Working as a member of various Web teams for more than a decade now has taught me that the most effective approach is to work with other Web experts who sub-specialize in content strategy, visual design, information architecture and usability.
Multidisciplinary teams seem to be the solution to large and even mid-size Web projects. I was curious to hear how other experts manage the challenges of Web projects. I asked some colleagues who I think are exceptional for their outstanding talent and commitment to the digital strategy field. Their answers fascinated me, and I hope you will find them useful and practical.
The goal of this multi-part series is to produce some best practices around Web projects, specifically starting well, setting goals and deliverables, managing unforeseen roadblocks and ending projects so that both parties feel satisfied.
My panel includes:
- Alice Coleman, Information Architect
- Daniel Eizans, Content Strategist (@danieleizans)
- Michael Hogenmiller, Visual Designer (@mhogenmiller)
- Chris Moritz, Information Architect (@chrismoritz)
- Jeffrey Rum, Visual Designer (@jsrum)
- Randall Snare, Content Strategist (@randallsnare)
You’ll find my takeaways at the bottom of the panelists’ answers. Thank you to my talented and fantastic panelists.
Question One
I asked the panelists what two to three pieces of information they needed to know before they begin a Web project.
Randall Snare, Content Strategist
Randall starts every project with these questions: Who are you and how is information managed internally?
I begin with, “Who are you?” It’s my first and most important question. I hope to inject some nuance, but often I am blunt.
The reason that knowing all about your clients (their roles, their processes, their frustrations, their names) is that it puts your analysis into an essential context.
Here’s an example:
Say you’re doing some content/usability analysis of a site that sells lots of stuff. And, you notice that there’s a page of pricing information that lives separate from product information. All of us would go,”Hey that’s not smart! You need to integrate a price with a product, because users need to know about price, it’s a key task,” etc etc.
But, the reason the pricing and product info is separate could be because of their CMS. They may have too many products, and a fluctuating market means their prices change weekly, and it’s too hard to find it in their system, so they make updates in one place (as opposed to 1,000 updates a week). Or, maybe it’s because their teams don’t talk to each other. And, there’s one Pricing Chief Executive guy who’s in charge of that, and the Marketing Brand Senior Managers only care about product information and couldn’t be bothered with prices.
So, my content analysis is moot if I don’t understand why it’s happening. Many bad things you see on websites are residue from internal systems, from human beings. So if I don’t know the humans, I don’t know the context, and I make content/design recommendations that cannot be implemented.
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Posted by Ahava Leibtag (@ahaval) | Apr 11, 2011
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