At the Association Technology Conference in December, I facilitated a session to discuss what was working and not working with the traditional Request for Proposal (RFP) process. With a group of association professionals and vendors participating, we developed some guiding principles that should help anyone who is considering sending out an RFP, whether or not you work for an association. 1. Work within a cross-division team of major stakeholders (including project sponsor) to define the project objectives. Be clear about the outcomes you desire and have the buy-in of everyone who has a vested interest in the project. 2. Develop... Continue reading

Here is Colin Eagan's second "on assignment" report from the Nielsen Norman Group's Usability Week 2010 in San Francisco. This time Colin reports on Usability for mobile devices. And watch for the special birthday tribute at the end. Continue reading

See Colin Eagan's video report from the Nielsen Norman Group's Usability Week 2010 in San Francisco. Colin is an Information Architect from our DC interactive team. Look for more reports later this week. Continue reading

Those of us who work on web strategy and design talk a lot about how pages should be constructed to make it easy for users to scan a page. Indeed, page hierarchy, limited menus, bullet-ed lists, and informative headlines are among the things that make it easier for website visitors to assess what may be of interest on a given page. However, do we also recognize that there are great differences among users in their ability to scan web pages? Having observed a lot of participants while conducting usability tests over the years, I have noticed that individuals vary widely... Continue reading

At long last, here is the video podcast of my interview with Bruce Hashim, VP and General Manager of NASDAQ.com, regarding the launch of their online community. I shared the transcript and background in this earlier post. Continue reading

I often find lots of thought-provoking material in Mark Hurst's "Good Experience" e-newsletter. Of particular interest recently was a video from the 2009 Gel Conference featuring slight-of-hand magician, Jamy Ian Swiss (photo at left). Jamy talks about the importance of user empathy in good design and demonstrates this on stage by revealing a magic trick that all can see except for the willing audience volunteer. This 25-minute video is well worth watching for anyone who truly cares about the user experience. Continue reading

NASDAQ has long had a great brand and reputation within the investor community. But the company realized last year that it was missing an opportunity to engage its constituents in new ways and help them network with one another. NASDAQ asked Ironworks to research their users' needs, craft a social media strategy, and build an innovative investor community (community.nasdaq.com) on the new Version 8 of Ektron CMS400.net. I recently asked Bruce Hashim, Associate VP and General Manager for Nasdaq.com, about their experience: Bruce, what were the business objectives that drove you to create a community site for NASDAQ? Bruce Hashim:... Continue reading

We had another interesting discussion on this week's Association Chat (#assnchat) Tweet-up (Tuesdays at 2:00 ET). I recommended that associations (and all organizations for that matter) have a social media strategy to effectively leverage the plentiful tools that are now available to engage members and customers in productive online conversations. However, I was challenged by my friend Jeff De Cagna who I respect as a thought leader in the association community and one who challenges conventional wisdom. Jeff is a skeptic of strategic planning and suggested that a social media strategy is likely unnecessary and may be perceived as too... Continue reading

Ironworks is helping ASAE and the Center with a new SharePoint track at the 2010 Association Technology Conference (Feb. 10-12 in at the DC Convention Center). This will be a full conference track of deep-dive sessions for those who have some basic experience with Microsoft's SharePoint collaboration portal and want to learn more. David Perkinson will lead a session entitled "Search Your Way to Success: How to Best Leverage SharePoint Search." He will discuss how to configure SharePoint's enterprise search capabilities for optimum performance and share some simple customizations that can make a big difference in user satisfaction with search.... Continue reading

We get a lot of requests to conduct usability testing on a website as part of the research in preparation for a major redesign. While testing at any time can provide valuable insight into the user experience and help identify problem areas, I have to question the expense at this stage unless one focuses on specific functionality that is likely to carry over with little modification. Often there is such significant change on the new site that early testing becomes meaningless. I would rather see budget dollars reserved for testing a prototype based on interactive wireframes for the new design.... Continue reading

1 - You can better manage the online conversations. People will talk about you and the issues you care about. They might as well do it on your site. 2- If you don't, your constituents will assume that you have something to hide. Do you? Transparency means opening the communications channels. 3 - Social media tools can help facilitate knowledge sharing with and among your customers, members, the public, etc. You can get credit. When should an organization NOT use social media? When conversations must be regulated by law or you don't have any good answers when people are critical. Continue reading

Welcome to the new Ironworks User Experience blog. I am personally very proud of the talented team (led by Bill Buell) of information architects, designers, developers and strategists that we have at Ironworks. You can look forward to us sharing our ideas, best practices, creativity, humor and useful resources on this blog. We welcome your active participation with comments and questions. Continue reading