Episode Four:
Squandering $Gazillions for Fun and Non-Profit: A Case in Point
Case in point. This will be a case in point. The premise is - You are a large, old service corporation with nearly two centuries in business. You have a large technical fortress and marketing engine. You have market presence and recognition. You want to do business over the web and have a notion to bring all these forces together to get you up and started fast. Nothing easier, right? Actually, right.
The correct step is to go get some books, preferably ones that unfortunately do not exist or will be emerging, such as:
An Executive’s Guide to Simple Web Solutions for Complicated Web Problems
How to avoid using a Hammer instead of a Screwdriver for Web Implementations
Wearing Headphones successfully to drown out Marketing Buzz and other distracting noises
How to lock up your Money before the Cookies are stolen from the Jar
Recognizing Territoriality and turning it to your best advantage
Nepotism on the Web: How to Save your Skin by Hiring you Cousin’s Son to Create Your Website – You Could Do Worse
New Leaves in the Wind (of course)
The Plan
Since most executives know how to spend money to get things accomplished, they earmark a bunch of dough and call a meeting. It's a small meeting of important people with broad minds. OR it's a important meeting of broad people with small minds. In either case, the desires are delegated to a planning committee. Here's the Plan:
1 - Define the Project
2 - Define the Implementation
3 - Define a schedule
4 - Define areas of Responsibility
5 - Define Look and Feel
6 - Define Content
7 - Define a system of Checks and Balances
8 - Define milestones
9 - Define Deliverables
10 - Define Platforms
11 - Define the Marketplace
12 - Define the Marketing Strategy
13 - Define a Project Reporting System
14 - Define Consultants and Project Vendors
15 - Define Programming Resources
16 - Define Project Parameters
17 - Define Phases (at least 3 will be needed)
18 - Define the Retirement Plan for Definers
19 - Define the Lunatic Asylum for the Executive
20 - Define the Launch
21 - Define the ReLaunch
22 - Define the ReReLaunch
23 - Define Phase 93
You get the picture. Yet, I said this was a "case in point" - and the above is the actual plan used for this case in point. Definition becomes the major component because implementation means a project has a beginning and an end - and END is a bad word when it comes to work-hungry, budget spendthrifts. The one thing the planners have aced are holding meetings and publishing requirement documents.
C.Y.A. Books
Requirement documents or as they are better known as Cover Your Ass Books, have always amazed me. I am a firm believer in clear planning; however, a requirement is one that has a specific hallmark - sonata allegro:
1 - It states the purpose and deliverable in the first paragraph.
2 - It outlines the essential steps toward that deliverable in less than a page.
3 - It takes the essential steps and looks for possible problems and lays them out simply - Themes and variations.
4 - It develops these antithetical forces concisely, and resolves them.
5 - It contains a "to do" list, approximate time consumption, estimated delivery dates and a person responsible (a stucky) for each task.
6 – End of story.
Like a symphony, with Exposition - Development - Restatement of thematic material - this is music to the ears. Any project, especially a web-one, should have a requirements document that is no more than 10 pages. BIG project? Add a page. Got a dumb top exek! Add an Exek Summary; but, be warned, Executive Summaries have appeared because no one wants to read 250 pages. 10 pages (or 11 for the Big project) should be a refreshing read for the Big Cheese. If you use a staple to keep the pages together instead of a binder, you may just have a good or great requirements document.
Unfortunately, Requirement Documents grow to Biblical proportions for the Technocrat. They must define every step, sub-step, sub-sub step - and exclude stuff, sub-stuff and sub-sub-stuff. They must play to the "money" people, drawing convincing arguments to venture down one road or another - especially when bidding for expensive software and hardware. It must include the "business" view, which is contained in a separate Business Case Document. The Business Case is the Business Case and the Requirements Doc is the Requirements Doc and never the twain shall meet. They are in two different languages. The Business Case is futuristic - a true fantasy novel; while the Requirements Document is science fiction - based on real technology which might be seen in our lifetimes.
The Requirements Document also serves as the principle communication document. Everyone knows it by heart! And it changes daily to assure that it’s covering asses properly. If you were not aware of today's changes, that's your fault. You were suppose to go to the Requirement Document electronic access system and look for the Changes, highlighted in red. It's a trip to the temple of Doom. Of course, if you have a proper requirements document of 10 pages, that never change, because ass coverage is not its main purpose - you can be expected to stay the course well and achieve the opposite shore.
L.A.F. (Ha Ha)
For Web projects, there are two very important elements that allow the Marketing department to be as rampant as the Technical department. This is "Look and Feel" and "content." LAF (Look and Feel - pronounced "laugh") is important. Unfortunately it is claimed territorially by three disciplines - the Graphic Artist, the Market Researcher and the Technocrat - among others.
"I know how to make snazzy designs," says the Graphic Artist.
"I know how to communicate with our customers," says the Marketeer.
"I know how to create the LAF and maintain it," says the Technocrat.
Get out the mud - it's gonna be battle royal. Unfortunately, the looser is the customer and the budget. You need all three disciplines to make LAF work; and so these predators are let loose to "defining, defining, defining." Actually, it is the Psychologists realm on the web. Understanding "people" and how they behave to the vitreous environment of clicks and scrolls.
Snazzy designs are great for billboards. Most corporations do not have "house artists," so they rely on the Communications department to hire consultants from among their friends and family. The Market manager may know the customer, but does not necessarily know how that customer will react to the new media - and the web is a one-to-one relationship - not a one-to-many. The Technocrat can devise an architecture for a LAF which will assure you need a higher priced programmer to maintain it rather than a community college student. It will impress you (not the visitor) when you look to how much you could have saved by letting you cousin's son do the LAF for pocket change. (Now is the time for nepotism).
Goood Web Dezign
There are several rules on the web for good design. I got these from books and apply them always:
1 - Always use redundant navigation. Visitors like one of several methods to navigate - Menu bars on top, Text links on the bottom, Graphic navigation on the side (the left side, never the right) and text links within the content.
2 - Use white as a background color for selling stuff. Use black to "rock" them. Use blue if you have games for five year olds and brown if your visitors are color-blind.
3 - Never use clichés, such as a Globe (or a spinning Globe, cliché on qualudes).
4 - Visitors should know where they are and where you want them to go.
5 - Visitors should get to "content" in no less than 3 clicks. (3 clicks to the cheese)
6 - Pages should load in less than 7 seconds.
7 - Graphics and content should compliment each other.
8 - Use Ariel or Helvetica typeface for all text. Need some fancier relief, use graphics.
9 - Avoid JavaApps
10 - Never use Frames
LAF design should compel the visitor to stay, no matter what your content is. When department stores design their floor plans, the perfume counters are always at the entrance of the store for a reason. Also, if you cannot find anything in that department store, do you stay? Huh? Do you?
The background is more important than the foreground. White is the best choice. This makes every other color a graphic element. Colors are powerful triggers, so beware. However, satanic and arty sites favor "black" backgrounds. Kids pages like blue. Avoid "brown" - ‘nuff said.
The LAF should immediately defer to the content, so a person knows where they are, why they are there and where they should go next. Navigation should be evident to all preferences, thus redundant. You will be surprised how people that prefer left sidebar navigation do not even notice the other navigation available.
Speed counts (meaning Size counts) on the web. No one waits more than 15 seconds for a page to load unless it's their own bank statement or porn (others not theirs, I hope). Globes and other clichés are not professional. It's like the legions of amateur desk top publishers who use Palatino type-face.
Have a clever graphic idea? Then immediately defer it to the content. Need people to read the content? Use Ariel, a non-serifed font. Times Roman looks like crap on the screen and is less legible. Use graphical fonts as graphics for text in more stately messages. JavaApps (not to be confused with JavaScript or Java itself) is a loading nightmare and will have visitors waiting. It is one of the principle reasons for not using Microsoft's FrontPage for any professional web design or implementation. Use Frames if you want to piss-off the visitor. There are a few instances where frames are OK, but marginally. Why use this technical blunder when traditional methods are far better.
So How Does our Case In Point Stack Up?
So there's my LAF treatise. So, in our "case in point" - after all that defining, spending, mishing, mashing and gyrating - the first pages had (drum-roll):
1 - Blue Background (with orange) - the fifth grader’s choice.
2 - A spinning Globe - the amateur’s choice.
3 - JavaApps with a 1 minute load time (and sometimes not at all)
4 - Right Hand navigation
5 - No sense of where you were, why you were there - but a clear sense of where you were going (click leaving!)
6 - Times Roman text (for the crayon set)
7 - No Frames (yippie!)
8 - Graphic elements that were so boring it killed the content.
9 - Lots of branding (subject of a separate chapter).
Of course, these pages were a dismal failure (although never recognized as such by their creators); but, clearly recognized as a work in progress. (It took eight months for their first appearance). Phase 2 kicked in, with a tighter control over the process; especially the gathering of content. Plus it was decided to bring in a consultant firm to partner with the already existing group. Enter, the parasitic worms.
The Invasion of the Killer Tomatoes’ Alter Egos
Most consulting firms in the web industry are designed to take advantage of what I already know. They know executives are clueless about the web. They know execs want to spend money. They know that company technocrats will lead them down paths of gory; and their marketing departments will sponsor any outside aid to cover ignorance.
These consulting firms are opportunistic, parasitic worms. I devote a whole chapter to consultants and boutique web companies; however, here's the modus operandi for the Consulting Firm hired by our "case in point." It's a classic.
1 - Have some sizzling web pages to demonstrate.
2 - Offer a program of getting increased traffic.
3 - Have a dazzling presentation on how you helped other poor, misbegotten fortune 500 companies.
4 - Have a portfolio of successes as reported by the Will Strut Jingo.
5 - Spend 400 hours with the project team, copy down everything they want to hear and present it back to them at an all day presentation. We ARE brilliant.
6 - Divide the web design into "Content Pools." Each content pool should have business representatives who will meet with the consultants and provide them with content ideas.
7 - Create a content map, 2 miles wide and 10 feet tall. Display it prominently in the War Room you manage to get at the "case in point's" site.
8 - Compile a 200 page Implementation plan for the project, to compliment the Business Case and the Requirements Documents. Give this document to the buffoons who hired you and who couldn't implement their own project plans, let alone yours.
9 - Be available to consult with the team. Keep the lines of communication open at $200 per second.
SO, (second Try) How Does our Case in Point Stack Up on ReLaunch
The results (ten-months later):
1 - The Globe stopped spinning.
2 - The Background was half-white, half-blue (orange still there)
3 - Text changed to News Gothic (a non-standard typeface for the web, which defaults to Times Roman in 99.9% of all browsers)
4 - More content - less interesting. All marketing "platitudes"
5 - Graphic intensity increased by 1% and all graphics are monochrome, an artistic touch of snooze proportions.
6 - Left Hand Navigation is evident, but no redundancy.
7 - Visitors still have a bewilderment factor upon arrival on the site.
8 - 10 Clicks to the cheese
9 - More branding.
10 - No frames (yippie!)
11 - No JavaApps (double yippie!)
Opera becomes a Drama: A Greek Tragedy
The third phase came into being with a new Chief Executive, whose prime purpose was to down-size the company and most of the participants in "the case in point." You might say that was divine justice; however, the new exec started his own "case in point," which continues today until the key in the door turns the final lock. Where is that "cousin's son" now that we need him to work part-time during the summer to improve on the bumble of four years and twelve million dollars pissed away. Can we afford the $60 dollars an hour to pay him now?