On 30 Jul 2009, at 10:44, ErinLynnYoung wrote:
[snip]
Let's say you're tasked with planning an informational site. Lots
of content for several audiences - facts presented in copy, video,
imagery, and interactive tools. There are no major points of
persuasion other than that you want users to find the site to be
credible, understand the subject matter better than they did before,
and maybe provide feedback on the experience.
You are warned in the beginning that new content will be added at
times due to mandates from above. This is not negotiable nor is it
avoidable. But there's no way of predicting what that content will
be.
Here is my question: What would you do or not do in the planning and
design of the site to try to ensure scalability?
[snip]
Things that come to mind (in no particular order):
* I'd be trying to get some of the folk giving "mandates from above"
involved in the project. It sounds like they need to be.
* I'd be thinking that the project is going to need ongoing work by UX/
developer folk. I'd be letting the client know that early.
* I'd be wondering if we can section of the variable bits into one
particular area (e.g. do all the special cases come down to special
events & news - in which case we can section off part of the site to
deal with them specifically.)
* I'd be trying to get an idea of what kinds of thing might be coming
down the pipe in the future. Then I'd start asking about what people
don't expect to happen. I find it useful to ask clients to think about
counterfactuals to the first thoughts that pop up in their head. It's
like weather prediction. The hard cases are those that have lots of
different chaotic outcomes. Try and hone in on those.
* I'd be wondering if we could use something where we can have more of
emergent structure (something wiki-ish, tagging, etc.) rather than one
that's designed up front.
* I'd be wanting a platform that's popular and probably open-source so
that I can easily find folk to hack on it, and leverage the efforts
from other folk, as time goes on.
* I'd be looking to sites with similar problems (e.g. BBC News,
Wikipedia, etc.) to see how they deal with the problem.
* I'd be trying to get some of the folk giving "mandates from above"
involved in the project. It sounds like they need to be. Oh wait. I've
said that already. Probably coz it's really, really important!
* I need a conversation to figure out what else to think about :-)
(and of course - all the normal card sorting, paper prototyping, etc.
to get the clients talking and thinking about what they want.)
Cheers,
Adrian
--
http://quietstars.com - twitter.com/adrianh - delicious.com/adrianh
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