Redesign Must Die
-
Upload
louis-rosenfeld -
Category
Technology
-
view
112 -
download
2
description
Transcript of Redesign Must Die
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Redesign Must Die
Louis Rosenfeld University of Illinois 9th Annual Webmasters Forum April 30, 2008
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
About me
Biases: Library science background Information architecture consultant Works mostly with Fortune 500s
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Redesign this: six months, a million pages
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
One ribbon-cutting later
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Under the hood
5
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Pig, meet lipstick
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
What do these have in common?
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Every large web site is a complex adaptive system
John Holland: “A Complex Adaptive System is a dynamic network of many agents (which may represent cells, species, individuals, firms, nations) acting in parallel, constantly acting and reacting to what the other agents are doing.”
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Individual agents, constantly acting and reacting Users vary by…
Content varies by…
Organizational context varies by…
Attitude Motivation and desire Demographics Psychographics Tasks and information needs Information seeking-behaviors Season/time of day What side of the bed they got up from …
Quality Currency Authority Popularity Strategic value Degree of structure Volume Cost Accessibility …
Mission, vision, goals Organizational politics Organizational culture Degree of centralization/autonomy Technical constraints Human resources Team structures Budget …
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Can we really redesign a series of moving targets?
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
More from John Holland
“The control of a complex adaptive system tends to be highly dispersed and decentralized...
“The overall behavior of the system is the result of a huge number of decisions made every moment by many individual agents.”
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
How redesigns overcome dispersed, decentralized decision-making
From Tony Dunn’s Tales from Redesignland: http://redesignland.blogspot.com/
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Whither Jimmy Wales’ photo?
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
The Cone of Uncertainty…
“It isn’t possible to be more accurate; it’s only possible to be more lucky.” From Steve McConnell’s Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
…becomes a Cloud of Uncertainty
“…what happens when the project isn’t conducted in a way that reduces variability.”
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Eight reasons why your redesign will fail 1. Moving target: too many variables to track,
measure, too little control over them 2. Getting it perfect: you can’t get a site
“right” 3. No end in sight: when will it be done? 4. Nailing it down: you can’t time box the
work that goes on
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Eight reasons why your redesign will fail 5. The benchmarks have been benched:
it’s difficult to measure performance of a live site
6. Getting all enterprise-y: you’ll replace your CMS/search engine/CRM system at the same time
7. Politics, of course: no one has figured out how to make them go away
8. Lipstick on a pig: cosmetic redesigns offer no value
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
A web site ought to be something else
A platform not an application that’s supple and flexible,
rather than pre-specified
lends itself to tuning, rather than fixing and supports multiple levels of engagement.
rather than binary roles, (e.g., user versus provider)
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
So what can we do about it?
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
You must answer these three questions
1. Who are your primary audiences? 2. What are their primary information
needs? 3. Does your site adequately serve those
needs?
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Q1. Who are your primary audiences?
In academic setting? Applicants Students Alumni Donors
How will you find out? Quantitative methods (e.g., web analytics,
switchboard/help center log analysis) Qualitative methods (e.g., persona
development, negotiation)
Faculty Staff Media
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Got personas? Use them
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Q2. What are their primary information needs?
3-5 major reasons each audience would visit your site (e.g., tasks, topics)
How will you find out? Quantitative (e.g., site search analytics,
reference desk logs) Qualitative (e.g., ethnographic studies,
stakeholder interviews)
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Site search analytics tells you what users want
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Q3. Does your site serve those needs?
Evaluate whether or not your site serves those needs
How will you find out? Quantitative: (e.g., web analytics focused
on conversion) Quantitative (e.g., task analysis studies)
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Web analytics helps close the feedback loop
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
The site tuning process: Rinse…
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
…and repeat (monthly, quarterly)
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
A little goes a long way
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
A better bet
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Improve the user experience by a thousand cuts 50% of users are search dominant x 5% of all queries are typos, fixed by spell checking. 2.5% improvement to the UX
50% of all users are search dominant x 30% (best bet results for top 100 queries) 15% improvement to the UX
…ditto for improving search results design, query entry design, query refinement design…
(Hint: invest in your enterprise search system)
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Tune, don’t replace
These are expensive: CMS Search engines Analytics applications
Can user research expose tweaks that fix major problems?
Otherwise, user-centered specs can help in tool evaluation
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Manage processes, not projects
Most aspects of design and development are ongoing
Budget percentages of FTE to tasks, rather than time-boxing them
Example: for content inventory, budget… 10% of the information architect’s work Rather than 60 hours during the first month
of redesign
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
No, really, the user is your friend
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Close the loop
You need a UX methodology toolkit Quantitative methods to answer the what
questions Qualitative methods to answer the why
questions And you need analytics tools
Getting better at portraying true sessions Gather data for quantitative analysis
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Distract, don’t persuade
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Build platforms, not applications
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Ban the word “redesign” at your next meeting
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Thank you
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Contact Information
Louis Rosenfeld Rosenfeld Media, LLC 705 Carroll Street, #2L Brooklyn, NY 11215 USA
www.louisrosenfeld.com www.rosenfeldmedia.com (discount code! UIUC08) www.slideshare.net/lrosenfeld (these slides)
©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.
Image credits and quotations
Lipstick on a pig: http://wizardofadscanada.typepad.com/touch_points/2005/06/mmm_for_june_6_.html Stock market: http://stylemens.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/04/16/wallstreet_h.jpg Natural gas pipeline: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/analysis_publications/ngpipeline/
compressorMap.html Immune system: http://www.thebrainmuscleworkout.com/image/scientist/
bigstockphoto_Biological_Design_1680747.jpg CAS: http://www.casresearch.com/ John Holland: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3410/images/ate-bio-03.jpg Holland’s CAS definition: Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos by M.
Mitchell Waldrop. Cone and Cloud of Uncertainty: http://www.construx.com/Page.aspx?hid=1648 Redesign cartoon: http://redesignland.blogspot.com/2008/02/desperate-times.html What do we do about it? http://www.pnac.org/images/shared_images/root/nacweb_047.jpg The bridgekeeper: http://arago4.tnw.utwente.nl/stonedead/movies/holy-grail/thumbnails/23-stop.jpg Personas: http://www.iqcontent.com/publications/features/article_75/ Conversion rate: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/05/google-analytics-is-re-launched-do-these-
five-things-first-in-v2.html Pacific Theater map: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/III/maps/USMC-III-I.jpg Admiral Nimitz: http://pages.videotron.ca/silexmt/optoaster/images/photos/chester_nimitz.jpg Gagged man: http://wire.ggl.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/gagged.jpg God kills a kitten: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:God-kills-kitten.jpg