in this issue

Deming and Goldratt

One Billion Internet Users

The ABCs of the BBC: A Case Study and Checklist

Evolutionary information seeking: A case study of personal development and Internet searching

HarperCollins to Create Its Own Digital Library

Web Site Usability and SEO

Elements of a Usability Reasoning Framework

How Women and Men Use the Internet

Domenico Lepore
Oded Cohen

Amazon's book description:

Radically improve any organization by applying the management philosophies of W. Edwards Deming and Eliyahu M. Goldratt with one powerful 10-step process: The Decalogue. A step by step guide to implementing the management systems of W. Edwards Deming and Eliyahu M. Goldratt. Dr.'s Deming and Goldratt are recognized as two of the foremost geniuses of modern management. The integration of the Theory of Constraints and the System of Profound Knowledge into one cohesive process brings the work of these two great thinkers to a new level of accessibility. The ten steps of THE DECALOGUE reflect the basic concept that in order to manage effectively we must be able to predict the outcome of out management decisions. This seemingly simple statement is the core of successful management. The Tools presented in this book will enable any organization to: * Manage effectively * Develop focused business strategies * Create an atmosphere of continuous improvement.

You will not find a quick fix in these pages, but with determination and focus you will be able to control and radically improve your organization.
 

Evaluation for Learning, Competency and Performance

Part I:  Why does ADDIE have a silent E? 
 

For several decades learning and performance technologies have been grounded in Quality methods (that's the big Q Quality) such as Instructional Systems Development (ISD) and Performance Centered Design (PCD).  These methods evolved from a number of sources, not the least of which was the United States Department of Defense, which recognized the value of consistency, uniformity, addressing root cause and the need to compress the time to competency in relation to achieving the mission.  W. Edwards Deming arguably led the Quality revolution, transferring knowledge of how organizations become greater than the sum of their parts, seizing crises as opportunities, continuously improving, getting to root causes, providing tools to address them then encouraging and empowering organizations to excel through practice.  The re-engineering revolution of the 1990s applied Deming's manufacturing successes to information technology, and our own Performance Centered Design methodology is a manifestation of Deming qua knowledge management (in many respects).    

Critical to all Quality methods are evaluation protocol - formative, summative, continuous evaluation, gap analysis and the like.  "In God we trust, all others bring data," said Deming.    But when pressed for details we find organizations woefully deficient in measurement tools, techniques and a commitment to evaluation that ensures competency and continuous improvement.  It is as if the quality process known as "ADDIE" - Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation - has a silent E.   

You would think that project managers would be eager to ensure the presence of a line item and appropriate budget for evaluation.  Wasn't it Peter Drucker who, in our lifetime, pointed out that lack of attention to business purpose and business mission are the most important causes of business frustration and failure?  How on this grey earth can you pay proper attention to such things without measuring?  How can you roll out a training program or a performance enhancing initiative bent on reducing time to competency without measuring that which informs competency and putting a stop watch to tasks to determine "how long?"  And what is the cost to business of each hour or day that employees - performers - are unable to perform and thus the organization is unable to achieve the mission?  

What is defined as "good" in training and performance initiatives too often reflect secondary or irrelevant criteria - like how authentic the simulation appears, how "usable" the interface is, how many employees checked the course out of the LMS, how many hours were "covered" or how the performers filled out the smile sheets.  What about the organizational mission and goal?  What about measuring the number of transactions that were completed successfully, how quickly and accurately proposals are generated and delivered by the sales force, how the close and revenue rates improved or how the call queue decreased, how many fewer employees quit and exactly how similar are employees accomplishing tasks as compared with the highest performers?  As I said, the E in ADDIE is silent, for the most part. 

The good news is that tools and techniques are evolving and finding their way to the marketplace that focus on process measurements in computer-mediated work. This is precisely what is necessary to properly apply the big Q to knowledge work.  Was, or is, evaluation really a lost art?  Hardly.  But our heuristics and naive tools are simply insufficient to gather and analyze data at the rate required to keep our eye on the business purpose and mission.  Companies have applied capture technologies to model-driven development tools for a few years now, with good results.  Now they are taking a step back and realizing that more depth is required at the very tip of the capability, namely data gathering and analysis, now and live.  We are finally at a point where we can make quick and accurate measurements that show a clear relationship between cause and affect, between evaluation and ROI. 

In part 2 of this series we will examine the emerging tools, look at case studies and perhaps take a few small steps toward turning some very bad habits around.  Until then just imagine the possibilities! 

Regards, 
 

Gary J. Dickelman

Summary:
The Internet is growing at an annualized rate of 18% and now has one billion users. A second billion users will follow in the next ten years, bringing a dramatic change in worldwide usability needs.

A-Z indexes are sometimes seen as the less desirable counterpart to other navigational elements such as sitemaps and, especially, search. However, A-Z indexes can be a valuable secondary navigation tool, especially for large sites with a lot of granular content ... "We felt the need to make the A-Z more like a supermarket (comprehensive and well-organized) and less like a junk shop (random and gems buried amidst the clutter)."

This article explores one question: what does Internet searching have to do with personal development? Personal development means that individuals improve their own abilities, skills, knowledge or other qualities by working on them. The paper reports on a qualitative case study, in which a single participant was interviewed and her Web searches observed. Information search strategies seemed to form a spectrum of developmental sophistication. Four major types of relationship were found: a) the Internet in the context of development; b) development in the context of the Internet; c) development affecting Internet use; and, d) Internet use affecting development. There were some informational phenomena which exhibited regression, the converse of development.

The HarperCollins announcement shows that at least one major publisher is seeking ways to work with Google and other Internet companies to make books and other material, like audio books, widely searchable. Some publishers have filed lawsuits against Google for making digital copies of books in major research libraries while that material is still under copyright protection.

Nothing makes me happier than shopping on a user-friendly Web site, one on which I can easily find the products I'm searching for. With the holiday season close at hand, user-centered, search-friendly e-commerce sites will surely have the upper hand when it comes to sales and findability.

So why do usability professionals still not comprehend SEM and SEO?

Abstract:

This technical note brings together two different threads of work: (1) investigating the relationship between usability and software architecture that has generated a number of usability scenarios with implications for software architecture and (2) developing an architecture design assistant, Architecture Expert (ArchE). One key element of ArchE is that quality attribute knowledge can be encapsulated into reasoning frameworks, and a Carnegie Mellon University Master of Software Engineering project team has developed an ArchE reasoning language (ARL) with which to specify the actions of reasoning frameworks within ArchE.

Men continue to pursue many internet activities more intensively than women. At the same time, trend data show that women are catching up in overall use and are framing their online experience with a greater emphasis on deepening connections with people.