This week's Boxes and Arrows features a must-read article by Peter Merholz and Scott Hirsch: Report Review: Nielsen/Norman Group's Usability Return on Investment. Merholz and Hirsch not only dismantle a Usability ROI report by Jakob Nielsen, but they then go on to offer practical approaches to effectively address ROI issues in the user experience domain.
They also pointed to a (free) report by Aaron Marcus on the same topic. It looks interesting, and its next on my reading list.
Today's other new B & A article is on a similar topic: Web Traffic Analytics and User Experience (Fran Diamond).
Tim Bray's latest entry in his ongoing series of posts about search is on metadata:
There is no cheap metadata . Of course, if we could use computers to compute the metadata like Google does, that would be immensely cheaper than having employees do it. And a lot of smart people have invested a lot of effort and money into the problem of deriving metadata from data, but it’s a hard one.
The latest and greatest version of my favorite programming language, Python (2.3) was released today. Apparently, its quite a bit faster than the last incarnation. Cool.
Digital Web's Nick Finck has posted slides from his "The Why and How of Blogging presentation at Web Design World 2003. I read them with some interest, as I'm giving a similar presentation in a couple of weeks. I'm talking to school librarians, so my audience is a bit different. I'm going to spend more time talking about the possibilities and options present in weblogs, and I'm going to go in-depth on the topic of RSS. Right now, I'm much more interested in RSS than weblogs. When you get down to it, a weblog is just a website (albeit an easy-to-use, frequently updated, and very useful website). But I think RSS is starting to wander into killer app territory.
CSS guru and (until a few weeks ago) Netscape Standards Evangelist Eric Meyer has written a somewhat depressing post on the state of standards, accessibility, and forward-thinking developers. He tells a story of a web developer working for the US Congress, and his challenges getting any of his colleagues to use modern coding practices and accessible design techniques.
This is the kind of situation that I think is more common than many of us realize, and it's a serious impediment to the forward motion of the Web. The enormous amount of wasted bandwidth and time such coding practices incur would, if translated into dollars, very likely cover a significant chunk of the U.S. national debt. There are too many Web authors stuck in 1999, and not enough who are looking forward to 2005 and beyond. What words, what memes would penetrate their shells and point them in the right direction?
Dave Shea, creator of the very cool CSS Zen Garden has written a nice piece on how the typographical controls in CSS can breath new life into an old font like Times New Roman. Paying attention to typography can make pretty much any design (or overused font) look better.
WebSiteOptimization has a writeup of US bandwidth usage for July. The take-away: broadband is growing (yea!) , but 60% of home users still use dial-up.
Nick Finck pointed to a couple of conference presentations from the recently-concluded WebVisions2003. Mark Newhouse has a nice "Back to the Future"-themed presentation about CSS, markup, and standards. Its a nice read, if only for Mark's slick design. Jeffery Veen has posted his keynote slides, entitled "Beyond Usability: Why Design is Hard and What We're Going To Do About It. Veen's slides are interesting, but I really wish I could hear his talk, too. The slides are very visual, and even though many of the themes and sites were familiar to me, I'd still love to hear what he had to say about them. My curiosity was piqued a bit more after reading Jeff's comments on the presentation, where he says he borrowed some concepts from his wife's preaching class. So, here's hoping a video surfaces, as they have for a number of other recent conferences.
Boxes and Arrows is back from a short hiatus with a nice article about Usability Heuristics for Rich Internet Applications. The article is focused on Flash applications, but I think its useful for any web application.
Two resources from recent conferences:
DUX 2003 Case Studies
Videos from OSCOM (Open Source Content Management)
Macromedia has revved its web-editor-for-the-rest-of-us, "Contribute." Big changes: Mac OS X support and better security. (via Digital Web)
Phil Windley is blogging the O'Reilly Open Source Conference. Lots of great observations:
Doc Searls: DIY-IT: How Open Source is Turning IT into a DIY Marketplace
Kevin Falcone: LDAP: Integrating Authentication Across Operating Systems and Applications
Mitch Kapor: Linux' Journey to the Mainstream Desktop
Stormy Peters: Open Source at HP
Simon St. Laurent: Office XML Formats
Tim O'Reilly's Keynote: Open Source Paradigm Shifts (See also: a note from O'Reilly)
Panel: Open Source Projects in the US Government
Mike Kruckenberg: Transforming XML for Web and Print
Good "reporting" so far. Keep your eyes out for more...
James Robertson points to a technical tutorial about building an XML-based CMS in PHP.
Jesse James Garrett, author of the Elements of User Experience book and PDF, has turned his attention to thinking about web teams. In the same way his "Elements" work helped define the parts of a successful web site, this article (and accompanying PDF diagram) defines the roles need on web teams. Garrett argues that teams need nine pillars:
1. User Research
2. Site Strategy
3. Technology Strategy
4. Content Strategy
5. Abstract Design
6. Technology Implementation
7. Content Production
8. Concrete Design
9. Project Management
Fortunately, nine pillars does not mean nine people. A single person can take on multiple roles.
I think this model can be quite useful when thinking about a team's strengths or weaknesses. Hopefully, Garrett will continue to expand on this work.
David Mertz has released the full text of his book Text Processing in Python in text format. Nice.
Ray Ozzie (Lotus and Groove) has a lengthy and valuable essay on mobile systems architecture.
Sean McGrath predicts The end of database-centric design in in ITWorld.com article. In short, the knock against traditional database-centric systems is the lack of flexibility. If you need to make changes to a database schema, the changes need to be (manually) cascaded down throughout the entire system, from SQL statements to user interface. I've built enough database driven systems to know this is true. Changes made after initial development tend to make brittle systems crack. They can be fixed, for sure, but the cost and complexity usually goes up. What's the answer? McGrath writes:
I believe we are seeing a deemphasis of database technology in enterprise application development. Look at architecture diagrams for Service Oriented Architectures, for Agile Processes or for asynchronous web services. There was a time when most IT architectures for business featured a database holding pride of place in the center of the diagram. Not any more. Why? Because we simply cannot afford to design for the present, when everything, from tomorrow onwards, is the future.
Speaking of web services, Tim Bray argues for a REST approach to weblog web services. A compelling case, I think.
From GUUUI.com: "Personas and the customer decision-making process"
Newsgator, makers of an Outlook-based RSS aggregator, have published a brief case study of RSS usage at Triple Point Technology. Even though it was published by a vendor, the case study is still a nice example of a company making good use of RSS.
Phil Windley pointed to a trio of Linux Journal articles by Tom Adelstein:
Linux Access in State and Local Government, Part I.
Linux Access in State and Local Government, Part II
Linux Access in State and Local Government, Part III. Part III focuses on education, and mentions the use of open source in many of Oregon's public schools.
Evan Lenz and Uche Ogbuji have written a great conference paper on the technical infrastructure of the Seattle U. School of Law CMS. The article is rather technical, and it covers the use of Cocoon and 4Suite. I've been hearing about this project for a while now from fellow alums James and Nina, who both worked on the non-technical aspects of the project. Its nice to see what the technical guts look like...
For a much higher-level view of using XML in CM, see James Robertson's "XML and content management systems."
From CIO Magazine comes the "6 Habits of Highly Effective CIOs" and the "10 Worst Mistakes CIOs Can Make." Both are interesting reads. The "6 Habits" article focuses mostly on working with the business side of the house (rather than the technology). My favorite "habit"? "Make IT user-friendly. For everyone."