article presents three problems with existing information architecture frameworks. First, they are too focused on organizing information based on topic. Second, they treat facets as a supplemental form of classification. Third, they conflate the organization and representation of information. Analysis of these three problems suggests that information architects should provide navigation systems and user interfaces'based on an underlying framework of faceted classification'that allow users to flexibly navigate through complex information spaces in the service of particular tasks and goals. To this end, this article introduces a faceted classification framework, and provides an example of a model framework, called 'Facets are Fundamental' (FaF). The purpose of the FaF framework is to explicitly designate faceted classification (rather than a hierarchical classification) as the starting point of the IA development process. Both of these approaches encourage information architects to employ non-topical methods for organizing and representing information.
Crystal, Abe. Technical Communication Online (2007). Articles>Information Design>Project Management
