Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy  

Today's businesses are overwhelmed with the need to create more content, more quickly, customized for more customers and for more media than ever before. Combine this with decreasing resources, time, and budgets and you have a stressful situation for organizations and their content creators. To reduce the costs of creating, managing, and distributing content and to ensure content effectively supports your organizational and customer needs, organizations can benefit from a unified content strategy. A unified content strategy is a repeatable method of identifying all content requirements up front, creating consistently structured content for reuse, managing that content in a definitive source, and assembling content on demand to meet your customers' needs.

Rockley, Ann. E-Doc (2002). Design>Content Management>Collaboration>Content Strategy

Managing--and Surviving--A Design Project  

Describes a process for designing documents that establishes clear goals and minimizes disagreements.

Harvey, Patrick. Intercom (2001). Design>Project Management>Collaboration

Merging XML Files: A New Approach Providing Intelligent Merge of XML Data Sets  

As XML becomes ubiquitous so the need for powerful tools to manipulate XML data becomes more pressing. Merging XML is particularly tricky, but often necessary to consolidate data feeds from heterogeneous systems, or to synchronize submissions of XML fragments which make up a larger document. An automated mechanism for defining and controlling such merges has been developed and is demonstrated to provide a consistent, adaptable and resilient solution to this problem. Integration into an information pipeline allows limitless customization.

La Fontaine, Robin. DeltaXML.com (2001). Articles>Information Design>XML>Collaboration

The Methodology of Participatory Design    

Technical communicators have lately become interested in participatory design as a way to structure and guide their research and development efforts, particularly in online media. But attempts to use participatory design - in technical communication and elsewhere - have been hampered because participatory design has typically been seen as an orientation or field rather than a methodology with its own methods, techniques, and acceptable range of research designs. In this article, I work with a range of participatory design sources to describe it as a methodology useful for technical communicators. After providing the historical and methodological grounding for understanding participatory design as a methodology, I describe its research designs, methods, criteria, and limitations. Finally, I provide guidance for applying it to technical communication research.

Spinuzzi, Clay. Technical Communication Online (2005). Articles>Collaboration>Methods>Participatory Design

The Newest Online Communication Tool: Collaborative Web Pages Anybody Can Edit

A wiki is a web site that anybody can change. You may have already visited a wiki without even knowing it. Wikis are poised to become one of the most important online communication tools we’ve seen in a long time. While blogs are justifiably getting most of the attention paid to the online world these days, wikis are quietly weaving their way into both the external and internal communication world.

Holtz, Shel. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Web Design>Collaboration>Wikis

Newsletter Co-Registration, and other Partnerships

When someone signs up for my newsletter, I list some other newsletters they might be interested in on my site's thank-you page. People can simply check a box next to the other newsletters they want to receive, click one button, and they're done. The publishers I partner with do the same for me, listing the Excess Voice newsletter on their sign-up thank-you pages.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2006). Articles>Web Design>Collaboration

The Nine Pillars of Successful Web Teams

Every Web team has its own take on dividing up roles and responsibilities and implementing processes for design and development. Formal titles, job descriptions, and reporting structures can vary widely. But the best teams I’ve encountered have one important thing in common: their team structure and processes cover a full range of distinct competencies necessary for success.

Garrett, Jesse James. Adaptive Path (2003). Design>Collaboration>Web Design

Observations on Entrepreneurship, Instructional Texts, and Personal Interaction    

This article explores the complexity in Rohan's observation that "although texts in progress create community, this function hasn't value; in the world of business works in progress must be free" [1, p. 130]. To do so, the article describes the history of the development of the paper sewing pattern, discusses the role personal communications with consumers played as the genre evolved, and offers observations on the kinds of instruction provided by sewing machine and pattern companies. The extent to which gender and authority are connected in communications between consumers and corporate authors is explored. The article concludes by observing that once a genre is sufficiently established to become a standard, two changes occur: industries adopt authority for only certain types of necessary information, and women's authorship becomes anonymous, corporate, and personal exchanges with consumers are curtailed to save the expense.

Durack, Katherine T. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2003). Articles>Collaboration>Instructional Design>Gender

Organization in the Way: How Decentralization Hobbles the User Experience

Contrary to all the books, articles, Web sites, and workshops that suggest otherwise, the biggest problem in user experience design today is not one of practice. Any competent practitioner can dip into the current toolbox of methods and create a satisfactory product. Right now, the biggest obstacle to good design is poor organizational structure. The fundamental makeup of most organizations runs contrary to producing quality designs, and as organizations get larger, this becomes increasingly apparent.

Merholz, Peter. Adaptive Path (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Web Design

Passion Matters

In creating the site for a client, the magic ingredient was passion. My client's passion added fuel to my own, and I was immediately catapulted to an even higher energy level than usual designing his site. This magic ingredient was being reflected in the client's web site.

Kaiser, Shirley E. Wise-Women (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Web Design

Picture This: An Effective Relationship Between Writers and Illustrators  

Writers and illustrators often find themselves in an adversarial relationship rather than working toward a single goal. The main reason for this is that writers don’t know enough about how illustrators work. By learning more about the similarities between the process of writing and illustrating, by reviewing the main characteristics of technical writing, and by treating illustrators as professional colleagues, writers can implement a strong collaborative work environment in which to create effective, accurate documentation.

Gadomski, Kenneth E. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Collaboration>Graphic Design

The Politics of User Experience

Governments hire thousands of employees and spend millions of dollars on contractors to design, build, and operate websites. Chances are good that you will have some exposure to government work, and therefore, some exposure to the politics of user experience.

Fleckenstein, Steve. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Collaboration>Government

A Practical Approach to Web Site Design  

Successful Web site design is accomplished by a team of professionals who: Define the business requirements for the site; Analyze the audiences; Collect content; Organize the site information; Develop a concept; Define the navigation system; Define the labeling system; Create blueprints and wire frames; Test the models; Create content maps. The matching of business needs to user needs should be your ultimate definition of a successful site.

Klepfer, Lori J. STC Proceedings (2003). Design>Web Design>Planning>Collaboration

Putting People Together to Create New Products

When companies plan out a new product (or service, or business process) they often think of the effort as the coordination of two teams solving different problems. Engineering addresses the question 'what can you make?' Marketing addresses the question 'what can you sell?'

Korman, Jonathan. Cooper Interaction Design (2001). Design>Collaboration>Engineering

Ready for Life in Transparencyville?

Before you jump up and down about social media and the wonderfully transparent world it is creating, consider the consequences. There’s just no way to prevent those outside your walls from looking in. Leaky information, errant e-mails and inappropriate instant messages now have the capacity to become very, very public. If there's one lesson that communicators need to take away from the new social media, it's how to operate in a world of transparency.

Fernando, Angelo. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Web Design>Collaboration>Social Networking

Reduce Redundancy: Decrease Duplicated Design Decisions

User interface complexity increases when a single feature or hypertext link is presented in multiple ways. Users rarely understand duplicates as such, and often waste time repeating efforts or visiting the same page twice by mistake.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2002). Design>User Interface>Collaboration

Roles Needed in an Intranet Team

A multi-disciplinary approach is needed when establishing an intranet team. Due to the diverse range of responsibilities, a large number of skills are required. This briefing outlines the major roles in an intranet team.

Robertson, James. Step Two (2003). Design>Web Design>Collaboration

The Rules of Digital Engagement

For contract web workers, consultants, and freelancers who work with far-flung collaborators, multiple clients, and constantly shifting teams, the rules of digital engagement--the way we interact with each other and resolve conflict in virtual space--are constantly changing. As we adapt to new ways of collaborating, we must also learn how to communicate effectively, set expectations, and build team confidence in an evolving work environment.

Follett, Jonathan. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Collaboration>Workplace

Running Group Critique  

Feedback is central to learning. Practice makes perfect, as the saying goes, but practice without feedback does not allow students or training participants to improve.

Doumont, Jean-luc. Intercom (2003). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Collaboration

Social Network Analysis

How do knowledge workers learn? How do they decide what to learn next? What motivates them to share? These questions are central to the challenges of knowledge management, and yet most corporate portals and online communities are designed in ignorance of their answers.

Morville, Peter. Semantic Studios (2002). Design>Web Design>Collaboration>Rhetoric

Storytelling: Using Narrative to Communicate Design Ideas  

What makes a story appropriate? Convincing?

Quesenbery, Whitney. WQusability (2001). Design>Collaboration>Rhetoric

Strategies of Influence for Interaction Designers

Unless you have the power to make business and development decisions for your project, some of your energy will be spent influencing those that do. Experienced usability engineers or interaction designers may have limited skill in influence, despite how significantly it can effect their ability to contribute to projects. It’s the smartest and most effective designers that work to understand the human to human interaction within their project teams, as part of their work towards better human to computer interaction.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2001). Articles>Collaboration>Interaction Design

Strategy with Design

What's changed in the last several years that gave designers a seat at the boardroom table and why do we have technology and information overload to thank for it?

Wroblewski, Luke. OK-Cancel (2006). Design>Web Design>Collaboration

Subversion for Designers

There’s no question that developers need version control when working on an app. But what about designers? In this article Chris Nagele, founder of Beanstalk, talks about the benefits and basics of Subversion for designers.

Nagele, Chris. Vitamin (2008). Articles>Web Design>Collaboration>Software

Tag, You're It!

I was shocked today when I realized I hadn't ever written a post on tagging. At the ASTD TechKnowledge conference, when I explained Web 2.0 to a group, tagging was an integral part of the conversation. But tagging requires you to take a step back from the web, and consider how you think.

Lentz, Michelle. Write Technology (2007). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>Collaboration