http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Web-Design/Collaboration A listing of the most recently indexed works about Design and Web Design and Collaboration in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Web-Design/Collaboration http://tc.eserver.org/35469.html http://tc.eserver.org/35469.html One appealing aspect of blogs over print media is the ability to comment and respond to comments. It’s the appeal of a conversation instead a lecture. http://tc.eserver.org/35367.html http://tc.eserver.org/35367.html When a screenwriter can summarize a story in one sentence, he has a compass that can guide him throughout the writing process. Cindy Chastain chronicles how we can translate this approach to help us remember the quality and value of the experience we intend to deliver. http://tc.eserver.org/35351.html http://tc.eserver.org/35351.html Wouldn’t it be a little magical if, when you signed up for a new site, it said something like, “We notice you have a profile photo on Flickr and Twitter, would you like to use one of those or upload a new one?” Glenn Jones created a JavaScript library called Ident Engine that can help you do just that. http://tc.eserver.org/35314.html http://tc.eserver.org/35314.html Rapid eLearning has seen a 7 or 8 year maturation that sometimes amuses me quite a bit. Why? Because many of the young developers have probably never had the experience of working within a large multimedia development team consisting of designers, storyboard teams, Flash developers, and creative artists. They are reduced to storyboarding in PowerPoint or Post-its, developing in Captivate or Articulate, and using iStockPhoto to fill in for their illustrative work. http://tc.eserver.org/34426.html http://tc.eserver.org/34426.html Coming after decades of increased capacity and expectations from the desktop at the network’s edge, the burgeoning acceptance of the cloud as a way of doing business raises a number of interesting and important questions for the broader public. What control do we have over our identities, security, and privacy? How will it change economic and business models? What are the implications for governance and cyber-security? http://tc.eserver.org/34368.html http://tc.eserver.org/34368.html The web, with its low barrier to entry and permeable social boundaries, is the ultimate medium through which to explore the finer points of the wisdom of crowds. You’re surrounded by online examples: Google’s search results. BitTorrent. The “Most E-mailed” stories on your favorite news site. Each is powered by wisdom gleaned from crowds online. You need a few things to enable online crowds to be wise. http://tc.eserver.org/34316.html http://tc.eserver.org/34316.html What follows is a list of the five things that I believe will have the biggest impact on a client’s site. At least they should, if the client understands them and chooses to implement them. http://tc.eserver.org/34193.html http://tc.eserver.org/34193.html The debate within the Web community over the optimal means by which to organize information often pits formalized classifications against distributed collaborative tagging systems. A number of questions remain unanswered, however, regarding the nature of collaborative tagging systems including whether coherent categorization schemes can emerge from unsupervised tagging by users. This paper uses data from the social bookmarking site del.icio.us to examine the dynamics of collaborative tagging systems. In particular, we examine whether the distribution of the frequency of use of tags for 'popular' sites with a long history (many tags and many users) can be described by a power law distribution, often characteristic of what are considered complex systems. We produce a generative model of collaborative tagging in order to understand the basic dynamics behind tagging, including how a power law distribution of tags could arise. We empirically examine the tagging history of sites in order to determine how this distribution arises over time and to determine the patterns prior to a stable distribution. Lastly, by focusing on the high-frequency tags of a site where the distribution of tags is a stabilized power law, we show how tag co-occurrence networks for a sample domain of tags can be used to analyze the meaning of particular tags given their relationship to other tags. http://tc.eserver.org/34167.html http://tc.eserver.org/34167.html There is plenty of hype about “Collaboration 2.0” at the moment, but the bugle is being blown too loudly, too soon. Take, for instance, the Enterprise Collaboration Panel at last year’s Office 2.0 Conference. Most of the discussion was really about communication rather than collaboration, with only a hint that beyond forming a social network (“putting the water cooler inside the computer”) there was still a lack of software that actually helped groups of people get the work done. What’s missing from the discussion is any formulation of what the process of collaboration entails; there’s no model from which collaborative applications could arise. If we can figure out a model then we in the UX community should be able to make a significant contribution to it. http://tc.eserver.org/33921.html http://tc.eserver.org/33921.html Want to know more about cloud and grid computing? Learn how you can use Infrastructure as a Service to get a full computer infrastructure using Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). See the similarities, differences, and issues to consider in grid and cloud computing. Explore some of the security issues and choices for Web development in the cloud, and see how you can be environmentally friendly using cloud computing. http://tc.eserver.org/33639.html http://tc.eserver.org/33639.html Information architecture (IA) means so much to our projects, from setting requirements to establishing the baseline layout for our design and development teams. But what does it mean to your clients? Do they see the value in IA? What happens when they change their minds? Can IA help manage the change control process? More than ever, we must ensure that our clients find value in and embrace IA—and it’s is our job to educate them. If we want our customers to embrace IA, we must help them understand why we need it. http://tc.eserver.org/33490.html http://tc.eserver.org/33490.html Nearly every company I’ve worked with since becoming a web professional six years ago has lacked an efficient way to decide which things to do first. Put 10 people into a room for an hour, and they’ll surely come up with a wish list a mile long. http://tc.eserver.org/33385.html http://tc.eserver.org/33385.html Many design organizations seek to impact strategic decision-making by learning how to speak the language of business. But until they master these new skills, they are likely to be the least qualified people to discuss business strategy at the corporate decision-making table. Yet no one else at the table besides the design team has a complete set of design skills. http://tc.eserver.org/33365.html http://tc.eserver.org/33365.html Building an effective website is often seen exclusively as the job of the web team, and viewed as a design or technical issue. However, having worked with many different organisations, we would argue that often what stops them improving their website is the organisation itself. Developing an effective website often requires organisational change: it requires a culture where people at all levels in the organisation adopt behaviours that make a ‘good user experience’ an important goal. If the organisation is not focused on providing a good user experience, then the web team will be unable to build an effective website. http://tc.eserver.org/33221.html http://tc.eserver.org/33221.html Most organisations spend most of their design time focusing on the homepage, often in tense negotiations with different departments, each jockeying for prominent positions in the global navigation. There’s more politics here than the appointment of a Fianna Fail junior minister. http://tc.eserver.org/32945.html http://tc.eserver.org/32945.html I’d like to share some of the things I’ve done (and still do) to get the team I work with to start using web standards. Maybe it will help someone who is in the position I was a while back. http://tc.eserver.org/32962.html http://tc.eserver.org/32962.html This document introduces the concept of harmonization and causes of fragmentation in the area of Web accessibility standards, and examines the impact of harmonization and fragmentation on Web developers, tool developers, and organizations. It also suggests action steps for promoting Web accessibility standards harmonization. http://tc.eserver.org/32552.html http://tc.eserver.org/32552.html In this article I will take a good look at XFN - the microformat for describing relationships between people. I will look briefly at what it is and the basic markup needed to add the information to your sites, before then going into depth, looking at the benefits you can get from that data by extracting it and using it in different ways. Extracting the data is easier than you think - there is probably a library for your favorite language already! If not, there are also some web services that could do the job that I'll show you below. http://tc.eserver.org/31951.html http://tc.eserver.org/31951.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31517.html http://tc.eserver.org/31517.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/31276.html http://tc.eserver.org/31276.html Meet Scott, age 28, with a Dunkin' Donuts cup costume, a web site, a MySpace page and an archive of compelling brand content that, by the way, happens to rank number four in a Google search for the brand name. Scott is among the legions of brand enthusiasts who are knocking down the walls of the traditional "us versus them" brand relationship, demanding to be let in and be a part of the brand experience. http://tc.eserver.org/31278.html http://tc.eserver.org/31278.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/30887.html http://tc.eserver.org/30887.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/30721.html http://tc.eserver.org/30721.html This is the recording of the presentation from the Catalyze Community monthly webcast featuring Charlie Kreitzberg on December 13, 2007. Charlie spoke on "Web 2 and You - How Web 2.0 Will Catapult Business Analysts and Usability Professionals into Center Stage" which examined his models for understanding Web 2.0 and explored the vast opportunities for professionals who define and design new software and websites. http://tc.eserver.org/30101.html http://tc.eserver.org/30101.html When used at critical points in the design process, group sessions build strong, respectful relationships. Since clients directly experience the design work, you don't need to sell clients on an idea--they were with you the whole time. http://tc.eserver.org/28908.html http://tc.eserver.org/28908.html These days, 'framework' is quite a buzzword in web development. With JavaScript frameworks like the Yahoo User Interface library, jQuery, and Prototype getting a lot of attention and web application frameworks like Rails and Django getting even more, it seems like everyone is using some kind of framework to build their sites. But what exactly is a framework? And are they only useful to programmers, or can we web designers benefit from the concept, as well? http://tc.eserver.org/28906.html http://tc.eserver.org/28906.html 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? http://tc.eserver.org/28800.html http://tc.eserver.org/28800.html Who decides what's best for a website? Highly skilled professionals who work with the site's users and serve as their advocates? Or schmucks with money? Most often, it's the latter. That's why a web designer's first job is to educate the people who hold the purse strings. http://tc.eserver.org/28738.html http://tc.eserver.org/28738.html If a virtual design firm is to be successful, it must develop an adaptive culture that fosters and strengthens connections between far-flung collaborators. http://tc.eserver.org/28513.html http://tc.eserver.org/28513.html One lesson we've learned over the past several years here at Cooper is that on the vast majority of our projects, intimate client collaboration is a critical ingredient for success. This is a lesson that we have sometimes learned the hard way; collaboration can be messy, unpredictable and has often forced us to compromise what we thought was a supremely clear and elegant vision. http://tc.eserver.org/28151.html http://tc.eserver.org/28151.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/28039.html http://tc.eserver.org/28039.html In this series, follow along as the IBM Internet Technology Group team designs, develops, and deploys a closed community Web site using a suite of software that is freely available. The open source community provides various tools that, when plugged together, begin to create a useful development and production environment for complex Web applications. Using these tools as a foundation, we provide a methodology and set of enhancements to help you simplify the production process. Although customization is still necessary, this series shows you the tools and techniques to get relatively complicated Web sites up and running quickly using open source tools, including Drupal, MySQL, PHP, Apache, and Eclipse technologies. In this first article, you'll compare our approach with other software tools available and explore the enhancements we made. http://tc.eserver.org/28038.html http://tc.eserver.org/28038.html In this series, you follow along as the IBM Internet Technology Group designs, develops, and deploys a closed community Web site using a suite of software that is freely available. Most of this series focuses on the actual implementation of the Web site, but this second article is a bit more generic. Read it to explore our design process, which can help you to create user experiences for applications, other interfaces, or Web sites. Part 1 discusses the team's requirements, compares several open source content management systems, and provides the rationale for choosing Drupal. http://tc.eserver.org/27856.html http://tc.eserver.org/27856.html Just how many people does it take to properly manage a website? It depends on the website. Shane Diffily explains how to figure it out. http://tc.eserver.org/27323.html http://tc.eserver.org/27323.html Nearly every ecommerce site revolves around a database to support inventory, listings and transactions. Building out the database can be a challenge. Here is what to expect. http://tc.eserver.org/26490.html http://tc.eserver.org/26490.html A rather stressful part of optimizing some sites can be working with a web developer who doesn't understand the importance of search engine friendly design. Sometimes these developers can be frustrating or keep you from getting your work done right. This article contains a number of thing to keep in mind and to avoid when working in these situations. http://tc.eserver.org/26087.html http://tc.eserver.org/26087.html Nobody would deny that usability guidelines, applied in context by a usability professional, are extremely valuable in guiding a website evaluation. The problem occurs when non-professionals apply these guidelines out of context. This can result in an unimaginative site that looks bland and homogenous. To design usable sites that truly engage customers we need to replace simple guidelines with a customer-centred design process. http://tc.eserver.org/25721.html http://tc.eserver.org/25721.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/25707.html http://tc.eserver.org/25707.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/25530.html http://tc.eserver.org/25530.html The Yahoo! platform design team shares their process for defining and designing a pattern and standards library, the process for defining the requirements of the repository and the process for defining the lifecycle of a pattern. http://tc.eserver.org/25368.html http://tc.eserver.org/25368.html Will cyberspace fulfill our dreams of creating a new work environment where not only women but men can choose to work remotely at home, rocking babies with one hand while pushing pixels with the other? There are no easy answers. http://tc.eserver.org/25371.html http://tc.eserver.org/25371.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/23836.html http://tc.eserver.org/23836.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/23745.html http://tc.eserver.org/23745.html Lighting design has a utilitarian role: to put enough light on the stage so that the audience can see the actors. But the lighting also helps shape the performance by providing the color and overtones that add meaning and layers and depth. The same mix of art and technology, craft and discipline exists in user interface design. http://tc.eserver.org/23593.html http://tc.eserver.org/23593.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/23189.html http://tc.eserver.org/23189.html La conception d'un site est trop souvent ponctuée de ces réunions stériles où chacun cherche à défendre son point de vue persuadé de plaider la cause de l'utilisateur final. Mais il n'existe pas d'utilisateur moyen. Chaque utilisateur est unique. L'approche ergonomique permet d'adapter le site à l'usage qui en est réellement fait et ainsi de construire sur des bases objectives. http://tc.eserver.org/23048.html http://tc.eserver.org/23048.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/22085.html http://tc.eserver.org/22085.html Numerous surveys across a diverse range of IT projects have identified that the lack of support from senior management (project sponsorship) is one of the biggest causes of project failure. This briefing explores the need for a project sponsor, the role they need to play, and how to choose one. http://tc.eserver.org/22082.html http://tc.eserver.org/22082.html The intranet team often becomes viewed as a gatekeeper or bottleneck that does little more than say 'no' to business units. The business then reacts by rebelling against this centralised control, or simply working around the intranet team. There is a better way. Intranet teams should instead look to playing a leadership and coaching role in the organisation. These two approaches provide a range of techniques for encouraging organisational change and supporting staff activities. http://tc.eserver.org/22059.html http://tc.eserver.org/22059.html In part one of this article the discussion was one of views, forms, and the manner in which they could be combined into a task structure known as a hub. This installment expands on those themes by exploring two other types of task structures commonly employed in web applications--wizards and guides. http://tc.eserver.org/22019.html http://tc.eserver.org/22019.html As a team you need to consider: Which tasks will you do together as a group? How will you divide the tasks among yourselves? http://tc.eserver.org/21829.html http://tc.eserver.org/21829.html Mavericks need not apply. In Web design, you have to collaborate. http://tc.eserver.org/21430.html http://tc.eserver.org/21430.html Four of your fellow development team members, all trying to do their specific jobs to the best of their abilities, have the power to sink your best effort at interaction design. As an interaction designer, it is your job to see they don't do so. (If you are not an interaction designer, read on anyway; you may be surprised to learn that you may be part of the problem.) http://tc.eserver.org/21248.html http://tc.eserver.org/21248.html A common view of vision is that it's something handed down by a leader to the troops. When a redesign goes awry, the troops complain, 'There was no vision.' But the problem goes deeper than either scenario; the problem is that there was no shared vision. http://tc.eserver.org/20339.html http://tc.eserver.org/20339.html Working in teams has its challenges. What would you do if you were part of a team that included software engineers, usability professionals, managers, teachers and elementary school students? What would you do if the team had to learn about web technology and user interface design in a few short weeks and then apply that skill to creating a web page ? Well, we had fun, and we achieved our goal. Join our panel discussion to hear more about an exciting project between members of IBM’s S/390 team and local elementary schools from Hyde Park, New York. http://tc.eserver.org/19147.html http://tc.eserver.org/19147.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/14649.html http://tc.eserver.org/14649.html Wilkinson explains how to use a project site to manage a Web site project. http://tc.eserver.org/14041.html http://tc.eserver.org/14041.html WebFeat is a web development effort by about 40 students, faculty and staff in the College of Engineering at the University of Washington. In this design environment, the challenges of building community among the members of the design team are substantial. We devised a suite of tools and processes designed to foster a sense of community and participation in the development process, as well as to lay the groundwork for participatory maintenance of the site in the future. http://tc.eserver.org/10306.html http://tc.eserver.org/10306.html Formal corporate models that standardize collaborative processes into rigid templates and flow charts can actually become anti-collaborative and isolate team members from each other. This divisionary effect is particularly problematic for World Wide Web hypertexts, which often require on-going, dynamic collaborations between professionals with diverse specializations. In this article, we examine collaborative processes through theory and two Web project team interactions: one that reflects a failed formal process model, and one that represents a more successful dialogic model. Because dialogic models are non-formal and inherently adaptable, they are thus stronger process models for collaboration, particularly for Web design projects.