Well in the sense that knowledge of a tool at our disposal is good, I
suppose it makes us better - like knowledge of how a planer works
might make someone a better carpenter, particularly on a job that
required one.
I think an broad examination of CMS's might also be useful in that
it's always valuable to look at different ways the same sort of tasks
can be accomplished to see the variations in the solutions that were
chosen. Looking at CMS's in particular might also be useful since so
much of what we do as user experience designers is presentation of
content. Presentation of different kinds and variable amounts of
content can be tricky, and that's what these systems do.
All that said, I am not sure that I fully agree with the statement
that knowledge of CMS's makes people better user experience designers.
The suggested inverse of this - that lack of knowledge of CMS's will
make you a worse user experience designer - seems doubtful to me. I
suppose a statement like this will be good for generating debate and
discussion though.
Michael
On Dec 21, 2008, at 9:57 AM, Brian Henkel wrote:
I'm planning to teach a course on how knowledge of Content Management
Systems makes us better user experience designers. In this course, we
will survey many prevalent CMS tools (slated at the moment: WordPress,
Drupal, Joomla, Sharepoint, Expression Engine) to review how they
work,
analyze their capabilities and limitations, and overall, make
non-technical designers more conversant with these technologies. It
is
my belief that this background not only helps a designer when
formulating/proposing a solution, but is also valuable in discussions
with other (perhaps more-technical) project team members.
I'd like to get thoughts and ideas from the community: How does
knowledge of Content Management Systems make us better user experience
designers? Literature on this topic seems to be scarce, so a
recommendation for further research is welcomed as well.
Brian Henkel
User Experience
Manifest Digital
1200 West Lake Street
Chicago, IL 60607
manifestdigital.com
312 235 3024 v
773 331 7645 c
312 803 9669 f
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