dyhatchett (dyhatchett)'s Public Profile in the Diigo Community

Member since Aug 18, 2007, follows 0 people, 0 public groups, 40 public bookmarks (40 total).

More »

Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

Introducing Project Requirements | evolt.org on 2007-12-26
- Requirements Baseline
  
  This is a Requirements Document that has been approved by the Sponsor
  and is supported by stakeholders and main members of the project team.
  It is the formal, contractual definition of what the Sponsor wants, and
  that the project team has agreed to deliver (remember Contract Law 101:
  contract=offer + acceptance). It must not be changed without a
  formal approval to do so.
- Once you've gathered and documented the Project Requirements, you need
  to check that you've truly understood them and that they accurately
  reflect the understanding of your main stakeholders. You go about this
  by effectively locking yourself in a room with those people, and staying
  there until you've got a common understanding of every single one of the
  Requirements, and an agreement on your Exclusions.
- 8 more annotations...
- - Document everything in writing.
  - If you remember, the final Requirements will be the basis of every
    single piece of planning you will do for the project. So getting them
    definitively agreed and not subject to interpretation by clients is
    essential. You must produce documentation that is clear and concise,
    using graphics, models and other visuals if it helps clarify what you
    mean. Your documentation must also be detailed enough for anyone else
    to plan or start work on delivering the Requirements.
  - The Sponsor should have a lot of input into answering these questions,
    not least because she will have to agree with your definition, and
    you'll save a lot of trouble the earlier you do this.
  - Step 3: Do We Really Need the Moon on a Stick?
    
    In any exercise in gathering Needs, you're going to end up with a
    mixture of must-haves, some should-haves, and some nice-to-haves.
    You now need to split those three categories into two: Requirements
    and Exclusions. Or alternatively, must-haves and everything else.
    Every Requirement will be delivered in the project; everything else
    will either be entirely rejected - either because it's not technically
    feasible or the client won't pay for it - or deferred to a later
    project or release.
    
    Here's the Acid Test for which box each Need should go into:
    
    Is the Need part of the original intent of the
    project? An example of an Exclusion on this basis might be
    reporting sick days using the vacation tool.
    
    Was the cost of delivering the need included in the
    original estimate? Assuming that this has already been
    produced of course.
  - Step 2: What do you Need?
    
    Now you've got a feeling for the context, you can start asking
    questions (open ones, ideally) that will drive out what it is
    that the sponsor needs. You'll also need to talk to anyone who's
    affected by the project, or at least a representative of each group
    to produce Needs for every major stakeholder.
    You'll need some standard information for almost any project, such as:
    
    Why do you think we're doing this project?
    What's your role in the project and in the business?
    How will what we're doing affect your role?
    What functionality do you need?
    What would success look like for you?
    How do you define project completion?
    Which staff should have access to it?
    What hours must it be operational?
    How is an employee's vacation allowance calculated?
    How will we know if an employee leaves?
    What happens if an employee doesn't use all their allowance?
    
    You should also be reading all project documentation - contracts,
    proposals, statements of work etc - as these nearly always contain
    strong hints of what stakeholders are expecting.
  - So step 1 is really Understand the Goals. How do you
    do that? With luck, it'll be documented for you (and if it's not,
    the old PM rule of If it's not documented, it's a rumour holds
    true), but unless you enjoy working on assumptions, you talk to the
    Sponsor and other key stakeholders (i.e. people who have an interest in
    the outcome of the project). Useful questions to ask include:
    
    Why are we doing this?
    If we're successful, what would be the outcome for you?
    What would happen if we didn't do this project?
  - As meeting the Requirements is the definition of success, they're the
    basis for all your plans: task list, estimates of time and cost, test
    plans, the lot. So you need to have them before you can accurately
    do any planning. So you need them as early as you possibly can, in
    as much detail as you can.
  - ecause Requirements are the things that the Project
    must deliver, they are the absolute definition of whether the
    project has achieved its Objectives. Meet all the Requirements in full,
    and you've done the job. Fail to meet any element of any of them, and
    you haven't.
A List Apart: Articles: Avoid Edge Cases by Designing Up Front on 2007-12-26
- Assess objectives and requirements
  Conduct scenarios
  Produce wireframes (and establish site architecture)
  Produce sketches, comps, and (if necessary) prototypes
  Draft the style guide
  Produce templates and stylesheets
  Write code
  Test presentation and behavior
  Reconcile test results, if possible
  Publish
- Fully detailed snapshots:
  >
  
  For all their benefits, wireframes and style guides still need the benefit of a trained audience to realize their full potential. A composite can be attached to an e-mail without qualification and sent to a sponsor, even an untrained one, for approval.
  >
  
  Lossless archives of project assets:
  >
  
  Most of the shops I’ve worked with produce comps as Photoshop documents which are not only used to create the flat snapshot images presented to the project sponsor, but are also delivered as-is to the site producers. The power of Photoshop’s user interface makes it easy for designers to compose and describe the visual aspect of a site’s layout, while simultaneously providing any photography, rendered type, or artwork that constitute the project assets.
  > I could say even more here, but Adobe’s not paying me to write this article.
  
  Deliverable by the designer alone:
  >
  
  Every member of the team has a deliverable for which they’re responsible, and a team that eschews comps also deprives its designer of demonstrable credit for the success of a well-executed project. Additionally, a composite is the best platform for assessing design quality in a single glance, which is something the designer
  >
  needs
  >
  in order to do his job well.
  >
- 17 more annotations...
- - The wireframes and style guide explain why and how things are to be done, but it’s the composites that do the best job of explaining what the site is, from end to end. Compared to the dry, technical nature of the rest of the project documentation, comps are colorful, approachable, and salable…and thus assets with which great care should be taken.
  - Deliverable by the designer alone:
    Every member of the team has a deliverable for which they’re responsible, and a team that eschews comps also deprives its designer of demonstrable credit for the success of a well-executed project. Additionally, a composite is the best platform for assessing design quality in a single glance, which is something the designer needs in order to do his job well.
  - Lossless archives of project assets:
    Most of the shops I’ve worked with produce comps as Photoshop documents which are not only used to create the flat snapshot images presented to the project sponsor, but are also delivered as-is to the site producers. The power of Photoshop’s user interface makes it easy for designers to compose and describe the visual aspect of a site’s layout, while simultaneously providing any photography, rendered type, or artwork that constitute the project assets.
  - Fully detailed snapshots:
    For all their benefits, wireframes and style guides still need the benefit of a trained audience to realize their full potential. A composite can be attached to an e-mail without qualification and sent to a sponsor, even an untrained one, for approval.
  - Earlier identification of user experience issues:
    Scenarios probably won’t catch all of the possible UX flaws in a site or application, but they will reveal many of the flaws likely to force multiple production iterations—before design, much less production, even starts.
  - Well defined scope:
    Since the assessment defines exactly what needs to be built and the resources that will be made available to build it, time and progress management are made easier.
  - The time requirements for maintenance and extension are greatly reduced—even before the site is launched—and time spent planning the project usually saves time iterating production prior to launch. Finally, the beefed-up process is imperative for teams that actually have lives outside of work: teams that can’t accurately measure their progress rarely get full weekends off, much less earn the unqualified confidence of their sponsors.
  - The best kind of style guide will also explain the rationale for each recommendation or rule it lays out.
  - These elements should be discussed in the style guide with the entire life cycle of the site in mind. Instead of letting the designer compose layouts as if they were meant for print, a style guide explains how a given situation should be handled—for example, the treatment of blockquotes, how much whitespace should exist between sidebar sections, the desired aspect ratio of inline graphics, or what icons should be used for list item bullets…even on lists that haven’t been thought up yet.
  - Before the style guide comes together, a design sketch will usually need approval from the client. The sketch incorporates the layout described by the wireframes, but includes most of the other elements under the control of the art director or designer: colors, typography, illustration, photography, and composition details that are important at the section or element level. Smaller details—tweaks, if you will—can wait for later discussion, but the approved sketch should be complete enough to begin a style guide.
  - However, the information left out of the wireframes out can be put into a leg’s-length list of specifications that should be established in a style guide.
  - If you translate wireframes into plain pages that merely position elements of your layout, you can test with real users instead of imaginary ones.
  - Wireframes identify and locate all of a site’s significant elements, such as page headings, navigation, primary content, sidebars, and application interfaces. A single wireframe should be used to describe the basic layout of the entire site, but you should also create wireframes for section indexes and application interfaces.
    
    Wireframes protect project participants from unpleasant surprises. They also provide the information needed to define the relationships between elements of site content, and the ways in which those relationships will be described in the site’s stylesheets.
    
    Effective wireframes can also provide a focus for discussing the behavior of the site’s layout and interface, leading to resolution of any fixed-vs.-proportional, Ajax-vs.-static, and typography questions that remain open after scenarios are played out.
  - Armed with a detailed draft assessment, the team will know enough about the site to roleplay likely visitor sessions. Roleplaying will come naturally to some, and for the rest, it’s easy to explain.
    
    Create at least one imaginary friend who bears a strong resemblance to the visitors you want to see on the site. Then create another imaginary friend (or two) whom you think would be likely to visit the site. If you want to be thorough, create one last imaginary friend whom you desperately hope will not visit, but who would still be in a position to influence others’ opinions of the sponsor if they did visit.
    
    Since the assessment will have offered some hint of visitors’ likely goals, you can then roleplay visitor sessions. With each iteration of this process, you change different factors: user objectives, interface/architecture elements, common external obstacles, color use, themes, layouts, content weights, and so on.
    
    Done properly, this step will establish the human factors of the design that will best suit the sponsor’s expectations. However, it can be expensive; effective scenario work generally consumes a dozen or so man-hours for a relatively simple site.
  - Who do we want to visit the site?
    What are we publishing that those visitors will find important?
    Where are our visitors in terms of geography, ambient environment, and client platform?
    Why does the sponsor want the site built—what are its business objectives?
    When should the site be launched, phased, maintained, and finally taken down or redesigned?
    How are we going to build the site—what tools are we using, and what’s the budget?
  - Assessment:
    A formal and detailed assessment of the project allows its scope to be properly defined.
    Personas and scenarios:
    Executed with care, scenario roleplaying identifies likely obstacles to positive user experience, which can then be removed from the design prior to signoff.
    Wireframes:
    The guidelines established by wireframes enforce layout consistency, discouraging the designer from composing everything as if it’s intended for print.
    Style guide:
    Adoption of a style guide allows collaboration between all team members to the end of finalizing the site’s design. Even clumsy execution of a style guide requires the graphic designer to “think out loud,” allowing needless edge cases to be caught and stopped before work begins on the prototypes of the work that will actually be put into production.
  - On many projects, I see the following process followed, and willingly follow it myself:
    
    Acknowledge objectives
    Design
    Produce templates and stylesheets
    Write code
    Test presentation and behavior
    Publish
Web Strategy: Integrating a Social Media Strategy on 2007-12-24
- Each tool serves a different purpose
  
  Blogs, Pocdasts, Twitter, Social Networks, RSS, Wikis, Forums and god knows what else each have their strength and weakness. You’ll have to learn how each of these tools are used differently, the best way to learn? Experiment, using as a personal tool first.
The Many Forms of Web Marketing for the 2007 Web Strategist on 2007-12-24
- The notable attributes include a ‘community’ or ‘viral’ and ‘conversational’ tone to them.
- I) Tagging, Collective Tools
  
  I’ve discussed how tagging can be used to harvest marketing intelligence as well as help your SEO results. See using Delicious for Market Research. Properly tagging content as well as researching how tags are used will help communities find your content.
- 16 more annotations...
- - H) Instant Messaging, Presence
    
    Clever marketers are figuring out how to involve real time conversational media using Instant Messaging tools, presence, and status tools, such as Twitter. These tools tie to online and mobile devices. My experience with Generation Y is that they are using IM as their primary way to communicate over all other mediums.
  - G) Online Video
    
    While Online Video has existed for many years on the web, it’s most notably been gaining traction from the video blog, or video sharing sites of great popularity such as Google Video, or it’s recent acquisition YouTube.
  - F) Widget Marketing
    
    Widgets are light weight web applications that are being embedded in websites, blogs, forums, and social sites.
  - D) Podcast Marketing
    
    Many corporations are reaching their community though on demand content on mobile devices, the key to this medium is certainly in the ‘pull’ strategy.
  - B) Social Networking, Forums, Wikis, Collaboration
    
    I’m tying these two together as both features are starting to merge in many modern versions. While founded from early usenet days, forums allow for communities to form around similar ideas and collaborate. Approximately 33% of companies deploy forums. Wikis have also been used to tie industries together as well as. Savvy marketers are starting to also realize the power of social networking sites in every flavor of focus, including image sharing sites like flickr for marketing.
  - 5) Community Marketing and Social Media Marketing
    
    eMarketer’s research indicates that this is the fastest growing area of growth for Web Advertising and Marketing is in the Social Media space. In my experience, the awareness rate is around 30% and deployment 10-20% for most corporations.
  - C) Sponsorship and /Cross branding/Affiliate
    
    This is a method of promoting your brand with the right audience in which the property is rewarded for integrating your brand. This can occur on content sites, shows, media properties, blogs, podcasts, and just about everything else.
  - 4) Brand Extension
    
    This is not a new concept, it’s simply been applied to web properties. The concept is simple, where your audience is, your brand should be also.
  - C) Syndicated Content and RSS
    
    I lump Syndication into this category as I see it as being an evolution as marketing shifts from Push to Pull. RSS is quickly becoming a method where users can opt-in for additional content. For more information start with Six RSS Resources for the Internet Professional or Web Strategist
  - A) Email Marketing
    
    While certainly not completely native to the web, they certainly are tied. Modern email campaigns (sometimes even direct marketing) involves barely personal emails blasted out to indviduals on a mailing list. These modern versions typically have the option to be HTML based, and have hyperlinks brining users back to the corporate site or Microsite. I hear the conversion rate for these are 2-5%, and typically deploy a positive ROI. Having spoken with many Web directors and Marketers, this is a task best suited for an outsourced vendor.
  - B) Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
    
    Frequently, companies will hire a specialized search company to purchase keywords that will help drive contextual links in search results. These ads are contextually displayed based upon the search query.
  - A) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
    
    Many web groups at large corporations have a document, a process, or even a dedicated resource who’s goal is to make sure web content is easily found, indexed, managed and correctly served in search results.
  - 2) Search Marketing
  - F) Regionalization
    
    In today’s global web, websites are translated, reformatted and segmented by region, culture, class. Be sure to focus on France, China, Japan as fast emerging languages. Also see report on internet usage in third world countries.
  - D) Interactive Web Marketing
    
    The web is more than a ‘read only’ medium, unlike other mediums, companies can make the website interactive, encouraging a new dynamic of engagement. There’s a variety of technologies to use from uses of Javascript, AJAX and Flash based.
  - C) Microsites for Segmentation
    
    Typically deployed around new product launches or campaign focuses, or specific market segments, these often short term websites are used for calling specific attraction. They typically have a unique URL and are tied to an integrate campaign. See Microsoft’s Origami microsite. Caution: some companies overly deploy these microsites and end up with a distributed and unfocused web strategy.
Four Levels of Engagement in the Blogosphere | High Context Consulting on 2007-12-24
- his level includes all of 1 plus actively commenting on relevant blog posts, adding comments to a Wikipedia discussion page, contacting bloggers directly to share your side of the story, etc. It also includes making connections with groups and individuals using social networking tools, such as LinkedIn, Facebook or MySpace. You are going beyond listening by reaching out to those who are leading the online conversation.
- 1: Listening
  
  At this level, you are regularly reading key blogs in your field or industry. You have subscribed to relevant keyword alerts on Google and Technorati. You search Wikipedia for articles that are relevant to your issues and analyze how well they do or do not represent them. You share what you hear and learn throughout your company so that others are more aware of what is going on. This is still largely passive but at least you are following along.
- 2 more annotations...
- - 0: Unengaged
    1: Listening
    2: Commenting and Connecting
    3: Fully Engaged
  - different levels of participation in the online world these days.
What is Web Strategy? | High Context Consulting on 2007-12-24
- your task as a web strategist is to develop supporting strategies to execute that vision online.
- our web strategy should be a framework for guiding the choices that determine the nature and direction of your web site. It should determine which audiences you are going to address. It should determine which content and service you chose to offer online. And as a framework, it should help you to rationally assess and deal with both opportunities and challenges as they arise.
- 1 more annotations...
- - “We define strategy as the framework which guides those choices that determine the nature and direction of an organization.” (Page 17.)
The Bamboo Project Blog: Blogging for Learning on 2007-11-09
- Good learning requires students to actively interact with the materials they are learning--to reflect and apply and use this information. Tools like blogs make this possible for individuals to do much more easily than in the past.
- So how to make blogging for learning an intentional process? Carter McNamara has a nice set of questions to reflect upon in maintaining a learning journal:
  1. What learning have you accomplished (or are you accomplishing)
  lately?
  
  a) What experience spawned that learning?
  
  b) What learning did you accomplish from that experience?
  
  c) How can you carry this learning forward to improve
  your life? Your work?
  
  2. What learning might you accomplish in
  the near future?
  
  a) What experience might spawn that learning?
  
  b) What learning might you accomplish from that experience?
  
  c) How might you carry this learning forward to improve
  your life? Your work?
Perspectives From the Pipeline: Blogs as Online Learning and Low Cost Nonprofit Professional Development on 2007-11-09
- Stephen outlines three important components that make online learning effective:
  Interaction - social contact enhances learning
  Usability - needs to be simple and consistent
  Relevance - online learning should be relevant to you right now
Online Articles Should Have Seven Words Or Less In The Title on 2007-10-16
- Online Articles - Breaking The Rules
  
  The Rule: 3 to 7 words in the title.
  
  Short titles format better, and are often
  "punchier." That is, they grab attention better. The
  fact that you are reading this article tells us that an eleven-word
  title can also grab attention. A title should have a decent keyword
  in it, indicate what the article is about, and be catchy. If
  it takes more than seven words to do this effectively, break
  the rule! Shorter words may help if you have ten of them, though.
- Online articles are different from print
  articles in many important respects. They need to be keyword
  optimized to be found by more readers, for example. They need
  to be shorter, to fit the space requirements and short attention
  spans of the internet world. They need to not only satisfy the
  reader, but to get the reader to click through to the web sites
  they are written to promote.
How Is Online Writing Different? on 2007-10-16
- Attention spans are shorter online. You
  need to get right to the point in fewer words. The ideal online
  article length is somewhere between 400 and 700 words.
- Online articles need to have the right
  "keywords."

Highlighter, Sticky notes, Tagging, Groups and Network: integrated suite dramatically boosting research productivity. Learn more »

Join Diigo

dyhatchett 's Profile

More »

Tags

More »

Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

Requirements Baseline

Step 3: Do We Really Need the Moon on a Stick?

Step 2: What do you Need?

Fully detailed snapshots:
>

Lossless archives of project assets:
>

Deliverable by the designer alone:
>

Deliverable by the designer alone:

Lossless archives of project assets:

Fully detailed snapshots:

Earlier identification of user experience issues:

Well defined scope:

Assessment:

Personas and scenarios:

Wireframes:

Style guide:

1: Listening

Online Articles - Breaking The Rules

More »

Groups

Me elsewhere

dyhatchett 's Profile

More » Tags

More » Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

Requirements Baseline

Step 3: Do We Really Need the Moon on a Stick?

Step 2: What do you Need?

Fully detailed snapshots:>

Lossless archives of project assets:>

Deliverable by the designer alone:>

Deliverable by the designer alone:

Lossless archives of project assets:

Fully detailed snapshots:

Earlier identification of user experience issues:

Well defined scope:

Assessment:

Personas and scenarios:

Wireframes:

Style guide:

1: Listening

Online Articles - Breaking The Rules

More » Groups

Me elsewhere

More »

Tags

More »

Recent Bookmarks and Annotations

Fully detailed snapshots:
>

Lossless archives of project assets:
>

Deliverable by the designer alone:
>

More »

Groups