David Heller's article on RIAs

I read an interesting article on UX Matters earlier today; a very good comparison between the 'old school' page-based Web application metaphor and the emerging rich internet application interaction metaphor being popularised by the later versions of Flash and the XML/DOM combo labelled by some 'Ajax'.

The article can be found here and I would recommend your reading it. David Heller presents a very clear, well constructed overview of the two metaphors; provides the reader with a framework for selecting when to use each appropriately; and discusses some of the advantages to be obtained from the use of RIAs for the particular task of user-intensive Web applications.

It is without a doubt one of the better articles on the topic that I've seen in recent times.

I might as well also mention that the initial swag of articles on UX Matters has been most promising, and I've enjoyed the more academic, journal-istic style of the articles.

[UPDATE: Apologies for the dud link to David's article. For some reason we had an extra http embedded in there, causing it to redirect to Microsoft of all places.]

Politics as business requirement

I've been experiencing some frustration this past week with a client mistaking internal politics with "business requirements". Essentially, we're being asked to structure the underlying architecture of the web site to meet a set of poorly-defined requirements due to the clients' difficulty in influencing other departments with respect to the purpose of the new site.

The key issue we're having is with internal marketing teams not wanting to use a common taxonomy on a shared Web site. The internal teams represent geographic marketing regions, and firmly believe (wrongly, according to the user research) that they need the freedom of labelling information idiosyncratically within their regional section of the site. The internal Web team don't possess the political clout to veto this requirement, and so we're forced to put in place a solution architecture that will accommodate a loosely-defined page architecture - effectively undermining one of our key success requirements: consistent labelling across site sections.

In hindsight we should have been talking to these internal marketing teams a lot sooner, but the client had already produced such a comprehensive set of 'approved' documentation laying out the site's content strategy that we were lulled.

Something to keep in mind in future projects, definitely, but it raises an issue when attempting to create a balance between user & business requirements. When approaching our work I like to review with the business stakeholders their objectives - in the form of marketing plans, business plans, competitor activities etc - and how those objectives might best be achieved through the Web site under review.

At the same time, we'd be conducting user research - in the form of surveys, one-on-one interviews, etc - to determine the user's objectives at the site, and the major tasks that they may need to undertake.

Politics enters the mix when one group of internal stakeholders - for reasons of their own - skips straight to the definition of functional requirements and site features, labelling them as "requirements". All evidence and arguments to the contrary, for example all of that user research indicating that the 'requirements' achieve nothing, are brushed aside. There is no way to balance this type of requirement - balance is not in the picture for this stakeholder.

The only hope here is to attempt to 'sell' this stakeholder on the project vision as early as possible. Sometimes this works. Sometimes... well this past week speaks for itself.

Whither competitive differentiation?

OK, so it took me a little longer than two days to get my head back together after a strenuous few days last week. I would still like to carry on with the theme of the discussion at the last IA-peers meeting, at which we argued the legitimacy of the notion that a two Web sites with superficially similar user audiences would be designed differently in some meaningful respect.

My proposition to the group was that two businesses with similar business models, attacting similar customers, should be designed differently regardless of the needs of the users, and that these differences will be in ways other than simply visual representation of the corporate identity. As well you may imagine, to an audience predominantly consisting of user-centred design practitioners, this proposition was well argued. First, let me present my reasoning:

• Companies compete in the marketplace by creating and maintaining a competitive advantage over the rest of the industry
• Competitive advantage comes in many different forms - a low cost base; superior product or service quality; the ability to innovate and commercialise new technologies; geographical reach; and others;
• Competitive positioning will affect all strategic decisions, including the balance between visual, functional, technical & content elements of a Web project - i.e. where the business focuses its efforts.
• Companies also differentiate themselves through their brand (not just the corporate identity), which encompasses the 'whole' product or service- the sum total of interactions a customer has with the organisation.
• The companies 'target' brand is represented and communicated through the brand essence and value proposition.
  

These are all company-centric ways in which one organisation differentiates itself from its competitors, and directs the efforts of the organisation towards communicating that difference to the market-at-large.

To give an example, Telstra's brand tagline has for some time been 'Making life easier'. It has only been recently that the corporate Web site has started to actualise this brand value through a focus on usability and user-centredness. Similarly, Mitsubishi Australia has recently been running a TV ad campaign promoting the company's commitment to manufacturing quality. A visitor to the company Web site should not encounter any errors or performance issues (site not available etc) when using the site if Mitsubishi wishes to reinforce, rather than contradict, that message.

Some have argued that these internal 'values' are unimportant in the context of a Web site's design parameters, but I believe it is the integrated interplay between these business characteristics and the characteristics of the user audience, and their needs, that will produce the best results for all site stakeholders.