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In this latest installment of the UIE Book Corner, we catch up with Russ Unger to chat about the book he co-wrote with Dan Willis and Brad Nunnally, Designing the Conversation: Techniques for Successful Facilitation. Russ is a Senior UX Leader at GE Capital along with being a well regarded author and speaker.

In an increasingly distributed workforce world, collaborating with design teams becomes much trickier. It’s not without it’s benefits. It opens your team to talent that may not otherwise have been available. Simply hopping on a Skype chat or GotoMeeting can be a solution, but often facilitation is the missing piece to the puzzle.

Facilitation is an important skill, whether with collocated or remote teams. It drives conversation and collaboration. The ability to facilitate well is integral when conducting participatory design activities, giving a presentation, or even giving a virtual seminar. Russ joins Adam Churchill to discuss the book and the various types of facilitation in this podcast.

Recorded: May, 2013 [ Subscribe to our podcast via ←This link will launch the iTunes application.] [ Subscribe with other podcast applications.]

Full Transcript.

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Adam Churchill: We’re continuing what we’re calling the UIE Book Corner series, with a look at “Designing the Conversation,” co-authored by Russ Unger, Brad Nunnally, and Dan Willis. The book was published earlier this year, and one of the things we like to do is take a look at the Amazon reviews and see what folks are saying. Among some of the things that we saw, “It’s a great book for anyone presenting, moderating, or facilitating.”, “The book offers lots of great insights into improving the conversation surrounding design with your teams and within our organization.”, “If you ever have to run a meeting, make a presentation, or even just ask your boss for a raise.”

We’re thrilled to have Russ Unger join us to discuss the book and its important concept. Russ also co-authored “A Project Guide to UX Design.” We’re recording this so you can listen in to what he has to say.

Hey, Russ.

Russ Unger: Hey, Adam. Thanks for having me.

Adam: Yourself, Brad, and Dan, that’s quite a lineup. Tell us a little bit about how the idea for this book came about.

Russ: You mentioned my first book that I wrote with Carolyn Chandler, called “A Project Guide to UX Design”. When the first edition came out, we got a one-star review on Amazon, and we got criticized for having a chapter that was called “Facilitating.” Now, the funny thing about that is there was no chapter in there, but it really kind of got me thinking about it. When it came time to write our second edition, I had earmarked facilitation as a chapter. I’d been pretty fortunate to take part in Cranky Talk Workshops that Dan Willis had put together, and facilitation was really on my mind. Especially since I’d been working with Todd Zaki Warfel on a book called “Guerilla Design and Research Methods” that’s still somewhere in the ether, and seems to remain almost finished.

Well, to make a long story short, I couldn’t find a way to fit worthwhile content about facilitation into about 10 or so pages of the second edition of “Project Guide.” Fortunately, we could put those pages to better use, and my wheels were really in motion. While we were doing this “Tweak Your Talk” session at South by Southwest last year, I started talking to Dan and Brad about the idea. Before long, we pulled together a proposal, and we found that there was a whole lot to talk about. In fact, I think about 240 pages of it, all on facilitation.

Adam: Alright, cool. Let’s jump into the book, taking a look at the way the book is structured. Section two is on group facilitation, section three is on one-on-one facilitation, and section four is called “One-on-Many Facilitation.” I’m just wondering if you can help folks understand, what’s the difference between group facilitation and one-on-many facilitation? What do folks need to understand there?

Russ: That’s a really great question. The biggest difference is that group facilitation is focused on working with groups of people who are essentially activity-based. By that, I mean that they’re engaged in workshops or brainstorming activities, focus groups, participatory design activities, and things like that. The group is essentially working toward a goal and an outcome, and they’re really setting out to achieve something. When you get into one-on-many, it’s more about a person, or a group of persons. People who are being the point of focus for a group of people, who are interested in their content. Kind of like your own virtual seminars or a presentation.

It’s those scenarios where there’s a lot of sharing, storytelling of information to a group of people, who are fairly limited in the way that they are responding or reacting, and even in how they contribute. In that section on one on many or one to many, its things like conference presentations, virtual seminars, like I just mentioned, lectures, which then all have their own set of challenges. Given the way technology and connectivity are moving along, these are becoming more and more important to know about. Particularly as we start seeing more and more distributed teams in content.

I myself work in an office in Chicago, but I’ve got teammates who are in Michigan, Connecticut and Minneapolis. This, to me, is a really important section to understand.

Adam: The book has lots of voices. That is, experts in our field weighing in on the concept, in that structure. I guess we’ll call them sidebars. You’ve got people like Dana Chisnell, Richard Dalton, and Kevin Hoffman. Super folks that we’re fortunate to work with, voicing their opinions on topics within the book. Besides the fact that it’s an all-star lineup of user experience design, how are those going to add value for anyone who’s going to pick up a copy of this book?

Russ: One of the things that Dan, Brad and I all know is that you don’t know everything about all of these topics. Frankly, there’s always more than one way to do things, too. You can look at just about anything you do, and somebody’s hacked a different version of it. We’re all pretty confident that we could be dropped into just about any scenario in the book, and we could likely pull that off. When it comes to sharing expertise and putting it in someone else’s hands to learn from, we wanted to make sure that our voices were helping to provide a great starting point. A core foundation for the activity, if you will.

And then, provide perspectives of others who are pretty deep into the topic areas. So for example, we have a chapter on practicing that gets input on about 20 different people, including myself, about how they practice before they get into a live scenario. The more I work with other people in facilitation activities, the more that I learn we’ve all got different flavors of approaches. For example, if I practice presenting something, I’ve got this crazy method to my own madness here. I start out with pencil and paper and doing outlines two or three times. Then, I get to something that’s digital. Then I will go back to note cards, and I may sketch on them. I design slides, if I need to. Then I will get into a digital tool, and start pulling that content all in place, making that its own entity. It may seem like that’s all part of the research and information gathering aspect of things.

But for me, it’s also designing and refining the content. Learning how to kill some of my darlings, and get familiar with the points that I want to drive home. After I get slides together, I will find different opportunities to go through that content. Frequently Brad and I will do Skype, and JoinMe sessions where we’re looking at content. Walking through it, and finding out where I’ve missed a beat or something.

I’ll do that with a local guild that we have in Chicago. Fortunately, for my kids, sometimes it’s with them. So they can see, and I can see where I’m tripping up. The thing of it is, that’s just my way of doing it. The more I do things like read Scott Berkun’s book, “Confessions of a Public Speaker”, he’s got his own method for doing these things. Then you look and you’ve got people like Eric Reis, Cennydd Bowles, Margot Bloomstein, Andy Budd in there.

Who all have different approaches. The idea is, we want to give you this core foundation. Here’s a really basic way to get started. But now go, and learn from these other people. It’s not just Russ, Dan and Brad say, “This is the right way.” They say, “This is a great starting point. Now you can learn from some of these other folks and tailor your approach.” I don’t really see that there’s an exact formula for practicing, as an example.

This is a great way to show that and help others. And also get some of our super talented friends into the mix, to help people along.

Adam: I’m going to be selfish for just a moment, but my goal here is to extract some nuggets of wisdom, to pass along to folks that I work with. I, of course, run the UIE virtual seminar program. Chapter 16, in your book, speaks to the challenges of virtual seminars and how to maximize the opportunity. What would you say the key take away is, for someone that’s planning to facilitate one on many, in this case, through that means?

Russ: For starters, chapter 16, Dan wrote that and he did a phenomenal job on that. What I think is, you have to get comfortable with that absence of feedback. You and I are having a conversation here, and so there’s a little bit of back-and-forth. In general, I’m the type of person who, I don’t know, I struggle with silence. I’ve really been working on taking a breath, having strategic pauses and the like. You already know this, I’m a really fast talker. I’m trying to read an audience and be measured. I also play to them and get a sense of what parts of the content are hitting home, and what parts I need to tailor or adjust for depending on my audience.

When you’re in a virtual seminar, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong, too. I do these things in Chicago called ChicagoCamps. They’re day conferences. You guys are always super sponsors. Shay and Brad, who I do these with, we always try to do things a little bit different. We did remote sessions the last time, and they’re pretty similar to a virtual seminar. While we pulled them off and expected some glitches. That’s just it, right? There’s glitches, so much can happen; an Internet connection can go down, the software you’re presenting through can crash, hardware can have its own set of gremlins, so on and so forth.

In fact, I think you guys did a virtual seminar with Todd Zaki Warfel. It was at his old office in Philadelphia, and you could hear the trains going by. [laughs]

Adam: Yeah, that’s right.

Russ: That’s one of those things that’s really hard to do. Even when we do different things, where there’s people presenting to a very large, disparate group. Again, it’s so challenging to gauge that audience and feedback. You’ve got people on mute, and sometimes you’ve got those phones that beep when somebody gets off the line. There’s always that one person who’s driving with their car window down, or your Comcast connection dies — sorry, Comcast — or whatever it is. Something seems to always be a challenge. There’s something that can always go wrong. That’s a strange sort of thing.

Samantha Starmer had a great quote in the book, and she says that once these can get to the point of being more interactive and engaging and not about someone presenting, and about the someones being presented to, that they’ll kind of level up.

I think it feels like we’re almost there. We’re in that phase that we really have to be doing these things and figuring out what’s wrong, and getting them right and how to make them better.

I also want to say that just the fact that we can do them at all is pretty amazing. I keep thinking about the Louis CK bit, when he says, “Everything’s amazing and everybody’s unhappy…”

[laughter]

How truly awesome it is that we can have people all over the planet sitting down in a comfortable office somewhere, trying not to crush their lunch bag with too much noise. Then getting to listen to the brilliance of a Stephen Anderson, or a Karen McGrane, or Adam Connor, and so on. While 100 other people all over the planet are doing it at the same time.

While they’re not without fault, they’re amazing. I really can’t wait until they’re, I guess, amazing-er.

You had asked about a key takeaway, and I know I took a long, winding road to get there. My key takeaway from all of this is, to really practice and know your content, and your timing. I tend to be loose as a presenter, but when it comes to doing a virtual seminar, I think you’ve really got to be that confident presenter. You’ve really got to know your timing and your beats. Once you have all of that down, and you’ve gotten all the hardware and software parts figured out, it frees you up to stress on the important things. Like, “Ooh, did that content land like it should’ve?”, and “Next time I’ll remove all of my jokes”. Because it’s hard to tell a joke to a deadpan audience when you don’t know if they’re laughing in a room in Philadelphia, or if they’re going, “Wow, this guy’s a dork.”

I think that’s one of the key takeaways, is really know your content and understand that the audience is there listening and taking notes, even if you can’t see them.

Adam: I think that’s really important. Because whether you are a new presenter, somebody that’s just at the beginnings of thinking something through, and finding out your way of communicating it to an audience. Or somebody like Jared, who’s spoken in front of thousands of people, that lack of interaction really is the trick. I think you’re right, being comfortable and getting confident in your delivery, regardless of the lack of interaction, is important.

Russ: My virtual seminar, I wouldn’t make that my first speaking gig, ever. [laughs] I would be really nervous about that. Unfortunately, I just said that and probably just made a whole bunch of people nervous. Unfortunately, you come out of college and you work for these locations with very large, spread-out teams. That could be your first speaking opportunity. I think it’s everything we just said, you’ve got to really know your content. Practice is what’s going to make you confident, and make you less afraid of that lack of reaction.

Adam: I’m sure you have lots of folks coming up to you and saying, “Hey. Got the book, loved it.” What are they telling you they love about it?

Russ: What’s been really great to hear is that people are seeing facilitation as one of those parts of design that is being a bit under-served. It’s kind of a core to what we do. I’m continually adding to my own facilitation toolkit, and learning from others.

I get to work with Josie Scott. She was somebody who contributed a chapter on focus groups. It’s really awesome to get to talk to her. In learning from her, one of the things that I got was, that being a good facilitator is kind of like being that really amazing drummer who can also sing. It’s all the limbs are going at once. There’s a lot of moving parts, and there’s a lot of things to consider. It’s really been great to hear that we’ve been able to provide some strong content to help people upgrade those softer skills.

They also tell us, by the way, how fantastic Dan’s illustrations are. I mean, those things are gorgeous, and he was nothing less than brilliant. Brad and I would write notes about the intro to the chapter and say, “This is what we’re trying to convey. In words, this is what I’m trying to get to you.” Then, Dan would show up with this magical pen, and — I’m not kidding you — every single time, he nailed it. There was no, “Go back, this idea isn’t good enough.” It was amazing. I think people are really enjoying that because it’s a great complement to the material. Mostly, it’s also been great to hear that we’ve been providing a starting point for people who are interested in facilitation.

It also helps to erase some of those lonely late nights of writing. I think as you know, I have a couple of kids, and so I tend to write from 10 at night till about 2 in the morning. Every time you’d get one of those nice-starred reviews on Amazon, it makes you kind of go, “OK, good. This wasn’t so bad. Maybe I’ll do another one sometime.”

The other thing is there’s a lot of texts out there that tell you about all of these different activities that you can perform. That’s just one part of it. In many cases, there’s an assumption that you’ve been setting up an event or that you’ve set these events up before that need to be facilitated, and you can more or less just drop in and do the task and activity. The reality is, there’s a lot to consider when it comes to being a facilitator. I mean, Adam, you had to set up the questions here. You had to get Skype set up for us and had to arrange the time.

We have to do small things for a conversation like this. When you get into groups of people, you start looking at things like, “Here’s the agenda. Here’s the supplies. Here’s the technology I have to manage. Here’s all the people I have to get into the right place at the right time, manage their expectations, manage the expectations that you’re putting upon them, including their personalities.” Sometimes you may even have to feed them. Then, you’ve got to get to know all about these things, all about your equipment, your supplies, the timing, and all about the place that you’re doing it in. I’ve been saying it a lot more and more lately, but it feels to me like we’re all event planners now, because of what it takes to plan facilitation activities.

I mentioned Kevin before, Kevin Hoffman’s been doing amazing work solely around meetings. That’s just one aspect of facilitation. There’s so much to consider when stepping up to the plate. We’re hearing that we’ve been helping people with that and that we’ve been doing a good job. That’s really awesome to know that part’s been really paying off.

Adam: You mentioned juggling your crazy life with the kids and finding time to write. I know you speak a ton at design conferences. You also do great design work. I’m curious as to when you’re going in talking to those clients and you’re armed with a copy of “Designing the Conversation,” when they’re talking about their challenges, what chapter do you find yourself turning to most often?

Russ: I hate that the only thing that comes to mind here is, “it depends”.

[laughter]

Russ: Because it does though, right? It depends on what the problems is, what we’re trying to solve. One of the great things about writing with Dan and Brad is that we were all our first-pass editors. I’ve probably read this book three to four times from cover to cover. There’s so much that sticks with me from taking that approach. I’m going to say we applied a lot of tough love when it came to writing the book, so we beat each other up pretty hard. We, at the same time, really respected and cared about each other and the content enough that we read it very meticulously.

It’s kind of funny, I can walk into a situation, and I can instantly think, “Wow, I wrote this,” or, “Dan or Brad wrote something Great,” and I can reference it pretty quickly. When you write it, there’s that quote that says, “When you write, you learn twice,” so I’ve got the benefit of more memory on the stuff. I think what I would say, I personally revisited workshops, participatory design, interviews, and focus groups the most. I say focus groups because my opinion, humbly, is that a lot of people are trying to use them wrong. I don’t think they’re successful when it comes to usability testing, and a lot of people think that focus groups can get you that. There’s some learning, relearning, unlearning that needs to happen around that activity. It really does depend on the kind of problem you’re trying to solve and what kind of access and availability you have from other people.

I did, just so you know, recently check out the “Virtual Seminars” chapter because we’re doing some distributed team training sessions at work. It’s always nice to have that book to look at what Dan, Brad, or I have written, to be able to use that as reference material quite a bit. It’s really nice to have a full paragraph that you can lift and put into an email for somebody, to give them some insight about what you’re trying to get across.

Adam: Very cool. The book is awesome. Thanks for spending some time with us.

Russ: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.

Adam: To our audience, thanks for listening, and coming to hang out in the UIE Book Corner.

Mobi-boom

I slutet av 2012 såldes 3.6 miljoner smartphones per dag, jämfört med antalet nyfödda under samma period som var 371 000.

Nya Google maps

Snart har du nya google maps i din dator och telefon, ställ dig i kö här.

Yahoo köper tumblr för 7 miljarder

En dryg femtedel av Yahoos kassa går åt till att köpa bloggplattformen som ska hjälpa Yahoo till en yngre publik och stärka dem i konkurrensen med Google och Facebook. Källa: Reuters

XBOX One Lanseras

En grym integration mellan spel, webb och skype och en väl utvecklad röst- och rörelsestyrning. Ett intressant ytterligare kliv mot att använda TV och webb samtidigt. Tyvärr med en look som för tankarna till en gammal VHS.

Responsiv lightbox

Magnific Popup är en jQuery lightbox som fungerar i alla typer av enheter. Gratis att hämta på GitHub, finns även för WordPress.

BBC lägger ner sitt Digitala Media projekt efter att ha spenderat nästan 148 miljoner USD

Tony Hall, Generaldirektör för BBC, säger att ”the Digital Media Initiative had wasted a huge amount of Licence Fee payers money.”

Projektet startades upp 2008 i samarbete med Siemens och tanken vara att satsningen skulle skapa ett mer integrerat och digitalt arbetsflöde för de anställda. Samarbete med Siemens sades upp ett år senare men projektet fortskred och man fortsatte att bygga på systemet ”Fabric” som skulle ge alla på företaget tillgång till allt bildmaterial, digitalt.

Beslutet att lägga ner satsningen är ett resultat av en genomgång av projektet som visat att man inte nått upp till de satta målen.

“It’s struggled to keep pace with new developments and requirements both within the BBC and the wider broadcasting industry,”  

Idag fem år senare kommer man att fortsätta använda Fabric men sluta utveckla sina egna in house-verktyg och i stället köpa de färdiga produktionssystem som idag finns på marknaden.

“There are now standard off-the-shelf products that provide the kind of digital production tools that simply didn’t exist five years ago.”

Det är stort att kunna erkänna och lära av sina misstag.

Källa: TNW

The post Webbveckan 21 appeared first on Winstonbloggen.

Fastlege og e-postekspert Jørn Kippersund har laget et intranett utenom det vanlige.

Kippersund er sjef for den interkommunale nattlegevakten Søre Sunnmøre, i tillegg til å holde foredrag og kurs under aliaset innbokskontroll.no.

Nattlegevakten er bemannet av 35 leger, som til vanlig jobber som fastleger. Hver lege jobber bare nattevakt hver 35. dag.

Hvordan lager du et intranett for en liten organisasjon der folk nesten aldri er på jobb?

Kippersund sjekket brukerbehovene og løste dem så enkelt som mulig.

Hva trenger legene?

De viktigste oppgavene for legene er:

• Når har jeg vakt?
• Hvem kan jeg bytte med hvis det ikke passer?
• Er vaktene rettferdig fordelt?

De ansatte på legevaktsentralen har på sin side behov for å vite hvem som er på vakt, og Kippersund selv må ha mulighet til fordele vakter.

Den gamle løsningen var en vaktliste som var hengt opp på veggen. Det fungerte så lenge alle jobbet samme sted, men den interkommunale legevakten er spredt over 6 forskjellige legevakter.

Dermed ble kravene til intranettet:

• Alle må se samme versjon
• Enkel tilgang med brukernavn og passord
• Enkelt å redigere

Eksisterende løsninger for legevakter finnes, men Kippersund forteller at de var dyre og ikke dekket behovene.

Legevaktens nye intranett er et regneark i Google Docs.

«Intranettet» til legevakten Søre Sunnmøre løser de viktigste oppgavene til brukerne. Legene kan se når de har vakt i regnearket og bytte vakter.

Intranettet, eller regnearket, forteller brukerne:

• Når du har vakt
• Hvem som har byttet vakt
• Hvor mange vakter hver person har tatt
• Hvor mange leger som er på jobb

Resultatet

Fordi folk nå måtte logge inn for å sjekke vaktene sine, kom denne tilbakemeldingen raskt:

– Kan du ikke sende det på e-post?

Kippersund ber deg være tøff:

– For at løsningen skal fungere må vi holde oss til én versjon. Vi kan ikke sende den på e-post. Det blir som å lære norsk til noen som snakker engelsk. Hvis du begynner å snakke med engelsk med dem, kommer de ikke til å lære noe.

– Men du vil jo at folk skal bruke løsningen, så derfor må du være på tilbudssiden og hjelpe folk over kneika. Fortell at du kan komme hjem til dem og vise dem hvordan de logger inn. Men ikke lag en vei som er lettere enn den de skal gå.

På de fire årene regnearket har vært i bruk, har Kippersund fått 3 søknader om fritak fra å ha vakt. 98,4% av vaktene tas av fastleger, og ikke av vikarer.

– I legeverdenen er dette en stor suksess, avslutter Kippersund.

Det er kanskje ikke så enkelt å måle om vi lykkes på intranett. Eller er det? Audun Rundberg viste noen smarte metoder på Intralife 2013.

Det er hovedsakelig to grunner til at vi bør måle og analysere intranettene våre:

1. For å finne ut mer om hvordan intranettet brukes
2. For å sjekke om vi lykkes med målene våre

Kjenn ditt intranett

For å vite hvordan du bør forbedre og videreutvikle intranettet ditt må du vite noe om hvordan dagens løsning brukes. Du kan for eksempel sjekke:

• Hva er de mest besøkte sidene?
• Hva er de minst besøkte sidene?
• Hvor ofte blir nyhetene lest?
• Hvor mye blir søket brukt?
• Hva klikker folk på på forsiden?

Audun har jobbet med intranettet til Avinor. Der så de på dataene fra 155.000 søk på intranettet for å finne ut mer om bruken av intranettet, om søket og hva de ansatte faktisk leter etter.

De fant blant annet ut at folk søker for det meste på fornavn og etternavn etter personer de ønsker å få tak i. Dette er mye hyppigere brukt enn for eksempel et søk på arbeidssted, arbeidsoppgaver eller telefonnummer. De fant også ut at 50% av søkene skjer med mindre enn 60 sekunders mellomrom. Mange feilstaver navn eller søkeord. Hva har de lært? Legg opp til enkelt søk på navn, og ta høyde for skrivefeil.

Mål suksess

Den viktigste biten av måling er likevel for å finne ut om vi lykkes med de målene vi har satt oss. Her snakker vi KPI-er, måltall, produktivitet, effektivitet og ressursbruk. Business, rett og slett. Audun sa at du må bli en “regnskapstype” som tenker penger og tall. Du kan for eksempel måle:

• Hvor lang tid bruker de ansatte på å utføre oppgaver?
• Hvor fornøyde er de egentlig med intranettet?
• Har vi fått ned antall fellesmail?

Det er viktig å måle disse tingene over tid for å se om de justeringene vi gjør underveis har noen effekt. Audun viste fram et eksempel på et KPI-regneark. Dette kan brukes for å sjekke om vi lykkes eller ikke med de målene vi har satt oss.

Pernod-Ricard Sweden har fått en ny corp.sajt signerad Ottoboni.

Likson det svenska egna varumärket Absolut satsas det på EPiServer CMS.

Den nya sajten har en diskret carousel med oindexerbart bildinnehåll (!), en mindre nyhetslistning, länk till bildbank och sökfält. Det grafiska valet för att redovisa text återkommer.

Pernod-Ricard äger även varumärken som Ballantine’s, Chivas Regal, Malibu, Ricard, Beefeater, Havana Club, Blossa Glögg och Chill Out.

Ett MittMedia med hårda sparkrav ångrar redan sitt knappt tre år gamla beslut om att införa Polopoly javabaserat CMS i koncern.

Enligt uppgift ska tidningarna Arbetarbladet, Allehanda.se, Dagbladet.se, DT.se, gd.se, helahalsingland.se, st.nu, op.se och ltz.se istället över på en egenhändigt kodad Ruby on Rails / Github CMS historia.

Så sent som i maj 2011 lanserades nya sajter på gruppens Polopoly.

Vid årsskiftet bestämdes att 150 tjänster skulle bort inom Mittmedia. Nu sparas även licenspengar in.

Sedan i mars söker även MittMedia flera med Ruby/Rails kompetens till Sundsvall och Gävle. Arbetet med Ruby ska pågått längre än så.

Polopoly ersatte tidigare CMS:et Escenic på MittMedia 2010 genom ett samarbete med Mkt Media.

Allt eftersom responsiv webbdesign har blivit kutym har det blivit allt mer aktuellt att diskutera det bästa sättet att skapa upp och ned bilder. Det mest ”renodlade”, och kanske nördigaste sättet är att använda SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) för detta.

SVG stödjs av alla webbläsare och är ett helt vektorbaserat sätt att skapa grafiska objekt med XML. SVG är helt oberoende av upplösning och passar bra i sammanhang där CSS och t ex olika webfonts inte stödjs eller fungerar lika bra. De kan däremot sökmotorindexeras, integreras i DOM och fungerar tillsammans med JavaScript och CSS.

SVG är en W3C rekommendation. Däremot kan inte SVG’s bli animerade.

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• Knepiga CMS-termer #16: Progressive enhancement
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• Knepiga CMS-termer #12: CDN
• Knepiga CMS-termer #11: Failover
• Knepiga CMS-termer #10: Redundans och Redundanta system
• Knepiga CMS-termer #9: Continuous integration
• Knepiga CMS-termer #8: Cache med ehcache, oscache och Varnish
• Knepiga CMS-termer #7: Eclipse
• Knepiga CMS-termer #6: Luntbuild
• Knepiga CMS-termer #5: Ant
• Knepiga CMS-termer #4: Maven
• Knepiga CMS-termer #3: Rally
• Knepiga CMS-termer #2: Velocity
• Knepiga CMS-termer #1: Lucene

 

For mange ansatte er intranettet i “bakgrunnen”. Noe de prøver å unngå. Det er siste utvei. På Intralife 2013 pratet Sam Marshall om hvordan vi kan endre dette.

Sam Marshall på Intralife 2013.

Sam Marshall jobber for konsulentbyrået Clearbox i Storbritannia og har erfaring fra flere store intranettprosjekter i Europa. Foredraget hans på Intralife handlet om fire nivåer av “intranet adoption”:

1. Obligatorisk
2. Akseptert
3. Givende
4. Stimulerende

De fleste står fast på de to første nivåene. De har et intranett som er kjedelig eller ikke fungerer, men som de ansatte ganske enkelt må forholde seg til for å kunne gjøre jobben. Noen organisasjoner har intranett som er “akseptert”, det vil si hakket mer brukervennlige og tilgjengelige – og kanskje litt mindre kjedelige.

Fra middels til givende

Utfordringen er å nå de to neste nivåene. Og det er først når du når disse nivåene at brukerne faktisk begynner å elske intranettet.

Du kan ta intranettet ditt videre og gjøre det givende å bruke ved å bygge inn elementer av for eksempel gamification og belønning.

Det er selvfølgelig viktig å gjøre “gamification” riktig. Sam fortalte en historie fra Siemens, der de ansatte fikk poeng for å kommentere, dele og interagere på intranettet. Disse poengene kunne igjen byttes inn mot gadgets, PC-er, kjøleskap og lignende. En av de ansatte i Siemens fant ut at han kunne tjene mer på å selge disse gevinstene videre enn det han tjente på den egentlige jobben hans. Det resulterte i at Siemens måtte endre konseptet. Fort gjort å trå feil, altså.

99% av de ansatte bruker det

Gamification er vel og bra. Men det er ikke før intranettet funker i alle ledd at det faktisk blir stimulerende for brukerne. På dette nivået er intranettet brukervennlig, tilgjengelig og givende. Her snakker vi blant annet om å gi de ansatte muligheter for å logge på intranettet hjemme på en hvilken som helst enhet.

British Airways har lykkes med dette. De har et intranett som er tilgjengelig for de ansatte hjemme, på ulike enheter, og mannskapet kan logge på fra ulike flyplasser. Tallene taler for seg: 99% av de ansatte i British Airways bruker intranettet jevnlig og 70% logger seg på intranettet hjemmefra.

Endrer måten vi jobber på

Vi gir oss ikke helt der. Sam Marshall mener at de beste intranettene er de som også endrer måten vi jobber på.

De kan for eksempel bidra til at vi sender færre vedlegg i e-poster, og heller lenker direkte til dokumenter som ligger på et samhandlingsrom. Her finnes det snedige plug-ins og teknologi som kan hjelpe oss langt på vei.

Sosiale funksjoner et annet virkemiddel som kan få de ansatte til å jobbe annerledes: Deling av informasjon, idégenerering, innovasjon, tilbakemeldinger og feedback. Dette igjen er med på å gjøre intranettet ikke bare obligatorisk eller “akseptert”, men givende og stimulerende – både for brukerne og bedriften.

Iteam är klara med en ny responsiv version av sin tidigare kund Beckers.se. Det är fortsatt även en EPiServer CMS plattform som används.

Sajten består av vita, luftiga puffar av samma storlek. Klassisk uppsättning med fet sitemap-footer och sök i övre högra hörnet. Och har även en logotype som vid både höger- och vänstermusklick leder till startsidan.

Design står Klirr Stockholm för efter att Deasign gick i konkurs.

When you prototype, you can learn a ton of things about what you’re building and how you should build it. Prototyping is an exploratory process, revealing details and ideas that only emerge once you have something in front of you.

There’s one thing you can learn while prototyping that nobody ever talks about: Who should be involved in this project?

Design is a team sport. Building and supporting a product or service will need the assistance of others.

The traditional approach to involving these other folks is to hand them a requirements document and say, “Here. Build this.” The hardcore traditionalists spend weeks or even months describing every mind-numbing detail in the document, pretending the people they hand it to won’t have anything useful to contribute. Then the tradidtionalists wonder why these folks are pissed for treating them like they are idiot savants.

Using a prototyping alternative, we can show what we’re doing to those folks who will be helping us get it out the door and supporting it once it’s out in the world. We can ask them questions like, “Is this the best way to get these results?”

More importantly, we can ask these folks, “Who else should we be talking to? What might those folks tell us about what we’re trying to do?” Suddenly, we’re building a team of collaborators instead of trying to mimic a poorly-constructed factory assembly line.

If you’re prototyping, are you asking, “who else should be looking at this? Who else should be playing with us as we try out these ideas?”

The users want it. The numbers show it. But that feature that proved so useful, it might be get implemented in 2014 — if ever. There might be a lot of reasons: The CTO doesn’t have the right team in place or may dislike the designer that designed the feature, the CEO wants the color red, or product is going after the wrong priorities. All decisions that are at expense of the user (and long term, at the expense of company profitability).

Design in large organizations isn’t for the faint of heart. 

Leisa Reichelt talks about the political or organizational struggles many designers face within their organizations in this great post:

Many times I’ve suggested a design approach only for the in house designer on the team to literally pull the design from their desk drawer or computer and to tell me how they tried to get the organisation to go this way two, three, maybe four or five years ago. They tried and tried, had no success, and filed the design away so they can get on with the work the organisation deemed acceptable or appropriate. It’s kind of depressing, and almost embarrassing when my main role is to advocate for work that was actually done years before I appeared. And sometimes it works.

…

Politics and egos are the main reasons that great design goes awry – either it is never presented (because presenting it is a risk to those egos and would be not wise politically), or it is presented and dismissed, or it is presented and then changed such that egos are not wounded and the politics are in tact, the design integrity is hardly a passing consideration.

 Read on…

Illustrations for REMOTE: Office Not Required are being done by the fantastic Mike Rohde again. This one is for the essay “Stop Commuting Your Life Away”. The book is due out in October of this year.

Skeu It! – and perhaps here is the reason why people went flat with their design styles. :) It’s a parody tumblr collection of some weird looking interfaces with coffee switches, jean pockets and lots of wooden clipboards. The site is now closed off, but definitely proved a point of how ridiculous (or skewed) a UI can get when pushed to the other extreme.

Credits: Justin Maxwell (@303)

Det är rekryter i fokus när Försvarsmakten lanserar sin nya, uppgradera EPiServer 7 webbplats rekrytering.forsvarsmakten.se. Sajten utannonserades redan i mars, men ska sedan dess tekniskt uppgraderats.

Det är en responsiv design historia med en ung målgrupp i fokus (16-25 år).

Rekryteringswebben är en del i ett större arbete där Försvarsmaktens tre plattformar ska komplettera varandra och hänga samman. Det har lett till att en gemensam plattform med en gemensam kodbas tagits fram.Det finns även EPiFind och ImageVault DAM inbyggt.

Efter alla projekt på open source WordPress senaste åren är det säkert skönt för EPiServer att svenska försvaret väljer fortsätta rulla ut egna huvudsajerna på samma CMS (tidigare hade de EPiServer 4.62).

Ottoboni har stått för majoriteten av WordPress (responsive redan hösten 2011) leveranserna och ska även ingått i detta designteam.

LBi i Malmö har släppt en ny mobil-app för kunden Reebok.

 

Reebok Fitness ska fungera som en personlig tränare i fickan där användare kan skapa fitnessprogram, se instruktionsvideor och dela dina framsteg med vänner.

Enligt Erik Henningson på LBi finns appen tillgänglig på över 40 marknader och för ett flertal språk. Reebok Fitness-appen här i App Store och Google Play.

Allt content i appen hanteras i Reeboks EPiServer lösning.

In this week’s UIEtips, Margot Bloomstein shares examples of how organizations are successfully incorporating content strategy into their information architecture.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

What’s in, and what’s out? “In my experience, it is very easy for brilliant information architects (or UX people who do information architecture) to underestimate the importance of editorial planning, voice and tone, and detailed guidelines for content creation. And conversely, it’s very easy for highly skilled content people to underestimate how much information architecture has to do with things other than content: the finicky details of application behavior and interaction design, in particular. I’m a huge fan of collaborations between information architects who care about editorial concerns and content strategists who love structure and talking about data. But whatever your situation, it’s important to know your way around structural design, if only so that you can provide useful feedback and support.”

Read the article: Incorporating Content Strategy into Your Information Architecture.

How do you incorporate content strategy into your information architecture? Let us know below.

Trendensers egen kreativa hjärna Frida Ramstedt berättar för She Creatives om sin succéblogg som blev iPad-tidning, inspirations overload och livet som egen företagare.

Namn Frida Ramstedt. Ålder 34. Företag Trendenser AB. Familj Gift med Niklas, nybliven mamma till Max. Bor I Göteborg, men har precis köpt hus i Kungsbacka (flyttar i juni). Utbildning Civilekonom med inriktning mot marknadsföring och reklam. Utrustning Mac Book Pro och en Canon EOS 5D Mark 3. Fritid Fritid? Jag jobbar aldrig, men jag är heller aldrig ledig. Det är väl den enda nackdelen med att ha sin hobby som förvärvsarbete. Bästa tv-spel Tetris. Favorit appar Bukowskis Market och Trendensers iPad-app, såklart! Läser just nu Blå Korall av Louise Boije af Gennäs. Kuriosa Åkte konståkning på elitnivå under min uppväxt och är utbildad konståkningsdomare med T1-licens.

Vem är Frida? Jag är en kreativ och vansinnigt energisk vildhjärna, fången i en timid och ganska blyg liten norrlännings kropp.

Hur känns det att ha en så populär blogg? Jag tänker inte på det så. Jag kämpar varje dag med att överträffa mig själv och göra den ännu litet bättre. Den dagen jag går runt och känner mig populär är jag nog på upphällningen. Jag blir lika förvånad varje gång någon kommer fram och säger att de läser den.

Vad inspireras du av och var hittar du din inspiration? Överallt. Jag har ingen off-knapp. Vilket kan vara ganska jobbigt ibland. Den senaste tiden har jag insett att jag inte ens klarar av att läsa modetidningar, se en film eller ens läsa en skönlitterär bok utan att gasa igång mig själv och komma på nya projekt. Att läsa inredningsmagasin på fritiden har jag lagt ner för länge sen. Det går inte. Det blir inspiration overload direkt.

Hur ser en vanlig dag ut för dig? Det finns inga vanliga dagar. Det enda jag vet säkert är att jag aldrig sitter på café och dricker latte och bloggar leendes i profil, vilket folk verkar tro eftersom det är den bilden jag har på min sida. Ibland sitter jag dränkt i pappersarbete och pysslar med bokföring och verifikationer hela dagarna. Andra dagar befinner jag mig i fantastiska hem, träffar fascinerande människor och gör hemma hos reportage utomlands. En tredje dag kan jag stå i en studio och vika rekvisita med tysk noggrannhet eller skissa på moodboards för kommande jobb. Man får nog lära sig leva med det i mitt jobb, att det inte finns något som är konstant mer än de ständiga förändringarna. Att vara vansinnigt flexibel är därför mitt viktigaste vapen.

Var kommer din känsla för design och inredning i från? Min mamma. Och min mormor. De har närt mig med skandinavisk design sen barnsben. Faktum är att jag ammades i en Jetson-fåtölj av Bruno Mathsson under hela mitt första levnadsår.

Vad är du mest stolt över i din karriär? Att jag vågade säga upp mig från Forsman&Bodenfors för att kasta mig ut i något totalt ovisst. Det var en helt fantastisk arbetsplats, med de smartaste människor jag någonsin träffat och jag hade ju drömt om att få en plats bland dem sedan jag började plugga med reklam, så det var verkligen inget enkelt beslut att sätta klackarna i den orange mattan och gå bort till chefen för att säga upp sig. Den dagen kommer jag aldrig att glömma.

Vad är din drivkraft? Min egen feghet. Att ständigt utmana den tills jag fullkomligen tröttar ut mig själv har blivit en grej. Folk tror kanske att jag lider av det beteendet, men det är precis tvärtom. Jag har aldrig mått bättre. Den radikala motsatsen till destruktivt handlande alltså. Jag växer flera centimeter per dag tack vare att ständigt stångas med mina egna rädslor och min ständigt närvarande feghet.

Varför behövs She Creatives? För att det är en förening vars verksamhet kan peppa och stötta tjejer att tro på sin egen kreativa förmåga. Jag blev riktigt förvånad över hur mansdominerad reklambranschen fortfarande är, inte minst när jag klev ut från universitetet. Nyexad och fullproppad med obligatorisk genusvetenskap. Jag är verkligen ingen råbarkad feminist, men efter att ha hört tillräckligt många kommentarer i stil med “du kan väl ta anteckningarna på det här mötet, du har ju så fin handstil” så var jag beredd att ringa Gudrun Schyman och konvertera.

Man kan kolla på Mad Men och skratta åt snedfördelningen och vissa kommentarer, men faktum är att mycket fortfarande är samma lika om man lyfter på locket till många byråer i landet. Rollerna ser lite annorlunda ut, titlarna och plaggen är justerade men tyvärr är det väldigt många mätta män på beslutsfattande positioner.

Därför tror jag inte alls att ensam är stark, tvärtom behövs initiativ som She Creatives och liknande nätverk för att hjälpa tjejer att våga ta för sig och att lära sig samarbeta för att nå gemensamma framgångar som kan gynna alla i den här branschen.

Fotnot: Frida har talat på She Creatives She Talks om entreprenörskap och hur hon byggt upp sin verksamhet från noll till ett bolag som omsätter drygt 2 mkr om året.

Idag lanserade, CXM-fokuserade Sitecore 7 siktar in sig ytterligare på att bli ett heltäckande verktyg för ”onlinemarknadsförare”.

Sitecore 7 säger sig nu erbjuda en helt ”sökbaserad struktur”, baserad på en ny Lucene/Solr motor.

Den nya sökbaserade metoden ska användas för att bättre leverera relevant, personaliserat material. Sitecore hoppas ta sin produkt upp en nivå gällande relevant och personligt anpassade upplevelser.

”– Nu går det att leverera unika, personligt anpassade upplevelser som leder till kunder som är trogna livet ut. Dagens potentiella och faktiska kunder kräver en hög relevans i sin interaktion online.”

säger Sitecores Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Thomas.

Sök används främst så att redaktörer kan hitta ibland alla mängder data och kunna erbjuda rätt material till olika typer av besökare.

Sitecore 7 ska även kunna skala upp till ett ”oändligt antal volymer” för att klara alla varianter av webbar som kan skapas.

Sitecore 7 säljs som en del av nya Sitecore Customer Engagement Platform (CEP), det framgår inte vad den nya licenskostnaden är.

Sök för att klara big data anstormningen satsade även EPiServer på genom förvärven av SiteSeeker samt Truffler.

Update: Drupal-inriktade webbyrån Wunderkraut tvingas till fler bakslag. Nu är det Wunderkraut Göteborg som lägger ned, bara månader efter att hela Danmarksverksamheten stängde ned.

Bolaget har därmed tappat 40 anställda av tidigare 70. Fler än hälften på blott en 8-månadersperiod.

Efter ett fint 2012 med både tillväxtpriser och fina kundreferenser verkar framgångståget helt spårat ur. Inte många nya referenser skymtas i egna informationen från i år och som MKSE skrivit tidigare har kunder hört av sig om bristande kvalitet i tidigare tagna kundcase (Lunds universitet, Ericsson, m fl).

Mitt i den rätt komplexa, egna konsolideringen fick Wunderkraut för första gången även se en ny typ av konkurrens i nystartade Drupal-enheter på omtyckta och erfarna byråer som Valtech, Creuna och Bazooka. Konkurrens kom även från nya typer av samverkande Drupal-nätverk som First Flight.

Tidigare regionschefen Carl Christiansson säger till MKSE att Magnus Leijonborg är den som är ansvarig för beslutet. Liksom det var vid nedläggningen i Danmark verkar irritationen på lokalkontoret stor över hur ärendet har hanteras. Främst sett till tålamod med satsningen men även gällande kommunikationen internt efter nedläggningen.

Till IT24 säger VD Magnus Leijonborg att marknaden för bolagets tjänster försämrats det sista året samtidigt som Wunderkraut rekryterade för snabbt förra året. Verksamheterna i Göteborg och Stockholm konsoliderats därmed och  Stockholm blev ny huvudort då ledningen och ägarna sitter där. Kvar på Stockholmskontoret finns 30 anställda.

Ett rejält bakslag för västkusten då den tidigare, numera avhoppade ledningen kom och verkade från den delen av landet.

Under årliga e-handelseventet Världens farligaste möte i Göteborg 21/5 avhandlades kundcase från bland annat Lagerhaus (blogghandel), Carlsberg (ny iPad styrd/baserad B2B handel av Star Republic) och årets Svensk Handel Retail Awards e-handelsvinnare Kicks.

Men en av de större nyheterna var det nya bankuppdraget CIBC eCommerce B2C – Precious Metals för EPiServer där EPiServer Commerce var den stora delen. Det är CIBC, en av de ledande kanadensiska bankerna som valt en tvåvalutaplattform för primärt sin B2C-handel av guld. Både försäljning och köp sköts. Ambitionen är att sälja över hela världen och priserna på guld varierar från 700 kanadensiska dollar till 10 000 dollar per dag och person.

Det finns även integrationer med t ex Purolator, Global Payments och Reuters.

Star Republic skötte uppdraget som ska landat på stressiga 3500 timmars utveckling utförda under en 9 veckorsperiod.

Det första uppdraget gick till CGI, men de hade problem med leveranskapaciteten.

EPiServers Ossian Berggren kallar även Star Republic för den troligtvis just nu mest aktiva EPiServer Commerce-partnern med 20 pågående och lanserade EPiServer Commerce 1 projekt i Sverige och internationellt.

CIBS är även SharePoint 2010 och Ektron .NET-användare för sina externa och interna webbplatser.