Working with Content Management Systems: Process, Architecture and Design @ IA Summit
I was at the Information Architecture Summit in Montreal earlier this month and am still blogging the sessions I attended. Other people blogged the summit too.
[SP: those are sketchy notes.]
Lane Becker, Jeff Veen (left to right.)
Lane [LB]: First of all i must thank you for joining us at 8:30 in the
morning, on the last day of the conference. I know if I weren't
speaking I wouldn't be here.
Jeff [JV]: I'm Jeff Veen, this is Lane Becker. He and I are partners at Adaptive Path.
Instead of a straight panel discussion what we'd like to do is use what
we've learned about the process of using CMS to lead a discussion on
CMSes.
LB: We roll CMSes out and there's not a lot of forethought.
JV: Meet Leroy, webmaster for Blexo Widget Mfg Co. He built the Blexo
site six years ago. It has grown a lot since then. Now, Leroy has a
small team to manage it all. They do everything by hand. (The pages are
static. You need one of Leroy's guys to change anything.)
Buffy works in Marketing at Blexo, she helps customers understand
Blexo's products. She explain the products on Web pages. But the
products change all the time. Buffy works a lot of hours.
Every time Buffy needs to change a page, Leroy has to do it. Do you think Leroy has time for this? Everyone's mad.
LB: Buffy hates Leroy.
JV: One day, Bruno came to Blexo to sell some software. He told them
about a magic system that could solve all of their problems. It would
be expensive, but they could change content instantly.
Blexo bought the software. But it took a year to get going, and cost
twice what they were told! And in the end, Buffy still asks Leroy for
all the changes.
Now everyone is angrier. And Blexo is out a lot of cash. And the site is as out of date as it has been.
Does anyone see anything familiar? (lots of hands raise) What went wrong?
A1. Thinking that tech is a silver bullet that will solve all your problems.
Jeff. Yes. That's what vendors and consultants do, right?
A2. Sometimes dealing with the CMS can be harder than dealing with HTML.
JV. Blexo didn't spend time accurately defining what their problems were.
Vendors don't do content. Bruno's company only solved the technical problems.
It is impossible to make an editor or librarian out of software. (despite what vendors say.)
Blexo had never thought about taxonomies, metadata, or their editorial process.
First manage content, then personalize.
Blexo was enamored by the lure of "advanced functionality". The project
to fix their content suddenly turned into a massive rethinking of their
Web strategy. "Well if we're going to get our hands dirty, let's do it
all at once." Bad, bad strategy.
People don't want to change how they work.
Buffy insisted on continuing to use Word to edit.
Do not fix what is not broken.
Cites "Content Management Tools Fail"
To manage content:
1. Get a team together. Engineer = reality check. Designer. Marketing guy.
2. Talk to the people who are going to be using it. Figure out how they work.
3. Design a CMS user interface based on that.
Kyle Pero, gem quotes: "CMS as a whole is just an insult to our field."
"There's this perception that a CMS is somehow meant to replace the
whole IA team... if we have to hire people the project is a failure."
"...There are some people who have no business publishing to a
website."
Start with a quick win.
Do not change paradigms.
Try not to redesign. That would be like putting lipstick on the... uh, bad metaphor.
Expectation management. The less you promise, the more you deliver, the better you are.
A search for hamburgers on McDonald's site yields 0 results.
Best Cellars' categorization is based on how people experience wine.
Fizzy, sweet, soft, etc. There are stores where wine bottles are
organized that way. It takes yhou literally 2 mins to pick up your wine.
Faucet Facet Finder at Kohler. Broadmoor hotel. fisherbikes.com.
[That was an animated discussion and I wasn't able to capture all of it... I left for another session at this point.]
 3:01:35 PM
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