Steven Mammone Describes What’s Required to Create a Successful Information Design Strategy
Last week we aired another installment of CMS-Connected, and we found out that your content design strategy does indeed rely heavily on what your CMS is designed to deliver. We uncover several very important considerations when developing your content design strategy.
First Butch and Scott showed us once again why they are our hosts, delivering a relaxed and entertaining opening to the show making short work of the high impact news stories that we chose to discuss in August.
Gartner Waves its Wand Towards Web Content Management
Scott and Butch spent a fair amount of time discussing this year’s Magic Quadrant (MQ) and helped us to understand some of the methodology and concepts when it comes to the MQ’s ranking strategy. While reminding us that this is really geared to the CIO’s of the world, the report also provides some very concise constructive criticisms of every company included in the ‘Quad’. In business, intelligent, constructive criticism based on the collective feedback of your peers and customers is ‘Solid Gold’. It would be foolish not to take a little time to investigate this feedback.
Scott delivers on this story, listing off the Top Dawgs of 2013 that made the grade in this latest MQ.
Talking Small Data and an Open Source Heavyweight Blunder?
Our esteemed hosts discuss a very informative and forward thinking article by Allen Bonde which brings to light the missing action with Big Data. We learn about Small Data and how we should be looking at delivering value from Big Data when confronted with a tsunami of information.
“we need to reenvision the "last mile" of Big Data via consumer-style, more responsive, more social apps that help us turn insight into action.” –Allen Bonde
Butch digs Scott a little in the next piece about a broiling Twitter conversation that he had with a Joomla evangelist questioning a recent decision to invite the founder of their #1 competitor to deliver the keynote address at the upcoming Joomla World Conference (#JWC13 on Twitter). Follow the tweets below:
Steven Mammone Teaches us about Information Design and Departmental Symmetry
What a treat is was to have Steven Mammone of GetFused.com, share his experience with information design. We see so many criminally inept website designs out there every day, yet when Steven describes some fundamental requirements they seem so logical and obvious. Clearly, it’s all in the delivery.
We learned that the lifecycle of a comprehensive content design strategy begins with the Information Architect. As with a homebuilder during the architectural drafting process, the architect will gather a ‘stocklist’ of what is required for this particular website. The IA will assess the available content and media types, build the navigation strategy, taxonomies, etc. and will hand of this architectural diagram to the User Experience (UX) designer. The UX is developed based on the AI diagram and adds strategy around each element. This is a usability prototype that defines elements such as ‘why is THAT there’ and ‘what purpose does it serve to the visitor’. The Visual Designer or User Interface (UI) designer then ‘breathes life’ into the usability hand off in the form of a series of graphical mockups.
Flexibility of Design and Concept is Heavily Dependent on the CMS
With the ‘proliferation’ of CMS’s flooding the market, Steven cautions us to do our homework and make sure that the vision that we have for our dream website directly aligns with the available toolset/featureset of the CMS during our selection process. We also learn about the innovation of CMS’s with HTML5, CMS 3.0, Responsive Design, etc. The maturation of CMS’s is described as having the ability to deliver content to modern channels such as Mobile, Social, Email and The Web. And finally we learn how, in the end, it’s the client participation that will define the success of our project.
Watch the entire interview and hear Scott’s contribution to this topic: HERE
Be sure to pay attention as Steven Mammone delivers some extremely valuable information that will save you a lot of time and money during your CMS selection or Information Design strategy. But you’ll have to watch it for yourself. However, we’ve made it very easy for you to ‘cherry pick’ your favorite section with our segmented selection layout.
Learn some very important steps for your next information design exercise.
CrafterCMS Goes Under the Knife with Seth Gottlieb followed by Rapid Fire
Following a truly informative discussion on Content Design, we switch gears and welcome Seth Gottlieb from LionBridge who takes on Crafter CMS. We learn a little about their history and also where CrafterCMS is best suited. Is a meeting with Crafter Software in your future? Listen to what Seth has to say and decide for yourself.
Finally, without introduction: RAPID FIRE!
Jade Carter
Jade is a content writer for CMS-Connected, facilitating the needs of the company blog. Bringing 10 years of Search and Digital Marketing to the table, he strives to build informative, relevant and fun editorial posts for the blog feed. Jade is an ultra distance (26.2 miles+) trail runner and lives to run trails in and around his home town of Victoria, BC.