Category: Special topic: Intranets

People Finder: Searching Without Logic?

by:   |  Posted on

One of the most frequent tasks on many intranets is finding people within the company. Providing an effective way to search people is thus a key goal in designing intranets. This goal becomes even more important for an organization like Emirates, a leading international airline, which has over 35,000 employees with over 140 nationalities and where more people are likely to use this feature more frequently.

Our intranet provides many applications that have a people finder feature to help staff find each other. The goal in using this feature varies depending on the application and situation. For example, people may want to find a staff to book a meeting or add them to a project team. Whatever the goal, a simple text input field and a Find button are enough to provide the sought-after results. But again and again I have heard complaints about not being able to effectively find colleagues using this feature.

The effectiveness of the People Finder feature is challenged in the following ways:

  1. People misspell names of staff they are searching. (e.g., ‘Vivek’ is spelled as ‘Vevek’; with over 140 different nationalities this is bound to happen.)
  2. Names stored in the database are not in proper format. (e.g., ‘Vivek Deshmukh’ is stored as ‘Vivek D.’)
  3. People are known by completely different names than the one stored in the database. (e.g., In some cultures women change their names after marriage.)


Figure 1: A typical example of not finding a person in staff directory

How can you design a better People Finder application than the one that so often says “Staff not found!”?

Building on users efforts

One idea is to look at what users do with the problem at hand and how they solve it, and then use their efforts to build the application. For our People Finder application we can do this by having a “Did you mean …” feature, which gives alternative name suggestions to users. These suggestions are not built by pre-defined logic but are based on the collective input of users.

In our department, when colleagues don’t find someone on a People Finder application, they try various strategies. These include:

  1. trying different spellings,
  2. asking another colleague for the persons correct name and spelling,
  3. calling the person directly (if they have their phone number), and
  4. checking previous emails to get the exact spelling.

Whatever activity they choose, they make sure that they have the right information to type in the People Finder text box. We need to make use of this effort (i.e., making an error and then fixing it) from the users to build our application. The following conceptual model is my attempt at designing such a system.

Building the application

There are five essential components to this concept:

  1. Build a relation table to store incorrect entries. In other words, store search queries which produced no results.
  2. Determine if the user has found the right person.
  3. Build a relation between the previous incorrect entries with the last correct entry determined in step 2.
  4. Check the strength of relation by observing patterns across all users.
  5. Present strong patterns as a “Did you mean …” feature on the search results page.

Let’s look at each step in detail.

STEP 1: Build a relation table to store incorrect entries.

To explain the concept, let’s take the scenario in which a user Sally wants to organize a meeting with Timothy Campbell using People Finder but cannot find him because Timothy Campbell is stored as Tim C. in the application database. (See Figure 1 above.) Let us store this incorrect entry Timothy Campbell in a database table called “Relation Database Table for Sally” (See Figure 2).


Figure 2: Incorrect entry inserted in the Relation table for Sally

STEP 2: Determine if the user has found the right person.

Next, let us say Sally tries a few more names in the People Finder text box, which generate no results. We store all of these incorrect entries in the Relation table. After a few failed attempts, Sally asks her colleague how to find Timothy Campbell in the address book. She is told his name appears in the address book as Tim C. Sally types the name ‘Tim C.’ and gets a result with Tim C.’s details. Sally adds Tim C. to the meeting list. It is this action of Sally clicking the Add button that allows us to identify a correct entry for the Relation table. (See Figure 3.)


Figure 3: Sally now types Tim Campbell’s name as it appears in the database.

STEP 3: Build a relation between the previous incorrect entries with the correct entry.

We then build a relation between the previous incorrect entries with the first following correct entry (i.e., Tim C.) and add it to another table called ‘Alias’ for the staff Tim C. Think of the Alias table as a ‘People also know Tim C. as …’ list. Note that the basis for saying that there exists a relation between the incorrect entries and the correct entry is the real life observation that people do what they must to find the correct name to type in the search text box. Of course you may get mismatches but this will be taken care of in the next steps.


Figure 4: Tim C. is related with the previously typed names


Figure 5: Alias table for Tim C.

STEP 4: Check the strength of relation by observing patterns across all users.

Next we identify the most common aliases used for finding Tim C. We do this by looking at the Alias table for Tim C. Those aliases that appear frequently are strong candidates to be displayed with a “Did you mean …” feature. In our example Timothy Campbell and Tim Campbell show a good pattern across different users as aliases for Tim C., so we conclude that when people search for Tim Campbell they mean Tim C.


Figure 6: Alias table shows that lot of people type Timothy Campbell or Tim Campbell to find Tim C.

STEP 5: Present common patterns as “Did you mean …” feature on the search results page.

The last step is to present the most common pattern to the users as a “Did you mean …” feature. In our example when -users search Timothy Campbell we present them with Tim C. as a “Did you mean …” feature. We can show additional information like the department, title or a photo of Tim Campbell so that the user can confirm that it’s the person he is looking for.


Figure 7: Implementation of the “Did you mean …” feature

Making the system efficient

The secret to making our system more efficient is eliminating -irrelevant relations. Consider this question: Should you build a relation between an incorrect entry which was entered at 08.30 and the next correct entry entered at 09.20? Probably not! It is very unlikely that the user will search for the same person after a gap of 50 minutes. A time frame of 20 minutes may be more realistic.

Advice on how to go about building such a system

  1. Build a business case
    Building such a system will take time and resources. You will need to present an argument to management why this is important and perhaps make a business case for the effort. Don’t forget to include key stakeholders like Human Resources while presenting the business case. Here are some key points:
    • Users will save valuable time while searching other staff.
    • Colleagues will not be disturbed – their time will be saved.
    • Companies will save on phone bills and employee time.
    • Systems become robust over time without additional work from users or a massive data cleaning effort.
  2. Collaborate and co-ordinate with different IT teams who build applications
    Pepare a list of all applications that use the People Finder feature. Collaborate with the IT teams who are responsible to build these applications and work out a plan to implement the “Did you mean …” feature on the current applications. This task becomes easier if you have a centralized IT team.

  3. Prioritize applications for implementation
    Our system becomes robust when many users use the system. Start implementing the feature on the “Frequently used by many” type of applications first. These applications will give maximum value in shortest amount of time.

The risks

There is a risk that few users can work together to build a strong pattern of, say, “Jerk” with Rob Stevenson, thus manipulating the system. This can be kept in check by doing two things. If your company is like ours (formal and very particular about its image) you can:

  1. Keep pattern strength high especially if the suggestions to users are going to be automatic without human intervention.
  2. In addition to high pattern strength you can include a manual check done by HR admin who can authorize or investigate each strong pattern. To do this you will need to provide an admin interface to HR where they can monitor and dig deeper in to strong aliases.

Going forward

Just as users learn a new system by using it, possibly by making mistakes on the way, a system can also be ”trained" to learn from the users by continuously “listening” to users inputs, while helping users along the way. Though some development effort and technical know-how is required, more intelligent people-finding features on company intranets are essential. There is a long-term payoff, and companies will be saving a great deal in terms of employee time and costs.

Enhancing Dashboard Value and User Experience

by:   |  Posted on

This article is the fifth in a series sharing a design framework for dashboards and portals.

Part 1 of this series, The Challenge of Dashboards and Portals, discussed the difficulties of creating effective information architectures for portals, dashboards and tile-based information environments using only flat portlets, and introduced the idea of a system of standardized building blocks that can effectively support growth in content, functionality, and users over time. In enterprise and other large scale social settings, using such standardized components allows for the creation of a library of tiles that can be shared across communities of users.

Part 2 of the series, Introduction to the Building Blocks, outlined the design principles underlying the building block system and the simple guidelines for combining blocks together to create any type of tile-based environment.

Part 3 of the series, Building Block Definitions (Containers), described the Container components of the Building Block system in detail.

Part 4 of the series, Connectors for Dashboards and Portals, described the Connector components of the Building Block system in detail.

In Part 5, we look at ways to enhance the long-term value and user experience quality of portals created with the building blocks by encouraging portability and natural patterns of dialog and interaction around aggregated content.

For the reader’s convenience, this article is divided into the following sections:

A Portal Design Vision: Two-Way Experiences

Recommendations

Metadata

Presentation Standards and Recommendations

Manage Functionality By Creating Groups

Enterprise 2.0 and the Social Portal

A Portal Design Vision: Two-Way Experiences

Portals gather and present content from a wide variety of sources, making the assembled items and streams more valuable for users by reducing the costs of content discovery and acquisition. By placing diverse content into close proximity, specialized forms of portals, such as the dashboard, support knowledge workers in creative and interpretive activities including synthesis, strategy formulation, decision making, collaboration, knowledge production, and multi-dimensional analysis.

At heart, however, aggregation is a one-way flow. In the aggregation model common to many portals, content is collected, organized, and perhaps distributed for use elsewhere, but nothing returns via the same channels. Savvy users quickly see that the greatest value of aggregative experiences and tools lies in their potential contributions to two-way flows. They understand that experiences capable of engaging direct and indirect audiences transform portal and dashboard content into a broadly useful resource for communities of much greater scope and impact. Further, business staff and IT users comfortable in the new world of Enterprise 2.0, DIY / mashups and shadow IT now often create their own information technology solutions, assembling services and tools from many sources in new ways that meet their individual needs.

Accordingly, portal designers should create experiences that support increased discussion, conversation, dialog and interaction, and allow for the potential value of remixing content in innovative ways. We might summarize a broad design vision for two-way portals that synthesizes these audiences, environmental factors and imperatives as follows:

  • Provide users with rich contextual information about the origin and nature of dashboard or portal content; context is crucial, especially in a fragmented and rapidly moving enterprise environment.
  • Improve the quality and consistency of the user experience of aggregated content.
  • Improve the portability of content, making it useful outside the boundaries of the dashboard.
  • Allow dashboard users to take advantage of other tools available outside the immediate boundaries of the portal.

Operatively, this means providing two-way channels that make it easy to share content with others or even "take it with you" in some fashion. The building block framework is ideal as a robust foundation for the many kinds of tools and functionality – participatory, social, collaborative – that support the design vision of two-way flows within and outside portal boundaries.

Recommendations

Based on this vision and my experience with the long-term evolution and usage of many portals, I recommend five ways to enhance two-way capabilities and the overall quality of user experiences designed with the building blocks framework:

  1. Define standardized Convenience functionality that could apply to all blocks. This will provide a baseline set of common capabilities for individual blocks such as export of Container content and printing.
  2. Define Utility functionality offered at the Dashboard or Dashboard Suite level. This captures common productivity capabilities for knowledge workers, linking the dashboard to other enterprise resources such as calendars and document repositories.
  3. Define common metadata attributes for all Container blocks, to support administration and management needs.
  4. Define presentation standards that appropriately balance flexibility with consistency, both within Container blocks and across the user experience.
  5. Define user roles and types of blocks or content to allow quick management of items and functionality in groups.

As with the rest of the building blocks design framework, these recommendations are deliberately neutral in terms of business components and processes, technology platforms, and development frameworks (RUBY, AIR, Silverlight, etc.), and design methods. They describe capabilities and / or functionality that design, business, and technology decision-makers can rely on as a common language when deciding together what a given portal or dashboard must accomplish, and how it should do so. (Besides allowing extension and reuse of designs, neutrality is consistent with the principles of Openness, Independence, Layering, and Portability that run throughout the building blocks system.)

Convenience Functionality

Convenience functions make it easier for users to work with the content of individual Container blocks. Good examples of Convenience functionality include printing the contents of Containers for use outside the Dashboard, or subscribing to an RSS feed that syndicates a snapshot of the contents of a block. Convenience functionality is associated with a single Container, but is not part of the content of the Container.

This collection is a suggested set of Convenience functionality meant to help establish a baseline that you can adapt to the particular needs of your users. Assign Convenience functions to individual blocks as appropriate for circumstances and as endorsed by users, business sponsors, and technologists. Some of these features make sense at all levels of the block hierarchy, and some do not (how would one print an entire Dashboard in a way that is useful or readable?).

The collection is broken into five groups:

  1. Understanding Content Sources and Context
  2. Making Dashboard Content Portable
  3. Controlling the User Experience
  4. Staying Aware of Changes / Subscriptions
  5. Social and Collaborative Tools

The illustration below shows Convenience functionality associated with a Tile.

convenience_functionality_c.jpg

Figure 1: Tile Convenience Functionality (By Group)

Group 1: Understanding Content Sources and Context

Preserving accurate indication for the source of each block’s content is critical for the effective use of heterogeneous offerings. Dashboards that syndicate Tiles from a library of shared assets may contain conflicting information from different sources, so users must have an indication of the origin and context of each block.  (Wine connoisseurs use the term "terroir.")

Show detailed source information for a block. For business intelligence and data content, the source information commonly includes the origin of the displayed data in terms of operating unit, internal or external system (from partners or licensed feeds), its status (draft, partial, production, audited, etc.), the time and date stamp of the data displayed, the update or refresh cycle, and the time and date of the next expected refresh.

For widgets, web-based applications, and content that takes the form of transactional functionality such as productivity or self-service applications delivered via an intranet or web-service, source information commonly includes the originating system or application, its operating status (up, down, relevant error messages), and identifying information about the group, operator, or vendor providing the functionality.

Send email to source system owner / data owner. This allows portal users to directly contact the "owners" of a content source. In enterprises with large numbers of internal data and functionality sources that frequently contradict or qualify one another, the ability to ask clarifying questions and obtain additional or alternative content can be critical to making effective use of the content presented within the Dashboard.

Show performance data and metrics. If standard performance data and measurements such as key performance indicators (KPIs) or balanced score cards (which have risen and then fallen out of favor in the past five years) affect or determine the contents of a block, presenting them readily at hand is good practice. 

Such performance indicators might take the form of KPIs or other formally endorsed metrics, and require:

  • Showing displayed KPIs
  • Showing supporting KPIs (rolled up or included in the summary KPI on display)
  • Showing related KPIs (parallels by process, geography, industry, customer, etc.)
  • Showing dependent KPIs (to illuminate any "downstream" impact)

For performance indicators defined by number and name—perhaps they are recognized and used across the enterprise or operating unit as a comparative baseline, or for several different measurement and assessment goals—provide this important contextual information as well.

Show related documents or assets. Whether automated via sophisticated information management solutions or collected by hand, related documents and assets increase the range and applicability of dashboard content. Bear in mind that less is often more in a world drowning in electronic assets and information.

Show source reports or assets. If the contents of a block are based on an existing report, then providing direct access to that item—bypassing document repositories, collaboration spaces, or file shares, which often have terrible user experiences and searching functions—can be very valuable for dashboard users.

Show related blocks. In large portals or Dashboards that aggregate Tiles from many different sources—perhaps several Tile Libraries—providing navigable links to related Pages or Sections of the Dashboard increases the density and quality of the connections between pieces of content. Whether mapped by hand or automated, these links can further enhance the value of the dashboard by exposing new types of relationships between informational and functional content not commonly placed in proximity in source environments.

Search for related items and assets. If individual Container blocks carry attached metadata, or metadata is available from the contents of the block, search integration could take the form of pre-generated queries using terms from local or enterprise vocabularies, directed against specifically identified data stores.

Group 2: Making Dashboard Content Portable

These capabilities enhance the portability of content, supporting the two-way communication and social flows that make content so useful outside the boundaries of the dashboard. The items below include several of the most useful and commonly requested portability measures:

  • Print contents of block
  • Email contents of block (HTML / text)
  • Email a link to block
  • Create a .pdf of block contents
  • Create a screenshot / image of block contents
  • Download contents of block (choose format)
  • Save data used in block (choose format)
  • Download source report (choose format)

Group 3: Controlling the User Experience

Individual blocks may offer users the ability to change their on-screen layout, placement, or stacking order, collapse them to smaller sizes, or possibly activate or deactivate them entirely. If designers have defined standard display states for Containers (see Presentation Standards and Recommendations below), blocks may also allow users to customize the display state:

  • Change layout or position of block on screen
  • Collapse / minimize or expand block to full size
  • Change display state of block
  • Deactivate / shut off or activate / turn on block for display

Group 4: Staying Aware of Changes / Subscriptions

Aggregation models lower information discovery and acquisition costs, but do not obviate the costs of re-finding items, and do little to help users manage flows and streams of content that change frequently. Many portals and dashboards aim to enhance users’ awareness and make monitoring the status of complex organizations and processes simpler and easier. This group includes functionality allowing users to subscribe to content through delivery channels such as RSS or to receive notices when dashboard content changes:

  • Send email on block change (it is optional to include contents)
  • Subscribe to RSS feed of block changes (it is optional to include contents)
  • Subscribe to SMS message on block change
  • Send portal Page on block change

Group 5: Social and Collaborative Tools

This group includes social features and functions that engage colleagues and others using social mechanisms. Introducing explicitly social mechanisms and capabilities into one-way dashboard and portal experiences can dramatically enhance the value and impact of dashboard content.

When designed properly and supported by adoption and usage incentives, social mechanisms can encourage rapid but nuanced and sophisticated interpretation of complex events in large distributed organizations. Social functions help preserve the insight and perspective of a diverse community of users, an intangible appreciated by many global enterprises.

Annotate block. Annotation allows contributors to add an interpretation or story to the contents of a block. Annotation is typically preserved when blocks are syndicated or shared because annotations come from the same source as the block content.

Comment on block. Commentators can provide a locally useful interpretation for a block originating from elsewhere. Comments are not always portable, or packaged with a block, as they do not necessarily originate from the same context, and their relevance will vary.

Tag blocks. Tagging with either open or predetermined tags can be very useful for discovering unrecognized audiences or purposes for block content, and quickly identifying patterns in usage that span organizational boundaries, functional roles, or social hierarchies.

Share / recommend blocks to person. Combined with presence features, sharing can speed decision-making and the growth of consensus.

Publish analysis / interpretation of block content. Analysis is a more thorough version of annotation and commenting, which could include footnoting, citations, and other scholarly mechanisms.

Publish contents of block. Publishing the contents of a block to a team or enterprise wiki, blog, collaboration site, or common destination can serve as a communication vehicle, and lower the opportunity costs of contributing to social or collaborative tools.

Rate block. Rating blocks and the ability to designate favorites is a good way to obtain quick feedback on the design / content of blocks across diverse sets of users. In environments where users can design and contribute blocks directly to a Tile Library, ratings allow collective assessment of these contributions.

Send contents of block to person (with comment). Sending the contents of a block – with or without accompanying commentary – to colleagues can increase the speed with which groups or teams reach common points of view.  This can also provide a useful shortcut to formal processes for sharing and understanding content when time is important, or individual action is sufficient.

Send link to block to person (with comment). Sending a link to a block – with or without accompanying commentary – to colleagues can increase the speed with which groups or teams reach common points of view.  This can also provide a useful shortcut to formal processes for sharing and understanding content when time is important, or individual action is sufficient.

Commenting and annotation, coupled with sharing the content that inspired the dialog as a complete package, were the most requested social capabilities among users of many of the large enterprise dashboards I have worked on.

Stacking Blocks

Some combinations of Convenience functionality will make more sense than others, depending on the contents of blocks, their purpose within the larger user experience, and the size of the blocks in the stacking hierarchy (outlined in Part 2). Figure 2 illustrates a Page composed of several sizes of Containers, each offering a distinct combination of Convenience functionality.

combinations_convenience.jpg

Figure 2: Combinations of Functionality

Convenience…or Connector Component?

Several of the Connector components (described in Part 4 of this series) – especially the Control Bar and the Geography Selector – began life as examples of Convenience functionality. Over the course of many design projects, these pieces were used so frequently that their forms standardized, and they merited independent recognition as defined building blocks. (The change is a bit like receiving a promotion.)

With sustained use of the blocks framework, it’s likely that designers will identify similar forms of Convenience functionality that deserve identification as formal building blocks, which can then be put into the library of reusable design assets. This is wholly consistent with the extensible nature of the blocks system, and I encourage you to share these extensions!

Utility Functionality

Utility functionality enhances the value of content by offering enterprise capabilities such as calendars, intranet or enterprise searching, and colleague directories, within the portal or dashboard setting. In practice, Utility functionality offers direct access to a mixed set of enterprise resources and applications commonly available outside portal boundaries in a stand-alone fashion (e.g. in MS Outlook for calendaring).

Common Utility functions include:

  • Team or colleague directories
  • Dashboard, intranet or enterprise searching
  • Dashboard personalization and customization
  • Calendars (individual, group, enterprise)
  • Alerting
  • Instant messaging
  • Corporate blogs and wikis
  • Licensed news and information feeds
  • RSS aggregators
  • Attention streams
  • Collaboration spaces and team sites
  • Profile management
  • Document repositories
  • Mapping and geolocation tools
  • Business intelligence tools
  • Supply Chain Management (SCM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions

My Experience or Yours?

One important question designers must answer is where and how portal users will work with Utility functionality: within the portal experience itself or within the user experience of the originating tool? Or as a hybrid of these approaches?

Enterprise productivity tools and large software packages such as CRM and ERP solutions often provide consumable services via Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) or Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), as well as their own user experiences (though they may be terrible). The needs and goals of users for your portal may clearly indicate that the best presentation of Utility functionality syndicated from elsewhere is to decompose the original experiences and then integrate these capabilities into your local portal user experience. Enterprise tools often come with design and administration teams dedicated to supporting them, teams which represent significant investments in spending and credibility. Carefully consider the wider political ramifications of local design decisions that affect branding and ownership indicators for syndicated Utility functionality.

utility_ux.jpg

Figure 3: Local vs. Source Experiences

Metadata

In portals and dashboards, aggregation often obscures origins, and content may appear far outside the boundaries of its original context and audiences. The Convenience and Utility functionality suggested above is generally much easier to implement and manage with the assistance of metadata that addresses the dashboard or portal environment.

The attributes suggested here establish a starting set of metadata for Container blocks managed locally, or as part of a Tile Library syndicated across an enterprise. The goal of this initial collection is to meet common administrative and descriptive needs, and establish a baseline for future integration metadata needs. These attributes could be populated with carefully chosen values from a series of managed vocabularies or other metadata structures, or socially applied metadata provided by users as tags, keywords, facets, etc.

Administrative Attributes:

  • Security / access level needed for content
  • System / context of origin for content
  • System / context of origin contact
  • Data lifecycle / refresh cycle for content
  • Most recent refresh time-date
  • Effective date of data
  • Block version #
  • Block release date

 Structural Attributes:

  • Container blocks stacked in this block
  • Crosswalk Connectors present within block
  • Contextual Crosswalk Connectors present within block

 Descriptive Attributes:

  • Title
  • Subtitle
  • Subject
  • Audience
  • Format
  • Displayed KPIs (defined by number / name)
  • Supporting KPIs (defined by number / name)
  • Related KPIs (defined by number / name)
  • Related Documents / Assets
  • Source Report / Assets
  • Related Blocks
  • Location

Metadata Standards

The unique needs and organizational context that drive the design of many portals often necessitates the creation of custom metadata for each Tile Library or pool of assets. However, publicly available metadata standards could serve as the basis for dashboard metadata. Dublin Core, with a firm grounding in the management of published assets, offers one useful starting point. Depending on the industry and domain for the users of the dashboard, system-level integration with enterprise vocabularies or public dictionaries may be appropriate. Enterprise taxonomies and ontologies, as well as metadata repositories or registries, could supply many of the metadata attributes and values applied to building blocks.

Presentation Standards and Recommendations

Visual Design and Style Guidelines, Page Layouts, Grid Systems

The neutrality of the building blocks framework allows architects and designers tremendous flexibility in defining the user experience of a dashboard or portal. The system does not specify any rules for laying out Pages, defining grid systems, or applying design styles or guidelines. Responsibility for these design questions should devolve to the local level and context; the architects and designers working on a given user experience must make these critical decisions.

Standards for Containers and Connectors. One of the paramount goals for the building blocks system is to minimize the presence of unneeded user experience elements (no excess chrome for designers to polish!), and maintain the primacy of the content over all secondary parts of the dashboard experience. Even so, aspects of the building blocks themselves will be a direct part of the user experience. Thus setting and maintaining standards for those aspects of Containers and connectors that are part of the user experience is essential.

The many renderings and examples of Tiles and other components seen throughout this series of articles show a common set of standards that covers:

  • Location and relationship of Tile components (Tile Body, Tile Header, Tile Footer)
  • Placement of Convenience functionality
  • Placement of Utility functionality
  • Treatment of Connector components
  • Boundary indicators for Tiles and Containers
  • Boundary indicators for mixed content (block and free-form)

Figure 4 shows one set of standards created for the Container and Connector components of an enterprise dashboard.

standards_view_border.jpg

Figure 4: Presentation Standards for Containers and Connectors

This is a starting set of elements that often require design standards. Architects and designers working with the building blocks will need to decide which block elements will be part of the user experience, and create appropriate standards. (If using lightweight and modular user experience development approaches, relying on standards and structured components, it’s possible to effect quick and easy design iteration and updates.)

Standards For Content Within Containers. Setting standards and defining best practices for layout, grid systems, and visual and information design for the contents of Container blocks will increase the perceived value of the dashboard or portal. In the long term, offering users a consistent and easy-to-understand visual language throughout the user experience helps brand and identify Tile-based assets that might be syndicated or shared widely. A strong and recognized brand reflects well on its originators. Figure 5 shows example standards for chart content in Container blocks.

standards_block_content_border.jpg

Figure 5: Presentation Standards for Chart Content in Container Blocks

Standards For Mixed Building Block and Freeform Content. Setting standards for layouts, grid systems, and information design for the freeform content that appears mixed with or between Containers makes sense when the context is known. When the eventual context of use is unknown, decisions on presentation standards should devolve to those designers responsible for managing the local user experiences.

Container States

The core principles of openness and portability that run throughout the building blocks framework mean the exact context of use and display setting for any given block is difficult for designers to predict. Defining a few (three or four at the most) different but standardized presentation states for Containers in a Tile Library can help address the expected range of situations and user experiences from the beginning, rather than on an ad-hoc basis. This approach is much cheaper over the long-term, when considered for the entire pool of managed Tiles or assets.

Since the on-screen size of any element of the user experience is often a direct proxy for its anticipated value and the amount of attention designers expect it to receive, each standard display state should offer a different combination of more or less content, tuned to an expected context. Using a combination of business rules, presentation logic, and user preferences, these different display states may be invoked manually (as with Convenience functionality) or automatically (based on the display agent or surrounding Containers), allowing adjustment to a wide range of user experience needs and settings. In practice, states are most commonly offered for Tiles and Tile Groups, but could apply to the larger Containers with greater stacking sizes, such as Views, Pages, and Sections.

One of the most commonly used approaches is to assume that a Container will appear most often in a baseline or normal state in any user experience, and that all other states cover a sliding scale of display choices ranging from the greatest possible amount of content to the least. The four states described below represent gradations along this continuum.

Normal state is the customary presentation / display for a Container, the one users encounter most often.

Comprehensive state is the most inclusive state of a Container, offering a complete set of the contents, as well as all available reference and related information or Containers, and any socially generated content such as comments, annotations, and collective analyses. Figure 6 shows a Tile in comprehensive display state.

states_comprehensive.jpg

Figure 6: Tile: Comprehensive Display

Summary state condenses the block’s contents to the most essential items, for example showing a single chart or measurement. The summary state hides any reference and related information, and places any socially generated content such as annotation or comments in the background of the information landscape. Figure 7 shows a Tile in summary display state.

states_summary.jpg

Figure 7: Tile: Summary Display

Snapshot state is the most compact form of a Container block, offering a thumbnail that might include only the block’s title and a single highly compressed metric or sparkline. Snapshot states often represent the Container in discovery and administrative settings, such as in search experiences, in catalogs of assets in a Tile Library, or in dashboard management interfaces. Figure 8 shows a Tile in snapshot display state.

states_snapshot.jpg

Figure 8: Tile: Snapshot Display

Convenience and Utility Functionality

New platforms such as Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) and Microsoft Silverlight, and the freedom afforded by Asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX) and Rich Internet Application (RIA) based experiences in general, offer too many possible display and interaction behaviors to discuss in detail here.

Accordingly, I suggest designers keep the following principles in mind when defining the interactions and presentation of Convenience and Utility functionality:

  • Convenience functionality is meant to improve the value and experience of working with individual blocks.
  • Utility functionality addresses the value and experience of the portal as a whole.
  • Convenience functionality is less important than the content it enhances.
  • Convenience functionality is always available, but may be in the background.
  • Utility functionality is always available, and is generally in the background.
  • Convenience functionality does not replace Utility functionality, though some capabilities may overlap.
  • Usability and user experience best practices strongly recommend placing Convenience functionality in association with individual blocks.
  • Usability and user experience best practices strongly recommend presenting Utility functionality in a way that does not associate it with individual Container blocks.

Manage Functionality By Creating Groups

Most users will not need the full set of Convenience and Utility functionality at all times and across all Tiles and types of Container blocks. Usage contexts, security factors, or content formats often mean smaller subsets of functionality offer the greatest benefits to users. To keep the user experience free from the visual and cognitive clutter of un-needed functionality, and to make management easier, I recommend designers define groups of functionality, users, and content. Create groups during the design process, so these constructs are available for administrative use as soon as the portal is active and available to users.

Other recommendations include:

  • Define bundles of Convenience and Utility functionality appropriate for different operating units, business roles and titles, or access levels of users.
  • Allow individual users to select from bundles of Convenience and Utility functionality. Customization commonly appears in a profile management area.
  • Create roles or personas for dashboard users based on patterns in content usage, and match roles with relevant and appropriate functionality bundles.
  • Define types of user accounts based on personas, or usage patterns and manage functionality at the level of account type.
  • Define types of Tiles or Containers based on content (informational, functional, transactional, collaborative, etc.). Apply bundles of Convenience functionality to all the Tiles or Containers of a given type.
  • Define standard levels of access for social features and functionality based on sliding scales of participation or contribution: read, rate, comment, annotate, write, edit, etc. Manage access to all social functions using these pre-defined standard levels.

Larger portals may warrant the creation of a dedicated administrative interface. The building blocks make it easy to define an administrative console accessible via a Page or Section apparent only to administrators.

Enterprise 2.0 and the Social Portal

Portals and dashboards that augment one-way aggregation of information with Convenience and Utility functionality can offer diverse and valuable content to savyy users – customers who expect Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, and social software capabilities from all their experiences and tools. As these recommendations demonstrate, the building blocks can serve as an effective design framework for portals that serve as two-way destinations.

Many of these recommended Convenience and Utility capabilities now come "out of the box" in portal or dashboard platforms, and the interactions that make them available to users follow standard behaviors in the resulting user experiences.When first identified as valuable for users (almost five years ago), these capabilities almost universally required teams to invest considerable amounts of time and money into custom design, development, and integration efforts. Thankfully, that is no longer the case.

Part Six of this series will explore how the Building Blocks framework solved recurring problems of growth and change for a series of business intelligence and enterprise application portals.  We will review the evolution of a suite of enterprise portals constructed for users in different countries, operating units, and managerial levels of a major global corporation.

The Trouble With Web 2.0

by:   |  Posted on

Today, there is a lot of buzz around a number of topics labeled as "Web 2.0“. Consultants jump on the "Web 2.0" bandwagon and IT vendors desperately struggle to add “Web 2.0” features to their products. But the term is still unclear and nobody has a good definition of what “Web 2.0” is and what it is not. The term was originally coined by Tim O’Reilly in an article describing the changes in business processes and models that have been triggered by new and creative combinations of already existing technologies.

Other “social networking” services (like wikis and blogs) have been added to the Web 2.0 “genre”, generating a new end user experience on the Internet. Many large enterprises are now starting “Web 2.0” projects, their IT departments seemingly eager to show their technological abilities. The “new” is strangely attractive and everyone wants to be on board.

But what is the real core of this new phenomenon? According to the conclusions of Tim O’Reilly the core is not the technology (which has been there for some time) but the emergence of new “patterns” – new or changed business processes and a new concept of the user. These patterns have been put to good use in the World Wide Web. But can they be transferred to a corporate environment, at the enterprise level, as well? Let’s have a closer look on them.

  • the Web 2.0 platform breaks down borders between services
  • Web 2.0 utilizes the collective intelligence of its users
  • Web 2.0 cannot control the process of knowledge creation
  • Web 2.0 is constantly linking knowledge, thereby not protecting intellectual property

The web as platform.

Or the Web 2.0 platform breaks down borders between services

One pattern identified by Tim O’Reilly is a change in the business model of software suppliers. In “Web 1.0” times the web was used only as a transport medium, delivering predefined information (e.g. static HTML pages) to client based software products (e.g. the Netscape browser). In Web 2.0 companies use the web as a platform, using the enhanced technology offering to create web-based applications or services that do not require any installation on the user’s machine (e.g. the Google Search Engine). If the client does not install a program that allows tracking of usage then charging for usage become difficult.

Business models that rely on the sale of personalized or concurrent software licenses will not work anymore. The suppliers will be forced to find another way to charge for their services. To generate income they may use advertisements (like Google) or additional service or content offerings (like “land” purchases in Second Life). Internal IT departments however may have to rethink their funding models, especially if they are funded by various company departments for their services. They will not be able to allocate operating costs per license if they want to be Web 2.0 .

Let’s assume a departmentally funded IT department offers a blog or wiki as a new service. No client installation is necessary, but access can be restricted to the members of those departments who pay for the service. Restricted access, as we will see later, will affect the overall value of a collaboration service and yet is not a fair sharing model – it opens up all sorts of claims for charge reduction on the grounds that the other departments use the service more intensively or in a different manner. A per-capita cost allocation may be a solution, but then the departments might try to overextend service usage as they don’t pay extra for more intensive use. The means of measuring usage and paying for it will have to change in order for the IT department to get paid for its services.

But this new platform pattern implies more than just a change in software distribution mechanisms. Not being bound to a client means these new web services typically do not rely on a single source of data, like a classical application with its own database, but combine data from different sources, enabled by open source protocols and standards. The large number of mash-ups (data combined and displayed in a new and usually creative manner) that have emerged around the Google map function are a good example. With these new service offerings the core competency of the service provider shifts from software development to database management and the ability to combine data that is available on the Web to create meaningful information.

Many internal IT departments face a different situation where access to data and the means to combine them are restricted by departmental boundaries, technological incompatibilities or data security and protection rules. Person-related HR or sales data are among the most protected in a corporate environment, and their usage is highly restricted for good reason. Data security and protection rules will also be a showstopper for externally hosted services. According to Article 25 of the European Data Protection Guideline, issued by the European Commission, personal data may only be transferred to third countries (all non-EU countries) if the receiving country provides an adequate level of protection. US organizations have to qualify under the “safe harbor” program to be able to receive data from a European organization.

But even then the idea of having your company’s most valuable data in an externally hosted application (e.g. the Salesforce CRM), with data transfer over the Internet will be the ultimate nightmare of every company’s IT security officer. The required security prohibits the clever combination and reinterpretation of data that we see on Google maps or elsewhere.

Web 2.0 cannot control the process of knowledge creation.

Or utilizing and enabling collective intelligence

We have seen that the new Web 2.0 services are powered by the ability to combine data from different sources. But where does the data come from and who creates it? The Web 2.0 pattern of “collective intelligence” shifts the task of creating and maintaining data and content from centralized resources to a dispersed user community. The eBay selling platform would be useless without the activities of the millions of sellers and buyers, who are creating the content and a critical mass of offerings that attract other users into using the service. Wikipedia would be a completely empty shell without its users creating and maintaining the content. In his article Tim O’Reilly states that the value of the service is related to the scale and dynamism of the data it provides. The larger the number of articles in Wikipedia the more users will use it as reference, therefore the service gets better the more people use it and contribute to it. Tim O’Reilly calls this the “LOW” principle – “let other’s do the work”. This works perfectly in the Web with its huge user base (according to the statistics already more than one billion people) but will this pattern also work in a corporate environment?

The corporate user base, even in the largest enterprises, is smaller than the user base on the Web which limits the number of potential contributors. If the quality of the service depends on the number of users then companies have a disadvantage compared to the Web-based services. In many interviews end users said that they often prefer to research on the Web instead of using their corporate knowledge resources because they are confused by the complexity of internal search and because the information they can find on the web seems to be more recent. However the reliability of Web-based information that can be edited by everybody is in doubt when comes to hard legal or medical use. Would you be willing to bet your career on a Wikipedia article?

If the quality of the service is improved by the amount of user commitment it will only be successful if a critical mass of users can be attracted. While Web services like eBay, Wikipedia or Flickr have been soaring over the last years, driven by user commitment, corporate services often have a contribution pattern like this:

web2_knowledgecurve.gif

But what attracts users to donate their time and energy to contribute to Web services like Wikipedia or Flickr while not doing so to corporate services? Psychology and economics teach us that there is no such thing as altruism – whatever people do will create a personal return of value for them. This personal value is measured by individual criteria. Respect and prestige, personal reputation, political beliefs or desires, and of course monetary incentives influence the decision as to whether their contribution creates this value. People create an article in Wikipedia because they believe that the topic is interesting or important or because they want to see their name in print, and put pictures on Flickr because they want to share them with others, thereby influencing how they are perceived by others. The value of contributing must be higher than doing something else (e.g. watching a sports game on TV or adding to the corporate knowledge base).

In a corporate environment this might be different as a different set of values becomes dominant. Company vision, goals, or instructions will be added on top of the personal value criteria, together with given priorities changing the decision of what creates value. Of course one big driver for such decisions is the need for an employee to be externally “chargeable”, a typical situation in the consultancy business. If a consultant has to decide whether he spends his time generating direct revenue for the company (and therefore for himself) by working for a client; or having to explain to his supervisor why he choose to improve the internal knowledge base instead he or she will opt for the first alternative. As long as contribution is regarded as less important topic in the corporate hierarchy the priority of knowledge initiatives will go down over time simply because people start to value other things as more important.

So contribution is rational for people if there is a reward. But there is another rationale for people, especially in large organisations. Cooperation within the Web communities is mainly driven by non-monetary values as the contributors don’t receive any money for their input. These communities are networks of specialists who rely on each others knowledge. Investing time to create and contribute knowledge will pay off here because there is no direct competition and other people’s knowledge might help you tomorrow. Small consultant companies may be examples of those tight communities. If there is direct competition people normally tend to change their behaviour. They try to acquire and to protect their special knowledge. The German language even has a special term for this kind of behaviour: “Herrschaftswissen”, which means superiority through withheld or not communicated information or knowledge. Many corporations have answered these issues by centralizing knowledge management into special departments . But Web 2.0 requires involving the largest number of users possible and a centralized approach might not be the right answer anymore. Corporate projects that focus on providing Web 2.0 technologies alone will fail if the companies do not change their rewarding schemes and knowledge management processes. Such projects will need to rethink incentives for participators and to create the time slots necessary for people to contribute. If the corporation wants the genuine benefit from Web 2.0 then they must not underestimate the effort it takes to produce it. Finding a balance between corporate or proprietary knowledge and the free-for-all idea exchange of Web 2.0 services is critical if a corporate IT department wants be benefit from Web 2.0 style services.

Web 2.0 cannot control the process of knowledge creation.

Or the uncontrollable wisdom of the “blogosphere”

Judging by the hype they have created; wikis and web logs (blogs) seem to be an important part of the Web 2.0 patterns. As blogs have spread through the web like wildfire vendors of content management systems are struggling to add this functionality into their applications. Already the term “blogosphere” has emerged as a collective term encompassing all blogs and their interconnections. It is the perception that blogs exist together as an extended connected community or a complex social system. However it is common knowledge that a system composed from several component parts will act differently than its individual isolated components. An ant colony develops complex social behaviour and erects structures – a task a single ant could never perform. While a single nerve cell is only able to transfer electrical impulses the enormous network of synaptical references and trackbacks of the human forebrain enables conscious thought.

Tim O’Reilly states that the blogosphere creates a structure that resembles the human brain. Expressing an idea in a single blog might not change the world, but if this idea is picked up, discussed and commented in a large number of blogs it not only gets the attention of many people – it might get enhanced, developed, refined, challenged and eventually transformed evolutionary into something that might influence the way of the world. Like in the anthill or the human brain this process is not controlled by a single instance – it is driven by the participation and cooperation of many individuals with their individual motives. This absence of a controlling instance allows for creativity, progress of ideas and the expression of individual opinions. The old saying that the whole is more than the sum of the parts is true here. However it is a self-organized process that follows its own rules – forcing or securing this is not currently possible nor probably desirable.

The various discussions on the attempts of some nation states to restrict Internet access within their borders show that organizations that rely on its inhabitants to keep within the existing structures will only tolerate an “uncontrollable” environment up to a certain level and will try to erect restrictions if this environment starts to thread organizational foundations. Using the discussions within a blogosphere to enable the development of new consulting solutions might be welcome to a corporation while critical comments on the latest corporate policies and procedures might not. In some corporate areas where following predefined procedures and processes (e.g. accounting standards) is necessary or where secrets have to be protected an open exchange among employees might not be allowed at all to protect the company interests. And companies who start allowing employees to blog will experience that enforcing control on the blog or wiki contents will be detected and will create strong opposition. Companies have to be aware that open service offerings like blogs and wikis cannot be removed afterwards or restricted in scope without losing employee loyalty or making themselves look like fools in the process. And worse – as the Internet provides a means to get around those blockages that the enterprise might believe are comforting: people might take their internal discussions public.

One other aspect – the strength of a wiki is the presentation of content in a loosely structured, intuitive way, creating a hypertext structure resembling creative human thought processes. As there is no visible hierarchical structure in a wiki retrieving content mainly relies on search. That is why Wikipedia or Google show a large search field on their main pages. This unstructured organisation of content fails if the content itself is highly structured. A law commentary contains the text of the law structured by paragraphs, with some comments or additional materials for each paragraph, sometimes for each sentence. Having a search might help if materials related to a special topic are needed, but if an experienced lawyer needs the latest comment on a certain paragraph he needs a different navigation – he will prefer to select the paragraph directly from a list, browsing through the hierarchy of paragraphs and comments. So wikis are a great tool but not a cure-all.

The Web 2.0 is constantly linking knowledge, thereby not protecting intellectual property.

Or the perpetual beta, mash-ups and new intellectual property

Another pattern Tim O’Reilly points to – most of the emerging 2.0 services will (or should) forever wear a “beta” sticker on their homepages. As the role of the user moves from passive consumer to active participant; the quick and continuous implementation of user driven enhancements becomes a driver for the service provider, especially in a competitive market environment.

Release cycles tend to diminish as deployment does not count for Web based services – users will always get the latest version of the service when (re-)loading the site. While development cycles shrink to days or hours and pressure to continuously implement new features rises quality assurance procedures becomes less important – bug-fixes can be deployed instantly and as long as the users don’t pay for the service they will tolerate errors or will be willing to learn new features by themselves. In a corporate environment this might be different. Deployment delays do play a role, especially when permanent online access is not given or network traffic is limited. Quality of the service and at least a certain operational stability will be more important than speed of delivery, especially if software errors will cause financial damage or threaten the company in other ways. And as corporate applications tend to be more complex than Web services training efforts becomes an important part. So corporate applications cannot be developed and deployed using a “perpetual beta” mode.

One other thing is the focus – while most of the Web 2.0 companies focus on a single product or a small suite of similar services; an internal corporate IT service provider will have hundreds, sometimes thousands of services (and applications) to provide. Release management and portfolio management will be needed to ensure maximum value, which means that development resources might not be able to work on one service the whole time.

Another pattern that follows from this development mode is the emergence of so called mash-ups. As the rapid development relies on “lightweight programming models” (another pattern described by Tim O’Reilly), like scripting languages the security of the code is minimal, exposing the software to the users who are able to use or even “hijack” the existing interfaces to create their own solutions and mash-ups on the existing platforms, combining data from different sources to create new information and knowledge. In some cases (e.g. Google Maps) this is welcome to the service provider as it increases the spread of the service and the data quality it provides – all the users of Google Maps do provide Google with an enormous amount of location data, enabling Google to create the most detailed worldwide Yellow Pages ever seen. However if access to or re-use of the data should be limited (e.g. to paying customers) the Web 2.0 technology might not be safe enough. In business to business relations and also in a corporate environment data protection, security and the protection of intellectual property are issues of huge importance, so an open technology platform will be out of scope. On the other hand this limits companies in leveraging the know-how and creativity of its users. Even the internal use of existing Internet web-based services might cause issues as the company cannot control the service. What if the service provider decides to change, charge for or even discontinue an external service the company has come to rely on? Replacing the service will again create additional efforts to adapt the internal applications, which might outweigh the savings created by the free use of the service.

What now?

We have seen that there are differences between the Web and corporate environments. While the Web is a deregulated environment, with millions of users contributing and easy access to data, corporations have to restrict their users for many reasons, thereby limiting the potential of the Web 2.0 patterns. While Web 2.0 patterns work well in the Web there might be obstacles and issues when they are implemented in a corporate environment without adaptation. “Might” because every company is an individual organization and there are no easy, “one-size-fits-all” solution. On the other hand the Web 2.0 patterns have been proven to be too successful to be ignored.

There is no ready-made solution, only some good advice. The most important and most simple is that corporate behaviours and processes are not changed just by implementing a new IT service. Installing a blog in a formal and hierarchical corporate culture will not change the company in an open and informal community. Web 2.0 patterns will only work if the corporate and even national culture is already responsive to more collaboration and participation or if the implementation is accompanied by other measures to support cultural change. Creating and holding up motivation of users to contribute, seemingly no problem in the WWW with a billion users will be one of the success factors. So corporate Web 2.0 implementation projects have to broaden their scope, have to add structural and cultural change or process redesign to their charter. And those “soft” topics tend not to have easy solutions. So when your IT department or an external consultant excitedly tells you about how they are adding “Web 2.0” to the corporate computing environment: be prepared for a difficult birthing process and adjusting your expectations.

I would be happy to hear about your experiences.

Connectors for Dashboards and Portals

by:   |  Posted on

This article is the fourth in a series sharing a design framework for dashboards and portals.

The Building Blocks are an open system – architects and designers should introduce additional navigation models and mechanisms into the experience as needed.Part 1 of this series, “The Challenge of Dashboards and Portals,” discussed the difficulties of creating effective information architectures for portals, dashboards and tile-based information environments using only flat portlets, and introduced the idea of a system of standardized building blocks that can effectively support growth in content, functionality and users over time. In enterprise and other large scale social settings, using such standardized components allows for the creation of a library of tiles that can be shared across communities of users.

Part 2 of the series, “Building Block Definitions (Containers)” described the Container components of the Building Block system in detail.

Part 4 describes the Connector Components in detail.

Overview of the Connector Blocks

The building block system includes several types of Connectors that make it possible for designers and architects to link the different areas of a Dashboard together via a consistent, easily understandable navigation model. The system also ensures the resulting information architecture can grow in response to changing needs and content. There’s no special stacking hierarchy for the Connectors. However, they do have an official stacking size (most are size 3) in order to keep Dashboards constructed with the building blocks internally consistent.

The defined Connectors are:

  • Control Bar

  • Section Connector

  • Page Connector

  • Dashboard Connector

  • Crosswalk Connector

  • Contextual Crosswalk Connector

  • Utility Navigation

  • Geography Selector

Control Bars allow access to deeper collections of similar blocks, such as Tile Groups and Tiles offering narrowly focused content. Section, Page, and Dashboard Connectors offer hierarchically driven navigation paths between larger Containers. Crosswalk Connectors and Contextual Crosswalks extend the capabilities of the default Building Blocks navigation model to include links that express context-driven associative relationships between Containers, regardless of their location within the Dashboard or Portal structure. Combinations of Connectors provide the familiar patterns of paths from a user’s current location to higher or broader levels of the Dashboard, links to items at the same level, links to contextually related items at all levels, etc.

Container Definitions

Each Connector definition includes:

  • Mandatory components

  • Optional components

  • Stacking size

  • Detailed description

  • Example rendering (for illustrative purposes only)

  • Rendering description

Control Bar definition

Mandatory components: Controls for manipulating Container content
Optional components: None
Stacking size: special – can be attached to Tiles, Tile Groups, or Views

Control Bar description

A Control Bar increases the amount of content offered by a Tile, Tile Group, or View by giving users the ability to change the content displayed within the block. Designers attach a Control Bar to a block to increase the effective depth (or scope) of the block’s content. Control Bars allow dashboard designers to increase the depth of a new or existing Container block without increasing the on-screen size of the block or creating a large number of very similar blocks.

One common way of using Control Bars is to allow users to perform repeated tasks on one object that is a member of a group of similar objects. For example, a Tile that allows users to approve or reject purchase orders for one operating unit could be augmented with the addition of a Control Bar. The Control Bar will expand the scope of purchase order approval functionality by allowing the user to choose one or more operating units from a list of all available operating units. The approval functionality itself should appear and remain within the Tile, though the scope may expand with successive revisions of the Tile.

Another common use for Control Bars is to provide tools for choosing different combinations of data parameters for display within a block, such as selecting a single item for focus (or rendering of available data) from a list of many other items of the same type, shifting the start or end dates for a time period, changing a measurement unit or referencing an axis for comparison.

The controls – buttons, sliders, actuators, etc. – in a Control Bar are often rendered as standard form elements such as radio buttons or select lists, or hyperlinks. They could just as easily appear as custom scripted elements, applets, or AJAX / RIA delivered sliders. The types and styles of controls presented should be driven by the guidelines of good user experience design. And perhaps your budget!

A primary benefit of Control Bars is to reduce the total number of blocks necessary for a dashboard – though they do increase the complexity of individual blocks – thereby lowering overall development costs and saving valuable screen real estate. For example, consider a single product that is part of a family of fifteen related products: placing a Control Bar on a Tile that shows the inventory for one of those products allows users to change between displaying the same kind of inventory data for any product in the family, instead of simultaneously displaying fifteen separate Tiles with the same inventory data for all the different products in the family. Control Bars also work well when users need to compare metrics, items, or groups of metrics or items, in a side-by side fashion.

Control Bars attached to stacked blocks retain their functionality. Stacking Containers with attached Control Bars can lead to complex possible permutations of scope and depth for block content. Explore the potential combinations and permutations carefully, especially in regards to security and access rights. Control Bars should not replace functionality already located within a block, or serve as a means of combining wildly different sorts of content together into a single block that is incoherent or inconsistent. I recommend limiting the use of Control Bars to one per Container.

Example rendering:

control_bar.jpg
Figure 19: Example Control Bar

Rendering description

This rendering shows a Tile with attached Control Bar that allows users to shift the focus of the Tile to any of a list of fifteen individual products, chosen via the select list shown. When the user chooses a product, the contents of the Tile refresh to show weekly inventory data for the new product, as well as a reference table and associated documents and links for the same new product.

Page Connector definition

Mandatory components: links to all Pages in the parent Section
Optional components: None
Stacking size: 3

Page Connector description

The Page Connector links all the Pages stacked within a single Section of the Dashboard. The Page Connector typically appears on every Page within a Dashboard, though this is not required. As users navigate from Section to Section, the links in the Page Connector change to reflect the different Pages stacked in each Section. Of course, placing a Page Connector on any Page does not preclude creating other groups of links to other Pages located throughout the Dashboard. The Building Blocks are an open system – architects and designers should introduce additional (Free Form, within the view of the blocks) navigation models and mechanisms into the experience as needed.

Example rendering:

page_connector.jpg
Figure 20: Example Page Connector

Rendering description

This rendering shows the navigation links to Pages appearing in a Page Connector for a Section titled Products, which contains a Section summary page and four other Pages.

Section Connector definition

Mandatory components: links to all Sections in the Dashboard
Optional components: link to Dashboard Home Page
Stacking size: 3

Section Connector description

The Section Connector is a high level Connector that provides a link to each Section making up the Dashboard. The Section Connector typically appears on every Page within the Dashboard, though this is not required. The Section Selector is akin to the ubiquitous global navigation element familiar from many web sites, though its actual content when displayed to a user will vary based on security settings or access rights. The links in the Section Connector should take users either to the Section Summary Page for that Section or to the chosen default Page within the Section. Include a link to any Dashboard Home Page in the Section Connector, especially if it offers unique content not available elsewhere in the dashboard.

Example rendering:

(click on image for larger view)
section_connector_small.jpg
Figure 21: Example Section Connector

Rendering description

This rendering shows the navigation links to Section summary Pages appearing in a Section Connector for a Dashboard that includes a Home Page and five Sections. Four of the Sections are navigable via the Section Connector, the remaining fifth Section – S.5 Administration – is dedicated to administrative uses, and is not navigable or linked via the Section Connector.

Dashboard Connector definition

Mandatory components: links to each Dashboard in a Dashboard Suite
Optional components: None
Stacking size: 3

Dashboard Connector description

The Dashboard Connector allows users with access to two or more Dashboards within a Dashboard Suite to move quickly and directly amongst all the Dashboards they may access, without passing through multiple log-in or authentication interfaces. Dashboard Connectors typically appear on every Page of a Dashboard, though this is not required. The individual links in a Dashboard Connector often point to the Homepage for each listed Dashboard. A less-common linking behavior for Dashboard Connectors is to connect to the last visited Page in each linked Dashboard or to a default Page of the users choosing that is stored as a personalization preference. For administrators and maintenance staff, Dashboard Connectors can offer the same quick and direct access to the separate administrative areas of each Dashboard in a Suite.

Example Rendering:

dashboard_connector.jpg
Figure 22: Example Dashboard Connector

Rendering description

This rendering shows the Dashboard links appearing in the Dashboard Connector for the Business Intelligence Suite described above.

Crosswalk Connector definition

Mandatory components: recurring item (link origin), destination building block
Optional components: None
Stacking size: None

Crosswalk Connector description

A Crosswalk Connector is a direct navigation path between individual building blocks, regardless of origin and destination locations in the Dashboard structure. Crosswalk Connectors provide a hub and spoke style path from many locations to a single destination, rather than a uniquely occurring link between two blocks. Crosswalks often take the form of a recurring name, term, or object that consistently links to another single building block offering content related to the linked item.

Common examples of Crosswalk Connectors include:

  • product names linked to a summary Page or View of the identified product

  • topic terms linked to a news aggregator or RSS aggregator block that shows recent items related to that topic

  • competitor names linked to a profile snapshot or market intelligence block

  • market or product family names linked to sales performance blocks

  • colleague names linked to profile information blocks showing their role, responsibilities, and direct reports

Example rendering:

(click on image for larger view)
crosswalk_connector_small.jpg
Figure 23: Example Crosswalk Connector

Rendering description

This rendering shows all the appearances of a Crosswalk Connector that links the instances of a product name to a destination Page in the Products Section (S.3) titled “Product Focus” (S.3.2), in this case a Page offering detailed information and tools related to a single product.

Contextual Crosswalk definition

Mandatory components: linked term (recurring item), origin contexts associative relationship, destination building blocks
Optional components: None
Stacking size: None

Contextual Crosswalk description

Contextual Crosswalks allow dashboard architects to create a direct link between blocks that is sensitive to context, instead of simply point to point. Contextual Crosswalks typically link a recurring item, such as a product name, to a destination block that varies based on the location of the originating link within the Dashboard’s information architecture. With a Contextual Crosswalk, the destination block of each occurrence of the product name is determined by the location or context of the link within the Dashboard structure; that is, by relying on the users current location to offer insight into the things they are most interested in seeing.

For example, each occurrence of a product name throughout a Dashboard could link either to a block offering inventory information for that product, or to a block offering sales information for competing products. When the product name is located in the Supply Chain section of the Dashboard, it would connect to the inventory block: when the product name is located in the Sales section, the link would connect to the competitor sales block.

Contextual Crosswalks are useful when Dashboards offer a substantial amount of content that addresses several different facets or aspects of an important and recurring topic, term or item. Contextual Crosswalks often appear in the form of a Page showing Views for an item, both of which are chosen via Control Bar to give users ready access to the other available collections of blocks matching the other origin contexts.

Keeping the broader principles of the Building Blocks in mind, it’s perfectly logical for Contextual Crosswalks to link from one of several Dashboards or Portals within a Dashboard Suite to another destination Dashboard.

While Contextual Crosswalks can express any kind of associative relationship, in practice, it’s best to define a limited set of types of Contextual Crosswalk in advance and apply them consistently across the Dashboard or Portal Suite. We know well that complex navigation models increase the work required for designers, developers, users and administrators. Prescribing the available set of Crosswalk Connectors (Contextual and standard) in advance will make it much easier to maintain consistent and easily understood navigation models.

Example rendering:

(click on image for larger view)
contextual_crosswalk_small.jpg
Figure 24: Example Contextual Crosswalk

Rendering description

This rendering shows the navigation paths for a Contextual Crosswalk that links from a number of different origin contexts (or locations) to one of a number of similar destinations within the Products Section of a medium-size Dashboard. The legend on the map identifies the origin contexts and destinations for the Contextual Crosswalk, as well as the linked term: a Product Name. In this case, the Contextual Crosswalk directly links product names in six possible origin contexts (Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, etc.) with six matching briefings that provide detailed information on the status of a that same product. Those briefings appear as Views available from the Branded Product Focus Page (which contains the Marketing, Supply Chain, and Competitors briefings) or the Co-brand Product Focus Page (which contains the Customers, Regulatory, and Auditing briefings). After clicking the linked product name in the Supply Chain Section, a user navigates to the Branded Product Focus Page (P.3.2), which presents them with the Supply Chain Briefing (V.3.2.2).

Utility Navigation definition

Mandatory components: links to Dashboard Utility Functionality
Optional components: None
Stacking size: 3

Utility Navigation description

This Connector gives users consistent access to the most important utility functions and features for a Dashboard or Portal, gathering ubiquitous links to these necessary tools into a single building block. Utility Navigation should include links to any Utility Function that must be accessible from most or all Dashboard Sections or Pages.

Utility Navigation is typically considered to have a stacking size of 3, meaning it is placed at the Page level of the stacking hierarchy and not within individual Tiles, Tile Groups or Views. This approach is common practice in design settings and enterprise environments where standardized functionality is often supplied by or closely connected to externally defined services supplied via SOA – situations where some sort of dependency links the Dashboard or Portal to another system or environment.

Example rendering:

utility_navigation.jpg
Figure 25: Example Utility Navigation

Rendering description

This Utility Navigation component uses icons to provide links to eight distinct Utility Functions, an enterprise directory, a news feed aggregator, managed documents (Resources), a calendar, enterprise search, KPI driven alerts, prioritized staff updates and personalization settings. As you review the illustrations and examples of Utility Navigation and the other Connectors, keep in mind that no rule from the Building Blocks system requires Utility Navigation to appear onscreen collected together in a single location (though good conceptual and practical reasons for doing so often apply). Likewise, the design decision about how to provide access and use – via icons, text, or other features – should be driven by the particulars of your project and user needs.

Recalling the example business intelligence dashboard designed with the Building Blocks system from Part 1, this illustration shows a Dashboard Page which includes several of the Connectors.

us_products_example_callouts.jpg

This Page includes a Section Connector, a Page Connector, a View and a Tile with attached Control Bars, Utility Navigation (labeled ‘Utility Functionality’ here) and Convenience Functionality (described in more detail in Part 5).

Geography Selector definition

Mandatory components: controls or links for shifting the geographic context of a Container
Optional components: None
Stacking size: special – can be attached to Tiles, Tile Groups, Views, or Pages.

Geography Selector description

The Geography Selector allows designers and architects to decouple the information architecture of a Dashboard from the shifting organizational structures based on geography that many enterprises rely on to understand the fundamentals of their activities. The Geography Selector presents users with controls or links allowing them to change the geographic reference point of a Container, while maintaining the structure of that Container. In the same way that Control Bars increase the depth of a Tile, Tile Group, or View, a Geography Selector increases the scope or depth of a Container while reducing the number of additional Containers to manage. For example, a Geography Selector might allow users the ability to change the focus of a sales activity chart located in a Tile from one US state to another.

Large enterprises often operate in or with reference to multiple states (or provinces, departments, etc.), regions, countries or even continents. These geographic concepts or schemes frequently differ from unit to unit within an enterprise. They often change dramatically from year to year to suit external environmental changes or internal reorganizations. Just as aligning a site map to an organization chart creates a brittle structure subject to disruption during reorganization, tying a Dashboard’s information architecture to an enterprise’s current geographic scheme is a recipe for frustration.

Some Geography Selectors allows users to choose from a single set of geographic units, such as states or counties, with respect to the parameters determining the data shown for a defined set of KPI’s (fixed Containers, variable scope for their content). Other Geography Selectors allow users to traverse a hierarchy of geographic units, with respect to the parameters determining the data shown for a defined set of KPI’s (fixed Containers, variable scope for their content). It’s possible to attach Geography Selectors to Containers with Control Bars. In these cases, the Geography Selector typically drives the Container contents before the Control Bar.

Example rendering:

geography_selector.jpg
Figure 26: Example Geography Selector

Rendering description

This rendering shows a Tile Group with attached Geography Selector and Control Bar. The geographic scheme represented is hierarchical, spanning three tiers, beginning with State, moving to district and concluding with territory. Of course, many businesses use non-hierarchical geographic schemes, irregular schemes, or a combination of these options; in these cases the structure and quality of the underlying data, functionality and business logic may require creative solutions to the problems spawned by unusual intersections of the various choices.

This set of Connectors provides the minimum tools necessary for the assembly of coherent Dashboards across a wide variety of circumstances. I encourage you to refine this starting set, or create additional types of Connectors to meet new challenges.

Conclusion

When combined in a fashion that meets the specific needs and context of a tile-based design effort, the Containers and Connectors can strike a good balance between cost, flexibility, and customization in terms of the user experience, systems and technology efforts and business perspective.

With proper assembly, using the stacking hierarchy and the small set of required elements, the information architect can create a consistent and scalable structure that supports a high quality user experience, lowers development costs and establishes a basis for sharing of resources across the enterprise.
—
Part Five of this series will describe a common set of utility and convenience functionality often used to extend the reach and relevance of dashboard content to other contexts of use, making practical suggestions for following the principles of Openness, Independence and Portability underlying the Building Block system.

Ease of Use Outside the Box

by:   |  Posted on

As user experience designers in an enterprise, we find ourselves knee deep in pixels. Should we use a dropdown element or a set of radio buttons? 10pt or 12pt size font? A broad-and-shallow or narrow-and-deep information architecture? While such design considerations are necessary and important, we miss huge user experience opportunities outside the webpage, outside the website, outside the browser. By tackling inter-application usability opportunities, user experience (UX) professionals can make things easier in a big way.

Ease of Use Outside the Box

Since enterprise usability issues affect the entire organization, even small gains in improved ease-of-use can reap large benefits in aggregate across the entire user base. Whereas we traditionally focus on intra-system usability, we can also advocate inter-system usability, basically greasing the skids between systems so that all systems are easier to use. We could champion the merits of large monitors, decry unrealistically complex password policies while offering password management solutions, and develop easy-to-remember URL shortcuts for all websites that our colleagues access.

Fundamentally, user experience design strives to optimize the efficiency with which users communicate with other users through a computer. Users retrieve, consume, and input information. Within a system, we design the interfaces that allow users to efficiently perform those tasks. But users access systems in context of the environment that they are in. A system’s user experience may be drastically impaired when users access a system in a suboptimal context.

Take an application with a very well-designed user experience, say Apple’s iTunes. Fire it up, search, sort, categorize, play, and buy songs with ease. Well, perhaps not so easily. What if you were running the application on a computer with a 233MHZ processor, 32Mb of RAM, 640×480 monitor, 28.8Kb modem, and one tinny speaker? What if your iTunes password had to be changed every 15 days, must be 12 characters long, and include at least one number and one non-alphanumeric character? What if simply finding the icon to launch iTunes was a chore?

You would have a drastically different (worse) overall user experience than what you’re probably used to, in spite of the application’s well-designed user experience. Software makers understand the impact that the context in which an application is served can have on the user experience that is actually experienced. Hence the ubiquitous “System Requirements” that helps to ensure that an application is being used in its prescribed context.

Clear Path to Information

A primary system task for users is retrieving information. How can we make it easier for users to get the information they need? Unfortunately, we almost always assume an intra-system perspective—one where the information that the user needs is accessible via the system and the user is already in the system. But what if we were to take a step back and look at the larger context in which the system is accessed? What we’d find are multiple usability hurdles between users and information. In fact, there are many hurdles between the users and the applications.< Let’s take a look at three key inter-system usability issues and how they can be addressed: # Viewport size – How much information can you view at a single time? # Authentication – Can you securely and easily log into your systems? # URLs – How easily can you get to your systems?

Even High Def is Low Def

Walk into any big box electronics store and you’ll see the ubiquitous wall of so-called high-def TVs. Great, stunning, crisp pictures – right? But if you were to compare the resolution of the world’s best hi-def TV to that of printed paper, the paper would easily win. The LCD technology that many hi-def TVs use is the same as that of our computer displays. We are constrained with limited information density.

Computer displays are the viewport though which the majority of communications between the user and computer occur. Because that channel is choked by relatively low resolution and small overall area, communication throughput is limited.
Alleviating this problem is easy – increase the display area. Either get a larger monitor or, better yet, get two larger monitors and use a virtual expanded desktop that spans both. Research has shown that users can complete tasks 10% – 44% quicker with larger screens and that multi-tasking was less, well, tasking.[1] With prices of large LCD monitors drastically dropping, you can have such a setup for under $500. The increased work efficiencies that you’ll gain can easily justify the relatively small upfront expense. In fact, usability guru Jakob Nielsen states, “anyone who makes at least $50,000 per year ought to have at least 1600×1200 screen resolution.”[2]

When More Secure is Less Secure

Everyone logs into applications in the workplace. Whether you’re submitting an expense report, entering worked hours, or just logging into an intranet, you have to authenticate yourself as a valid user. The integrity of authentication lies primarily with password policies that govern password complexity and required frequency of change.

A good password is one that cannot be guessed. And there within lies the problem. What is difficult to guess is most likely difficult to remember. This problem is mulitplied when you have many applications that require authentication, each with its own password policy that dictates password complexity and mandatory resetting. So while a hacker may not be able to guess your passwords, you most likely will not be able to remember them either. So what do you do? Do what everyone else does (but knows they shouldn’t) – write your passwords down on the small piece of paper in your desk drawer. Not exactly the most secure practice.

The problem here is that the security folks design their password policies in a theoretical world where they only consider computers and hackers. Make the passwords very strong. But the primary end users, the people who actually log in appropriately, are not considered. The ultimate result is systems that are less secure. People are people. Defining password policies without considering the complete human context in which they are applied results in lower security.

As usability experts we should prescribe password management utilities. Password management utilities lock all your credentials to multiple applications under one master credential. The master credential is often a master password or a fingerprint scan. Once you have authenticated yourself with the master credential, the password management utility can then submit the individual credential to the respective applications as you access them. Since you no longer have to remember each password, you can realistically use tough-to-hack passwords for each application. Because you only have to remember a single master password, you can be realistically expected to use a strong master password.

Do You Speak URL?

It’s not uncommon to have a dozen websites that you need to access in the workplace. You need to go to one website to track your work hours, another for expenses, another for benefits enrollment, and yet another to log help desk tickets. Just arriving at these websites is often a challenge in-of-itself because each has its own long, cryptic URL. This is especially the case with internally deployed applications where the URL may include the server name, port number and even URL parameters.

A URL for an internally deployed PeopleSoft application such as http://psoft-production.hostinghub.companyname.net:8080/asp/ASPPROD/?cmd=login is not uncommon. Using your browser’s “favorites/bookmark” functionality can alleviate the problem, but that still places unnecessary burden on the users to bookmark each website and organize them. Even if the websites are bookmarked well, each time the user has to access a website, he must open his bookmarks, browse, find, and click.

Fortunately, there is an easy to implement solution that addresses the problem. URL “jumpwords” are words that you can type into your browser address bar that take you directly to a website. Think AOL “keywords,” but more persistent because they are integrated directly into existing browser functionality. So rather than having to bookmark http://psoft-production.hostinghub.companyname.net:8080/asp/ASPPROD/?cmd=login to access your Peoplesoft application, you would be able to just type “peoplesoft” in the address bar and you would be taken to the application.

Catching and rerouting the user can only work within an organization’s network (this does not work across the Web in general for obvious reasons). There are two main steps to set it up. First, you must make an internal DNS entry that catches and routes all jumpwords. All jumpwords are routed to a single, simple application page that maps the jumpword to the specific full URL and then bounces the user to that URL. You’ve then literally brought your organization’s websites to employee’s finger tips.

Big Picture Ease-of-Use

Whether designing a user interface or conducting a usability test, we generally assume that the user has already accessed the system in a predefined context. Take a step back and apply ease-of-use fundamentals to the factors that lie immediately outside of individual applications. By keeping our eyes open for opportunities to improve the user experience in a larger context, we can increase the communication efficiency within organizations and use simple solutions to reduce frustration and confusion of the people using the systems.

1.”Meet the Life Hackers”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/magazine/16guru.html?ei=5090&en=c8985a80d74cefc1&ex=1287115200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print New York Times Magazine, October 16, 2005
2. “Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox”:http://www.useit.com/alertbox/screen_resolution.html , July 31, 2006