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Mobile is coming, mobile is coming, mobile is coming...
Without much tangible evidence to support it, I have been hearing and parroting this for a few years now. I was not one who predicted annually, "okay, this is really the year when it finally takes off", but I would tell those willing to indulge me (or at least not cut me off) that mobile will have a profound change on how we work, play and interact. It is immediate, it carries location information, and it is always with you. Maybe I just want to believe it, but some recent headlines and announcements have me thinking mobile's day as part of the global mainstream is finally dawning. Just a few of them are:
Looking at these headlines in aggregate -- and in light of the fact that iPhones are so user friendly and people are generally comfortable texting on their phone -- tells me that functionality everyone can relate to and use is finally arriving. Most, if not all, can relate to seeing the price of an item on a store's shelf and wondering if it's cheaper on Amazon, or wanting to read some news while waiting for that habitually late friend to show up, or checking to see if your latest paycheck has been deposited.
What does this mean for enterprises like IBM who sell primarily to other businesses? From a research and product offering standpoint, IBM sees the promise of mobile -- see IBM Launches Mobile Web Initiative to Transform Consumer and Business Experiences . What is less clear to me, is exactly what mobile resources individuals will look for to support their "relationship" with an enterprise like IBM. At ibm.com, we have seen considerable interest in a wireless portal we deployed for business partners in Japan, and we can readily see some extensions to that. For individuals working at our clients, some of the desired mobile capabilities that come to mind are order status, issue resolution status, event information, special offers and quick access to sales and support personnel.
What else would you like to see? What mobile features and functions should IBM and others who sell primarily to other businesses offer?
Garrett Hall
ibm.com Innovation and Strategy
Categories
: [ Garrett_Hall | ibm.com | mobile | web_innovation ]
May 05 2008, 03:19:51 PM EDT
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IBM.com is a Webby Award Nominee!
ibm.com has been nominated as a top website for the 2008 Webby Awards. IBM's website is one of five finalists in the IT Hardware/Software division of the "Marketplace" category.
The Webby's are prestigious awards that symbolize success in web design, user experience, and interactivity; they have been the leading international award for the web since 1996.
The 12th annual Webby Awards ceremony will be held at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City on June 10, 2008.
YOU are the People's Voice...
There are two Webby awards in each category -- one that the a panel of judges bestows and one where the public decides the winner. Public voting for the nominees takes place via the People's Voice Awards through May 1st (http://peoplesvoice.webbyawards.com/). You can help select winners in the Markeplace category via People's Voice voting, as well as being able to vote for all the other categories. The voting tool is a great way to see what is leading in the web for other industries.
New 1x2x Design
A new ibm.com design was introduced last June to move the site from a static experience to one that is dynamic and adaptive. The innovative design was validated with worldwide user testing and expert evaluation by user engineering professionals. Since its launch, it has been praised by industry analysts and has also driven increased traffic, reaching approximately 300 million visitors annually. IBM is also providing thought leadership through the further integration of personalization on the site with the addition of the "My IBM" feature. This new dynamic home page serves up a customized experience based on intelligent user detection. Roll-overs and dropdown menus are also an innovative addition to the IBM website. The ibm.com team was involved from the first steps of conception of this re-design to production, execution, implementation, and feedback. The entire ibm.com team is credited with this nomination, making ibm.com one of the leading competitors in the IT industry today.
Want a glimpse into our future....?
Our next plans involve driving emerging technology on the ibm.com in the area of communities and collaboration. Currently we have several projects under way to experiment, utilize, and create communities that users can build and network through. The ultimate goal is to have an underlying platform that encourages collaboration, the sharing of ideas, and the surfacing of relationships, while creating a participatory environment in which people find the right information and the right resources.
Stay tuned to our blog for more information on this topic!
Don't forget to vote for ibm.com in the Webby awards - online voting is open until May 1st and feel free to spread the word!
Christina Hu
ibm.com User Experience Design Team
Categories
: [ 1x2x | awards | christina_hu | design | nominee | v16 | webby ]
Apr 15 2008, 02:15:43 AM EDT
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Research study on ratings and reviews for the business user
We have all used it – ratings or reviews by other consumers – written about a product or service we are interested in purchasing. Amazon has had this functionality available for years, and most online consumer stores have it. Now business-to-business focused companies (such as IBM) are also looking at how rating and reviews can help in for instance building trust and loyalty with customers.
But is it so easy to just move a "consumer success" over to the enterprise world? That was my first question I asked when I started making research study on ratings and reviews for the business user. Other questions that I find interesting are:
- Are the benefits the same for more complex products or solutions?
- Could reviews take over some of the value that customer testimonials or reference stories traditionally provided?
- Does the presence or absence of a ratings and reviews capability affect the buying behavior of our customers?
- What are the perceived benefits and barriers for business users in relation to ratings and reviews?
I have set out to try to answer this set of questions and more. If you are interested in this area and would like to participate in the research, please take the survey. It takes only 10-15 minutes and your input is much appreciated. As an added bonus, you can also sign-up to get the report findings sent to you when this is available.
Link to survey
Christian C Carlsson
ibm.com Site Architecture team
Categories
: [ buying_behavior | christian_carlsson | ibm.com | ratings_reviews | ratings_survey | reviews_survey ]
Apr 09 2008, 07:37:19 AM EDT
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Why is IM different than e-Mail?
Digital convergence is hitting the living room. It needs to hit basic communications tools too.
The distinction between instant messaging, e-mail and discussion forums is increasingly artificial:
- Why aren’t my chats with someone simply stored in my e-mail history?
- Why can’t I open a chat window with somebody who isn’t on-line and have my message just appear in their in-basket?
- If I’m looking at an e-mail from someone, why can’t my reply appear in front of them as a chat window?
- Why do I get replies to my forum posts as e-mail but I usually have to visit the forum in my browser in order to reply?
- Why can’t a complete discussion thread be accessible in my e-mail client?
- Why can’t a long e-mail thread be viewable, and with the same display options, as if it were a discussion thread?
- Why must each email in a long thread repeat in its body all the previous messages in the thread?
- Why isn’t editing, formatting, inserting graphics, spell-checking, selecting text or navigating around the body of a message absolutely identical whether typing a message or an e-mail or a forum post?
Clearly, there is huge and growing overlap on these three paradigms, but the overlap is so imperfectly managed that it’s turning into a serious productivity bottleneck as their usage becomes ubiquitous. And the immediate future poses additional common sense questions:
- Why can I record voice and video chats but I can’t create a simple voice e-mail…simply?
- Why isn’t all voice mail (land and mobile) delivered via email?
- Why can’t I use my computer to email a voice message to someone?
Then look a bit farther and even more questions appear:
- Why aren’t business telephone conferences automatically recorded and instantly made available as podcasts that can be replayed, emailed, chatted and discussed?
- Why can’t Web conferences?
So with all these seemingly obvious questions, are they about to merge? Will Apple be the only company who can accomplish this?
What do you think?
Jeff Schaffer
ibm.com site architecture
Categories
: [ IM | e_mail | ibm.com | jeff_schaffer ]
Apr 02 2008, 10:38:51 AM EDT
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Has Agile software Development really "hit the wall"?
Hello, everyone, my name is Matt Ganis. I’m with the ibm.com site architecture team and a heavy proponent of Agile Development methods. For those that aren’t familiar with Agile methods, it’s a development methodology that stresses rapid iterations, small and frequent releases, and evolving requirements facilitated by direct user involvement in the development process. These methodologies include Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, RUP and DSDM (to name a few).
There have been many studies looking at the adoption of these techniques by various development teams, and many surveys that look at who has adopted. Scott Ambler (a fellow IBM’er and friend of mine) conducts such a survey in Doctor Dobb’s Journal. Scott recently spoke at the SD West conference in Santa Clara, California about some of the results of his recent survey, and he postulates that the adoption of Agile among development teams has “hit the wall” – implying that fewer teams are adopting these methods and more specifically that agile adoption “has peaked."
Now, I’ve been teaching Agile classes lately to some of our teams in Poughkeepsie (the large Operating system, hardware, and firmware teams) and it got me thinking about Scott’s statements:
I wonder if Agile hasn’t so much “hit the wall” but that it’s been adopted by all those teams that could easily adopt the methods (about 70% of the survey respondents), however, now it’s time to work on the other 30% (the last mile, if you will) that have some serious issues in adopting these methods. So it’s not that they can’t (or don’t want to adopt) – it’s more that they don’t know how to adopt given their environment.
Working with the large operating systems guys, it’s clear that the traditional Agile approaches won’t work (well) for them. Given the complexity of these systems making small changes in two week iterations can be difficult (if not impossible) for these teams. I know what you’re thinking: “just do longer iterations” – or the shortest iteration they can. But when you listen to other practioners, they claim you’re not Agile if your iterations are too long. However, for these types of groups, maybe it doesn’t mean that they can’t be Agile, it just means they can’t conform to the traditional definition of Agile. For these teams, working in increments of 6 weeks would be considered Agile (as opposed to a traditional 2 week iteration) – after all, 6 week iterations would be far better than 6 month or 1 year “waterfall” releases. So I wonder if the 70% referenced by Ambler is the “easy” part, and the final 30% is the “tougher nut to crack”.
So why do you all think these 30% aren’t adopting agile? A few things come to my mind:
- They have a large number of dependencies on external teams (or processes)
- The systems are highly complex (like an Operating system)
- There is a large amount of Legacy code
- Some of these systems just aren’t built to change often.
None of these reasons should prevent a team from adopting an Agile development methodology, but I would think it would make them very cautious in their approach.
But I’m curious what you all think: how can we help get that last 30% “over the hump”?
Categories
: [ Agile | ibm_com | matt_ganis | software_development ]
Mar 25 2008, 11:15:00 AM EDT
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Test environments on the enterprise web
I was reading an interview the other week with Andreas Weigend explaining the evolution from e-business to me-business and, now, we-business. Andreas seems to have a lot of experience in this subject, on how customers make decisions using information and how corporations should position themselves strategically.
He used a simple pyramid to explain his thinking, and even though the term “we-business” risks becoming a well hyped word, there is no doubt that collaboration and integration will increasingly drive a change in how business and organizations communicate with their customers – and vice versa.
Andreas’ thoughts on e-business are that people should discover products and services together, through a community where they are connected by conversations. But before companies can get to that Community level in their relationship with the customer, there are fundamental levels that need to be explored and used. This puts a lot of constraints on the enterprise. Not only does it take time and a lot of resource to change large, complex web structures such as ibm.com, it also requires major changes in culture, behavior and leadership. I believe we all recognize that many enterprises talk a lot about the Participation stage, but do we see enough real action? While it has never been easier to test how the customers react and behave in their engagement with a business, this opportunity is still used at very limited level and, at least in the B2B environment, experimentation and testing is limited (Andreas’ ‘Experiment stage’). Companies selling to consumer seem to be much better at this.
Experimenting widely across an entire enterprise portal is not the best solution due to several reasons like stability, business impact, and stakeholder and sponsor involvement. This is why a more controlled, yet open environment is needed. Many traditional online companies already do this, for example, eBay’s Sneak Peek and Playground, and YouTube’s TestTube, to mention some. The common objectives for these “playgrounds” as stated by the companies are constant testing, testing, testing, and change, change, change!
However, the use of these types of testing environments does not have to be limited to companies who came into being since the advent of the web. At IBM, we have recently launched our own testing site called ibm.com Sandbox. Our objective is to create a collaborative environment for testing of new designs, functions, features, applications and emerging web technologies. Hands-on experimentation with hands-on results will also help us drive internal change in our own web culture, creating a better visitor experience. There are nothing like hard facts to convince others!
The Sandbox is still in its early days with new features being developed for testing as I write. But we are already using this environment to collect both qualitative and quantitative feedback which is then used when making decisions on developing or deploying new functions or designs on the IBM web site.
Working on the Sandbox project, I would be interested in hearing and learning from others on this topic. After all, IBM is not facing the challenges of keeping up with the fast changing world of e-business alone. So, let’s follow Andreas Weigends lead and make that we-business instead!
Christian C Carlsson
ibm.com Site Architecture team
Categories
: [ beta_testing | christian_carlsson | ibm.com | sandbox | testing_environment | web_experimentation ]
Mar 20 2008, 05:09:20 PM EDT
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Why do avatars sit? An IA looks at Second Life
As an information architect and general introspective type I tend to look at life and cyberspace in terms of questions. Today I’m pondering “Why do avatars sit?” I wonder, how can they be tired? Is it a social construct? Is it just a habit? Or is it just the need for the duplication of the real life current position? But when I found myself beginning to explore Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com), my thoughts began to coalesce around three fundamental IA questions and their evolving solutions.
Where am I? On websites the company logo is prominently in a corner or at the top of the page. In Second Life, how do I know where I am in greater detail than the map? I need repetitive signs or common design elements, interior design that matches the corporate identity, and consistent landscaping to signal my current location.
What can I do here? Unlike the web where click-and-watch or click-and-listen are the only choices, I can interact with elements and create things in the Second Life. I need standard visual indicators for which items hold interaction capabilities.
Where can I go next? Teleporters, sometimes clickable images that transport me, could offer a preview to see where I’m going before I get there. Some type of virtual navigation controls or options might be a way a user can see “what else” there is to see in the world at all times.
A strong information architecture puts us closer to developing an optimal 3D internet user experience. A great user experience can help us continue to support, educate and participate in collaborative relationships with our customers and partners in the virtual world. I’m excited to be working in an evolving world; I think I’ll pull up a chair.
Ginger Poole
Information Architect, User Experience, ibm.com
Client experience lead, Virtual Business Center, ibm.com
Categories
: [ ginger_poole | ibm.com | information_architecture | second_life ]
Mar 18 2008, 01:12:00 AM EDT
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Welcome to the ibm.com web innovation blog!
Hello and welcome!
So, who are we? We are a group of technical folks, with some business skills mixed in. We are spread across the globe, but happen to belong to the same organization inside IBM. Our job titles may be "information architect", "web developer", "site architect", or "user experience designer" but it all boils down to one thing: every day, we try to think of new and innovative ways to improve the visitor experience on the ibm.com web site. Today, we're introducing this blog as one way to do precisely that.
The topics in this blog might range from "Is Open ID as good as it gets?" to "How to use Ajax to improve site performance" and we welcome your input on all of them. Some posts might be technical, others philosophical. Some will be long, some short (hey, we could go Seussical with this :). Sometimes we will be specifically looking to get feedback from you on particular ideas and sometimes we will just be "thinking out loud" or sharing some stuff we have done that we think is pretty cool. Some of us already blog and, for some of us, this is a brand new experience. But we do promise one thing: we'll read what you write, if you read what we write!
Looking forward to the adventure! Tune in tomorrow for our first entry: ""Why do avatars sit in Second Life?".
Monica Piccinini
ibm.com site architecture manager, former programmer, current blogger
Categories
: [ ibm.com | intro | monica_piccinini | web_innovation ]
Mar 17 2008, 11:57:06 AM EDT
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Technical and strategic insight on the present and future of the ibm.com website
