One of the issues with SharePoint is that developing on it as a platform is quite a bit different than normal software development, because of the development is actually configuration of web parts and governance versus writing code.

So what do you do?

Microsoft to the rescue! They’ve released a new site called SharePoint Guidance. It’s a portal that covers all stages of development, from requirements gathering to unit testing and user acceptance. They also have a bunch of links to software that makes the job of developing for MOSS easier.

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Great news!

Usability Counts is a blog partner for the Open Web Awards, a competition that spotlights sites that encourage openness of the technology and/or social aspect with their users, and Open Web Awards is the only multilingual international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology. Through an online nominating and voting process, the Open Web Awards recognizes and honors the top achievements in 26 categories.

(I stole some of the text from them).

This is the second time around for the Open Web Awards. All you have to do is visit our website and submit a nomination through that big blue sidebar item on the right. Nominations will be open through November 16th, 2008.

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I’ve done my part (dropped off my absentee ballot at the poll, bypassing the hordes that like standing in line), so now all I can do is wait for the vote. FiveThirtyEight.com feeds that fix — it’s a stat geek’s guide to the election

The site everything from the number of interviews that John McCain and Barack Obama have done (
2,077,765) to projections after projections after projections. It ain’t fancy, but it’s very usable.

Do your part.

Vote. Then visit this site.

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So i was suprised to see a Yes On 8 advertisement on my blog today. It wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s pure branding, and I’m not making any money off off it.

And I would never want this ad on my site — I’m voting no on proposition 8 tomorrow — but I feel like my site’s been hijacked for political purposes. I run a usability blog, and while I might mention my political leanings (Libertarian, with a slight hint of Democrat in there), to have this on it just ruffles my feathers.

This is the danger of allowing political ads, especially one’s that are so controversial: someone’s going to get upset.

Anyone else have this happen today?

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If you run a blog, there should be a search box somewhere on the site

I might have written another post about this — it might have been Baseball Prospectus — where I described the issue where search was confusing because there were too many different ways. In their case it’s probably a technical issue because they’re on some custom hacked together content management system.

Six Revisions is different: they’re on WordPress, which has search right out of the box (notice the search box I have on this site, nice and big). Yet, there’s no way to search the site except through using google. It’s really disappointing, because the content is off the charts, and I was going to find a Photoshop article along the lines of their Illustrator article to send to a friend, but I can’t. I have to browse through their archives; this increases page views, but I don’t want to take the time.

It’s simple: blog readers sometimes want to see what’s on the inside, and the easiest way to do it is either through free form search, or through tag clouds.

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So, just what is everyone cursing about now?

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My fellow information architect Mack Reed pointed me to this cyber event, which he’s participating in. You can check it out at Twitter.

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CleverWorkarounds has an insightful post are an South Australian goverment project that’s being scrapped after spending $5 million on IT development. What’s notiable about this is that this reflects how many SharePoint engagements go: projects failing because the approach taken was too complex for proper implementation, and many of the difficulties would have discovered early on with a proof of concept.

Projects fail for a number of reasons, but the main point here was the lack of high level systems thinking. Sometimes, it’s best to figure out ways to simplify the complexity, and that isn’t always an easyr thing to do.

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You open up your consulting business, start posting to your blog, and wait for the millions of visitors to come in. Or don’t come in.

I personally have a three year plan for this blog, and I know it’s a journey, not a destination. It’s about the quality of the traffic for me (and who I want to promote to), not the quantity.

Along the same lines, proBlogger has a great post about the psychology of blogging. Read on…

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Marketing budgets are slashed.

Development projects are shelved.

New initiatives are put off.

So why is this the perfect time to rethink usability of your applications? Here’s a few reasons.

Most usability changes are small improvements, not drastic changes

If your application or website is surviving and making revenue, but not increasing in revenue the way that you want, this is the prefect time because most changes are small tweaks versus massive redesigns (or, if you are having to do a massive redesign, you’re probably not going to be around much longer anyways).

Some suggestions:

• How does your help text read?
• Do your emails communicate the message plainly enough to encourage better conversion rates?
• Can you remove screens from the process?
• Are there bugs that are affecting the user experience?

Making user experience improvements versus development changes is cheaper

The ratio of time on projects of developers versus user experience architects is about two or three to one, and developers are very expensive. Thus, taking on large-scale projects that may or may not improve your website or web application is a risky proposition, but making changes on a smaller scale where you can measure the results in short, iterative development cycles in much easier to demonstrate to upper management and customers.

Plus with limited resources, you can also cut down the amount of requirements gathering you are doing and have user experience architects work directly with the developers.

User experience changes help keep your current customers happy, and retention is the key to survival in a recession

During periods of a good economy, the key is growth. During recession periods, the key is keeping the customers you do have, because you don’t have to convert them.

It’s best to talk to your customers directly (especially the high value clients), and ask them about your service. Put together a survey of five or six simple questions that are open ended, like:

• What do you like about the  website?
• What do you dislike about the  website?
• How often do you use the website?
• Do you use it in conjunction with other services?
• What are websites you like?

Interview ten or so customers, and you’ll be surprised at the insights they gave. One of the insights we got from customers at Escrow.com during a time of recession was that they were familar with eBay as an application. As we redesigned the Escrow.com site to fit the eBay style, revenue went up without any marketing spend.

Thus, we kept our customers happy.

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