Posts filed under Process
Drupal for Journalism Educators: Poynter's News University Goes Live
Last week, Poynter’s NewsU.org, the world’s leading journalism education website, went live with a complete redesign. The website was designed and developed by Aten and built entirely in Drupal. It is the result of almost a year of strategy, design, and development, in collaboration with the incredible team of web producers and content experts at NewsU.
It’s an exciting step forward for NewsU, and an exciting case study in using Drupal as a learning platform. The website features hundreds of courses spread across several course types, each with its own needs for design, behavior, reporting, and 3rd-party integration.
A few of challenges we tackled with NewsU included:
- Creating an effective UI for allowing NewsU to promote — and end users to find — courses within an extensive catalog of almost two hundred training modules.
- More clearly demonstrating the relationship between NewsU and its parent organization, the Poynter Institute.
- Managing permissions and enrollment across hundreds of courses for more than 130,000 users.
- Importing massive data sets into Drupal from legacy sources including MySQL and SQL Server.
- Integrating with SCORM learning modules, Adobe Connect, and other 3rd-party services.
- Developing and implementing design and technical standards for creating (as well as retro-fitting) courses across the entire website.
We’re extremely pleased with the outcome of the process. It is rewarding to work with organizations that have such relevance in the current world climate. As journalism continues to evolve and adapt in the age of the Internet, the need for quality, relevant training will need to adapt with it. So far, Drupal has proved a capable platform for handling the unique needs of an online learning experience. We’re looking forward to helping expand and refine both NewsU and Drupal as a learning platform.
Check out the redesign at NewsU.org.
Look out for an upcoming case study on the design and development process, as well as a soon-to-be announced session proposal for DrupalCon San Francisco. You can learn a bit more about the redesign process at NewsU Next, see what people are saying on Twitter, or ready the official press release.
Embracing the Iterative Design Process
I’ve officially replaced Scott as the newest member of the Aten team. For more than a month now, I’ve been soaking in everything, and I wanted to take a minute to reflect on my experience. So far, I’ve been very involved in Aten’s design process. It seems fairly similar to how I’ve done things in the past, with one clear exception: the attitude surrounding design revisions. Throughout my career as a web designer, I’ve always seen (and been a part of) negativity around the revision stage of the design process. In some ways, I think we all feel like our awesome designs might be ruined by the input of others.
Aten calls the revision stage of the process the “Iterative Design Process.” To me, this has meant that no design is going to be perfect from the get-go, and as a team, we’ll help each other make good ideas great through iterations of the design. The same idea applies once we present a design to a client… we make it clear that what we’ve created may just be the starting point, and we extend an invitation for clients to provide feedback that will help make what we’ve created even better.
Maybe it’s as simple as calling it an iteration versus a revision, but from what I can see, it’s enough to keep it a positive – and effective – experience. For me, I’m happily getting used to the Iterative Design Process.
Building websites for content
We take a content-first approach to building websites. That means that one of the first things we’ll do in a project is ask you for all of the content you plan on publishing to the web. That’s right, all of it.
What if you don’t have all of it?
Well, then we’ll want to have some really in depth discussions about what it’s going to be. Content is an incredibly important part of every project for us, here’s a few reasons why.
Where’s the beef?
Users want stuff. Whether it’s products, news, images, articles, local weather, social networking or a plethora of other things, your content is the reason people come to your website. Your content is what we’ll design for during the creative phase. It’s what we’ll build for during development. In fact, putting your users in touch with your content in a no-nonsense way will be our motivation in every step of the project. When it comes to building a website, understanding your content isn’t only a good way to start, it’s the only way.
Your content, your brand
The copy, images, video and rich media applications that you serve your users are the heart of your brand on the web. They’re how you communicate with your audience; how you build and maintain relationships that perform. The better we know your content, the better we know your organization - which helps us create a website that communicates your vision, embodies your brand, and invigorates your audience.
Everything in its place
People expect to find things in specific, sometimes arbitrary or surprising, places. Shoe polish? Look next to light bulbs. Camping gear? Try sporting goods, next to automotive.
Web content is no different. Your users expect to find content in specific places, and we need to make sure it’s there, waiting for them. A solid information architecture can mean the difference between frantic, frustrated clicking, and smooth, intuitive browsing. So how do we know your user’s browsing habits? Among other things, we ask them how they’d find your content.. This process is a critical step in building your website, and we’ll need a comprehensive list of your content to complete it.
Unique approach for unique content
Your content helps to define our development approach. Do you plan on promoting company events? We’ll need to build a calendar. How about feature staff biographies? We’ll probably want to integrate profiles with user accounts. Each type of content that you feature on your website could mean a custom tailored solution, so we’ll need to be as prepared as possible. Having access to all of your content up front assures that we build out the functionality of your website realistically, with no surprises, and in a way that fits your needs like a glove.
Details, details, details
When it comes to the front end, it’s the small things that take a website from good to great. Getting the style right on an author’s name, a publication date, an address for an event, a blockquote, etc., profoundly improves the overall readability and aesthetic of the final product. Getting familiar with these details from the get-go, that is, the specific challenges your content presents, gives us much more time to get it right, and minimizes any “crunch” leading up to the launch date.
So what does all of this mean for you? Basically, expect to deliver a whole lot of content, and to do it really early on in the project. The way we see it, we’ll both reap the rewards. You’ll get an effective, smooth process and a high performance website that you can really be proud of, and we’ll get - well - pretty much the same thing, actually.
Telecommuting
About three years ago, my wife, Jen and I decided that we needed to be closer to our families before having kids. I had been working at the Aten office in Williamsburg for three years, and Justin was open to a change. So, we packed up and moved back to Rochester, NY (where we met in college) and I’ve been telecommuting ever since. Working from home is both terrific and terrible.
What Works
Luckily, 99% of everything I create is for the web. That alone makes telecommuting work well. I can quickly post design comps online, get feedback, and roll that feedback into a new version, all in a few hours.
We work for clients on a national scale. So we already have a solid platform developed for long-distance communication.
With IM, Skype, Phones and SMS, it’s cake to get in touch with people.
We use three main tools to share information; Basecamp for project management, Google Docs for sharing document files, and Gmail for e-mailing. Most of the time, they all work great together, with Basecamp sending you e-mail notifications and Google Docs inviting you to edit documents other people start. This trifecta of online software lets us share Requirements Documents, take collaborative notes during meetings, and generally record any communication we could possibly make. As a testament to how important a good process can be, I think our process has improved since I’ve been in the office, to the point where it just doesn’t matter where I am.
I do my best work when I’m in “The Zone,” that magical place where ideas come easily and I type about 10 times my normal speed. Working in a quiet space is essential to keeping focused, and having a home office allows me to have as much quiet as I want. It’s much harder for people to distract me than when I worked in the office. Sometimes I come up with an idea over breakfast and being this close to my office allows me to implement them while they’re still fresh on my mind.
And finally, one of the greatest perks of working from home is that when I make a pot of coffee, I get it all to myself.
The Challenges
One of the biggest things you miss out on when telecommuting is face-to-face interaction. When I worked in the office, it was great hanging out with everyone outside of work. It stinks to miss out on snow-boarding with the team. That said, when I’m in Denver and we do hang out, it’s usually a lot of fun.
With IM, Skype, Phones and SMS, it’s cake to get in touch with people. Sometimes people forget I’m in a different time zone, but that’s okay.
The software we use is great for storing information, but sometimes it feels like the information is spread a bit thin, or it’s hard to find what you’re looking for. And not being in the office means I can’t just stick my head up and ask someone else.
The downside of working by myself is that sometimes it’s too quiet. Sometimes I’ll go for a couple days without seeing anyone other than my wife. That can be a bit strange. So, I try to hang out with friends for game nights and I’m looking into design-related networking opportunities in Rochester. Any ideas?
And then there are the random things you have to deal with when working from home. Just yesterday I had a guy deliver eggs while I was on the phone. And the week before that, I had to deal with an electrical problem in my office (A UPS is a must, even when using a laptop).
The Future
I’m really enjoying working from home. Despite its challenges, it’s been really great to live in Rochester and work for Aten in Denver. And if you have any questions about how well it works, just take a look at our work.
Jen is about 25 weeks pregnant, so things at home are going to change quite a bit in the next couple months. It’s exciting knowing I’ll be close after the baby is born, though who knows if it’ll ever be quiet again?
Card Sorting: Getting the right results
We’ve been been performing simple card sorting exercises for some time now to gain insight on how people think about content. If you don’t know what card sorting is, read about it here. The results can be fascinating, and more importantly, useful.
Why we like it
Card sorting has found a comfortable home in our information architecture process, somewhere between market strategy and industry conventions. In addition to helping us develop navigation language, card sorting puts our assumptions about information architecture to the test. We learn where people expect to find content, and what other content they expect to find there. Sometimes, card sorting provides some surprising and exciting feedback, and it’s always fun to work those results into our final product. Generally, though, the results coincide with our expectations, which is valuable in itself because it helps to get our clients on board with our recommendations that much quicker. We can simply say “it’s in the cards”.
The old method
At first, we were doing all of our card sorting manually. We’d solicit a few participants, get together some numbered index cards, sticky notes, and a few pens, and go for it. Our participants would scratch out their categories, which cards go where, and any notes they had on a sheet of paper, then collect their money and leave smiling. Afterward, I’d do the dirty work of putting the results together in a huge spreadsheet and counting how frequently different sets of cards were categorized together.
The spreadsheet was a mess. Participants were represented as columns (A, B, C, etc), and cards were represented as rows(1,2,3,etc). In each cell, I would write the number of the other cards that were sorted with the card number of that row, by the user defined in that column. Afterward, I would count up the frequency of each card appearing with another card, or a specific group of cards. It was a pain.
The new method.
Optimalsort. To be fair, Brad mentioned this to me awhile back, and it’s taken me some time to really look into it. To be fairer, if I’d googled “card sorting”, google would have mentioned it to me, too. I take little consolation in it being a paid ad.
Optimalsort is an online card sorting application. It’s free for up to three projects, with ten participants each. It’s easy to use. No more index cards and messy spreadsheets, right? Kind of.
The Problem
Optimalsort saves us tons of time and trouble actually administering the card sorting tests, and I’ve got no complaints there. They also provide a few result analysis options that are useful in their own right - including results standardized for use in an analysis spreadsheet designed by Joe Lamantia. These work great in a closed sort.
The problem is that the analysis options provided by Optimalsort for an open card sort don’t offer the metrics that I’m most interested in - how frequently individual cards are grouped together, or in other words, a cluster analysis. In Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld mention just one “obvious” quantitative metric to capture during open sorts: The percentage of time that users place two cards together.
The solution
Optimalsort offers the open card sort data in raw CSV format, which is great, because it means you can figure out how to do just about anything with the results - given a little time and effort.
Or, even better, someone else can figure out how to do just about anything with the results. Aapo Puskala, a Finnish psychologist with a focus on user interfaces, is just the guy. His card sort cluster analysis tool turns raw Optimalsort CSV data into a whole pile of useful metrics, including, of course, the percentage of time that users place two cards together. Sweet.
Thanks, Aapo.