How should a website be considered by an organisation?

It is essential for the success of any website that it is recognised as an integral part of the organisation. It is a global, potentially low-cost communication and an (increasingly) transactional medium by which information and services can be made available at any time of day or night.

As such, organisations need to consider how best the Internet can be used to provide access to information and to aid in the delivery of goods and services to customers.

A clear web management strategy is at the heart of developing this thinking. It must be an integral part of the organisation’s Corporate Communications and e-Strategies.

There are three main categories of website:

• Information orientated: these cover departmental publications, publicity, recruitment, news, statutory information, promotional material, providing advice, requesting responses and feedback. They may, for example, provide an electronic catalogue to users. Queries and requests can be handled via email or forms. Orders, and necessary payment, can be fulfilled through the conventional procedures.

• Operational: these are transactional websites geared towards e-business and cover the whole online process, from service selection through ordering and confirmation to online payment. These may be integrated with departmental systems to enable electronic transactions with the public and other customers.

• Campaign: such websites will support a specific publicity campaign, working directly with press, TV and radio advertising. All the media reflect the same messages and images. They may also provide an electronic catalogue to users with requests being handled via email. Fulfilment can be handled through the conventional procedures.

Many websites may incorporate aspects of each of the above. In all three categories the principle of developing a relevant and effective management strategy applies. This section sets out the five key components of a web management strategy:

• Purpose - what is the website for?

• Strategic and operational management - who is the owner and who is responsible?

• Information and other content management - how will material and services be provided and presented online?

• Evaluation and ongoing development - how should use and performance of the website be monitored and how should the results be used for future development?

Content Management simplifies Web publishing

What is Content Management?

TeamSite, by Interwoven delivers enterprise web page management you can put to work right away.

Organize your web sites to more effectively carry out your agency's mission.

• Consolidate numerous Web properties into a single managed environment to drive down operational expenses.

• Streamline your content development by reusing your materials.

• Empower your web master to manage your content for faster changes with greater accuracy.

• Web pages can be written by anyone in your agency; content contributions can be controlled through permissions.

• Maintain web governance standards by archiving auditable copies of all websites, while improving the transparency of your organizational processes.

• Effectively manage system security, fault tolerance and disaster recovery.

Bolster workforce productivity and accelerate time-to-value.

TeamSite content management system from DIS enables agencies to manage content across all internally and externally facing Web-based applications, such as enterprise portals, intranets, self-service applications, public-facing Web Sites, and extranets. Your agency can reduce your web site development and maintenance costs and the time-to-Web risk associated with all online initiatives.

• Ensure your agency’s brand consistency across all Web and application touch points.

• Empower content owners to manage their own content for faster changes with less process overhead.

• Reuse content across business applications and sites to drive consistency and lower publishing costs.

• Web content creation and publishing processes can be set up to suit your unique agency.

• Version control assures consistent content integrity.

• Share resources and collaborate with other agencies using TeamSite.

• Customer and technical support available 24x7.

How does parallel design work?

What is most striking about parallel design is how many ideas can be considered in a very short time. Most linear processes would only have considered a few iterations of a single design in the time that parallel design can consider many ideas. McGrew's design team considered at least 40 design alternatives in a single day. McGrew found that most participants responded immediately to good ideas. This was true even when good ideas were contained in otherwise poor design solutions.

Good user interface design requires designers first to "saturate the design space." This means that user interface designers should consider as many alternative design ideas as possible before selecting the best to take forward.

How have others conducted parallel design?

McGrew (2001) published an article confirming the value of parallel design. McGrew's case study was the user interface for an invoice reconciliation program. He scheduled a one-day session with several participants, including the project manager, a designer, two subject matter experts, a technical writer who was scheduled to do the training, three users, and a human factors engineer.

They began by having each person independently sketch a proposed user interface on a large sheet of paper using colored felt-tip markers. The sketches then were posted on the wall for all to see and evaluate. After viewing the design solutions proposed by others, each participant sketched two new designs. McGrew required that each new design include at least one idea from another person's design and an idea that no one had yet proposed. Again, all participants reviewed all the design solutions. They began to agree on an optimal design fairly early in the process and were able to reach consensus on the final user interface before the end of the day.

Benefits of parallel design:

Several research projects have shown the value of this technique:

• Seeing and trying others' designs improved final solutions
• Creating many designs produced better results
• Combining design elements resulted in better user interfaces

Seeing and trying others' designs improved final solutions

Bailey (1992) reported on training courses where students were given a specification and used a prototyping tool to create a simple system. After all the students completed their designs, each student used everyone else's system to complete a task. Having experienced the ideas of all the other students, each then made changes to his or her original prototype. This process was repeated two more times. The revised interfaces were always considerably better than the originals. Two important observations emerged from these classes:

• No matter how good the original interfaces were, every one was improved.
• Students were able to very quickly identify the good design ideas in the systems of others, and they effectively integrated those good ideas into their own designs.

Creating many designs produced better results

A few years later, Nielsen (1993) described a development methodology in which several designers worked independently to generate as many different design ideas as possible. Once they had created different designs, they combined their different ideas and took the best features from all designers. The goal was to develop and evaluate different ideas before settling on a single approach.

Nielsen listed the following as major benefits of this approach:

• It allows a range of ideas to be generated quickly and cost-effectively.
• It allows several approaches to be explored at the same time, thus compressing the concept development schedule.
• The concepts generated can often be combined so that the final product benefits from all the proposed ideas.
• People with little usability expertise can use the technique.

Combining design elements resulted in better user interfaces

A few years later, Ovaska and Raiha (1995) published an article suggesting that having designers make initial design decisions independently and then combining their results produced better user interfaces than the original design of any one person. They called this approach "parallel design."

Use Parallel Design

With parallel design, several people create an initial design from the same set of requirements. Each person works independently, and when finished, shares his/her concepts with the group.

The design team considers each solution, and each designer uses the best ideas to further improve their own solution. This process helps to generate many different, diverse ideas and ensures that the best ideas from each design are integrated into the final concept. This process can be repeated several times until the team is satisfied with the final concept.

Content Management simplifies Web publishing

What is Content Management?

TeamSite, by Interwoven delivers enterprise web page management you can put to work right away.

Organize your web sites to more effectively carry out your agency’s mission.

* Consolidate numerous Web properties into a single managed environment to drive down operational expenses.

* Streamline your content development by reusing your materials.

* Empower your web master to manage your content for faster changes with greater accuracy.

* Web pages can be written by anyone in your agency; content contributions can be controlled through permissions.

* Maintain web governance standards by archiving auditable copies of all websites, while improving the transparency of your organizational processes.

* Effectively manage system security, fault tolerance and disaster recovery.

Bolster workforce productivity and accelerate time-to-value.

TeamSite content management system from DIS enables agencies to manage content across all internally and externally facing Web-based applications, such as enterprise portals, intranets, self-service applications, public-facing Web Sites, and extranets. Your agency can reduce your web site development and maintenance costs and the time-to-Web risk associated with all online initiatives.

* Ensure your agency’s brand consistency across all Web and application touch points.

* Empower content owners to manage their own content for faster changes with less process overhead.

* Reuse content across business applications and sites to drive consistency and lower publishing costs.

* Web content creation and publishing processes can be set up to suit your unique agency.

* Version control assures consistent content integrity.

* Share resources and collaborate with other agencies using TeamSite.

* Customer and technical support available 24x7.