Redesign Must Die

Slide 2: About me Biases:  Library science background  Information architecture consultant  Works mostly with Fortune 500s ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 8: Every large web site is a complex adaptive system John Holland: “A Complex Adaptive System is a dynamic network of many agents (which may represent cells, species, individuals, firms, nations) acting in parallel, constantly acting and reacting to what the other agents are doing.” ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 9: Individual agents, constantly acting and reacting Users Content Organizational vary by… varies by… context varies by… Attitude Quality Mission, vision, goals Motivation and desire Currency Organizational politics Demographics Authority Organizational culture Psychographics Popularity Degree of Tasks and information Strategic value centralization/autonomy needs Degree of structure Technical constraints Information seeking- Volume Human resources behaviors Cost Team structures Season/time of day Accessibility Budget What side of the bed … … they got up from … ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 11: More from John Holland “The control of a complex adaptive system tends to be highly dispersed and decentralized... “The overall behavior of the system is the result of a huge number of decisions made every moment by many individual agents.” ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 12: How redesigns overcome dispersed, decentralized decision-making From Tony Dunn’s Tales from Redesignland: http://redesignland.blogspot.com/ ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 14: The Cone of Uncertainty… “It isn’t possible to be more accurate; it’s only possible to be more lucky.” From Steve McConnell’s Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 15: …becomes a Cloud of Uncertainty “…what happens when the project isn’t conducted in a way that reduces variability.” ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 16: Eight reasons why your redesign will fail 1. Moving target: too many variables to track, measure, too little control over them 2. Getting it perfect: you can’t get a site “right” 3. No end in sight: when will it be done? 4. Nailing it down: you can’t time box the work that goes on ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 17: Eight reasons why your redesign will fail 5. The benchmarks have been benched: it’s difficult to measure performance of a live site 6. Getting all enterprise-y: you’ll replace your CMS/search engine/CRM system at the same time 7. Politics, of course: no one has figured out how to make them go away 8. Lipstick on a pig: cosmetic redesigns offer no value ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 18: A web site ought to be something else A platform not an application that’s supple and rather than pre- flexible, specified lends itself to tuning, rather than fixing and supports rather than binary multiple levels of roles, (e.g., user engagement. versus provider) ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 20: You must answer these three questions 1. Who are your primary audiences? 2. What are their primary information needs? 3. Does your site adequately serve those needs? ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 21: Q1. Who are your primary audiences? In academic setting?  Applicants  Faculty  Students  Staff  Alumni  Media  Donors How will you find out?  Quantitative methods (e.g., web analytics, switchboard/help center log analysis)  Qualitative methods (e.g., persona development, negotiation) ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 23: Q2. What are their primary information needs? 3-5 major reasons each audience would visit your site (e.g., tasks, topics) How will you find out?  Quantitative (e.g., site search analytics, reference desk logs)  Qualitative (e.g., ethnographic studies, stakeholder interviews) ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 25: Q3. Does your site serve those needs? Evaluate whether or not your site serves those needs How will you find out?  Quantitative: (e.g., web analytics focused on conversion)  Quantitative (e.g., task analysis studies) ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 31: Improve the user experience by a thousand cuts 50% of users are search dominant x 5% of all queries are typos, fixed by spell checking. 2.5% improvement to the UX 50% of all users are search dominant x 30% (best bet results for top 100 queries) 15% improvement to the UX …ditto for improving search results design, query entry design, query refinement design… (Hint: invest in your enterprise search system) ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 32: Tune, don’t replace These are expensive:  CMS  Search engines  Analytics applications Can user research expose tweaks that fix major problems? Otherwise, user-centered specs can help in tool evaluation ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 33: Manage processes, not projects Most aspects of design and development are ongoing Budget percentages of FTE to tasks, rather than time-boxing them Example: for content inventory, budget…  10% of the information architect’s work  Rather than 60 hours during the first month of redesign ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 36: Close the loop You need a UX methodology toolkit  Quantitative methods to answer the what questions  Qualitative methods to answer the why questions And you need analytics tools  Getting better at portraying true sessions  Gather data for quantitative analysis ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 41: Contact Information Louis Rosenfeld Rosenfeld Media, LLC 705 Carroll Street, #2L Brooklyn, NY 11215 USA lou@louisrosenfeld.com www.louisrosenfeld.com www.rosenfeldmedia.com (discount code! UIUC08) www.slideshare.net/lrosenfeld (these slides) ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

Slide 42: Image credits and quotations Lipstick on a pig: http://wizardofadscanada.typepad.com/touch_points/2005/06/mmm_for_june_6_.html Stock market: http://stylemens.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/04/16/wallstreet_h.jpg Natural gas pipeline: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/analysis_publications/ngpipeline/ compressorMap.html Immune system: http://www.thebrainmuscleworkout.com/image/scientist/ bigstockphoto_Biological_Design_1680747.jpg CAS: http://www.casresearch.com/ John Holland: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3410/images/ate-bio-03.jpg Holland’s CAS definition: Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos by M. Mitchell Waldrop. Cone and Cloud of Uncertainty: http://www.construx.com/Page.aspx?hid=1648 Redesign cartoon: http://redesignland.blogspot.com/2008/02/desperate-times.html What do we do about it? http://www.pnac.org/images/shared_images/root/nacweb_047.jpg The bridgekeeper: http://arago4.tnw.utwente.nl/stonedead/movies/holy-grail/thumbnails/23-stop.jpg Personas: http://www.iqcontent.com/publications/features/article_75/ Conversion rate: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/05/google-analytics-is-re-launched-do-these- five-things-first-in-v2.html Pacific Theater map: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/III/maps/USMC-III-I.jpg Admiral Nimitz: http://pages.videotron.ca/silexmt/optoaster/images/photos/chester_nimitz.jpg Gagged man: http://wire.ggl.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/gagged.jpg God kills a kitten: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:God-kills-kitten.jpg ©2008 Louis Rosenfeld, LLC (www.louisrosenfeld.com). All rights reserved.

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