07 Sep Where’s Waldo?
Part 2 of 6
I was a kid with a messy room, much to my mother’s horror. She was always stunned when I could find what I was looking for immediately. I KNEW my clutter because I lived with it. One time, she duct-taped my door shut and posted a cleanup order signed, The Management, so I knew she meant business. I was Fred G. Sanford, she was Marie Kondo.
I became a convert when I got a place of my own, to her great relief.
This week kicked off our client portal introduction and assessment. I was alone. Inside the site without a tour guide holding my hand when…Holy Gordian Knot, Batman! The sheer amount of information crammed on a single page almost gave me vertigo. I immediately became my mom looking at a messy room and wondering how the heck I was going to find the items I wanted. It seemed so easy as we watched the client’s agent expertly navigate the screen last week.
As a new user, it was a bit frustrating trying to find the guide material. Imagine if I were a new customer and in a hurry to find what I needed. As a web professional, I felt an immediate urge to reorganize and streamline it.
The image at the top of this post visually sums up this search experience. If you actually looked for Waldo, I’d be astonished if you found him, because he’s not there. According to Wikipedia, illustrator Martin Handford created the beloved Waldo character “to provide a link between each crowd scene and provide a focus and purpose for the book.” The admin page was a crowd scene, and I was the viewer trying to find the focus element.
This week’s readings have a wide spectrum of prescribed processes a content strategist should take, such as project strategy, content inventory, publication, marketing, analytics, metadata, and governance, among others. I am curious how we will accomplish some of these since our assignment is a narrow section of guides to check for specific performance measures. We requested sample customer feedback and support tickets from the client, which we have not yet received, so many of these content subjects will have to wait. But I am building a substantive client evaluation for my individual content roadmap assignment due at the end of the semester.
On another note, our team has an official Kanban board. And no, I’m not going to link to Team Alpha Super Awesome Cool Dynamite Wolf Squadron’s ultra-secret tactical HQ—loose lips sink ships. How did I ever get by without this slice of Kanban awesomeness in my life? And it’s only my first week of use. I am excited to see how this terrific Trello tool will help our crew coordinate and track our progress. I love experimenting with different organization methods.
I am already OCD about lists, but I may need an intervention after this.