The Spirit of Web 2.0

Writing about http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/groups/tlig/comms/feb08/prog.htm

I went to rather a depressing conference last Wednesday.  And it left me feeling like this <=

To cut a long story short I had not chosen wisely.  Whilst the topic seemed relevant and appropriate the audience at which it was pitched did not really include me.

The other attendees and the presenters were almost exclusively members of IT departments in universities.  They were concerned about things like being able to ‘market’ themselves to the rest of the institution and whether or not they should be allowed to use an internally-facing sub-brand.  They were also interested in proving value to customers and management stakeholders and setting up good basic internal communications.

This was interesting up to a point – since arriving at my current institution I’ve noticed a queue of people coming to me for internal ‘marketing’ advice.  They of course mean, and need, nothing of the sort – but it takes a while to persuade them of that.

But, while I was sat with half an ear on the presenters, and partly to stop myself picking a fight with an obnoxious chap sat in front (who, amongst other things, turned round to tell my colleague that the sound of his typing was irritating – hello?!  new technology conference!), I made a few notes about what I’d hoped the conference would be.

1. What do technologists need to know about communications?
2. What should communicators learn about technologies?
3. Where does editorial responsibility/content ownership lie?
4. Can communication be managed within interactive (web 2.0) channels?  If so, how?  In a top-down way or in a self-governing way?
5. How do Facebook/Bebo/blogs/social bookmarking fit into a communications mix?  (The peer-to-peer benefits are clear, the organisation to member/customer dynamic is less clear…)

Basically, what I need to work out, and what I’d hoped to have the opportunity to discuss, is what do I do with the following list of tools?  Is there a clever way of piggybacking on them or using them that I am missing?  How on earth does crisis management work in these fora?  In fact how do you manage communications through them without looking like you are donning your Nazi jackboots and behaving in a completely inappropriate way?

(Of course, I do realise that most of the point of web 2.0 is the socialist, egalitarian, utilitarian vibe and that by seeking to manage things or use these tools I am proving myself to be a potential member of Prentiss McCabe or worse still Malcom Tucker…)

• Blogs
• Facebook/Bebo/MySpace
• YouTube/ Google Video
• Flash Meetings
• Instant Messenging
• Social bookmarking
• Flickr
• E-portfolios
• VLEs/Moodle
• Podcasts/ Videocasts
• Digital mapping/ Mind Mapping etc.
• Texts/ SMS
• SecondLife
• Wikis
• Web forums
• Email – are we really using it well enough?
• PDA/ Blackberry – web for phones?  Still necessary now we have the iPhone?
• Tiny URLS/ go redirects
• RSS Feeds & Readers

I appreciate that some of these are in no way web 2.0 – but I thought I’d throw the lot into the mix.

So, that’s what’s bothering me at the moment.  How are you?

Filed under: Blogging, Blogging About Blogs, Branding, Conferences, Higher Education, IT, ITS, Internal Communications, Media, PR, Web Geekery

Intranet Redesign & Restructure

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/insite/

A log of the process behind restructuring a redesigning insite, the University’s intranet.

(Article taken from insite itself.)

Usability Review and Redesign of insite

You
may have noticed by now that insite, the University’s intranet, has
been substantially changed. These changes are the result of a thorough
usability review and redesign project designed to make insite easier to
use. Insite has also been switched to the new University web design.

The usability review and redesign project, a collaboration between
the Communications Office and eLab, started in November 2005. This
project involved a major review of insite which utilised various
usability techniques in which members of the University have
participated extensively. Thanks once again to those who participated
in all the different stages.

The initial focus group work resulted in a list of goals that participants wanted to achieve using insite:

1. Look up email and phone number/contact information
2. Find information on departments and departmental policy etc.
3. Read news– daily updates on news and events, with links to newspapers and local news
4. Access email
5. Access files
6. Find and complete forms
7. Use the “search box”
8. View alerts and ITS emergency info
9. Find out who is responsible for ‘stuff’
10. Find information via the A-Z index

The next step was usability testing: actually monitoring staff while
they were performing a set of predefined tasks on insite ; recording
and analysing their mouse movements and keystrokes and routes to
information. The tasks were designed to measure how well insite
delivered the key goals. The resulting report included over 80
recommendations for improvements (both on insite itself and on
departmental sites):

• Brand the insite web site strongly, to differentiate it as much as possible, from other websites (particularly my.insite).
• Find
  a way to distinguish between links to departmental pages and other web
  pages e.g. prefix Undergraduate Study >> or French Department
  >> to page headings.
• Consider making departments and services a section of insite so that it appears in the left navigation and as a tab.
• Participants
  found the A-Z index very useful. Never remove the A-Z index. In fact
  make the A-Z index very prominent on the insite homepage. Also make it
  a more prominent link next to the search box, in the Sitebuilder
  template.

Many of the suggestions have already been adopted, others have been
passed on to the relevant departments. The review highlighted that many
staff would be in favour of personalisation of insite and this is
recognised as a general aim for the future.

The usability review also allowed comparison of insite with other
intranets using measures set up by the Nielsen Norman Group of
usability experts. The results showed that for four tasks insite was
most usable, for one task it was mid-range and for three tasks it was
in the least usable percentage.

The layout of the content has also been reviewed and restructured. A
card sorting exercise was held with fresh test participants who sorted
the links on insite into groups and gave those groups labels. The
labels helped us to identify the language that most people used.

Several alternative designs were created and evaluated and the final design reflects the wish for a stronger brand image.

All these results have been taken together to produce a redesigned
insite that focuses more on the tasks identified above. Obvious changes
to the homepage are:

• More news and events encompassing an area for news for students and staff
• Prominent ‘people search’ to provide a quick and easy way to contact other members of the University
• Link in the left navigation to lists of departments and services
• Large link to emails and files
• Link to IT Services (and an alert icon)
• Clear branding of the intranet

At some point in the future, the people search function will link to
a new and improved email and phone search. The new system will allow
you to search on combinations of first name, surname and department. An
ongoing project is looking at developing this system into a complete
people search tool holding information on role descriptions, working
hours, research interests etc.*

Beneath the home page of insite the content has been radically
reorganised to reposition insite as a news and events web site with
lists of links to get users quickly through to content held on other
web sites. Because there is so much content to link to alternative
routes are provided:

1. The first route is an alphabetical list of links for those that know exactly what they are looking for.
2. The
   second is a list of links sorted by topic for those who aren’t so sure
   and will benefit from browsing through what’s available.

The topic were defined by the card sort exercise. Whichever route you choose each link is followed by a short description.

In conclusion, insite has been redeveloped to make it easier and quicker for you to find the information that you need.

^{*That’s the Trombinoscope idea for those of you in the know!}

Filed under: ITS, Internal Communications

MLE – Learning Platform

Writing about web page http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=mle_home

It’s funny how a lot of the time you have no idea what your friends actually do at work… as opposed to where they work.

Last night, in the pub, I actually asked a friend what he did. He works at BECTA and he used to work for JISC and at one point he worked here.

It
turns out that he kind of invented the term Managed Learning
Environment – and now, from what I understand he works on developing
learning platforms.

He sits between the ideas people and the coding people and writes user–focused and task oriented specifications.

Anyway,
he says that Managed Learning Environments are now dead ducks because
generally people log on to one place (where everything ought to appear)
and none of the systems sitting behind it talk to each other.

It’s also his opinion that the cultural and political issues in HE make it practically impossible to implement.

Well – makes a change from the usual kind of pub conversation!

Filed under: Friends, ITS

Spring Cleaning

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/its/aboutus/message/

In a frenzy of Spring cleaning yesterday – I moved onto my H Drive
and with gay abandon deleted a whole directory of files that I needed.

Bless IT Services – they are going to restore them for me from back up.

So far I’ve managed to get my email down from 5 GB to 1.5 GB - I need to get it down to 400MB… It’s going to take forever!

But the upside is that we get to get rid of Groupwise and welcome MS Outlook and Exchange as a replacement.

^{*This
is nothing compared to the time that I was tidying my very first
computer (using Windows 3.1) and deleted the autobat.exe file – just
before a big essay was due in and I’d spent all night writing it.}

Filed under: ITS, Warwick, Work