All,
I am working with a Immigration agency in Canada that has specific requirements including the Processing and Handling of immigration issues in Western Canada.
The CIAS is a comprehensive settlement agency that supports the settlement and integration of immigrants and refugees in the Calgary community.
This may include case management, language bank, volunteer management, language bank, and referrals
This site has some great design patterns used by lots of the most popular websites.
Hi,
We are upgrading to iMIS v 10.6 and we also wish to migrate iMIS from our old server to MS SQL 2005. Is iMIS 10.6 supported under this environment.?
Thanks
Mark
This week several of us in InfoDev attended a 2-day seminar on Web Content Usability, taught by Expero, a local usability firm. Lots to say about that, but I'll start with the end, where we asked for and received a quick evaluation of usability issues with our new Helpsite. Here's what we got, in the order they were brainstormed:
My first five days at ASI in Austin, TX have been enlightening and not frightening. I'm enjoying the environment. So far this company feels a lot like the small company, Entek, that I worked for in Cincinnati, OH. I'm the new technical writer on the CRM team and I have a lot to learn before I can write much, but I'm happy to be here, and looking forward to being able to contribute. I won't write many blog entries here since my blogging energy goes to www.justwriteclick.com, but I wanted to try out the imiscommunity blog interface and introduce myself.
Presenters: Ted Sienknecht, Marcia Kerchner
Concept: We're overlooking a wealth of usability-related data we have on hand!
Where to gather information?
. Lessons learned: Study system usage statistics and user feedback from current/prior releases for possible improvements and functionality
. Software evaluations: Study other software users currently use for implementations they expect or understand
. Field observations: Watch users while they perform relevant tasks and note process, actions, systems, problems, needs, etc.
. Interviews & Focus groups: Use structured inquiry with users about their opinions and experiences
. Task analysis: Investigate typical tasks users perform on the system
. User profiles: Create representative identities for user subgroups (personas)
. Help desk logs: Read help requests for areas for improvement or new functionality
Presenters: Janice (Ginny) Redish, Whitney Quesenbery
Usable content lets users:
[1] Find what they need.
People find what they need when
. links use words they know
. content on information pages is in small pieces with good headings
[2] Understand what they find
People understand information when the content speaks directly to them with
. personal pronouns
. action verbs
. active voice
. words they know
Presenters: Daniel Schwartz, Arin Bhowmick; Oracle
Summary of their experience:
• Specific use case design pattern set = domain abstraction
• Valuable for organizations of any size
• Documentation demands _large_ time commitment!
• Need to create balance, when to reference existing patterns vs. build new
• Critical: properly scope what are pattern vs. product features
• Critical: efficient post-design strategy (just as key as optimal design)
• Design pattern success = documenting best practices for domain + being actually implemented org-wide
Presenters: Laura Mason, Ecora; Gregg Almquist, Experient Interactive and Design
Without Style Guidelines (“The Frankenstein effect”)
. Product was fragmented – page design and language seemed pieced together
. Inconsistency made product harder to use and undermined users’ confidence
. Most important information wasn’t always first on page
. Various synonyms used for the word “enter”
. Tone bounced around from formal legalese to very casual
Presenters: J. Goldberg, Oracle; J. Helfman, Oracle
Recommendations from a usability study of new widescreen page layouts (what users preferred and how they expected such pages to behave):
- Left justify content.
- Make content resize and flow as pages resize.
- Keep page splitters stationary, and let right-side content resize and move in proportion to available page area.
- Have tables always show all columns, unless there's a horizontal scrollbar.
- Make graphs and maps resize with constant aspect ratio, with predefined min/max sizes based on intended tasks.
- Overall: Use a constraint-based liquid layout, rather than redesigning for each display.
