Much of the early writing about the iPad has focused on its technical limitations. The negative reviews have largely been around the lines of “why bother, I’d rather keep using my laptop or iPhone”. But the iPad is innovative not so much for its technical features, it is in a sense just an overgrown iPod touch, but for what it represents as a new class of devices that fills, or more accurately creates, a new gap in the market. Does that make it a revolution? Probably short of that but certainly an historic evolutionary step.

For anyone with an iPhone they’ll immediately get what the iPad is about. You can surf the web, check email, view photos and video and download apps from iTunes from what is effectively a big, fat sexy touch screen four times the size of the iPhone’s one.

So from a technical point of view it is a bigger iPhone without the phone and camera, yet another PDA device, a stunted laptop, another way to connect to the Internet apart from your TV, games device, computer, phone and home storage device. Nothing that really excites on the surface. But then you think about how you’d use it and therein lies the evolution.

The iPad fills what was a growing chasm as the couch surfing instrument. We already know people tend to surf and watch TV at the same time, now they have the tool to do it. If you want to quickly look up something online whilst at home why turn on the computer or laptop with it’s noisy humming and heat generating hard disk? The iPad is light and portable and the touch screen much better for using from your lap than any laptop’s dongle mechanism. What about the TV as your web browser such as the Playstation 3? Eh! Never took off because surfing using a game controller or DVD remote sucks and you can’t then watch TV at the same time. Better to use those devices for their primary purpose. What about the iPhone’s screen? Great, but here’s what anyone with an iPhone already knows. No matter how great the workarounds, zooming and touch scrolling there is, it’s still too small to really surf a website and be totally happy about it which is why we in the industry have been creating mobile sites, something completely different to normal website for people on mobiles.

The iPad will be a new class of devices that sits on the coffee table, gets used for games, puzzles and accessing email and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, reading books and magazines and even doing homework. When friends come around it will be the new photo album. And it will portable such that when you go down to the local café, or commute to work, it will come also act the perfect social PDA device. Will it also be a camera and portable music device like the iPhone? Probably not, not its niche.

So what is at the heart of this evolution? Price, as it always is. The iPad is very affordable. But from a technology point of view, it’s two things, the screen and the size. The screen is is quite simply amazing touchy goodness and simply the best interface device for computers yet invented, and available at an affordable price. And what is important about that screen is not the hardware specs but actually the software that controls the interaction with it and makes it so intuitive. It’s what Apple does best being put to good use. Then secondly the size of the device. Just right. This predominantly achieved from the hard-state hard disk removing the hum and heat of what we’re used to from laptops. That technology is coming in laptops too now but the iPad puts it straight to good use.

In ten years time when the predominant way we travel around with our computers is a touch screen, tablet style device we’ll look back and remember the first one of these and say, yes it was the iPad. And when the publishing industry finally gives up on pulping forests and it is predominantly electronic downloading we’ll look back to the breakthrough device that commercially changed everything and say, yes it was the iPad. And when kids grow up and remember the “teenies” or whatever they’re going to call this decade, the picture that will form when asked to think about the Internet will likely be that device that sat around the house and could access the internet at will, which will be the iPad or one of its successors.

And in a commercial or school setting when we think about a computer that is portable but still able to do serious work from a user-friendly screen we’ll remember the iPad as the device that finally filled that awkward gap.

So as a device the iPad is brilliant evolution. However, it’s effects on the way we interact with the Internet, particularly as it relates to various industries and social behaviour may be remembered as revolutionary. Publishing, education, film and video distribution, games manufactures take particular note. Your worlds in particular just changed for good.

Thank you to our picture source: ThinkGeek

I had reason recently to discuss the concept of Information Architecture (IA) with a client. In its broad context, as it applies to digital, it was readily apparent that this client’s world view, the definition that they pursued was limited to the site navigation and page layout in context of a classic sitemap mapped out in Visio. Whilst I understand that most IA’s are referred back to a site map diagram  – which I believe is a trap of the industry -  it occurred to me that the definition as interpreted by my work colleagues who rank developers, project managers,  strategists and designers (conceptual) is in an entirely different area of focus and emphasis. However, we’re often left with clients that need to understand just what in the world we are talking about. So where is the disconnect?

As is always the case when in doubt, I fall back on the Trusted Wikipedia definition of Information Architecture as a starting point:

“Information architecture (IA) is the art of expressing a model or concept of information used in activities that require explicit details of complex systems. Among these activities are library systems, Content Management Systems, web development, user interactions, database development, programming, technical writing, enterprise architecture, and critical system software design. Information architecture has somewhat different meanings in these different branches of IS or IT architecture. Most definitions have common qualities: a structural design of shared environments, methods of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, and online communities, and ways of bringing the principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.”

Quite a formal definition that needs bearing in mind if we are to disseminate the underlying definition in context of the digital world.

When building any sort of digital system – website, extranet, intranet, lots of people, including both clients and practitioners make the mistake thinking that it’s easy. It’s not. A well built website considers factors that are the summation of different areas of endeavour for the business or organisation in question. Everyone has a vested interest to ensure that this pesky website thing works – the sales force, corporate comms group, IT & IS, HR, executive, products group etc. Ultimately, they are there to support the activities in communicating to the site’s end users, both actual and intended and the intended function of the site in turn supports the business goals being focused upon by the underlying organisational strategy.

What is overlooked on a regular basis by both clients and so called ‘expert’ practitioners is the need for us to have an understanding of those other audiences on the business side who have a vested interest as well as the same understanding as it relates to the user side. The often subscribed to view is that managing or eliciting such involvement from other stakeholders internally can unnecessarily stymie the progress of the project. And in contrast, assessing the audience both intended and actual is often just ‘too big a task’ by most peoples standards. Involvement in such activity extends to the IA and how it impacts on the User Experience (UX).  IA by our own industries definition is not just the site structure from a page relationship point of view, however the problem is that we often don’t communicate this terribly well to our clients, who are more focused on the commercial outcome of  what the end result will be. And rightly so, as they are the ones ‘paying’ us to deliver results. Succinctly, IA involves not only the navigation and the hierarchical arrangement of the pages, but also encompasses the below aspects.

1. Who is the audience? Are they going to be myopically challenged (as mentioned below) or have the attention span of a butterfly. A learned academic is going to spend more time – and have the patience – to thoroughly read a 2,000 word long web page discussing a theoretical point or offering detailed information. This in contrast to your average line manager who is already time poor and going from managing one situation to another. The way each of these users “digest” content is different. Good websites try and address different styles of visitor.
2. Content Layout – Priority and scaling of content in relation to context and intended purpose. The concept of a great tract of text 1500 words long doesn’t faze most people – until the question arises ‘Would you read that?’ Without understanding the user audience and their background, motivations and ultimately using the data you already have, content needs to be crafted to suit each of the audiences that are likely to visit the site. Both clients and practitioners are guilty of not thinking in this area nor offering advice and alternatives. How to solve this? If you can’t deal with all that in 200 – 250 words on the one page, you need to consider strategies to segment the data into logical areas on the page (summary paragraph, dot points, side content bars, cross linking etc) and the creation of content channels that make sense. Web audiences are very different, regardless of background to those that go through a paper document.
3. Image Use – Either overused (way to large), underused (way to small) or cliched, out of context. How many product sites have you gone too where the images are tiny and they were next to no help at all? Too many I bet.
4. Navigation Layout. Layout of navigation and the way that it functions is a critical component that many websites have executed poorly and causes the site to fail in its goals because it is too difficult to use. Well constructed sites are designed in a way that make cognitive sense and are intuitive. The simple task of highlighting a button into an “active” state when the mouse floats over it is often missed by some really high traffic websites. Also the notion of highlighting the navigation area in some fashion to reflect the area of the site that you are browsing through is often missed. Breadcrumbs are also highly underrated. This trail and visual cue of where you are in the site gives relevance to the hierarchical order of information.
5. Font Size – Again highly underrated. How many sites have you found where the font is a tiny 6 point type, but the core audience is 50+ male white collar workers…. who are probably wearing glasses. Have at the least a font size button which can scale the site up and down.
6. Print version – like it or not, people still print pages. Make sure that your site can  fit on the A4 sheet and ensure that the page is set up to prevent content getting cropped. Savvy website owners will also setup their print variants to have pre-formatted pages with company logo, contact information, the page location within the site, print date and possible cross linked information.

Good UX yields ease of access and allows people to fall into the natural rhythm of finding the information they are looking for and if it is done correctly, it is self feeding in that it yields data back giving you insights into your web audience and what they are looking at and where they track across the site. The key things is that good IA starts at the design stage and should be encompassed in the Wireframes and the Site layout. Excellent IA is the result of good consultant activity at the Pre-Sales / Client Definition / Discovery stage of the project and should take into account a site visit whereby you can ’soak up’ the atmosphere of the client in question.

All the above needs to be determined before a good IA can be setup and they all impact on the overall User Experience of how your prospective site visitors will interact with your business in the digital channel. The current line of thought that is trending in digital agency and wider high end ad agency environments extends to the notion that the most important channel to engage and interact in a meaningful way with your consumers is the digital channel, as it has the capacity to uniquely service each site visitor with a personalised and tailored experience that meets their expectations of your brand.

A businesses brand persona and the way it is articulated at every touch point with your organisation – product quality, packaging, customer service, phone call centre, printed material, customer interaction, operations staff, sales force, partner channel – influences the perception of your business in peoples minds. Our goal at Areeba is ensuring that the delivery in the digital channel and how your brand presence as articulated by your website and digital presence in general meshes with the strategic goals of your business overall.

After a break of a couple of week: (due to high demand) we are back with the links of the week! Find here are a few links and discussions roaming through in our internal inboxes during the last weeks…

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Links of the (last) week(s):

- 80’s games geeks, watch this

- Geek clock

- Boy the movie (bro!)

- Why not live in a missile base?

- Congressman Fears Guam May Capsize

- Social Web Involvement

- The Anti-Tweeting Blog

- The Hidden Pizza Restaurant and the story behind it

- Interesting signup page

- Facebook “Like” button

- Google – new tool – Government Requests to remove content from Index

- FlairBuilder – Interface prototyping tool

- Pink turn at ‘G reveals rising rate of breast cancer

- Link identifiers

- Decline of the homepage

- OMG YES!!! Internet filter goes bye-bye!

- Steve Jobs’ thoughts on Flash and iPhone, iPod and iPad

- Drupal security report

- Social Intranet: Open Atrium social network for internal use

- Run Like Crazy competition

- Apple’s Flash burst may be probed

- Designing Social Interfaces: Overview and Practical Techniques

Areeba is pleased to help in the launch the Pink Footy and Netball Day 2010 website, produced for Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA), in conjunction with the Victorian Country Football League, Netball Victoria and AFL Canberra. Pink Footy & Netball Day is a day to recognise and support people affected by breast cancer in your sporting community and to raise funds for Breast Cancer Network Australia.  Celebrated over the Mother’s Day weekend, Footy and Netball clubs will show their support for BCNA and breast cancer survivors by playing with a Pink match ball.

The website provides information about the Mother’s Day event, and facilitates the purchase of specially coloured balls for Football and Netball games across Australia. Primarily targeted at the clubs and associations who will be organising the events, the website also contains bio’s on particular clubs of interest, an online store, event merchandise (pins, caps), and a large range of FAQs, news, media, and information about the day.

Clubs wanting to participate should purchase a Pink Football or a Pink Netball Day pack through the official website. Proceeds from the sale of all Pink Footy & Netball day packs will support the work of Breast Cancer Network Australia.

If you are a Footy or Netball player, or would wish to grab a particularly fabulous football or netball – check out the site.

In 2009, more than 150 pink footies and 250 pink netballs were purchased generating great community awareness and media exposure for BCNA, VCFL, Netball Victoria and the clubs, leagues and associations involved. The successful event raised more than $80,000 for BCNA!

Quote: BCNA

Areeba is very pleased to deliver the project, greatly enjoyed working with the BCNA team, and are looking forward to the result.

What is it?

RedDot Content Management System, now called Open Text Web Solutions Suite, is an Enterprise Content Management system with lots of solid build in functionality. But like a lot of Enterprise CMS products there are always gaps in the product as the care required to get Enterprise products to market sometimes does not keep up with the fast pace of the changing industry. Surprisingly one of the things not done particularly well straight out of the box is the ability to create human readable filenames and put keywords into filenames. Doing this makes a huge improvement to Search Engine page ranking (called Search Engine Optimisation or SEO). A lot has changed in this space over the past few years and human readable SEO friendly filenames has become one of the key tactics in this area.

So using RedDot’s built in API, Areeba have built a module for the CMS that once installed automatically derives and sets the friendly filename to SEO best practices based on the page title whenever you create a new page. Simple! There are other neat things included such as a function to reset the filename when you want to (after changing the page title) and a check to avoid duplicate names.

Even if you don’t care about SEO, such as if you have an Intranet, there is still great benefit in having human readable and friendly URLS that represent what the page is about rather than those ugly random characters (called GUIDS).

The module works on versions of RedDot CMS from 7.5 upwards and Open Text Web Solutions Suite 10.1 (and probably later but this is the latest version at release).

What kind of difference will it make to site traffic?

A lot. There’s no exact science to this because of other factors that also make a difference but from our experience you can expect at least 30% improvement to traffic simply as a result of making the URLs more search engine friendly. Combined with other factors such as page structure and the results can improve beyond that. So if that sort of traffic improvement appeals to you weigh it up against the cost of this module.

How much is it?

We’re selling the module for US$2,000 and it is licensed for each installation of the CMS. Review the licensing in the package for complete details.

How do I get it?

Just send us an email with your name and organisation to enquiries@areeba.com.au and we’ll send you out the product with full documentation and a licence to trial it. If you’re happy with the module, and I’m sure you will be, just wire us some money and the module will be fully licensed for commercial use.

How long will it take to install?

We’ve prepared comprehensive step-by-step documentation and you should be able to get the module up and running on your projects in less than an hour.

What if I have an existing project with lots of pages?

If you’re starting a new project the SEO module is almost an essential starting point and nothing more is required.

However, if you have an existing project with lots of pages Areeba have also built a script which we’re licensing separately for US$2,000 which will go through the entire project and assign the friendly filename on every page for you. So you would back up the project, run the script and re-publish the project. The script is not essential but is a real time saver for existing large projects and if you have multiple projects.

What other amazing products does Areeba have in the pipeline for RedDot and Open Text Web Solutions Suite?

Well, I’m glad I asked. Areeba is soon to release a multi-file upload facility which allows you to bulk select documents or images, assign titles and Meta information and put them into your asset library. We’ve including commercial grade image gallery code and best practice document library layout. For regular users of RedDot looking for easy to manage image galleries or document libraries this will read like a godsend. If this sounds of interest please enquire to enquiries@areeba.com.au.

Here – as always on a Friday – are a few links and discussions roaming through in our internal inboxes this week…

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Links of the week:

- Have you met a psychopath in your career?

- 10 unexpected online user behaviours to look out for

- GMail CEO deletes every email after he read it

- Inglourious Basterds – Quentin Tarantino’s Camera Angel

- Aussie fan pages with the most fans + tourism campaign

- From Social Media to Social Strategy

- Go runlikecrazy!

- Bike boutique

- Maps In Modern Web Design: Showcase and Examples

- Ok phone nerds…is this all its cracked up to be

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Thanks to our picture source: GiveUpInternet

There was a recent announcement that Jetstar is focusing it’s marketing budget in the social media area. The figure of 40% is striking as it will amount to a significant amount of money that probably would have been spent in TV, print, and radio 20 years ago, which is now going to new media. This is another in the very long line of businesses (Google social media marketing spend) who are moving toward “digital” media communications channels rather than staying with “traditional” media channels.

Get On Soapbox

In this case to talk about the value we have to move past the question of what happens when Jetstar (in the example above) has to actually deliver those heavily discounted flights, and quality does not match service expectations. They’re a smart company who are either giving away flights that were flying anyway (so little increase in fixed costs, for a marketing opportunity), or have acknowledged the costs of the give away, and know what they’re doing. Guesswork on if they’re crazy or not is pretty moot; and its one that has little to do with digital strategy because Jetstar would have given almost free flights via another medium anyway.

So the value is the fact that many thousands of people will be exposed to noise about the offer via a social media channel. Many, many, many thousands. GoogleBuzz, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, emails, etc, will all be adding their voice to the Internet about the deals, and that is a good thing in marketing – the company name is getting out there.

But I have a doubt. I am curious what the net short term and long term effect of this social media noise will be for all companies. Now while Twitter is hot (I think its still hot, but I am over 30 so I’m not sure), and nobody has found a way to make Chatroulette generate revenue yet; so I guess its still a valuable tool to broadcast from. But when everyone starts using Twitter for this, and our management of Twitter followers and lists becomes as onerous as maintaining Facebook friends (Digg posts, blog pingbacks, spam lists) – won’t Twitter soon just be added to a list of obliquely relevant tools for marketing? Akin to standing on the street corner and yelling about something?

So the net short term benefit is present, its those thousands of impressions. But its the long term that still bugs me. We’ve already got tools around that help manage tweeting, subscribing, lists and such. We’re only a short jump to a solid hybrid campaign tool that does web, email, twitter, buzz, digs, follows, and linkbacks in one. But ask why this is needed? It’s the over provision of information to the company’s marketers that we are seeking to filter. For the end user it’s a wave of noise. So both groups soon and certainly in the future will be sinking in data-noise.

By way of example the first ten or so comments in the blog post about Jetstar above are re-tweet comments, and that might equal ten people yelling the same story to the internet (as a positive), but it also looks a bit trashy on the blog post. Here are ten people who have done no more that re-tweet and link-back. Value to their blog readers is low, as all they have provided is a link with no indication if their opinion. Which is also standard and the “done thing” for Twitter, so we can’t blame the Twitter-verse, but maybe we should be thinking of ways that this could be done slightly better? Nah, its social baby, go with it. This is back linking for the 2004-2009 crowds, which in present day terms is still valuable but needs the Google algorithm to help understand what is relevant and filter results.

Using “social media” in marketing is mainstream now, and you’d expect any marketing team to be using these tools. The good point here is that Jetstar have made available a stat that we can get interested in (40%), and can talk about. So in effect the Jetstar announcement is itself a marketing exercise. Is that a good thing? Yes, without question. Good on them, they’re keeping the buzz of social/digital communications alive.

For Twitter marketers the time is now. Make effort, links, impressions, and hits now, as the more of the Internet that joins, the more folks will engineer ways to unhook and dig through the noise. We can’t stop the signal, but as users we will guide its path to us, and filter what we see. As time passes we will see more people using controls to get the news they want, without the guff-guff. E.g. RSS feeds and feed reader apps are a classic example of this. Get what you ask for, not what the companies think you might want.

I’ll go out in a small limb and say that the twitter-bots and re-tweet spam will increase to a point where many folks will disconnect from it. It will be as useless as a recent friend activity in Facebook for somebody with thousands of friends. Largely a useless mix of mafia wars or farmville updates sprinkled with lolcats (ok, that was cynical, but you get the point). We will need personalized Google algorithms to control the incoming data. Why in hell not jump the on bandwagon! It gets the digital media types excited (such as myself) and also is still effective for today and tomorrow.

If you’re not involved in the Twitter/Google/Internet wave (or as I like to call it the InterGoogle or TwitterVerse) then resource up some staff who are in the know, and dip your foot in. You can do it without a disaster PR reaction, and you’ll at least learn something new. It is not going away ever, and the time for early adopters to gain high value kudos is passing.

But (and there is always at least one) the social media wave will soon merge with the other forms of media communication. Email is no longer hot, and websites are very standard practice. Both are very legitimate forms of media for communication (well duh), but were wiz-bang-geek-tomfoolery many years ago. Today your Twitter cast tagline should match the direct mail cards to members, and be in sync with the online offers on the member’s portal.

The fact is that companies using “social media” to give away stuff are seeing a new channel, but it is made up of  the same type people who cut newspaper clippings for 15% off a product many years ago. They are reaching a much larger, slightly different sub-set of consumers who have probably disengaged from the print and TV media. I hate TV and print ads and find myself blind to most offers, and would expect that everyone is building an internal mute button for all commercials, including web banners, pop-ups, loud TV ads, and infomercials. Those who will re-tweet and follow-for-dollars, and are probably no more likely to purchase a new product that the present folks who used to collected petrol slips or 2-for-1 vouchers (nothing wrong with that either!). It is really important to understand that these people are new, can easily respond to the message, but are not a new type of customer. They are the same broad type of customers that we used to reach before, and all that has changed is the way we reach them.

So where does that leave us?

Well it means that digital-social-media is just media. Grab the old marketing books and edit the lines to include social media buzzwords, and the maxims stay the same. Keep authentic, stay on brand, avoid trolls, play nice with others. Give context, show value, and present well, and it will keep happening for you. Probably. Hopefully.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying social media is poor or valueless. The opposite entirely.

The social networks are massively valid, but no more or less valid than anything else; unless your analysis of target audience makes it more relevant. We need to be using a hybrid of communications as part of a cohesive strategy, all of which need a hook and/or context to the viewer to connect with them. The Twitteratti** folks can get thousands of re-tweets and their re-message is heard just about everywhere. But this has to be targeted and planned. This is no different from hiring a pop-star to slurp your cola drink, or a sports celebrity to wear your clothing label; it’s just another tool in the communications toolbox.

Slightly depressing?

Nope, not at all. It is still a bloody exciting time to be in digital media, and there are some darn sexy things happening every day…

*This is my way of saving a rant is coming.

** folks who are trending on twitter. Eg. If you could get Will Wheaton to twitter about the ipad compared to your new product; you’d see huge follows and RTs. Like a text based nerdgasm.

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Thanks to our picture source: theminimalistlibrarian

This is part 5 of a series focusing on the different approaches to a successful digital project. In this episode, Managing Director Chris Lester focuses on Project Methodology.

If you’ve been any job long enough you eventually conclude that everything they ever taught you at University is wrong. Project Methodology is no different. When it comes to developing web projects the predominant methodology still in use today is strict Waterfall Methodology. The term Agile gets spruiked by various people but I’ve not many people who genuinely know what this methodology is or how to use it. I have come to the conclusion that to understand Agile Methodology you need to understand Waterfall Methodology and its inherent flaws in detail first. Agile, or the principles of it that I like at least as I don’t like all of it, is a cure to a disease and that disease is Waterfall Methodology in its pure form.

In a nutshell the process of Waterfall Methodology is that you define everything up front, in great detail and you don’t move to the next step until that is signed and agreed by the client. The principle is that if you know exactly what you are going to build up front then you save money not having to do it more times than once and you ultimately deliver on what the client wants in the end. Lovely thought. But here are the seven main reasons why it doesn’t work.

1) You can never capture everything up front anyway

Our brains have capacities and when you are spending time in a detailed specification there is only so much your brain can conceptualise a system on paper. Even if you spend your life in these things which invariably developers do and clients don’t, after about page 50 of a detailed functional specification I defy anybody not to keep their eyes from glazing over and simply to miss stuff.

What matters is delivering on the business requirements that the client has in a professional and complete manner. What usually defines that is a core understanding of the business rules. What we end up doing in Waterfall is detailing in a document trivial details such as form labels, positioning of screen components, buttons, text and other minute details that would take minutes to fix post prototype. Then with all that detail it is easy to overlook the big business rules and missing functionality.

Examples of how it fails:

1. We define exactly how a drop down appears but don’t answer where and how do you maintain it.
2. We specify the exact format and place of appearance of the input date-of-birth but we miss the business rule about how old you are allowed to be to use the system.
3. We simply miss the big underlying purpose of how we should solve a problem and what the problem is that we are solving,
4. We define the screens but miss the inherent workflow and what happens when a process is canceled

We fool ourselves and the client that by having such amazing detail such as a 100+ page specification document that we couldn’t possibly have overlooked anything important, and yet I see it happen time and again.

2) You pay more and you don’t really get the insurance

It’s like buying insurance for the end-of-the-world. You pay your money up front and it works beautifully when not needed but if you require it to save you, well, it’s the end of the world. There is a cost, usually a fixed one, involved in defining things up front. The only payback to this cost is if things don’t need to change down the track. However invariably things do change down the track and the methodology may protect slightly the budget but usually does very little to remove client dissatisfaction or the client referencing original requirements documents or discussions and hence getting their change through cost free anyway.

With Waterfall, we can spend hours defining something that if you took the worst possible interpretation of a requirement, and if you then got it wrong and had to change it twice after development, would still be measured in minutes

A methodology is meant to be about guaranteeing we deliver what the client really wants and completely. If it’s only protection is against the project price and scope then it is still failing to deliver on what it is meant to do which is to deliver complete solution for the client in a predictable manner. Often with Waterfall the insurance costs more than the worst case risk outcome.

A methodology needs to guarantee we deliver on the client’s needs. A very small fraction of a Waterfall Process actually does this and the rest is a distraction and does little to cover the genuine risks.

3) Waterfall plus tight deadline equals great disaster

You cannot be that detailed and keep moving in a tight deadline. Waterfall cannot move fast nor do things in parallel. It simply isn’t designed to do that. It is expensive, slow and takes on a time line of its own. If your requirements are more immediate Waterfall gets really, really ugly.

4) The detail oriented client will drown waterfall process

A client who is a stickler for detail will drown waterfall. Every step and iteration will involve a series of questions, feedback, versions, modifications and clarifications. All designed to protect from risk (in theory). The answer from the vendor is typically an attempt to control things more and in waterfall that means more detail, greater and longer definitions and more cost. And the more detail you get, the more you can’t see the forest for all the trees.

More detail equals more inconsistency too. Track changes, version control, cross referencing all get overstretched. Even if you get pretty good at all this I defy anyone to keep it all contained in the once place with everything being defined just once.

Gaps in specification are rarely in the things you are looking at; they’re nearly always hiding in the periphery of what is defined. They are the things implied, the things just plainly not thought of and just missing the big picture by talking about the solution rather than defining properly the problem. When you think at the detailed level your brain has a habit of staying there. A good specification can skip detail but must always deliver to the big picture to be successful. Waterfall is all detailed solution and it keeps your brain there.

5) The client without attention to detail will bypass the process

Many clients simply don’t care for 100 page detailed documents. What these clients want is to tell you their problems and you go away and deliver it as you’re the expert. Waterfall puts a huge onus back on the client to be part of the architecture and understand a definition language and technical references totally alien to them. Waterfall keeps asking the question “this is what I think you want, is that the right answer?” as if the client is the ultimate architect whereas what I client really wants to hear is “I know what you want and I have just the right answer, let me show you” placing the vendor as the solution architect.

The client without detail will ignore the waterfall methodology process and still stick to their original requirements conversation or document as the ultimate specification. This client would say “I don’t care what the document says, I told you this is our problem and you said you would solve it and you haven’t”.

This client always wants to actually see what you have in mind as the ultimate proof of understanding. Waterfall actually goes away for months at a time and shows the client nothing until it is all delivered and gift wrapped. Then Waterfall Methodology goes “why didn’t you TELL me that’s what you wanted at the start by reading the obtuse 100 page document” and client replies “This is the first time I’ve had a chance to give input and it isn’t what we want and YOU wrote that document not me”

6) Waterfall puts barriers on the delivery team’s creativity

Waterfall usually involves different people at different points of the process. A Business Analyst or Solutions Architect will be involved in the specification without the onus to deliver the result whereas the developer follows the prescribed path to the letter. Waterfall encourages the mindset of specialisation where these keys roles don’t communicate and in the same language. The communication ends up being a very expensive document in the middle without a cohesive solution in it.

The best projects I’ve ever been involved with the development team have had the scope and capability to define the solution as they developed based on the core business rules rather than a prescribed solution. At the heart of it that is what successful development thrives on. Waterfall methodology takes those rights away from a development team. It says “don’t think, just do” and it encourages your head down, creativity-free development team to exist. A development team under Waterfall is not allowed to improve the solution in the build phase without invalidating the signed off specification and raising a change request. Instead they must simply deliver the solution as envisaged by somebody at arm’s length to the build process, defined months before the business even knew what it wanted and without context to the solution in progress.

The developer that can architect and analyse is still unfortunately rare. However, it is what clients want and what gets good results. Waterfall hates these developers and these developers hate Waterfall. The Waterfall methodology, as the prescribed industry process, stands in the way of the necessary evolution from mindless geek to creative analytical developer that the market both demands and requires.

Waterfall is the methodology for low skilled production line workers, the workers that consistently deliver poor results and expensive, ugly solutions and which are the oversupplied, under desired heart of the ITC industry today.

7) Waterfall and the illusion of it working

To be even called a methodology a process must have worked at some time. That sometimes for Waterfall that I’ve observed is when the project would have gone well without it anyway.

Waterfall is the illusion of riding a horse on a tourist trail ride. You can hold the reins, click your mouth, dig in your heals and look like a rider but most horses on a trail ride know the path and the way home and they’re going there no matter what you’re doing. It is easy to fool yourself that you’re riding a trail horse but rest assured if that horse wants to stop and eat or roll in the river it probably will, rider and all, and it’s going home whether you go through the motions of being a rider or sit on its back like a sack of potatoes.

So a project can work with Waterfall but I’ve never seen a situation when a waterfall process would make the difference between a successful outcome and failure. Add the overhead that Waterfall imposes and I’ve never seen the extra cost justified in the delivered result.

I’ve been perhaps deliberately harsh about Waterfall. And at its most basic definition it isn’t so bad. I rail more at the way it is implemented in practice within our industry. At Areeba we advocate a light waterfall framework with a big dose of Agile mixed into the delivery part. Because we encourage a culture of developers and designers to be creative and solve problems we tend to get better results defining only up front what matters, typically a good definition of the problem rather than a detailed prescription of the solution, and leaving the details of solving the problem to the development process. It requires smarter developers, but when you’ve had a project work that way it is hard to ever look at Waterfall the same way again.

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Find more in your workshop for a successful digital project:

Part 1 – taking an operational strategy approach: 6 Steps To Your Successful Digital Strategy
Part 2 – a technical viewpoint: 4 Things To Know Before Building Your Web Site
Part 3 – the project management part to it: 6 Rules To Avoid Killing Your Web Project
Part 4 – the creative brief: 5 Principles To Effective Web Design

Every week I am going through my inbox and collect all the emails which have been send around internally during the week.

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Links of the week:

- Nestle’s Facebook meltdown

- 25 years of dot.com

- Opera Submits its iPhone Web Browser to Apple’s App Store

- Social networking helps an increase in sexually transmitted diseases

- Great website if you ever need any repairs done!
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Thanks to our awesome picture source: Ira Marcks

This is part 4 of a series focusing on the different approaches to a successful digital project. Daniel Cheong-See describes how important design is in the development life cycle.

The aesthetic design of a website plays an instrumental role in the success of the project. The credibility of a company is often judged purely on the brand application, layout, typography and colour. There are though, many other factors which contribute to a successful design of a web project.

Here at Areeba, creative input is crucial at many stages of the project. It is important that design is considered from the initial inception of the project to understand organisational objectives, contribute to developing a good user experience, and also throughout the technical development of the project to oversee the creative direction and to make sure the initial vision is maintained.
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1) Establish a good creative brief from the outset

A good creative brief is critical to the foundation of communicating to the creative team the essence of what you are trying to achieve. It is the floor plan to creating a successfully designed website that meets yours and your users needs.

It is a common misconception that if a comprehensive scoping and requirements stage is performed, then a creative brief doesn’t need to be done. Much of the information and research provided in the initial stage can be replicated into the creative brief, but without the creative brief, you are not communicating with the design team how you would like the brand of the website perceived by the target audience.

A good creative brief should introduce the design team to the background of the project, key business objectives and project goals.

Identify any success factors of the project so that the design team keeps this in mind when coming up with a design solution. Identifying who the target audience is that the interface is considered with the demographic and style of user.

It is important to approach the creative brief as a collaborative process. All stakeholders should be involved with a design representative so they can advise on any questions that might arise during the questioning. It is a good opportunity for stakeholders to consolidate the perceived direction.

It is important to get all parties signed off on the creative brief once it has been completed so that everyone has a reference point to continually refer to in order to validate any decisions made within the design.
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2) Determine your brand image

One major point which seems to be overlooked when creating a website is the importance of the brand. It is all too often that a company undertaking a web project haven’t really thought about how they want their company perceived in the online marketplace. A company should work out how they want to reflect their organisational philosophy and organisational characteristics. It is important to build a brand personality that can evoke credibility and motivate prospective customers.

It is all is very easy to become reliant on latest online trends, glossy buttons and gradients, but if it doesn’t tie in with your fundamental brand image, then it should not be applied. Colour is a very important emotive devise which should be thought out with extreme consideration. How do you want your user to think, feel?
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3) Don’t forget your goals

After establishing the main user and business objectives within both the creative brief and the requirements gathering stage, it is important to continually cross reference them throughout the project.

Make sure that any processes that the user has to achieve on the site are done in a logical and easy way. There are factors for all different interpretations that the user can take to perform a task. A design should be simple and intuitive and help the user perform the task they are there to do.

If one of your key goals is to showcase your brand, then design a site that reflects the essence of the brand. Use colour and imagery which symbolises the characteristics of your company.

If one of your key goals is providing information, make sure that your attention is on creating content that is usable and readable.

If a key goal is for subscription conversions, then make sure it is prominent, Make sure it is clear on the outset where it is, use colour and contrast to make the subscription area stand out, reduce the number of steps necessary to perform the subscription process.
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4) Don’t forget about good design principles

It is important to remember fundamentals of good design when designing a website. All too often clients think that cramming everything above the fold of a homepage is the best way to deliver everything the user needs. Remember the importance though of white space and balance of a design. Squashing everything into a small area may have negative effects on the visual representation of the brand and information hierarchy. White space reduces the amount of information that users have to process. When a user first scans the page if the areas are not easily distinguishable then it is harder to find what they are looking for.

Don’t try and cram everything on the page, try and be considered to what the user will actually want and need at that point in their visit.

Clarity of layout and representation of information is primary importance when designing an interface. If users can’t find what they need they will leave. They key is good information design. Organising information on the page during the wireframe stage allows clarity of what information you are trying to deliver without being influenced by the brand.

Balance in design is a key to give the perception of a stable and quality brand. A balanced user interface is more easily understood and hierarchy is more easily indentified. Here at Areeba we often apply a grid based approach to our interfaces in order to achieve a balanced design. Convention within design can also assist in creating an interface that a user would be familiar in using5.

There are many established ways that websites are designed which users today rely heavily on, for example how a menu is displayed and operates, or how a link works.

Key messages on the page should be done in a clear and uncluttered way. Keeping it brief allows users to scan the page and identify key messages easily. Clear understandable entry points are important throughout the site. The copy of these entry points should allow any user to understand where they are going in the website.
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5) Measure results and continually improve

It is important to realise that once your website is deployed you must monitor its performance to make sure it is fulfilling your goals. Analytics play an important role in reflecting on this but it is harder to quantify general brand feedback. Simply asking people for feedback can be successful but you must be mindful that brand perception can be quite a subjective thing. A continual reflection of the initial project goals and objectives is a good monitor of success. Testing regularly against success metrics allows you to adapt and fine-tune your website to better fulfill both user and business goals.

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Thanks to our picture source: http://www.changethethought.com

Find more in your workshop for a successful digital project:

Part 1 – taking an operational strategy approach: 6 Steps To Your Successful Digital Strategy
Part 2 – a technical viewpoint: 4 Things To Know Before Building Your Web Site
Part 3 – the project management part to it: 6 Rules To Avoid Killing Your Web Project
Part 5 – a take on methodologies: 7 Reasons Why Waterfall Methodology Stinks