Communicating Customer and Business Value with a Value Matrix

What happens to the personas and scenarios once you’re ready to start requirements definition and design. Are you sure you’ve adequately communicated the type of system your users need to the Business Analyst and Interaction Designer on your team?

Cecil, Richard F. UXmatters (2008). Articles>Collaboration>User Experience>Assessment

Methods and Results of an Accreditation-Driven Writing Assessment in a Business College    

This article describes a pilot effort for an accreditation-driven writing assessment in a business college, detailing the pilot's logistics and methods. Supported by rubric software and a philosophy of "real readers, real documents," the assessment was piloted in summer 2006 with five evaluators who were English instructors and four who worked or taught in business environments. The nine evaluators were each given 10 reports that were drawn from a sample of 50 reports completed in a writing-intensive course. They created 88 individual assessments using a 10-category rubric. While the overarching purpose of the pilot was to determine the effectiveness of the methods used, the results may also be of interest to those involved with the assessment of writing.

Warnock, Scott. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2009). Articles>Education>Assessment>Methods

Relocating the Value of Work: Technical Communication in a Post-Industrial Age    

This article analyzes the location of “value” in technical communication contexts, arguing that current models of technical communication embrace an outdated, self-deprecating, industrial approach subordinating information to concrete technological products. By rethinking technical communication in terms of Reich's “symbolic-analytic work”, technical communicators and educators can move into a post-industrial model of work that prioritizes information and communication, with benefits to both technical communicators and users.

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Technical Communication Quarterly (1996). Articles>TC>Assessment>Theory

A Technology Transfer Model for Program Assessment in Technical Communication    

In this article we seek to reframe accountability by means of an emphasis not on auditing but on student performance, not on the development of databases but on the creation of reflective practice. We attempt to demonstrate one model of program assessment that focuses on student performance as the center of a reflective assessment framework that can act as a technology transfer model for the diffusion of program assessment knowledge.

Coppola, Nancy W. and Norbert Elliot. Technical Communication Online (2007). Articles>Education>Assessment>Technology Transfer

The User Experience of Enterprise Software Matters

I can’t tell you how many frustratingly unusable enterprise Web applications I’ve encountered during my 12 plus years in corporate America. As important as the user experience of enterprise software is to a business’s success, why isn’t its assessment usually a factor in technology selection?

Sherman, Paul J. UXmatters (2008). Articles>Web Design>User Experience>Assessment

Communicating Customer and Business Value with a Value Matrix

If you’re like me, you’ve always felt something was missing once you finished creating your personas and scenarios. They communicate the heart and goals of the user, but miss out on a lot of details. And while it’s the intent of both documents to do just that, neither personas nor scenarios succinctly communicates to your business what features a product or service should have and why it should have them.

Cecil, Richard F. UXmatters (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Assessment>Personas

Test Driving Your Next Employee's Skills

For the past few years, the buzz phrase in interviewing has been behavioral interviews. In behavioral interviews, the interviewer asks the candidate what has been done in the past in order to extrapolate what will be done into the future: past performance indicates future performance. I’m suggesting that the behavioral interview could be more than a discussion about behavior—it could be a demonstration of behavior. Test driving candidates places a demand on the candidate to exercise his or her current ability while under scrutiny. Thus, rather than hearing stories about behavior, test drives allow you to observe behavior.

Rieger, Daniel. TechCom Manager (2008). Careers>Interviewing>Assessment

Google Insights: A Social Barometer for the Digital Age

Grant Whiteside looks at Google Insights for Search tool and how it can give you a pictorial breakdown of the social barometer.

Whiteside, Grant. Scribd (2009). Articles>Internet>Assessment>White Papers

Reviewing User Interfaces

While user interface (UI) reviews often occur at the end of the development cycle, I recommend that you get involved early in the process, preferably when the designers create the initial wireframes or paper prototypes. Why? Making changes early in the process reduces development costs. Plus, if you identify usability issues early, it’s much more likely the team can remedy them before launch, preventing bad reviews.

Bracey, Rhonda. UXmatters (2009). Articles>User Interface>Assessment

Strategic Numbers: Discussing the Value of Design With Sara Beckman

We’re excited to bring Sara Beckman from the faculty at the Haas School of Business back into the Adaptive Path fold. We first worked with her in 2003 on our groundbreaking report, Leveraging Business Value: How ROI Changes User Experience.

Rutter, Kate. Adaptive Path (2009). Articles>Interviews>Graphic Design>Assessment

Is Corruption an Issue?

You might think corruption is mainly an issue in places like sub-Saharan Africa or Myanmar, but unfortunately I’ve been exposed to several cases of this inside the online industry.

Boye, Janus. JBoye (2009). Articles>Content Management>Software>Assessment

Measure Audience Engagement with Internet Video

A video's Engagement Curve is a visual representation of the audience's cumulative interactions with the video. An Engagement Curve quickly reveals which parts of the video clip the audience finds compelling -- in the example above, viewers are clearly rewinding to re-watch a segment in the middle -- and which parts do not hold the viewers' attenion -- in this case, the end. An Engagement Curve is read from left-to-right, with the left edge representing the beginning of the video and the right edge representing the end of the video. The dashed grey line shows the view-count, while the blue line shows many times that particular segment of the video was watched

Visible Measures (2009). Articles>Multimedia>Video>Assessment

Comparison of Home Page Loadability Scores for Major WCM and ECM Vendors

YSlow assigns letter grades (A thru F) for a page in each of 13 categories of best-practice. I decided to run YSlow against the home pages of 35 well-known web content management and/or enterprise content management vendors, then calculate a Grade Point Average. The scores are posted below.

Thomas, Kas. Lulu (2009). Articles>Content Management>Software>Assessment

Toward Content Quality

How do we know whether content is any good? This simple question does not have a simple answer. Yet, I think having a good answer would help us show our employers and clients why their content needs to improve and how their content compares to the competition’s.

Jones, Colleen. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Content Management>Quality>Assessment

Differentiating Your Design: A Visual Approach to Competitive Reviews

A common activity at the outset of many design projects is a competitive review. As a designer, when you encounter a design problem, it’s a natural instinct to try to understand what others are doing to solve the same or similar problems. However, like other design-related activities, if you start a competitive review without a clear purpose and strategy for the activity, doing the review may not be productive.

Hawley, Michael. UXmatters (2009). Design>Project Management>Collaboration>Assessment

Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site

The Yahoo Exceptional Performance team has identified a number of best practices for making web pages fast. The list includes 34 best practices divided into 7 categories.

Yahoo (2008). Articles>Web Design>Quality>Assessment

Pitfalls of Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools

Automated web accessibility evaluation tools are hard to trust, understand and only provides feedback on a small amount of factors that influence accessibility. Also, a unified web evaluation methodology should be adopted to provide consistent results across tools.

Standards Schmandards (2009). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Assessment

Deque Worldspace

Worldspace is an accessibility analysis tool designed to identify errors with Section 508, and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Worldspace. Resources>Web Design>Accessibility>Assessment

Comparing Featured Article Groups and Revision Patterns Correlations in Wikipedia  

Collaboratively written by thousands of people, Wikipedia produces entries which are consistent with criteria agreed by Wikipedians and of high quality. This article focuses on Wikipedia’s Featured Articles and shows that not every contribution can be considered as being of equal quality. Two groups of articles are analysed by focusing on the edits distribution and the main editors’ contribution. The research shows how these aspects of the revision patterns can change dependent upon the category to which the articles belong.

Poderi, Giacomo. First Monday (2009). Articles>Editing>Online>Assessment

Information Architecture Task Failures Remain Costly

Task success is up substantially compared with usability statistics from 2004. Bad information architecture causes most of the remaining user failures.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Information Design>Usability>Assessment

Practical .NET Unit Testing  

When the concept of unit testing is presented to a manager or a client managing a project, their reaction is often formed from a naïve understanding of the process. They assume that it has about the same ROI as traditional system testing. Unit tests are absolutely critical to writing complex, reliable software. Try to avoid comparing unit tests with traditional software testing. They are NOT the same thing, and they have dramatically different purposes.

Young, Jason. YTechie (2009). Articles>Web Design>Assessment>ASP

Is Your Web Site Working?

A badly designed and implemented Web site can cost your company more than money. Aside from the obvious costs of having the site developed, which in some cases may be quite a lot of money, a badly designed Web site can give existing and potential customers a negative impression of the company. Therefore, it is essential that your Web site is actually fulfilling its objectives.

Self, Tony. HyperWrite (2001). Articles>Web Design>Assessment

Short Guide To Evaluation Of Digital Work

This short guide gathers a collection of questions evaluators can ask about a project, a check list of what to look for in a project, and some ideas about how to find experts for evaluators who are assessing digital work for promotion and tenure.

Rockwell, Geoffrey. Philosophi.ca (2009). Academic>Careers>Tenure>Assessment

Comparatif des CMS

Un site web pour afficher les différences entre des centaines de Progiciels de Gestion de Contenu.

Guide CMS. (French) Resources>Content Management>Assessment

Evaluation of an XML-Based Content Management System in the Translation Process

Translation companies typically embrace innovations in methods for efficiently creating final formatted documents. About a year ago a client asked if we would be interested in testing and evaluating a content management system (CMS) and how it would relate to our translation process.

Argondizzo, Peter. STC International TC SIG (2008). Articles>Content Management>Translation>Assessment