WebedtecH

One of the challenges we face with the implementation of collaborative workspaces is maintaining the fine balance between functionality and simplicity.  We have all watched a site go horribly awry due to a focus on specific, deep details without maintaining a holistic view of the experience.  SharePoint, Google Apps, etc. – the platform does not matter; the symptoms are the same.  The effort comes in prevention and mitigation.

Walk a thousand miles

As site developers and solution providers it is easy to lose sight of the people who need to use the wonders we build and force them into change that is unnecessary and burdensome.  We spend a great deal of time with our creations becoming intimately familiar with them.  We know their navigation structures like the back of our own hands; the order makes perfect sense to us.  It is that very familiarity that blinds us to the experience a fresh pair of eyes will have when they visit our site for the first time.

Evaluate your site design with this litmus test.  When you go to a page is the purpose of the page obvious or do you have to “know” where, how, and why things work?  If you need prior knowledge about a site or tool to understand what it does and what is expected of you then your design fails.  I will always take the position there is great value to a simplified interface and information flow if for no other reason than it frees the user’s mind to concentrate on the important aspects of the task at hand.

Design to be forgotten

If you create a solution architecture that requires your users to retain an understanding of the site/tool operation between uses your design fails.  In some cases it can be months between application uses and the information on the application’s operation will be lost from your users within days.  Your options are to create pages of help documentation or design your site so it can be “relearned” each time it is accessed.   Be warned however this is a tricky balance to maintain; ease of use without being repetitive for frequent visitors.

Avoid creating blind spots

When working on a web site there is always an inclination to put information we deem important on the home page.  The trap this creates is the production of “blind spots” on the page.  For example, it’s popular to put a list of the team members working on a project on the home page of a site.  When you visit the site for the first time it’s interesting information.  When you visit the site for the fifth time it’s a waste of space on the page.  Pages that will be heavily trafficked by design need to avoid blind spots whenever possible.  Information must be relevant, timely, and concise.

Moving forward

Think carefully about the sites you visit and the things you like and don’t like.  Design simply.  Once you finish your design wait a couple of days then go back and remove anything that doesn’t absolutely need to be there.  Remember you can always entice a user with something new but when they’ve seen everything at once there’s no surprises.

Do your teachers and staff have the tools necessary to work together as a team?  Considering building an intranet?  That’s what we’re doing and I’ll explain how.  The amount of power and functionality that a school has access to through a system such as Google Apps gives a great opportunity to build a collaborative workspace for teachers and staff with virtually no cost.  However the idea isn’t without it’s challenges.  When planning any sort of collaborative web effort, I recommend starting with three key questions:

1. What do you NEED to do?
2. What do you WANT to do?
3. HOW do you want to do it?

The first question is without a doubt the most important.  The second and third will change, even be discarded, if they don’t meet the requirements of the first one.  Our needs right now are simple:

1. A central location for forms and reference materials that can be accessed by any staff member on or off the network.
2. A shared location for policies and procedures (currently we use a network drive)
3. A simple way to keep said policies and procedures current for everyone needing access

Now this set of needs could be served by any number of solutions so we’re still at an impass.  On to question 2…what do we WANT?

1. A system that is easy to use
2. Integrated with our current email system
3. Available from anywhere
4. Reliable
5. Adaptable
6. Minimal (no) cost

Not much more specific, but it does point out some key requirements in narrowing the field.  For example, “integrated with our current email system” points towards Google Apps since it is what we have been using for email for two years very successfully.    Also, “available from everywhere” eliminates most network centric solutions and points us back to the cloud.

Finally we come to the HOW.  This can be a tough one since by this point you still have a couple of options left on the table and you need to do a critical analysis, cost-benefit comparison, etc.  For us this was made a great deal simpler by the last WANT…minimal (no) cost.  Looks like we’ll be building our intranet with Google Sites and Google Apps.

Next…functional requirements.

Presentations: Give Synced Presentations Online with Zoho Show

Personally I like the idea of an online shared presentation solution with low overhead and an easy start up. This seems to be a great idea for multi-location staff development or even after hours training if it’s combined with something like Skype for audio broadcast with the slides.

Techdirt: Is An Online Study Group Cheating?

Vincent Clement writes in to let us know that that a student at Ryerson University in Toronto is facing expulsion for setting up an online study group for his chemistry class using Facebook. The school is saying it wasn’t so much a study group as it was a place for 146 students to cheat and share answers (though, it’s only blaming the student who ran the group). Students at the university are reasonably up in arms over the matter, as they don’t see how it’s any different than a traditional study group. Of course, the whole thing seems a little bit silly. As we discussed almost exactly a year ago, people working together to collaborate is an important skill in the real world, and what some people consider “cheating” these days seems a lot like the type of collaboration that kids are quite used to doing online, and which should serve them well later in life.

We can view this quite easily.  The school doesn’t have a clue.  I look for this action to be retracted rather quickly.  If not, then anyone who knows chemistry should join his study group and give these guys a hand.