Miscellany / Strategy — 2 comments
18
Nov 09

Entropy and the Web

Websites want to be chaotic. They don’t like order, hierarchy, or staying on brand. Your efforts to tame it or control it are largely futile. The best you can do is point it in the right direction and then keep on eye on it. Turn your head for just a minute and suffer the consequences: broken links, inconsistent messages, oddball layouts, one time exceptions, and so on.

We usually clammer for more people, more money and more tools as salvation. They’re not. Those things will solve today’s problems, but new ones will arrive tomorrow. No set of widgets, plug-ins or third party add-ons will stop the inevitable. No workflow, processes or project manager from heaven stands a chance. Can you think of any CMS so good that it doesn’t let anything through the cracks? I can’t. Can we supersize it to an EMS and lick the problem? That’ll probably make it worse.

I bring all this up because after two days of great information and conversations at the AMA Higher Ed Symposium, It’s clear that higher ed is lurching forward in fits and starts to leverage all the wondrous new tools and services appearing daily on the Web. But in all the excitement and drama lies the everyday needs of everyone’s website. You’ve gotta remember to take care of the small, non-glamorous details that keep your site alive and well. Don’t lose sight of the daily grind because entropy is always there with you.

Is there hope? Well… just about the only thing any of us can muster in defense is vigilance. Stay attentive, be nimble and don’t let small problems fester into big ones. Keep the daily grunt work moving along efficiently, but also keep an eye on what’s coming up ahead. If the new thing on the horizon goes unchecked until it’s too late to deal with effectively, you lose. It’ll turn your hard work and good intentions into chaos and doubt. Don’t let it get to that.

Content / Higher Ed / Information Architecture — No comments
12
Nov 09

Use link titles as a check on your architecture decisions

Recently at work, there was a discussion about link titles, their utility, when to use them, when not to and so forth. Link titles are those attributes you insert into a link tag that helps set expectations for users of where a link will take them. Conceptually, they’re easy to understand and rationalize. The hard part is actually writing them. I’m certainly guilty of writing banal descriptions that would make you wonder why I included one at all. But since no one ever calls you on them, it’s easy to let them slide. But over the years, I’ve come to realize that the seeming chore of title tags is actually an excellent check on your site’s information architecture. Let me explain.

Since title tags are an exercise in telling people what they’ll find behind a link before they actually go there, the act of writing it requires you to justify the relevance of the link in the first place. If you’re at Apple’s website on the Macbook page, you might see a link to their Macbook Pro page. Makes logical sense, right? If you’re interested in a Macbook, you might be interested in stepping up to a Pro model. A title tag might say “Step up to a Macbook Pro for added performance, storage, memory and more.” The sentence establishes relevance and a reason why you should click or not click. Job done, move on.

Let’s take another example, however. Let’s say you’re on a university’s annual report site, on any page. There’s a global link to the chancellor’s site. You write a link title that says… what? “Go to the website for Chancellor so and so.” No, that’s too obvious. “Get information about Chancellor so and so.” No, that’s not relevant to the annual report as a whole. “Get Chancellor so and so’s impressions on the year’s events.” No, if that information existed, it would be part of the annual report site itself.

The above reasoning hints at the utility of link titles. Writing them forces you to double check your architecture. Why does a link exist on this particular page or in the global nav? Is it relevant to include here versus over there? How does the inclusion of this link in this area on this page help the visitor accomplish their goals or further their aims?

All of these questions should have been asked early in the process, but things slip through or circumstances change. Writing link titles help verify that your user experience goals are kept intact and on track. Try it, it works.

Higher Ed / Strategy — No comments
15
Aug 09

Who is Your Client?

I’ve noticed that in higher ed, the word “client” refers to anyone except the school’s target audience. It’s usually a department head, an administrator or a project lead — essentially, anyone internally associated with the school. In an agency setting, that would make sense. You answer to the people who hire you because they pay your bills. In higher ed, though, students pay the bills, not your colleague in the next office. Internal personnel are your team members. They should help you (and you them) create the best experience for your true clients. Now, I’ve simplified things down to students here, but there will be others- donors, alumni, etc.- but you get the idea.

All employees at your school serve the greater ideals of the institution which, in turn, should ultimately revolve around the needs and wants of it’s various audiences. As such, an internal request must be measured against the established frameworks of the institution’s long term strategy. To say yes to every request will not only dilute the strategy and bottleneck any forward progress (because there will never be enough time and people to handle all requests), it’ll ultimately confuse and frustrate your true clients.

Higher Ed / Miscellany — 2 comments
13
Jul 09

Time For Change

I haven’t posted for months. Not because I don’t want to, I do. The dearth of updates stems from an ever growing perception that what I write is hypocritical. By virtue of this site, I claim to have knowledge and insight into matters of strategy, IA and design, but in the 18 months I’ve spent at my university (on top of a decade’s worth of web experience), I have nothing of note to support the claims I’ve made here. The strategies, architecture and design ideas that I’ve put forth haven’t manifested themselves in the real world. I’m a believer that execution is what matters. You can sing the praises of your own ideas, that’s fine, but if you can’t make them real, if you can’t get them into production, then it’s just talk. So, without further ado and sans excuses (which is nearly killing me not to spell out), I’ll just move along.

This site used to be a fun place and I’m bringing that positive vibe back. So while I may continue to talk about web matters, I’ll mostly just write about my observations of the world. I hope that suffices to any readers left out there.

Higher Ed / Miscellany — No comments
14
Apr 09

The Trouble With Titles

I recently took steps to get out of my current, part-time MBA program and into the executive version. To get some questions about the switch answered, I met with a program rep. One of the topics she wanted to cover was whether I met the minimum requirement of 10 years work experience. Having been in the web game for 12 years, I was a shoe-in. But she informed me that the requirement came with a caveat- the 10 years should show growth in management and/or increasing responsibility. Further, one way the school gauges an applicant’s worthiness is by their work title. That’s when “shoe-in” turned to “hmmm…” for me. I don’t consider titles in the web world to carry much meaning and have therefore never given them much thought or credibility. Want to know if someone is good? Look at their body of work and ask pointed questions. Want to get into an executive MBA program? Apparently, get a good title. WTF? At this point, “hmmm…” turned into “let me explain…” Continue reading →

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