A Twitterable Twitter policy

Here’s a corporate Twitter policy that has the extra added benefit of being itself twitterable:

Our Twitter policy: Be professional, kind, discreet, authentic. Represent us well. Remember that you can’t control it once you hit “update.”

From Gruntled Employees Blog

Trying to sell a bad interface

In our local newspaper the other day I saw an advertisement for a new website created to support the NSW Central Coast’s waste collection and recycling system. (Click the image to see it.) The main thrust of the ad was that the “fastest way to book your bulk kerbside collection is online”. And to show how “fast” it is, the ad listed an eight-step “Bulk Kerbside Checklist”:

1. Visit www.1coast.com.au - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
2. Select the ‘Click here to book a bulk kerbside collection button’
3. Review the collection guidelines & proceed to the booking page
4. First time visitors will be asked to register their email address to receive a password to access the booking page
5. Login using your email address and password
6. Search for your property and follow the on-screen prompts
7. A confirmation email will mean your booking was successful, and provide you a booking reference number.

But here’s the killer, eighth step:

8. Alternatively, you can call our Customer Service Centre on 13001COAST for help

Surely, seeing all the steps required to complete one transaction (namely booking a junk pick-up for your home, online) spelt out like that would make the website owners realise that the process is far too complicated.

I don't know much about the web but I know what I like

The Web is a bit like an art museum: an amazingly rich resource which is too easily squandered. I have just posted an article on my website (originally presented as a paper at the Ark Group Information Architecture Forum, and at Oz-IA 2009), which introduces principles and techniques used in art museum education and shows how they can be applied in web construction, writing and design. It offers insights into:

• transforming information chaos into information order
• eliminating inessentials
• making personal connections with visitors (or users) through relevance and participation, while minimising cognitive load
• structuring content in terms of what visitors want to know and do, rather than “internal, organisational imperatives”
• the need for unity and consistency, to allow visitors to build up a mental model of the site
• showing a human face, where appropriate.

Read more...

Challenging some myths about art

I thought, for a change, instead of writing about museums and multimedia, I’d write about art – specifically, art appreciation. (This is actually how I came into the museum-web world.)

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Art is a contradiction for many people. On the one hand it surrounds us all the time: most houses have at least one painting hanging on the wall, even if it’s just a reproduction; and one art form in particular – photography – seems to be everywhere around us. On the other hand, art is regarded by many as mysterious and rarefied, something for that special group of people: the “artistic”. Ask someone to say something about art and the most likely response you will get will be, “I like it”, “I don’t like it”, or an indifferent shrug. Why is this? Well, maybe many feel ill-equipped to say something intelligent and don’t want to appear foolish. So, it’s easier to build up a barrier, in the form of myths, between themselves and “Art” (with a capital A). Here are some of my favourite myths:

• “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like.”
  Actually, I don’t know what I like and I don’t want to. I want to be surprised. “Liking” means judging, and judging – too easily – gets in the way of enjoying. In fact it’s possible to enjoy a work of art without liking it.
• “Art should be beautiful.”
  Some people (e.g. art historians and critics) disagree – citing, for example, much of Goya’s work or Picasso’s Guernica – but I say “All great art is beautiful; it’s just that my concept of ‘beauty’ is broader than most people’s.” Sometimes the best way to appreciate “difficult” art is to keep exposing yourself to it. If it’s got something going for it, some lasting quality, it will probably grow on you.
• “To properly appreciate art you need to know the historical background.”
  Actually, background information can sometimes take you away from appreciating an art work. There are two types of information about an artwork: intrinsic and extrinsic. My advice is: get as much of the intrinsic information first. For example, you might read, or hear a tour guide say, “Rembrandt was a miller’s son.” So what? Does that really help you to understand Rembrandt’s art?
• “I’m not artistic.”
  This usually means, “I can’t draw; therefore I have no right to understand art.” Sure, if you’re not a painter you probably wouldn’t know whether the artist used rose madder or vermilion, but that’s just the mechanics of painting. I can’t play the violin but I can enjoy and appreciate a violin concerto.
  Do artists make art for other artists? No (well, mostly not).
• “Modern art is rubbish; a child could do it.”
  There are two responses to this one:
  a. You’d be surprised how hard “easy” art is to make.
  b. One of the breakthroughs of modern art (basically from the 20th century on) was “unlearning” the sophistication of adulthood.
  “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – Picasso
  

100 Best Curator and Museum Blogs

This blog has been listed in the “100 Best Curator and Museum Blogs” page on the Online Universities site (#16 under “Resources & Advice”). It’s in good company, although I wonder why Seb Chan’s Fresh+New(er) is missing?

New Australian Museum website

Have you seen the new Australian Museum website?

australianmuseum.net.au

(New URL, too; www.austmus.gov.au and www.amonline.net.au now redirect to it.)

It has an interesting What's on functionality: Tabs for different audience types: "General", "Kids", "Under 5s", "Teachers", "Members", "Tourists", with exhibitions, (permanent) displays, events and tours listed together.

All 'end-pages' (that is, pages with content, as opposed to links to content) have 2 buttons: "Add comment" and "Add tags" right after the page heading (you have to be registered with "My museum" to use them) and many of them have the name of the person who wrote them (eg: http://australianmuseum.net.au/Australian-Museum-Palaeontology-Collection), linked to a brief staff profile and a form to contact that person.

That last URL reveals an interesting fact about the site: despite the fact that I got to the page by clicking 'Minerals & fossils' > 'More about Fossils' (reveal) > 'Fossils' > 'More about Fossils in the Australian Museum Collections' (reveal) > 'Australian Museum Palaeontology Collection' (yes, 5 clicks!), the URL shows no hierarchy. The CMS apparently serves every page as though it is in the root directory. The advantage is that URLs are shorter than they otherwise would be but still very readable (a boon for search engines), but a disadvantage is that it obscures the context of the page.

But I have a problem with the "expandable links". Eg: About us:
Try to find out "More about Our Organisation"... It's not a link! You have to click the tiny , to reveal the sub-topics.

Still, overall, it's a very engaging site, full of opportunities to explore, contribute and be involved.

MySource mini

Yesterday (Thursday 30 April 2009), I saw the future of Web content management systems: MySource mini. Squiz.net, the company that created MySource Matrix, have essentially released a working subset of what will become the successor to Matrix (or MySource 4). For now, it is designed for "brochure-ware" sites (basically standard pages + forms). The first thing that makes this unique (as far as I'm aware) is that it is a hardware + software bundle. You buy the server, with the CMS (and 11 page designs) pre-installed and then, for a modest annual fee, the server will automatically receive upgrades and patches as they become available. Squiz say the ideal website for this setup is one with up to 1 GB of content receiving up to 100 000 page-views per day.

The second thing that makes this CMS so revolutionary is that it looks so simple. It actually feels like you're editing the site (ie: the 'front-end') directly. This is very different to the usual conceptual split between 'front-end' and 'back-end'. But the simplicity is an illusion – in a good sense. The technology is incredibly sophisticated.

Noteworthy features include:

• An inline WYSIWYG editor that, unlike others, doesn't rely on the browser's own code libraries. This means that it is truly cross-platform and cross-browser compatible.
• Auto-save (and manual save, of course), with 'revert'
• Image library with generous thumbnails
• A feature that tells the website manager who's logged in and what they're doing (and have been doing)
• All designs have thumbnail screenshots
• System tells you what designs are being used and by what pages
• System tells you what files attached to a design aren't actually being used by that design (also what files are missing)
• Complete server cache control, with a day-by-day report on cache performance (and traffic)
• Alias URLs (useful for marketing campaigns) that are not handled as redirects and are never indexed by Google
• Workflow that can work serially (approver 1, then approver 2, then approver 3, etc.) or in parallel (approvers can approve in any order, or simultaneously)
• The ability to choose a workflow (assuming you have sufficient permissions)
• Versioning, with a timeline (you can't roll back, like in Matrix, but you can view, and export, any previous version of a page as a PDF – much less resource-hungry than full rollback)
• Context-sensitive help

There are a number of interface features that are so appropriate and so beautifully realised that they raise the bar for interface design. Such as:

• Timelines with draggable 'viewports' and changeable scales (day, month, year)
• Task panes (eg: for finding an image) that are part of their parent windows, but appear to be floating in front
• Asset browsers with a (Mac-like) column interface
• A liberal, and appropriate, use of thumbnail snapshots
• A yes/no slider control
• The 'help-pointer': a small, bouncing graphic that shows you exactly where a particular interface widget is, so you can follow steps in the contextual help system

Some of these are so innovative and useful that I expect other software companies will try to copy them.

Criticisms? Very few, and most (if not all) of these are features that Squiz.net just haven't built into mini yet, but are planning to. Such as:

• No safe-editing, meaning that you can't use the approval process workflow on live pages – instead, changes happen immediately
• Only 3 kinds of form inputs: text, pop-up selectors and radio buttons
• No centralised list of current alias URLs
• No calendar, e-commerce or bulk email

Matrix is an undeniably powerful system; however its back-end interface feels complex and crowded, because almost every feature is available at all times. As a result, the controls (especially in the sitemap area) are small and finnicky. In contrast, mini feels clean and spacious, because the interface is focused on what you need to do at that time, but it also makes the context clear (so you always know where you are)

This is indeed the future of CMS.

More information about MySource mini

30 min. video demo (29 Oct 2008)