in this issue

Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web

5-Second Tests: Measuring Your Site's Content Pages

Streamlining Usability Testing by Avoiding the Lab

Develop a Landing Page Framework

Alertbox: Ten Years

User-Centered Design FAQ

Editorial Reviews.
From Book News, Inc.

As a systems engineer at a nonprofit firm in Reston, Virginia, Passin became fascinated with graphical ways to represent formal logic statements in natural language and their relevance to the Web. He defines the semantic Web as an integrated concept of how computers, humans, and the Web can work together; and introduces systems for representing data and metadata (e.g. topic maps), and how they relate to Web searches. These concepts are applied in two cases studies.

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Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web

"Workflow Learning: Old Wine, New Bottle?" This question was posed to me by a faculty colleague at the Innovations in eLearning Symposium 2005 on June 7th - an event sponsored by George Mason University (GMU) in partnership with the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) and the Naval Education and Training Command (NETC). "No," I replied. "Workflow Learning is not just repackaged EPSS." On the other hand, if the common understanding of EPSS were performance-centered systems and tools then the answer would have been "yes."

Workflow Learning, as articulated by Jay Cross and documented by the Workflow Institute, is what many of us have referred to for years as process-centric performance support (or simply process support). If workflow represents a current of tasks and activities and interrelationships, then Workflow Learning is how we are enabled when dropped like a cork into the flow that represents our work. We are carried along to receive the data, information, knowledge, tools and context such that tasks are inevitably completed. From another perspective, the things we need to make us smart (competent and productive) come to us at the time of need - whether artifacts or collaboration or handoffs.

So why do we need a new phrase like "Workflow Learning" if the concept is a well understood instance of performance-centered design? Because what has become commonplace "EPSS" is only slightly warmed-over eLearning. If the business or organizational problem at hand is a performance gap, then a learning solution will likely not close it. Yet we continually see learning solutions relabeled "EPSS." Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I am intrigued by the extent to which the phrase Workflow Learning resonates with most people as an instantiation of our notion of process support. "EPSS on steroids?" I guess so. So much so that the Workflow Institute is alive with activity, including inquiries, workshops, assessment, certification programs and more. The best and the brightest who are tackling problems from service oriented architecture to the semantic web are finding themselves at the Workflow Institute participating in panel discussions, writing articles, applying these principles to their work, arguing and conducting research. It has been a long time since a performance-centered idea has generated so much activity from such a bright and eclectic crowd. Great stuff!

Regards,

Gary Dickelman

The usability lab, with its fancy cameras, one-way mirrors, and comfortable observation suites, is often considered a can't-do-without necessity for conducting serious usability tests. Even those who feel it's not required will jump at the chance to use a lab when available. However, while studying successful projects over the years, we've found that usability testing can often be more effective when the team eliminates the lab from the process.

Why do landing page campaigns so often convert poorly? Because in planning them, the creators fail to think beyond the page itself. Typically, prospects click through an e-mail or a banner ad to a single landing page with a single call to action and little, if any, persuasive copy.

300,000 words of usability essays have had an impact: online user interfaces are considerably easier to use now than they were in 1995. Many predictions and recommendations have come true, though the full Alertbox vision is far from realized.

User-Centered Design is a method for designing ease of use into the total user experience with products. It enables organizations to consistently develop engaging products that are easy to buy, easy to set up, easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to upgrade. It calls for a multidisciplinary team to design everything the user sees and touches and to gather user input and feedback during each stage of the development process.