26. Misdiagnostics
Attempting the impossible
“boil the ocean” in no time at
great cost
Believing the unbelievable
unwarranted claims from agencies
and software vendors
Becoming irresponsible
unwarranted declarations of
victory at the expense of
our teams and users
28. Complex Adaptive Systems
Entity consisting of many diverse and autonomous
components or parts (called agents) which are
interrelated, interdependent, linked through many
(dense) interconnections, and behave as a unified
whole in learning from experience and in adjusting
(not just reacting) to changes in the environment.
36. How to stop playing God
in 5 easy steps
1. Swap control for prioritization
2. Embrace evolution over revolution
3. Emphasize process over projects
4. Use anchors to counterbalance reaction
5. Sneak in governance at the grass roots
49. Zipf is The Truth
Not just search queries, but...
• Documents
• Features
• Audience segments
• and more...
50. George Zipf, your
portfolio manager
Each layer is
cumulative
layer
information
architecture
usability
content strategy
0
indexed by search
engine
leave it alone
leave it alone
tagged by users
squeaky wheel issues
addressed
refresh annually
1
2
tagged by experts (non- test with a service (e.g.,
topical tags)
UserTesting.com)
3
tagged by experts
(topical tags)
4
deep links to support
contextual navigation
refresh monthly
“traditional” lab-based
user testing
titled according to
guidelines
A/B testing
structured according to
schema
61. Cadence in text
Weekly
Call center data trend analysis
2 – 4 hours
behavioral/quantitative
Task analysis
4 – 6 hours
behavioral/quantitative
Exploratory analysis of site analytics data
8 – 10 hours
behavioral/qualitative
User survey
16 – 24 hours
attitudinal/quantitative
Net Promoter Score study
3 – 4 days
attitudinal/quantitative
Field study
4 – 5 days
behavioral/qualitative
Quarterly
Annually
69. It ain’t easy, but...
1. Swap control for prioritization
2. Embrace evolution over revolution
3. Emphasize process over projects
4. Use anchors to counterbalance reaction
5. Sneak in governance at the grass roots