Hi Brian, In my view, there are three reasons for understanding CMS's. All three are more practical than theoretical.
First, you need to know the medium through which your design will be realized. If you are designing a solution that will be implemented with a CMS, then you should certainly know the limitations and strengths of that system. Understanding how the CMS generates navigation, incorporates taxonomies, and presents interaction, etc. will help you design something that can be built within the constraints of the system, or, identify what needs to be altered or created. Second, (assuming you are not the primary webmaster/author) you are actually leaving behind two (or more) 'experiences' - the site as published and the site as tool for publishing/communicating. Usually our designs are 'populated' and maintained by content owners and authors who interact with the site through various types of management interfaces, long after the 'design' has been delivered. Those interfaces are typically determined by the CMS and are often not modifiable by the experience designer. Knowing how the CMS handles data/content input can help you create a system that is usable for the full spectrum of user roles. Third, if you are involved in choosing a CMS, as you may be when specifying requirements, then knowing what's out there seems a necessary bit of preparation. If you are in the attractive position that William is describing of creating a publishing/CMS platform, to suit all your user types/needs, then knowing how an existing CMS works is less important, other than, as he suggests, learning from past mistakes/successes. And as Bruce mentions, CMS's can be viewed as collaboration platforms. There again, i think knowing what functionality your CMS platform supports (blogs, commenting, etc.) and understanding how your particular platform enables (or hinders) exchange and presentation of information can only improve your design work. /avi brightroom.ca > > 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. >> >> ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
