Archives for the category "content management"

US courts enforce accessibility legislation

February 21, 2008 · Posted in content management, user experience  

A U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruling issued Sept. 7, 2006 raises the bar for online businesses, requiring them to meet the terms of the Americans with Disabilities Act just as offline business have been required to do since the law’s passage in 1990. The court ruled that retailers may be [...]

Northern Voice blogging and social media conference

February 19, 2008 · Posted in Content Development, content management  

This weekend, I am off to Northern Voice, a blogging and social media conference. At least three of the cci2008 presenters are involved with Northern Voice which, after all, is all about content convergence and divergence, aggregation and syndication. If you haven’t bought tickets for Northern Voice, you can’t attend – it’s sold out – [...]

The Content Wrangler talks content management on technology radio show

January 16, 2008 · Posted in content management  

Scott Abel of The Content Wrangler discussed his predictions for content management trends with technology lawyer Scott Draughon on MyTechnologyLawyer Radio Show on January 17, 2008. You can hear a playback of the show on the site, and get an idea of what Scott sees coming down the pike for the rest of this year.

The Value of Personas

November 17, 2007 · Posted in content management, Information Design and Usability  

A post on the new Rockley blog got me thinking about personas. If I’ve learned anything over the past number of years as a consultant, it’s not to gloss over steps just because the digital thinkers consider it “the fluffy stuff.” The step of creating personas is one of those steps. Clients, particularly engineers and [...]

DITA, DTDs, FrameMaker, and other tools

July 8, 2007 · Posted in content management  

A couple of people have asked lately what the difference is between a DTD and DITA, and in one case FrameMaker vs XML, so I thought the topic of schemas was worth discussion. Here, we’ll cover what a DTD really means, how to compare it to a DITA schema, and figure out where an authoring [...]

Understanding the connection between persona development and business impact

July 6, 2007 · Posted in Content Development, content management, Information Design and Usability  

When companies want to skimp in a development process, whether that be for a web application, a desktop application, a content management implementation, a usability project, or a documentation set, the first thing they’ll cut (if they even thought of it at all) is doing persona development. They’ll say it’s not important, or that it [...]

Usability of content management systems is discussed on multiple continents

June 14, 2007 · Posted in content management, Information Design and Usability  

James Robertson of Step Two Designs just published an article on the 11 usability principles for CMS products. As usual, James has said what needs to be said about the topic, simply and eloquently. He has hit all the major points. But one of the pieces that I don’t think gets hammered home often enough [...]

Why [some] tech writers don’t like content management

June 8, 2007 · Posted in Content Development, content management  

Moving to content management means a big shift in the way technical communicators work and the way they think about their work. With some sweeping generalizations (because the very nature of “top ten” lists require such generalizations), here are my five top reasons that technical communicators don’t like content management: The personality types drawn to [...]

Everything You Wanted to Know about Content Management

March 15, 2007 · Posted in content management  

As promised, I’ve posted the slides from the STC webinar Everything You Wanted to Know about Content Management, But Were Afraid to Ask. The experience of presenting the webinar is a bit odd. I sat in my office, staring at the screen, with no visual or audio feedback to let me know if the audience [...]

When site redesigns go wrong, badly wrong

January 25, 2007 · Posted in content management, Information Design and Usability  

Canada’s airline, aptly named Air Canada, has a loyalty program called Aeroplan. Here are the reasons that “loyalty” doesn’t equate in the user experience equation. Before the site redesign, the site was usable, more or less. With a little hunt and peck, you could find what most of what you wanted. It was a little [...]

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »