Instruction for doing research online for UNC's Media & Journalism Research Methods course, MEJO 701. These slides were used for the MA course, but they are relevant to the PhD students as well.
Norton's Internet Safety Advocate with a presentation on internet safety, online privacy, viruses and malware, for 8th grade students (13 years and up)
Special Topics Day for Engineering Innovation Lecture on CybersecurityMichael Rushanan
This particular presentation covers, at a high level, our national cybersecurity initiative. The content targets prospective high school students and delves into areas of computer science, information systems, and policy.
Instruction for doing research online for UNC's Media & Journalism Research Methods course, MEJO 701. These slides were used for the MA course, but they are relevant to the PhD students as well.
Norton's Internet Safety Advocate with a presentation on internet safety, online privacy, viruses and malware, for 8th grade students (13 years and up)
Special Topics Day for Engineering Innovation Lecture on CybersecurityMichael Rushanan
This particular presentation covers, at a high level, our national cybersecurity initiative. The content targets prospective high school students and delves into areas of computer science, information systems, and policy.
Machine Learning for Non-technical Peopleindico data
Machine learning is one of the most promising and most difficult to understand fields of the modern age. Here are the slides from Slater Victoroff's (CEO of indico) talk at General Assembly Boston for non-technical folks on how to separate the signal from the noise -- stay tuned for the next time he speaks:
https://generalassemb.ly/education/machine-learning-for-non-technical-people
Originally designed for a workshop - adapted for use here. Include lots for links to resources appropriate for youth and adults who are just stepping into the online space.
I hope you enjoy this report. You will learn about the various new advancements in our world of technology. You will learn how to adapt to these updates so you can better understand and enjoy your computer. Have fun!
Technology Tips for Students-New Student Tech CampStephanie Moore
New student tech camp hosted two weeks before school begins. Material and information used to ready students in the use of their 1:1 Tablet PCs at Villa Duchesne
Does being female make a difference to the way people use software? Can the software industry change the way we do things to make our software more useful for women? Would that be sexist? Would any men want to buy our software afterwards?
Pragmatic Designer's Guide to Identity on the WebJamie Reffell
This talk was presented at Webvisions 2010 in Portland, Oregon.
When you're designing for the web, you have to think about identity. This includes the nuts and bolts of login fields and passwords, as well as fancy technologies like Facebook Connect, OAuth, and OpenID.
This talk presents a pragmatic approach to identity on the web, focused on best practices and a reality-based understanding of user behavior.
I'll cover:
* How users really handle accounts and passwords, and what that means for your site.
* Best practices for login/logout.
* Shared accounts, shared computers, and other messy realities.
* What designers needs to know about OpenID, OAuth, Facebook Connect, and other identity platforms.
* What might happen next: future-proofing your design without a crystal ball.
A new(ish) perspective on knowledge management in small organisations, with a little bit of Frank Zappa and Superman 3 thrown in. Originally delivered at the NCVO Information Management Conference, London, Nov 2008.
Humorous discussion presenting some of the kids of risks that face public facing Web sites for corporations ranging from hacking to legal to social media scares. Slides are illustrative in nature and the aim of the talk is more awareness than anything else.
Tame the wild web that's grown over decades of decentralized web services by providing a central self-service solution that's prettier, cheaper, and (as far as the customer is concerned) maintenance-free -- without hiring a small army. Texas A&M and Berkeley are maintaining WordPress networks of thousands of sites with web teams of two to five, and you can do it, too.
WordPress is popular because it's easy for users to grasp and easy for developers to extend. Why not take advantage of that to provide branded websites for your campus constituents? Sure, there are a few groups who need a custom site and have the money to pay for it--but what about everyone else? A little structured content here, some inline help there, and you have a one-size-fits-most solution for virtually every small website on your campus. Go beyond the student blog network! WordPress is for everybody: faculty, staff... even that events coordinator who needs a website by 5 because she's opening up registration in the morning and what do you mean, is the content written?
Using case studies from Texas A&M University and The University of California at Berkeley, I'll demonstrate how to set up common content models, templates, and workflows for:
* Departments
* Research teams
* Conferences & symposia
* Committees
We know that a content-first approach to design is a best practice, but knowing is only half the battle. We're accustomed to our legacy workflows--and so are our clients. For years, we've trained clients to expect designs first, prototypes later, and writing last of all.
Win clients over to your new workflow by showing them what's in it for them: not just a better user experience for their readers, but a better authoring experience for the content editors.
With a CMS that lets you modify the admin interface, you can make not only the design but the CMS itself fit the content. When coupled with a responsive design workflow, setting up the model first helps clients think more concretely about:
* modular content
* prioritizing chunks for mobile, search, and archived contexts
* user roles and access
* editorial UX
This content-first approach lets you design the CMS to fit the organization's content model and workflow. You can:
* dogfood throughout the prototyping and design processes
* spot areas of confusion early
* change the admin interface
* add inline help
* plan documentation to be a backup or a last resort
Machine Learning for Non-technical Peopleindico data
Machine learning is one of the most promising and most difficult to understand fields of the modern age. Here are the slides from Slater Victoroff's (CEO of indico) talk at General Assembly Boston for non-technical folks on how to separate the signal from the noise -- stay tuned for the next time he speaks:
https://generalassemb.ly/education/machine-learning-for-non-technical-people
Originally designed for a workshop - adapted for use here. Include lots for links to resources appropriate for youth and adults who are just stepping into the online space.
I hope you enjoy this report. You will learn about the various new advancements in our world of technology. You will learn how to adapt to these updates so you can better understand and enjoy your computer. Have fun!
Technology Tips for Students-New Student Tech CampStephanie Moore
New student tech camp hosted two weeks before school begins. Material and information used to ready students in the use of their 1:1 Tablet PCs at Villa Duchesne
Does being female make a difference to the way people use software? Can the software industry change the way we do things to make our software more useful for women? Would that be sexist? Would any men want to buy our software afterwards?
Pragmatic Designer's Guide to Identity on the WebJamie Reffell
This talk was presented at Webvisions 2010 in Portland, Oregon.
When you're designing for the web, you have to think about identity. This includes the nuts and bolts of login fields and passwords, as well as fancy technologies like Facebook Connect, OAuth, and OpenID.
This talk presents a pragmatic approach to identity on the web, focused on best practices and a reality-based understanding of user behavior.
I'll cover:
* How users really handle accounts and passwords, and what that means for your site.
* Best practices for login/logout.
* Shared accounts, shared computers, and other messy realities.
* What designers needs to know about OpenID, OAuth, Facebook Connect, and other identity platforms.
* What might happen next: future-proofing your design without a crystal ball.
A new(ish) perspective on knowledge management in small organisations, with a little bit of Frank Zappa and Superman 3 thrown in. Originally delivered at the NCVO Information Management Conference, London, Nov 2008.
Humorous discussion presenting some of the kids of risks that face public facing Web sites for corporations ranging from hacking to legal to social media scares. Slides are illustrative in nature and the aim of the talk is more awareness than anything else.
Tame the wild web that's grown over decades of decentralized web services by providing a central self-service solution that's prettier, cheaper, and (as far as the customer is concerned) maintenance-free -- without hiring a small army. Texas A&M and Berkeley are maintaining WordPress networks of thousands of sites with web teams of two to five, and you can do it, too.
WordPress is popular because it's easy for users to grasp and easy for developers to extend. Why not take advantage of that to provide branded websites for your campus constituents? Sure, there are a few groups who need a custom site and have the money to pay for it--but what about everyone else? A little structured content here, some inline help there, and you have a one-size-fits-most solution for virtually every small website on your campus. Go beyond the student blog network! WordPress is for everybody: faculty, staff... even that events coordinator who needs a website by 5 because she's opening up registration in the morning and what do you mean, is the content written?
Using case studies from Texas A&M University and The University of California at Berkeley, I'll demonstrate how to set up common content models, templates, and workflows for:
* Departments
* Research teams
* Conferences & symposia
* Committees
We know that a content-first approach to design is a best practice, but knowing is only half the battle. We're accustomed to our legacy workflows--and so are our clients. For years, we've trained clients to expect designs first, prototypes later, and writing last of all.
Win clients over to your new workflow by showing them what's in it for them: not just a better user experience for their readers, but a better authoring experience for the content editors.
With a CMS that lets you modify the admin interface, you can make not only the design but the CMS itself fit the content. When coupled with a responsive design workflow, setting up the model first helps clients think more concretely about:
* modular content
* prioritizing chunks for mobile, search, and archived contexts
* user roles and access
* editorial UX
This content-first approach lets you design the CMS to fit the organization's content model and workflow. You can:
* dogfood throughout the prototyping and design processes
* spot areas of confusion early
* change the admin interface
* add inline help
* plan documentation to be a backup or a last resort
Getting started with WordPress is easy--unless you got started a long time ago in some other CMS, or Dreamweaver or even (shudder) FrontPage. But you and WordPress can still have a happy relationship despite your baggage! In this session, I'll show you how to import almost anything into WordPress. I'll share examples from real projects for each step of the import process:
* Setting up your ideal content model in WordPress
* Cleaning up your import for best results
* Importing from any other CMS, database, or HTML files (yes, files)
* Converting old content to custom post types, taxonomies, and modular fields
* Auditing and cleaning up content in WordPress
* Processes for long-term content strategy & maintenance
How to manage the complete content strategy in WordPress using plugins. Do your content inventory in WordPress -- no spreadsheets! Do content modeling using custom post types, taxonomies, and fields. Video: http://wordpress.tv/2013/08/02/stephanie-leary-content-strategy-wordpress-case-studies/
How to use WordPress plugins to manage the content lifecycle: evaluating content; structuring content with custom post types, taxonomies, and custom fields; making style guides available and visible; improving workflow and approvals; dealing with embedded images and responsive design; maintaining and doing ongoing evaluations; planning future content.
Using WordPress as a content management system in higher education, as shown at the CASE District IV conference in Austin, Texas on March 29, 2010. Be sure to grab the associated handouts:
http://sillybean.net/downloads/case/plugin-handout.pdf
http://sillybean.net/downloads/case/profile-handout.pdf
http://sillybean.net/downloads/case/feed-handout.pdf
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
Securing your Kubernetes cluster_ a step-by-step guide to success !KatiaHIMEUR1
Today, after several years of existence, an extremely active community and an ultra-dynamic ecosystem, Kubernetes has established itself as the de facto standard in container orchestration. Thanks to a wide range of managed services, it has never been so easy to set up a ready-to-use Kubernetes cluster.
However, this ease of use means that the subject of security in Kubernetes is often left for later, or even neglected. This exposes companies to significant risks.
In this talk, I'll show you step-by-step how to secure your Kubernetes cluster for greater peace of mind and reliability.
Encryption in Microsoft 365 - ExpertsLive Netherlands 2024Albert Hoitingh
In this session I delve into the encryption technology used in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Purview. Including the concepts of Customer Key and Double Key Encryption.
Removing Uninteresting Bytes in Software FuzzingAftab Hussain
Imagine a world where software fuzzing, the process of mutating bytes in test seeds to uncover hidden and erroneous program behaviors, becomes faster and more effective. A lot depends on the initial seeds, which can significantly dictate the trajectory of a fuzzing campaign, particularly in terms of how long it takes to uncover interesting behaviour in your code. We introduce DIAR, a technique designed to speedup fuzzing campaigns by pinpointing and eliminating those uninteresting bytes in the seeds. Picture this: instead of wasting valuable resources on meaningless mutations in large, bloated seeds, DIAR removes the unnecessary bytes, streamlining the entire process.
In this work, we equipped AFL, a popular fuzzer, with DIAR and examined two critical Linux libraries -- Libxml's xmllint, a tool for parsing xml documents, and Binutil's readelf, an essential debugging and security analysis command-line tool used to display detailed information about ELF (Executable and Linkable Format). Our preliminary results show that AFL+DIAR does not only discover new paths more quickly but also achieves higher coverage overall. This work thus showcases how starting with lean and optimized seeds can lead to faster, more comprehensive fuzzing campaigns -- and DIAR helps you find such seeds.
- These are slides of the talk given at IEEE International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation Workshop, ICSTW 2022.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
A tale of scale & speed: How the US Navy is enabling software delivery from l...sonjaschweigert1
Rapid and secure feature delivery is a goal across every application team and every branch of the DoD. The Navy’s DevSecOps platform, Party Barge, has achieved:
- Reduction in onboarding time from 5 weeks to 1 day
- Improved developer experience and productivity through actionable findings and reduction of false positives
- Maintenance of superior security standards and inherent policy enforcement with Authorization to Operate (ATO)
Development teams can ship efficiently and ensure applications are cyber ready for Navy Authorizing Officials (AOs). In this webinar, Sigma Defense and Anchore will give attendees a look behind the scenes and demo secure pipeline automation and security artifacts that speed up application ATO and time to production.
We will cover:
- How to remove silos in DevSecOps
- How to build efficient development pipeline roles and component templates
- How to deliver security artifacts that matter for ATO’s (SBOMs, vulnerability reports, and policy evidence)
- How to streamline operations with automated policy checks on container images
Climate Impact of Software Testing at Nordic Testing DaysKari Kakkonen
My slides at Nordic Testing Days 6.6.2024
Climate impact / sustainability of software testing discussed on the talk. ICT and testing must carry their part of global responsibility to help with the climat warming. We can minimize the carbon footprint but we can also have a carbon handprint, a positive impact on the climate. Quality characteristics can be added with sustainability, and then measured continuously. Test environments can be used less, and in smaller scale and on demand. Test techniques can be used in optimizing or minimizing number of tests. Test automation can be used to speed up testing.
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
In his public lecture, Christian Timmerer provides insights into the fascinating history of video streaming, starting from its humble beginnings before YouTube to the groundbreaking technologies that now dominate platforms like Netflix and ORF ON. Timmerer also presents provocative contributions of his own that have significantly influenced the industry. He concludes by looking at future challenges and invites the audience to join in a discussion.
Welcome to the first live UiPath Community Day Dubai! Join us for this unique occasion to meet our local and global UiPath Community and leaders. You will get a full view of the MEA region's automation landscape and the AI Powered automation technology capabilities of UiPath. Also, hosted by our local partners Marc Ellis, you will enjoy a half-day packed with industry insights and automation peers networking.
📕 Curious on our agenda? Wait no more!
10:00 Welcome note - UiPath Community in Dubai
Lovely Sinha, UiPath Community Chapter Leader, UiPath MVPx3, Hyper-automation Consultant, First Abu Dhabi Bank
10:20 A UiPath cross-region MEA overview
Ashraf El Zarka, VP and Managing Director MEA, UiPath
10:35: Customer Success Journey
Deepthi Deepak, Head of Intelligent Automation CoE, First Abu Dhabi Bank
11:15 The UiPath approach to GenAI with our three principles: improve accuracy, supercharge productivity, and automate more
Boris Krumrey, Global VP, Automation Innovation, UiPath
12:15 To discover how Marc Ellis leverages tech-driven solutions in recruitment and managed services.
Brendan Lingam, Director of Sales and Business Development, Marc Ellis
The Metaverse and AI: how can decision-makers harness the Metaverse for their...Jen Stirrup
The Metaverse is popularized in science fiction, and now it is becoming closer to being a part of our daily lives through the use of social media and shopping companies. How can businesses survive in a world where Artificial Intelligence is becoming the present as well as the future of technology, and how does the Metaverse fit into business strategy when futurist ideas are developing into reality at accelerated rates? How do we do this when our data isn't up to scratch? How can we move towards success with our data so we are set up for the Metaverse when it arrives?
How can you help your company evolve, adapt, and succeed using Artificial Intelligence and the Metaverse to stay ahead of the competition? What are the potential issues, complications, and benefits that these technologies could bring to us and our organizations? In this session, Jen Stirrup will explain how to start thinking about these technologies as an organisation.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
3. Working with Mom
•“We go to great lengths to ensure easy
understanding. We make the button look
like something you can press.”
“Anatomy of a Noob”: http://tinyurl.com/noob-anatomy
4. Working with Mom
•“We use desktop as a reference,
windows, pull-downs, accordions, etc. We
call them metaphors, but very seldom do
we question whether those metaphors are
as intuitive and universally understood as
we assume.”
“Anatomy of a Noob”: http://tinyurl.com/noob-anatomy
5. Working with Mom
•“In the case of my mom, there is
obviously little connection between the
physical desktop and its digital
counterpart.”
“Anatomy of a Noob”: http://tinyurl.com/noob-anatomy
6.
7. • “And yea, upon teh n00bs, did Our
Geek Jobs set His Obsessive Eye. And
He brought forth a device of great sales
potential: the iThing, which one can
touch with thine finger.
• And lo! did teh n00bs poke and jabbeth
at the iThing, achieving much of what
was desired.”
19. Working with a Computer
•“In abusive and controlling relationships,
the victim has the sense they are always
‘walking on eggshells’ - fearful of saying or
doing anything that might prompt a
violent/intimidating outburst.”
“Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness”
http://tinyurl.com/abusive-computer
20. •“In relationships with an abuser or
controller, the victim has also experienced
a loss of self-esteem, self-confidence, and
psychological energy. The victim may feel
‘burned out’ and too depressed to leave.”
“Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness”
http://tinyurl.com/abusive-computer
Working with a Computer
21. We are all trapped in
abusive relationships
with our computers.
22. Our users are afraid and
embarrassed to ask for
help.
I’ve worked in the A&M Health Science Center, the System Offices, and now the Writing Center, a tiny office staffed mostly by student workers. I do freelance work for authors, mostly in science fiction and romance. I also do my mom’s business site.
“Anatomy of a Noob: Why Your Mom Sucks at Computers” is a great article on the way real people use computers, and why the standard desktop-and-mouse interface just doesn’t work for many people.
The whole article is well worth reading, as are the comments on Hacker News in response.
How many times have you heard this one?
My students have a habit of not telling me about a problem with their profiles or Word or the scheduling app or whatever... until they find out that someone else is having the same problem. If one person has the problem, even if it happens every day for two weeks, they’ll think they’re doing something to trigger it.
When we-the-geeks see an application crash or toss an error message onto the screen, we understand what’s happening. Our users don’t. They’re walking a tightrope every time they log in, and anything unexpected makes them fall off, leaving them completely helpless.
For those who didn’t hear about it, a few months ago, a news site called ReadWriteWeb had an article that, for some reason, became the #1 Google result for “Facebook login” within hours of its publication. The article has hundreds of comments from annoyed Facebook users who thought this article was a redesigned login page.
I noticed this five years ago when I was working at the System Offices. That’s the umbrella administration over all ten Texas A&M Universities and its seven state agencies. When we surveyed our readers prior to redesigning the site, many of them told us we were missing information on specific degree programs, campus maps, and bus routes. Despite the different logo, URL, and site design, most of them had no idea they weren’t on the main campus website.
People can’t see websites holistically any better than they can desktops. They’ve developed sidebar blindness in addition to banner blindness.
If you aren’t familiar with Readability, you should check it out. It’s a bookmarklet that strips ads and design elements from newspaper articles and blog entries and reformats the text according to your preferences.
Why aren’t we designing pages like this in the first place?
These comments generated a lot of derision from alpha geeks who didn’t understand why someone would Google for the Facebook login page every time they wanted to use the site, rather than typing in the URL or using a bookmark.
People don’t understand the difference between the two text inputs at the top of their browser windows, but they do know that the one on the left generates an error message if you mess something up, whereas the one on the right understands what you ask it for and offers corrections if you misspell something.
(Incidentally, I can think of three reasons people don’t use bookmarks: they’re accustomed to losing them when something goes wrong with their roaming profiles or when they switch or upgrade browsers; they know that when the website gets redesigned their old bookmarks will no longer work; and they don’t know how to get into the bookmark manager to delete or update old bookmarks.)
People use the more forgiving input, the search box, because they know bad things will happen if they make a mistake. They’ll see an error message that seems to be yelling at them, or they’ll go to the wrong page.
I read this article about seven years ago, and I’ve often joked about it to my Windows-using friends, but really, it’s true for all of us. Mac users might not get slapped around quite as much unless we’re using Adobe products, but we’ve all grown accustomed to lost data, applications that crash, and error messages that don’t tell us how to fix or avoid the problem.
Obviously, this is an exaggeration -- we don’t fear for our physical safety when using a computer! -- but it does provide a useful model for understanding how our users think.
In response to the ReadWriteWeb/Facebook fiasco, a guy named Ed Finkler from Purdue wrote an article called “We’re the Stupid Ones.” He said at first, he laughed along with everyone else at the silly people who use Google to find Facebook every day... but then he realized that we’ve failed as developers.
He wrote, “When folks need an elevator, we should give them an elevator, not an airplane.”
“We’ve been giving them airplanes for 30 years, and then laughing at them for being too stupid to fly them right.”
If these PhDs, these students with amazing resumes, are “stupid users,” then I’m with stupid.
How?
The first step is to make it easier to ask for help or report a problem.
There’s been a lot written about 404 error pages, so you’re probably already doing a couple of these things.
Start with the language. Most 404 errors say something like, “The file you requested could not be found.” Do you hear how passive that is? Take ownership of the problem! “I’m sorry. I couldn’t find the page you wanted. However, I searched for the words you entered, and I think one of these pages might be the one you were looking for...”
But what about those other error messages? Don’t let the server defaults appear here. Give people alternative ways to accomplish their tasks when the computer fails them.
Admit imperfection on every page. Invite people to tell you what’s wrong, and do the hard part for them. It should be trivial to include the referring URL in a hidden form field.
Make yourself available. Add phone numbers everywhere! Don’t hide behind the mean machine.
Don’t rely on volunteers; they’re the ones who AREN’T afraid of the computer.
Grab people who didn’t come in to your office with the intention of helping out with the website. Ask them if they have two minutes to see how the website works for them, with you looking over their shoulders.
Ask your new hires. They don’t know where anything is yet.
Do you have any retirees who’ve come back to work part time? They have very different perspectives.
Get the accident-prone users to test your web apps. They’ll find out what happens when you press the submit button forty times in two minutes.
When you ask to meet with a group to go over their web content, most likely you’re going to be talking to the person in charge of the group and maybe some subject matter experts. Are you also talking to the people who actually answer the phones? They’re the ones who know what questions aren’t being answered on the website and which forms people can’t find.
I don’t mean lower the bar; I mean, look at your organization’s strategic goals and see if ANY of them are based on your users’ needs, and not your own.
This stuff is super basic. Is it in your strategic plan? Do you just assume you’re going to do this stuff, or do you spell it out and measure your progress toward these goals? Do you have an ongoing process to identify tasks that can’t be done online and make sure they get automated?
Our strategic plans tend to look like, “We want a 20% increase in visitors every year for the next three years.” But what good does that do if we don’t provide them with the things they need once they get there? We have to flip the priorities around. We have to privilege the users’ goals over our institutions’ -- otherwise the things our bosses want to push onto our users will take priority when budgets get cut.
These goals I’ve listed are generic. Figure out what users want out of YOUR website and put those things into the strategic plan.
After you’ve done those other things, and you’re down to the metaphors you really do need to use, explain them. Don’t assume that everyone knows what to do.
How many of us slap a feed icon on a blog sidebar and expect our readers to know what to do with it? On all the sites I work on, our feeds are used more internally, as a way to shunt information around between silos, than they’re used by our readers. When we add a small link explaining what a feed is and how to use it, and we offer an option to subscribe by email instead, use of feeds increases.
Feedburner offers a feed-to-email service. Several email marketing companies do, too. I know MailChimp is one of them.
I love using microformats. They’re a wonderfully easy way to convert web content into files that can be used in desktop applications. But you have to explain them! They aren’t mainstream yet -- and anyway, your users don’t really get the desktop apps in the first place.
To sum up...
Don’t offer seventeen ways of doing something. Figure out the best way, the one that serves most of your users, and do it that way.
Users are blind to the peripherals, so leave them out! Do we really need sidebars full of links on either side of the president’s blog?
Every time you add something, ask:
Is this really necessary?
Will people really use it?
Do our readers understand why this is here?