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Usability
at Women.com
An interview with
Bill Skeet, Director of Network Architecture at Women.com
Conducted via email by John S. Rhodes
(20-Jan-2001)
A Peek Inside
Women.com
Women.com has great brand recognition and a solid offering of content.
What are its other strengths? Does Women.com have a sustainable competitive
advantage?
There are numerous assets, but the one that seems to resonate most with
users is the association with established brands such as Cosmopolitan,
Redbook, Good Housekeeping and others... The Women.com
brand does have some weight too, but the fact that we aggregate the content
from all of these trusted sources gives us clout with users right out of the
gate.
How important is usability at Women.com? For example, what kind of effort
has gone into improving usability of content, navigation, and shopping in
general?
The company is trusting more and more in usability and user-centered
design methods. Only 18 months ago, the company did not have UI
resources. Since then, the newly-formed group has helped redesign
several parts of the network and, in doing so, has evangelized user testing
as sort of beacon to guide the design process. The benefits have been
measurable.
Who truly cares about usability at Women.com? Designers? Writers?
Executives? Do you think that will change any time soon?
Well, the designers and the people with business responsibilities seem to
be most interested. But there's no doubt that people around the
company can appreciate the value when they are exposed to it properly.
Women.com handles a lot of content. How do you do it? What tools and
techniques do you use to manage it all? What issues do you face? Does
usability play a role?
We are investing in a content management system that will help us.
Up till now, it's been done manually. I think anyone who has been
faced with managing a site with a lot of content knows the benefits and disadvantages
(speed, flexibility, maintenance, control, complexity, etc.) There are
tradeoffs, but we certainly think the ultimate benefit comes from the
content being housed in a database. The biggest benefit may be in
reduction of work and efficiencies in maintenance. Personally, I'm
looking forward to a more error-free site. Right now, we maintain more
than 100,000 flat files, so that creates a lot of opportunities for
mistakes.
About Bill Skeet
What exactly is your role at Women.com? What is your title? What are
your responsibilities? What are your goals?
My title is Director of Network Architecture. Basically, I'm
responsible for the organization and structure of the various women.com
sites (which we call a "network"). My goals are to create a
good customer experience while keeping the site easy and efficient to
maintain.
Please tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your educational
background? What kind of work experience do you have? What are your core
skills?
My undergrad is Journalism with a concentration in visual communication.
In a previous career, I was a newspaper designer and a graphics journalist
(I created information graphics like maps, charts, diagrams).
I went back to school in 1991 because I felt like there was going to be
an opportunity to deliver information to computer screens. I also
believed that the skills necessary for designing information on a computer
were different than the skills to lay out a newspaper page.
There wasn't a program for HCI or Interaction Design, but I found
professors in various areas that supported my ideas. So my graduate degree
is officially "Special Studies" which means I made up my own
curriculum by combining Cognitive Psychology, Industrial Design and Mass
Communications. I discovered the web through Lynx and Mosaic just in time
for my masters project which was a prototype of an interactive
newspaper.
If you knew that you were going to get stuck on an island, what five
things would you take? What things are really important to you?
My wife, a telescope, pencils with erasers, paper, a computer with an
internet connection :)
Seriously, I'd probably just want a lot of food and some tools to build a
shelter, but that's too boring.
Wrap Up
In general, what is going to happen in 2001? Do you have any
interesting predictions?
I think a full-fledged recession is going to be delayed for a few years..
I expect 2001 to be a year of trepidation-- the market will go up and down
like a roller coaster with the ebb and flow of uncertainty. This is
going to be very tough on companies that are reactionary and not proactive
-- they will get torn apart by the "whip effect". Companies
(and really I mean executive teams) that are balanced and methodical in
their growth will survive the period. I suspect it's no surprise to
say that companies without a good business plan will die; but I expect some
companies with good business plans to die too...
What should every person remember about this interview? What is the one
thing that you want them to understand?
Shucks. If it's memorable, it's probably because something is
wrong.
(Read Part II)
What next?
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