rhonda gilligan — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:06:38 GMT

I would have expected IAs to do a better job including text links in their stories. Your blurb encouraging me to “check out the presentations from ” should be a link to that podcast. When I find “podcasts” in your left nav and click to the page, you organize the individual podcasts by not date even though the sort criteria is labeled “date”, not “day of conference”. Finally, all the descriptions for each day’s casts are the same, so I have no content clue as to what the topics discussed that day might have been in order to determine which ones might be of interest to me. So, I guess in order to “check out the presentation from April 12” I have to first find the link in the nav for podcasts, then figure out which day of the conference (1,2,3, or 4) the 12th was, then take a shot that it might contain something of value or interest to me. Not exactly what would pass muster on my team for usability or content strategy.

rhonda gilligan — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:25:14 GMT

In a previous comment, it was stated that posting these podcasts would have the benefit of drawing new people into the conference and association. I’d assume if that was a goal that you’d want to put the most professional foot forward. And I wouldn’t expect a professional IA to need to be paid in order to design usable interfaces with valuable content. I’d expect that to be a given. I think it’s terrific that you got your conference pod casted for the first time, but if you’re only talking to yourselves and making it overly difficult for the rest of us to get the value from them, what’s the point? Of course, I sympathise with Mr. Parks’ personal tragedy and it may well be that his situation mitigates the usability challenges. If your goals were achieved, good for all of you. But users don’t know your back stories, they only know what works and what doesn’t.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by rhonda gilligan