SharePoint Saturday Columbus Photos: Round I

Posted in Photography, SharePoint on August 14th, 2010 by "The SharePoint Muse" – Be the first to comment

Registration

*update to post*

This post contained images that were not optimized for the web due to export error. 
Please check out SharePoint Saturday Columbus Photos here in SmugMug

SharePoint Design Funnies – Intranet Requirements

Posted in Branding/UI, SharePoint on July 25th, 2010 by "The SharePoint Muse" – Be the first to comment

SharePoint Branding Intranet Requirements

SharePoint 2010 Branding and Customization Resources

Posted in Branding/UI, SharePoint on May 30th, 2010 by "The SharePoint Muse" – 2 Comments

As I was researching SharePoint 2010 Design for our new book, Beginning SharePoint Designer 2010 (wrox), I collected several links to good resources. I hope you find them as helpful as I did. I tried to bucket them in order of design/dev cycle. Why? Probably because I’m an Information Architect at heart. No reason really.

The most important source of information is the SDK. I can’t stress that enough. There is so much more documentation with this release than there was with 2007. However, we are all in the habit of looking to each other for information first.

Researching the SDK and walking through the Development classes, even if you aren’t a developer. is an important step in understanding the complex relationships between the objects in SharePoint and ASP.NET.

I will repost a full set of resource links once I finish writing for the book.

Planning Strategy and Design

Visual Design

Usability

Wireframes and prototypes

Web Content Management

Implementation

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010

Downloads:

CSS and HTML Resources

SharePoint 2010 requires a better understanding of CSS than you needed in SharePoint 2007. You really should be able to plan your css. If you can use the box model on purpose. If you know how to clear a float. If you understand a stacking index, you are okay. If you don’t, practice on plain old HTML first. Build your own HTML from scratch and style it. Draw a design and build it from scratch Plan it.

CSS Sticky Footer – You may find yourself struggling to get your footer to stay at the bottom of your page. If you really want this to be a part of your site, test the layout and structure all alone to troubleshoot. Test with and without content on as many site templates as possible. CSS Sticky Footer, CSS Sticky Footer II, CSS Sticky Footer III

  • JS Sticky Footer If all else fails, use this JS Sticky Footer. Be sure to test your site with real content!! If it’s not in the body of the site, look to the CSS overflow as the culprit.
  • Understanding Floats (another advanced technique but helpful alternative to overflow)

Themes

General SharePoint CSS and Markup

Master Pages

Starter Master Pages

Master Page Tips and Tricks that will save your ARSE

Simply Cool Tips and Tricks

Upgrading 2007 Designs

Ribbon

Videos

Developer Links

Books

Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition Non-Designer’s Design Book, The (3rd Edition) Pro CSS and HTML Design Patterns
Essential SharePoint 2010: Overview, Governance, and Planning (Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series) Beginning SharePoint Designer 2010

Look there’s my name on there!

Professional SharePoint 2010 Development (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) Search Patterns: Design for Discovery
SharePoint 2010: Best Practices to Upgrade and Migrate
SharePoint 2010 For Dummies

10 Must See Sessions from Mix10 Conference

Posted in User Experience on May 14th, 2010 by "The SharePoint Muse" – Be the first to comment
I went to the Microsoft MIX conference in March. These are the sessions that I still have on my IPhone for listening to later. ALL session videos are FREE to ALL of the web, not just attendees.

Total Experience Design, Paul Dawson (EMC)

Paul presented the first UX design session I attended. His British accent and dry humor makes this session worth the investment of your time.

The Art, Technology and Science of Reading, Kevin Larson (Microsoft Research)

Tons of interesting scienc-y insight into why its so important to consider the structure of the language used to communicate on the web. I didn’t see this one in person but watched it and found it fascinating.

10 Ways to Attack a Design Problem and Come Out Winning, Robby Ingebretsen

There is quite a bit of insight in this session.

Service Design Goes Social, Shelley Evenson (Microsoft FUSE)

I always enjoy sessions from one of the Microsoft Research Team. Shelley has a great grasp on social media.. There’s new ways for services organizations to reach their customers and clients. Users are responsive… but wary at times. They say that instant feedback and customer service is caring… but creepy.

The Elephant in the Room, Nishant Kothary

…Drawing insights from fields like behavioral economics and evolutionary psychology to explore how embracing politics and understanding human nature makes our designs better, our projects smoother and our lives …

This was one of the most talked about sessions they had there.

Lifecycle of a Wireframe, Nick Finck

Nick’s presentations are always great. He creates a screens cast so his presentations are very valuable.

Modern Web Form Design, Luke Wroblewski (Yahoo)

Luke is incredibly gifted at communicating. I missed his session to see Bill Buxton speak. Luke tweeted that he understood why I missed his session.

An Hour With Bill Buxton, Bill Buxton (Microsoft Research)

This man is amazing. He is my leader. Listen to his thoughts on design.

The Laws of User Experience, Anthony Franco

Fantastic presentation. I listened to this one three times on my iPod. It’s chock full of information and best practices.

The Democratization of the Design Industry, Ross Kimbarovsky

Treat Your Content Right, Tiffani Jones Brown

Content? You mean that stuff that replaces Lorem Ipsum at the “end” of a project, just before the launch date? Yes, content. I don’t know about you, but I go to the web for relevant, credible content. Make sure you treat yours right. Learn best practices from Tiffani for giving your content some TLC.

I’m Speaking at SharePoint Saturday DC | Topic: “Managing Design in a SharePoint Project”

Posted in Presentations on April 23rd, 2010 by "The SharePoint Muse" – Be the first to comment

I’m heading back to Washington DC to present at SharePoint Saturday on May 15th, 2010. My session is about “Managing Design in a SharePoint Project.”  Although it isn’t the most interesting title, and it doesn’t once mention the word “crap”, it’s chock full of delicious morsels of experience that I want to share.  The purpose of the session was to offer you answers to common questions that arise when discussing “SharePoint Branding”.   There is more to it than implementing Master Pages.   Do you want to know more? 

 Just for fun, I interviewed myself for the session.

Q. Why Did You Choose This Topic?

A.  That’s a good question, Marcy.  As I moved from a SharePoint Designer newbie to where I am today, I remember wishing that someone would explain the process.  I could find articles on rounded corners and breadcrumbs.  But what about the process??  (by the way Erik Swenson, EMC,   eventually did cover this).

The more I learned,  the more I knew I didn’t know.  There were times that I felt like my knowledge gap was insurmountable, but I generally prevailed and enjoyed trying new approaches..    Like many, I earned my stripes through mistakes and subsequent rework.  I survived with a bruised ego and more determination to find the answers.   I started asking around and after a few years, I had a lot of answers.   So I hope that this collection of answers to common questions sounds enticing to you. 

Q. What sort of “branding” questions do you answer?

A. I answer broad and high-level topics that cover multiple disciplines.  Most are process related.  I try to give as many examples as I can.  Developers, designers, architects, and anyone on the project team will find this helpful.   

  • Why does design matter?
  • When to engage design?
  • Who are the key players in design?
  • What do designers do anyway?
  • Where does design fit into a SharePoint project?
  • How do I implement someone else’s design?
  • Is there an easy way to work with digital agencies on SharePoint project’s?

 

Q. Do you have a favorite part of your presentation?

I love sharing my stories.  I know that people feel less alone if they aren’t the only one that has been through a trauma.  :)    But I have to admit, my favorite part of the session is when we  ALL AGREE TO STOP CALLING IT “BRANDING”.   It’s a high hope, but I believe that one day we will; It’s part of the problem.

Q. What if you don’t cover my question with your pre-packaged answer. 

A.  At the end of the session, I’ll spend  about 10 minutes answering your specific questions.  If you would like to  submit prior to the event, I’ll try to include your question. 

4/23/09   – SharePoint Saturday Update:

  • 900 people registered
  • $700 raised for Red Cross.
  • Sponsors finalized
  • Session schedule being developed
  • Speaker shirts, attendee t-shirts + bags being ordered
  • Register to be a Live Blogger for EndUserSharePoint
  • Still working on hotel discount
  • Nice SPSDC Google Map by John Miller
  • Lots of seats still available. If you haven’t registered, do it now!

SharePoint Saturday Presentation: Designing Intuitive SharePoint Sites

Posted in Presentations on February 13th, 2010 by "The SharePoint Muse" – 2 Comments

User Experience Design in SharePoint

Posted in User Experience on December 28th, 2009 by "The SharePoint Muse" – 2 Comments

Prologue: Aligning Thoughts and Ideas

Introduction

A prologue (Greek prologos), or prolog, is a preface to the story. It sets up the story, giving background details and other miscellaneous information.

This is the prologue for a series of articles on User Experience Design (UED) in SharePoint. The series is intended to improve the success of your SharePoint implementation through a better understanding of User Experience Design.

These articles are relevant to power users, designers, information architects, business analysts, project managers and anyone passionate about SharePoint.

Why User Experience Design Matters to Me

Background

I began my love affair with SharePoint in 2005 when I was working at a global medical device manufacturer. I inherited many manual data management processes that seemed designed to elicit human error with their convoluted schemas and irrational schedules. Unfortunately, many of the "human errors" were mine and even worse, highly visible. I lost confidence in my abilities and actually started feeling depressed. I dreaded going to work.

My boss knew of my background in web and graphic design and asked me to build a site to pilot SharePoint 2003. The site would manage our department file-shares, processes and key documents. I jumped at the chance. This was my opportunity to normalize this data and automate the system, almost completely eliminating human error, and putting me in the corporate good graces. It was personal to succeed in this endeavor. My ego depended on it.

Objectives

The key objectives of the site set the context. The site should be intuitive so that it could be used with minimal training. Because we were in the middle of an FDA audit it was critical that the migrated content was credible and quickly accessed to support FDA requests for information. The site design also had to be universally understood across departments and continents.

Audience

The audience was comprised of over 2000 project managers, chemists, scientists, researchers and executives that worked on several continents.

Success Metrics

The success of the site (and indirectly, my success) would be measured by user adoption and the ability to find content quickly. How was I to make a group of 2000 minimally-trained users adopt a site? The answer was clearly dependent on design. It must be designed an architected well.

Solution and Outcome

We built a solution based on User Experience Design (UXD) principles and methods. A thorough understanding of user needs, site context and content drove the site map, taxonomy, interactions and visual design. The site was a success, our processes were automated, user adoption was high and so were my spirits.

SharePoint was my hero.

The Problem: Information Gap

Over the last five years, I’ve moved into SharePoint consulting and continue to follow the thought leaders in various User Experience (UX) discipline, incorporating and linking their ideas into each SharePoint implementation.

There is more than enough information available regarding User Experience Design (UXD) for the Regular Web Design World (RWDW), however there is a tremendous scarcity of this content as it applies to SharePoint. One of the major reasons for this is that originally, SharePoint was focused on collaboration. The challenges of working with an immature product combined with the design customization limitations made it very difficult to focus on User Experience (UX). SharePoint 2007 dramatically changed this and we finally had the platform to incorporate UXD.

As SharePoint has matured into a robust platform offering rich user interface (UI) features and true development capabilities, there is a need to standardize the User Experience (UX) approach in SharePoint.

Next Steps: Aligning Ideas

The forthcoming series of articles define the User Experience (UX) disciplines, roles and responsibilities, and helpful approaches as they relate to SharePoint. These articles will focus heavily on areas that I know best: usability, visual design and the psychology behind them. As I continue to develop these ideas into articles and supporting visuals, I welcome your input and feedback.

SharePoint Branding Won’t Fix Crappy Content

Posted in Presentations, User Experience on December 26th, 2009 by "The SharePoint Muse" – Be the first to comment

My SharePoint Saturday DC Presentation  is available. The SharePoint Saturday DC was a success overall.  Had a few problems with my demo so I wanted to make sure that the presentation was reworked to include content covered in the demo.  This is now available to you on Slideshare (http://slideshare.net/marcykellar )as well as here, my lonely rarely updated blog. 

Overview – Branding alone cannot support the user experience in SharePoint.  The successful redesign of an existing SharePoint site is dependent on multiple factors that are often overlooked.  
 
This session was designed for Architects, Designers, and IT Pros and includes the following:
 
-Common Causes of Branding Problems in SharePoint
-Demonstration of “crappy content”  and impact on branding
Overview of the elements of User Experience (UX)
-Methods to improve user experience and overall look and feel

To Download the sharepoint spider mentioned in this presentation- paste this link in your address bar: http://www.sharepointuserexperience.com/downloads/SharePoint_Spider_1.5.zip

Requesting Stories of “Crappy Sharepoint Content”

Posted in SharePoint on November 24th, 2009 by "The SharePoint Muse" – Be the first to comment

I’m presenting at SharePoint Saturday DC on December 5th.  My Topic?  ”Why Branding Won’t Fix Crappy Content: Real World UX & IA Discussion”.  If you have an example (or horror story) about “crappy content” that vexed your branding, please submit it here and I may use it to build my demo.  The demo will be made available to the community as the mother of all testing sites. 

Note:  Your comments will remain anonymous if requested.

Thanks!

How to Determine If That’s SharePoint Or Not!

Posted in SharePoint on November 13th, 2009 by "The SharePoint Muse" – 5 Comments

Sometimes I run across a site that looks like it might be SharePoint. A quick trick I have to determine if it is running on MOSS is to add the following after the root url:

 /Style%20Libary/XSL%20Style%20Sheets/Itemstyle.xsl 

If you get a 404 error, it isn’t a SharePoint Publishing site.

Test it out on these known SharePoint sites:

http://www.eyecarevouchers.co.uk/Style%20Library/XSL%20Style%20Sheets/itemstyle.xsl

http://www.gtlic.com/Style%20Library/XSL%20Style%20Sheets/itemstyle.xsl

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