Re: Web media

["Anthony Markatos" <tonymar -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Tony Markatos responds:

....In any communications project - paper-based or web - the main thing 
that needs to be done is to obtain a rigorous understanding of the 
end-user's goals. Yourdon & Associates state that this is ninty-eight 
percent (98%) if the REQUIRED work.

Andrew Plato responds:

The web is a media outlet, like television. Therefore building sites is a 
complex media and development process - not purely a writing task.

Tony Markatos responds:

If you are saying that web surfers are, like TV "channel-surfers", often not 
very goal driven, I can see this.  However, web site organization is still 
very important; you can not just randomly position stuff.  And the only 
truely effective way to organize (partition) is by end-user goals.

About Writing: Andrew, VERY few people mistake me to be 'gun-ho' for 
writing.  The simple truth is that for technical communications - even 
paper-based - writen text is a very poor tool for documenting procedural 
information.  If you want to say that writen text is also a poor chose for 
communicating non-procedural information, (web or otherwise) you won't get 
any argument from me.

Andrew Plato said:

You can whine all you want about how the site must cater to the needs of the 
user, but if you can't grasp the architectural aspects of how the site does 
this - they you cannot exploit that technology to
meet your oh so dear end-user needs.

Tony Markatos responds:

Ask yourself, which of the following is more "real world":

Company A: A very rigorous analysis was performed on the product's (web 
site's) end-users.  And, based upon this analysis, the product's interface 
was designed to be very user friendly.  However, the development effort fell 
apart because we simply could not find enough "techies" to implement the 
design.

Company B:  We have enough "techies" - everybody here is a techie.  But 
nobody really knows (or cares to know) the end-user.  As a result, the web 
site is a failure because it does not meet the user's needs and is too hard 
to understand.

Tony Markatos
(tonymar -at- hotmail -dot- com)


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