Comments on Enhancing Dashboard Value and User Experience

James Kelway — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:03:42 GMT

Mainly I think we have cultural issues to deal with on top of the technical implimentation and also the impact on our users. I have to remind myself that our users are the people who are on both sides of the website – the people managing the content and those who are viewing it. So I guess we do not want to constrict their creativity in producing killer content, but we don’t want to destroy user engagement because of a few minutes of madness with no guidelines or governance.

We are definately going to set up some metrics to easily see where choices on the interface have impacted on user experience. Thanks for the list here as that will provide the bluepint for our sequence of measurements. We have also worked on other engagement metrics such as frequencey of visits, bounce rate, page impressions per user, time on site etc.

We are also working on A/B testing which with the new CMS, should enable the producers to conduct their own testing. As there are so many different sites this seems the only way to ensure a level of test and measurement. Our IA department numbers 1 – and the UX team are too stretched to offer anything other than consultation.

So this leads me to governance. The navigation (and revenue drivers such as subscription sign-ups) I think should be locked down. At present all elements on the page can be moved around, a WYSIWYG approach for the site editors. These elements are so key to user’s interactions that the thought of them moving rings the usability alarm bells.

I’m thinking an adaptation of your model, the layers you mention, needs to be constructed and outlined to all the stakeholders. So often our discipline seems to come across as the killjoy to the party when new technologies are bought and developed. It would be nice to somehow come up with a workable solution where our producers can create without feeling their hands are tied but our user’s needs are not compromised through changes in the interface.

Dan Brown’s take on this is interesting as he rightly states CMS is not linear and in fact the whole process will become more iterative – perhaps that is what we are leaning towards, iterative content management. With the testing and live metrics this will be even more true. I will keep you posted on future developments – but thankyou again for the series, it really has allowed me to start framing the problem.

Joe Lamantia — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:30:30 GMT

@James: I’ve seen the building blocks put to work in support of governance several times; in these cases, the governance perspective becomes another layer that the blocks help provide structure and language for. I should add that to the discussion on the ‘layering’ principle – thanks for the tip.

CMS is definitely an arena with good potential for applying the blocks. Social media and rich interactions are others, but we’re not focused on those at the moment. In CMS efforts, the blocks can help bridge the customary mental fault line separating content creation vs. content distribution. It’s an outdated framing that adversely affects the basic model for much CMS work at all levels of size and complexity, not just the enterprise realm. [See Dan Brown’s http://www.greenonions.com/archives/2005/06/24/content-ma… for a start on this…]

Would you mind sharing some of the things you’re working on / thinking about related to CMS and building blocks?

If your company is tracking any of the common business metrics (for customer satisfaction, time to market, product sales, revenue vs. expenses, effectiveness of your on-line channels, average rate of new customer acquisition, etc.) then assessing disturbance to the overall UX might be as easy as comparing the before and after numbers of any of these indicators.

Also, if your website producers can move things around at will, you’ll need some new tools to understand the effects those changes have. A/B or multivariate testing of different combinations of blocks may help provide insight into any effects on the user experience.

James Kelway — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:18:23 GMT

Thanks for a great series Joe. You mention in an earlier article about how this can be applied to other sites, not explicitly dashboards or portals. I think this way of looking at the IA that can be used for various online solutions will be really valuable. In terms of governance for access rights on sites where there are multiple web editors, this way of isolating page elements helps in defining the roles of users who administer sites.

Have you thought about widening the perspective to include all types of website? I am thinking particularly about CMS and how these software solutions affect what can be delivered and the controls content producers have over the visual representation of the pages they maintain. Obviously what they do with a page has a big effect on the user experience but these patterns that you outline here may help to control, or define, the ability to move elements around.

The company I work for are about to purchase a system that will give control over to the website producers, away from the UX team, so they can change the page in an instant. Have you any tips to look out for in terms of user engagement metrics or the monitoring of what they do with the aim to not disturb the user experience?

Praveen Kumar Verma — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:26:37 GMT

Sure Joe. Every project comes with its unique set of requirements and nuances. Mostly, designs are context specific because there are so many variables that control it. These variables depend on the project in hand; however, the bottom line is to understand the design thinking and to leverage upon it while building a site or portal.

The important thing about your article is portal vocabulary. I was doing all the design without any language. However, after reading the article I was able to articulate my thoughts in a better way.

I used almost all the concepts you provided in one way or the other. As an IA I was already familiar with all these concepts through experience or exposure. The important thing is that you put them together as a binder which one could refer back to.

In the end, I would say that I like the way you approached portal design. You made it look unified and created sense out of it. Basically, you stitched together the fragments of portal design that were spread all over in my mind and perhaps everybody’s. Thanks for creating this “101 of Portal Design”.

Joe Lamantia — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:26:58 GMT

@Praveen: Thanks – glad you’re getting benefit from the material. Care to share some more about how you used the ideas / the building blocks?

@Joe Sokohl: Yep – it’s a fancy (make that ‘nuanced’) way to say ‘context’. People in the audience who *aren’t* tired of hearing about ‘context’, please raise your hands. That’s about what I thought.

And If your hand isn’t up, I hope it’s busy holding a glass of good wine!

Joe Sokohl — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:21:08 GMT

I had to look up terroir: From Dictionary on my Mac: “The complete natural environment in which a particular wine is produced, including factors such as the soil, topography, and climate.
• (also goût de terroir |goō də|) the characteristic taste and flavor imparted to a wine by the environment in which it is produced.”
Nice term.

Praveen Kumar Verma — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 10:21:56 GMT

Nice article Joe! Lately I got a change to work on Sharepoint 2007, the client was migrating from Sharepoint 2003 to 2007. As usual, Information Architect was called upon when they had already messed up the system. Most of the times, the client takes help from internal IT staff to set up the portal and realize their mistake when it is already too late. Internal IT teams lack the capability to capture primary user tasks and to create content categories.
Your series was really insightful in terms of designing and standardizing portal. Your articles really helped me in providing me consolidated information about portal design. Keep up the good work Joe.