Design Matters

By Anne Rockley, with Pamela Kostur and Steve Manning

Reviewed by Jim Owens

If you think that designing information for reuse is simply a matter of writing “stand-alone” topics that can be understood in any context, you should read this book. Although its focus is how to manage information, Managing Enterprise Content contains many valuable lessons for information designers.

Information is a vital asset for any organization, but as Rockley points out, it is seldom managed effectively. More often, its development and distribution is left to individual departments working in “content silos.” In this way, the organization unknowingly creates and processes the same content in many places. One department is often unaware of the resources available in another department. Even when departments manage to share and trade information, they spend time and effort converting formats and performing “cut-and-paste” operations.

Organizations can make better use of their information assets by planning and managing how content is processed and developed. The first step is to perform a “content audit” to identify what is being created and where. With this information, the organization can pinpoint duplicated effort, and then develop a “unified content strategy” to plan for mutual content development and reuse.

The lesson for information designers is that successful reuse requires long-term, top-level planning. It isn’t enough to write a topic that can be understood in isolation. You need to know what will happen to that topic in its lifecycle: who will reuse or repurpose the topic; how it will be processed; where it will show up in the organization’s information products.  Also of particular interest to information designers is the section on “Design,” with chapters on information modeling, metadata, dynamic content, and workflow.

Besides offering practical advice on how to overcome content silos, conduct a content audit, and develop a unified content strategy, Rockley surveys the technologies available for effective content management. Not surprisingly, she recommends the use of XML throughout the organization. The book concludes with a classification and comparison of various authoring tools, content management systems, and options for workflow and delivery.

New Riders, 2003 ISBN 0-7357-1306-5

Jim Owens is a technical writer in Ottawa, Canada. His interests in information design topics include visual presentation, content organization, topic planning, and rhetorical approach. He also recommends Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug (reviewed in the previous post), How to Write a Usable User Manual by Edmond H. Weiss, The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams, Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery by JoAnn Hackos, and Single-Sourcing: Building Modular Documentation by Kurt Ament.

Reviewed by Jim Owens

In this short and entertaining book, Steve Krug draws us into the world of our own half-conscious thoughts as we navigate various actual web pages. These thoughts can slow us down, confuse and discourage us, and eventually cause us go somewhere else. Krug’s most important contribution is to help us notice these inarticulate reactions. He also offers design tips for avoiding these reactions, but ultimately, as the book’s subtitle suggests, the answer is just common sense.

The ample and well-designed illustrations are themselves a lesson in usability. With side-by-side screen shots, Krug shows us the crisp and handsome web page we think we’re designing, and the pared-down “eyeball” view of the user, with most of the page blurred out of direct consciousness. From the big headings above the screen shots (”What we design for” and “What users see”), the meaning of the illustration is transparent. Probably one could absorb most of the book’s lessons just by looking at the pictures. But Krug’s informal, friendly prose, dotted generously with humor, makes this book a pleasure to read.

For web design, Krug identifies and recommends some common practices that users now expect; for example, putting the company logo at top left and using it as a link to the home page. If you’re new to web design, this may save you from re-inventing the wheel (or inventing something that doesn’t work as well). As Krug points out, “Conventions are your friend.” He also provides advice for writing effectively, some of it refreshingly unorthodox (”Instructions must die!”). And as a bonus, he talks about why and how to conduct usability testing. But without a doubt, the real value of this book is the way it exposes our mental processing of information.

New Riders, 2000 ISBN 0-7897-2310-7

Jim Owens is a technical writer in Ottawa, Canada. His interests in information design topics include visual presentation, content organization, topic planning, and rhetorical approach. Other related books he recommends are Managing Enterprise Content by Ann Rockley, How to Write a Usable User Manual by Edmond H. Weiss, The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams, Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery by JoAnn Hackos, and Single-Sourcing: Building Modular Documentation by Kurt Ament.