Here is a Flickr archive of their infographics.

Brianna Sylver has written a nice overview of design research methods and then summarizes by showing when to use which method. The comments on this article debate the use of the term 'market research' over 'design research'. I won't fret over vocabulary. If you prefer the term 'design research', just use it in place of 'market research'. Confused already?

Gerry McGovern takes information to task :-): "The world we work and live in is becoming more information-based. What that means is that we complete more and more of the tasks of our lives as a result of accessing information. This information is active, driven, purposeful, and measured. How is it measured? By whether it has helped people complete the tasks that they have used this information to help them complete."

The field of Content Strategy (CS) is galloping forward. Here is a presentation by Karen McGrane where she provides a good framework (slide 80,81) to focus on content strategy. Content Strategy: Content is King!View more PDF documents from Karen Mcgrane.

Gerry McGovern on new skills for internal communicators: "Intranet internal communications is radically different from print internal communications. The intranet internal communicator facilitates rather than dictates. They help people find. They guide rather than lead. They support the completion of a task such as checking up a procedure or a job vacancy. They focus on creating clear menus and links... This is a call to arms. You young ambitious communicators, get involved in making search work better, focus relentlessly on the quality of menus and links, simplify the steps and words used in software applications, make policies easier to understand and forms easier to complete. There is so much to do, so many areas where you can make your organization more productive, efficient and effective."

Insightful post by David Armano on sustaining a social media effort in the enterprise: Seeding. As you plan your approach for designing your social system, take into account that you'll have to invest to grow your effort into a healthy ecosystem that can produce data, insights or even new ideas. People will be required in order to do this. Feeding. Whether it's a community, Wiki or internal collaboration solution you've put in place, it will have to be fed with a steady stream of content. Some of this can be automated and some of it can come from your participants--but there has to be some editorial judgment made for every piece of content and functionality. People are required for that. Weeding. A productive social business design will require efforts to prune and weed out material that can inhibit its growth (just like a garden). In some cases, automated moderation services can do this--but in others people will be required to ensure that interactions are productive. Weeding can also include creating a separate environment--for example, Nokia's "blog hub" encourages employees to vent freely internally (using anonymous aliases).You can bet that someone is looking at the data and analyzing it. If not, they should be.

A good introduction to collaboration by Scott London. Wonderful read for anyone who wants to get a quick understanding into this popular topic. "Despite the shortage of formal research on collaboration, however, there is a growing body of literature on the subject. This paper reviews some of the principal sources in order to better understand: What is collaboration? How does it differ from other models of cooperation? What are the prerequisites and dynamics of effective collaboration? What makes an effective collaborative leader? What are some of the obstacles to successful collaboration? And how do we create more collaborative communities? The paper includes an annotated survey of some of the key works on the subject." Related article: Collaboration in Action: A Survey of Community Collaboratives

Got this link from ColumnTwo on yet another research technique called laddering. "Asking Why? during research interviews seems rather obvious and straightforward. I have always tried to make it a point to structure my research interview scripts to ask Why? when following up on questions I’ve asked participants. However, the Means End Chain theory and the laddering method provide a focus and a direction for the Why? questions. While the actual implementation of the laddering technique may be difficult and cumbersome, I found a general awareness of the goals for asking Why? to be helpful. My hope is that using the essential concepts of the laddering technique will help me uncover people’s root consequences and values, providing insights that I can leverage in my design projects."

Michael Sampson has written an interesting article on state of calendering applications out there. "There" is the nirvana of calendaring, whereby you can set up a meeting with anyone, viewing their free-busy time within the context of your standard calendaring client. It’s seamless—it works across Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, Google Calendar, Meeting Maker, Apple iCal, and other systems. It’s automatic—the free-busy information shows anytime you enter their name, adding them to an upcoming meeting. Basically, it just works... That’s not the case today, even for products from the big vendors...

The idea of having a team to manage and sustain the intranet still raises eyebrows. It was not that long ago that the intranet had the same position in the organisation as the e-mail exchange server -- a tool from the IT department that needs little intervention. Hopefully all this is changing. But this change also means that the organisation has to deal with skills gaps. They either have to groom internal talent or source talent from the industry. Both are frustrating affairs when you don’t know what you’re dealing with. This is where James Robertson’s book, What every intranet team should know, shines. I was consulting for an intranet redesign when James announced his book. I ordered multiple copies immediately. I gave one copy to the client’s project team and I’m happy to say that the conversations are at a higher level these days -- more focused on action rather than on conceptual understanding. Many of the ideas that James presents in his book are ideas that he’s already touched upon in his resourceful blog, ColumnTwo. However, having all these ideas arranged for a quick read, and in fine print I must add, is quite priceless. It just works better. So if you want to have more focused conversations with your clients or stakeholders around intranet management, just grab a copy of this book and give it to them.

A very nicely written article on using content templates to elicit content from one or many subject matter experts. These templates are used depend on the publishing model used for site development. "One tool I’ve found extremely helpful whenever more than a handful of people will touch the content on a new site is the content template. A content template is a simple document that serves two purposes: it’s a paragraph-level companion to your website’s wireframes (or other IA blueprints), and it’s a simple, effective means of getting useful information from your experts to your writers. (It is not the same thing as an HTML template you feed to your content management system.)"

Interesting presentation on the state of ECM by AIIM. Check out the stats on Sharepoint. AIIM State of the ECM Industry researchView more presentations from Atle Skjekkeland.

A poll (PDF) by The Harris Poll shows that internet banner ads are ignored while internet search engine ads are not that bad. However, both these types of internet ads fall short of TV ads which are still preferred. Over one-third of Americans (37%) say that television ads are most helpful in making their purchase decision while 17% say newspaper ads are most helpful and 14% say the same about Internet search engine ads. Radio ads (3%) and Internet banner ads (1%) are not considered helpful by many people. Over one-quarter of Americans (28%), however, say that none of these types of advertisements are helpful to them in the purchase decision making process. Via Harvard Daily Stat

Ace Online Schools has posted a collection of virtual tours. Cool stuff.

Interesting article in the latest Interactions magazine on storytelling in organizations. Gary Hirsch and Brad Robertson describe a framework called the "story plotter" which they use to classify stories into 4 categories along 2 dimensions: positive and negative; current and what could be. The 4 categories are: Stories of fact (current, positive): these are stories that have happened in the organization's past can can be used to guide its future. Stories of contradictions (current, negative): these are stories (or like Snowden would like to call them 'antistories) that are currently being told about how the organization is contradicting its stated values. Stories of possibility and revolution (positive, what could be): these are stories that can used to direct the organizations actions towards a desired state. Stories of fear and anxiety (negative, what could be): these are stories of concern that people have about the organization (or in Snowden's terms, the 'hell' state). Interesting classification. Definitely not exhaustive, but like the authors argue, actionable.

Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox "Social software is not a trend that can be ignored. It's affecting fundamental change in how people expect to communicate, both with each other and the companies they do business with. And companies can't just draw a line in the sand and say it's okay for employees to use Web 2.0 to communicate with customers, but it's not okay to use it when communicating with each other."

Donna Spencer has written a simple yet comforting piece on how she thinks through the draft IA for a small website. "When you have made something up - and I don’t care whether you do it on a whiteboard, in a spreadsheet or in your head - then start thinking about whether it will work for the users, and whether it will work for the content. Revise and play with your idea until these things start to fall together."

I stumbled upon this site by the Australian Government's Department of Finance & Deregulation. They have a comprehensive collection of guides and checklists for managing their online properties. The collection covers IA to content strategy to intranets to KM. Cool!

An article from the New Scientist has Palo Alto Research Center in California warning that Wikipedia's growth is tailing off and extreme governance could be behind it. "Chi thinks that Wikipedia now includes so much information that some editors have turned from creating new articles to improving existing ones, resulting in more disputes about edits. Such disputes are not a level playing field because established editors sometimes draw on extensive knowledge of Wikipedia's guidelines to overwhelm opposition in a practice dubbed 'wikilawyering."

Jean Hollis Weber wrote this article in 2007 but it's still relevant today given the recent focus on content strategy. "This article provides information that will help you in planning and developing a style guide. You’ll find information about the purposes of a style guide and guidelines for what should (and should not) be included, whether to develop one or more style guides, and how detailed the style guide should be. At the end of the article, you’ll find a sample style guide outline (in PDF format) that illustrates many of the details discussed in this article."

Jeff Cram has written about 3 types of content management system projects. The technical migration The visual design The strategic redesign I think this captures a lot of projects I've done over the years. However, I'd like to add 'The politically motivated' to the list. These are projects that make you wonder why they are "on" in the first place. [Via ColumnTwo]

J.Boye has published an article that lists "[CMS] vendors you should examine closer and potentially send your RFP to? Interestingly J.Boye is a vendor neutral consulting firm, so this list might turn out to be quite influential.

Eric Reiss shares web writing tips that he has gathered over the years. It sems that George Orwell’s rules are a must-have in any such list. George Orwell, the English author of 1984, Animal Farm and other classics, has six rules of writing. Here they are - they’re all gems: 1) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print. 2) Never use a long word where a short one will do. 3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. 4) Never use the passive voice when you can use the active 5) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday equivalent. 6) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous!