A “zero in-box”

Posted May 3, 2010, under Productivity
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I was having a conversation on the weekend with a colleague about my always zero in-box and thought I’d share my simple approach to dealing with email:

Rule #1: Look at your email only a few times a day. Learn not to worry about your in-box and the need to react immediately. It’s a distraction and you’ll be a lot more productive if you don’t treat it this way.

Rule #2: Read every email, as you do make the decision to either reply, forward (delegating to others), delete or file. That’s it.

For those requiring action or a bit more attention, I file in a folder labelled @Action – then I go through this folder a couple times during the day to deal with these. Another option is to file the email and create a to-do to manage the follow-up.

I have a single folder for filing email that is labelled @Archive. Don’t bother creating folders for projects and categories. Use your email software search to find things.

Rule #3: Send less email. Walk over to someone’s desk if you want to say something, pick up the phone and make a call. Reducing the amount you send will also reduce the amount you receive.

I’ve been doing this for about 8 years now and always have a zero in-box. When I come back from vacation to that 500+ email box I can usually clear it in about a 1/2 hour using this approach.

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Next stop: Vancouver

Posted February 9, 2010, under Banking, Jobs and Careers
24 comments

Twenty-one months ago we moved from Vancouver to Calgary with my employer at the time. Three months later we moved into our house. A year later layoffs landed and I was one of them. Three days later I joined an agency, then later left to join another UX consultancy. Change for certain has been a constant thread.

A couple weeks ago we listed our house. It sold in four days. The plan at the time was to find a new place and maybe downsize. After the sale a former colleague contacted me about a job opportunity. We talked, he made an offer. A couple days later, after much discussion with the family, I accepted.

So it’s with this post that I let you all know that I’m on the move again. This time back to Vancouver.

I’m joining the team at Central 1 Credit Union as Product Manager, Direct Banking. I’ll be overseeing their suite of MemberDirect banking products starting in March. Having worked in the credit union system for a big part of my career I’m excited about returning to my roots in banking and helping to shape Central 1′s products.

Over this past twenty-one months I’ve met a lot of great people here in Calgary, made some new friends, helped move UX forward a bit more (with Calgary UX), seen my son off to his first year of school and watched my wife blossom in her career. I’ve had a lot of wonderful opportunities to grow, learn and share and I’d like to thank everyone for that.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank the team at nForm. When I joined them back in 2009 I wasn’t expecting such a short ride. I’ve been truly fortunate to have worked with such a great group of people and will miss you all. Your support in this decision has been greatly appreciated.

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Doing a content audit or inventory

Posted February 8, 2010, under Information Architecture, User Experience
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This is a re-post of my article Doing a content audit or inventory that was posted on the nForm blog January 26, 2010.

This past couple weeks I’ve been doing a large content audit and inventory. With the increased attention on content strategy the audit/inventory seems to be making a comeback.

In this post I’m going to share my recent approach and talk about the tools and process I used to get a comprehensive audit/inventory done.

Audit or inventory?

Before I start though I want to clear up some terminology – in particular the difference between a content audit and a content inventory. Some use the terms interchangeably, but I think there is a difference (I could be wrong), so here’s my take on it:

An inventory is quantitative. An inventory is to help you paint a picture of how much content the site has and to help in the identification of the specific pages/URLs/content as well as any other meta data I can gather. I prefer to do these using a tool to automate much of the work.

An audit is qualitative. An audit helps me understand what kinds of content there are, shows me how pages are currently organized, connects me with the voice and tone of the content and helps me uncover the subject matter so I can be conversant about the site with my client. I prefer to do these manually, reviewing the content on as many pages as I can (for larger sites this might just a sample of the overall content – every X page or page/document type – or a level or two deep).

Doing a content inventory

I’m the first to admit that the task of doing an audit/inventory can be a significant undertaking, tedious and even “mind-numbing” as Jeffrey Veen once said, so I’m always looking for ways to make it easier. Below are a couple tools that can help speed up your work:

  • iGooMap (OSX) is an application that was designed to help create Google Sitemap files for search engine optimization. What I particularly like about this application is that it can pull down a list of URLs with the date last modified from the server (which can be helpful in showing when content was last edited and expediting the ROT or OUCH assessment). It exports files to an XML Sitemap file or to a text file listing all the URLs. You can also filter extensions and parameters from URLs, disallow certain files or folders and view bad links.
  • Integrity is an application that was created for webmasters doing link checking and has been extended recently to allow you to create XML sitemap files as well. It also can export the results of your scan as a .CSV file or as an XML sitemap file, allows filtering and the ability to ignore certain parameters. Like iGooMap it also shows you bad links.

Note: if you are a PC user there may be comparable Google sitemap creation tools, but I don’t have any suggestions for you. For link checking, I’d suggest trying XENU Link Sleuth

The advantage of using a tool to automate some of the work is that: is that it gives me a comprehensive list of URLs without much effort and can run in the background while I do my audit or other work. While tools are helpful, they tend to scan everything they can find via a hyperlink. So once I have my list of pages I usually try and spend some time cleaning up my inventory. Here are a few methods I use:

  • Load the list of pages into Excel (each page URL on it’s own row) and then sort the column ascending from A-Z so that the URLs appeared based on their site file structure. This speeds up the grouping of content in the spreadsheet and makes it easier to locate similar content based on the URL path.
  • If you have URLs in a mix of cases it can be hard to scan and read. So to make them all the same case using Excel’s LOWER function.
  • To locate duplicates within the spreadsheet use Excel’s COUNTIF function and some conditional formatting, then quickly identify and flag duplicates and delete them from the spreadsheet. If you’re not an Excel wiz, try this tutorial on using the COUNTIF function to find duplicates.
  • Consider moving other content/file types (PDF, Word Docs, Video, Audio, PowerPoint, etc.) to other tabs in your spreadsheet so that you can separate the pages from the files on the site and really focus on the content that’s HTML. I usually have one for Documents, Audio and Video respectively.

Doing a content audit

When I work on an audit I create a spreadsheet with a few columns set up:

  • Content ID (optional). Some people like to number everything, but I don’t. Personally I find this hard to read and even harder to navigate.
  • Levels. Here I record the page name. Rather than rely on colored background or other reminders I use a column for each level within the site (labeling it simply as L1, L2, L3, etc.). This helps me see the relationship of pages to one another more easily that the numbering scheme used above. I usually don’t go more than a few levels deep and keep the column width small to make it easy to read.
  • URL. The page URL
  • Document type. Here I list what template the page uses or the type of page it is
  • Owner/Maintainer. Here I list who’s responsible for the content. This I usually have the client fill in.
  • ROT or OUCH. ROT stands for Redundent, Outdated and Trivial. It’s a bit ambiguous so lately I’ve been using Gene Smith’s suggestion of OUCH (Outdated, Unnecessary, Current, Have to Write). This you can document or have the client fill in.
  • Do not review. At times there is content that simply just doesn’t need to be reviewed. It could be historical, time-based content (like past press releases or newsletters) that just isn’t worth the time reviewing. You can speed up this task by flagging the content in the spreadsheet. I might take a stab at this or have the client do it.
  • Notes. Here I’ll record anything that I want to make note of or mention.

Combining the two approaches

Sometimes it is worth combining the two methods. When I do:

  • I start by doing a manual audit of the site
  • While I’m doing the audit I create a content inventory to get a list of pages and when they were possibly last modified/updated and clean up the inventory file – removing duplicate URLs and cleaning up formatting
  • I open both spreadsheets and copy/paste the pages from the inventory to the manual audit that were not reviewed giving me a complete list of all the content on the site
  • I may have the client identify the page owner/maintainer, OUCH, which pages we may be able to ignore and which content might be relevant to particular audiences

A couple final tips

  • Make sure your scanning tool indexes all the various file extensions. Most are made for search engine optimization and as such exclude a number of extensions.
  • Double check for redirects. These could point to redundant pages in your inventory.
  • If you have content behind a login area, see if your tool will allow you to enter login credentials to capture this content. If it won’t, you’ll likely have to do it manually.

Hopefully these tips and tools help to make your content audit/inventory work a bit smoother.

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Explain IA

Posted January 31, 2010, under Information Architecture
10 comments

To “explain IA”, this afternoon I had my 5-year-old son draw me a picture of what he thought IA was and what it is I do for a living. Thought everyone would enjoy his take on explaining IA.

Here’s the complete drawing:

Some close up photos:

Here’s what you’ll see on the drawing and his explanations of the drawing in quotes.

“My Dad’s job is an information architect”. Apparently I look like a transformer with 70s hair.

People – “you work with a lot of people Dad”. Naturally people are romans, knights and guys with swords.

Audiences – “here we have a drawing of the orchestra on stage with an audience “the guys at the right are bagpipe players, people will love them”

Labels – a drawing of a can of “mom soup”

Navigation – here we have a compass “like Jack Sparrow’s” and “pirate ships having a battle”

Organizing – “I made a site map of super heroes, organized by boy superheroes and girl superheroes with pictures in case people can’t read my writing”

Finding – “you have to find Waldo in this super big cave”

Search – “this is a hand holding a magnifying glass, looking at a spider”

Maps – “cause you sometimes need a map to find things”

Making things easy – “I decided not to draw anything for this because it was easier”

and lastly – “It’s fun, see they are smiling”

I think he has a pretty good grasp of what IA is. Who knows, maybe he’ll be an IA/UX/IxDA/Designer when he grows up.

NOTE: I only helped with printing out pictures of super heroes and the writing of this summary. I was totally amazed at what he knows about what I do and what things are part of it all. I have a fantastic son!

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The fine art of listening

Posted December 22, 2009, under User Experience
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This is a re-post of my article The fine art of listening that was posted on the nForm blog December 22, 2009.

As UX practitioners we help create things that are better, more usable, better organized, easier to engage with, help sell more stuff or reduce costs (a non-exhaustive list). Many of our methodologies and approaches leverage a single important skill – listening. And while many of us recognize the importance listening plays in our work few of us are really good at it.

According to research about listening:

  • We spend about 45% of our time listening
  • We can recall about 50% of what was said after someone speaks and comprehend about 25%
  • Spoken words only account for 30 -35% of the meaning. The rest is transmitted through nonverbal communication that only can be detected through visual and auditory listening
  • The average person talks at a rate of about 125 – 175 words per minute, while we can listen at a rate of up to 450 words per minute

Effective communication and relationship building, whether with clients, peers or others, is dependent on good listening habits. So how important is listening in our day-to-day communication?

  • Ralph G Nichols and Leonard A Stevens (researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Iowa, respectively) in their Harvard Business Review article, Listening to People found that managers and office workers earn 40% of their salaries listening; executives earn up to 80%.
  • Three of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People are dedicated to communication and listening. Take for example Habit 5 that states, “seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

Effectively listening can help us understand a situation; make informed decisions; be more efficient and productive; build trust and respect; and help us develop strong relationships with others.

Here’s some examples of places where listening is required in UX:

  • During sales: this is where we build relationships and understand need
  • During design research or discovery: We need to actively listen and be attentive to the inputs being provided. Through listening we learn about the needs, pain points, issues, opportunities, goals, interests, etc. of our users
  • When facilitating: Listening is critical to ensuring that we effectively guide discussions and gather input/feedback about end-user or business needs
  • When presenting deliverables: Listening to what people say about our work through dialogue and feedback.

The good news is that like other forms of communication such as writing and speaking, listening is a skill that can be learned. All it takes is a bit of understanding and practice. Some of you will be great at it immediately, while others may need to continuously practice and build your skills.

How do you get better at listening? Here’s some suggestions:

  • First, clear your mind so you can actively listen.
  • Second, be quiet. Shut up. Don’t talk. Really, be quiet. Learn to tolerate silence and don’t interrupt. Hold back on the impulse to immediately answer questions or to jump in and share your point-of-view while others are talking.
  • Third, try changing how you listen. Try to capture the message (listen with your ears, mind, eyes and heart). Make eye contact, use an open posture and be attentive to body language, volume, tone and pace. Look deeper than just the meaning of the words and try to understand the reason, feelings or intent beyond the words. Be empathetic, objective and analytical.
  • Fourth, comprehend what was said.
  • Fifth, clarify by paraphrasing back what was said. Use your own words to confirm that what you’ve heard is correctly understood. If you are told that you didn’t understand it correctly, try asking people to re-communicate it as a metaphor, this can often get you back on the same page. If you don’t understand something, say so.
  • Lastly, respond to what was said (if you need to) or ask more questions and keep on listening.

If you want to practice these skills, give this a try:

Walk up to someone you don’t know and introduce yourself. Shake their hand and ask who they are. Then listen, ask questions, listen some more and don’t talk except to ask questions. See what you can discover.

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