STI
31st October 2008, 08:19
From Industrial Worker (http://www.iww.org/en/node/4395), October 2008.
Secret to union web site success
by Eric Lee
Ask people what they think makes for a great union website. Some will say: Keep it fresh with loads of new content. Others will add: Make it interactive. Add a mailing list. Make sure the site is accessible for disabled people. Use a content management system. Don’t use Flash. Do add a search bar.
That’s good advice, but in my experi*ence setting up three websites for three different trade unions in Lon*don this summer, I think there is one thing often neglected when we talk about the difference between suc*cess and failure. I’m talking about training.You can’t just build a website and hand it over to a union. Even if it’s your own union and you’ve built the website yourself.
I’ll give an example. For one web*site I’ve just completed, first I trained the branch secretary for a couple of hours. I then trained two other branch officials because it’s always best to have more than one person involved for a couple more hours. Last week I met with the branch secretary to do another hour-long refresher. This week, he came by for two more hours to work out how to do a whole bunch of things on the site. And we’re not done yet. I’ve asked them to plan on a further training day.
The websites I’ve designed recently use Drupal, a powerful open source con*tent management system. We like to say that running a website isn’t rocket sci*ence and tools like Drupal make it easy for anyone to have a feature-rich website that’s easy to maintain.
But that’s not exactly true. Judg*ing by the number of issues which have come up with the three unions I’ve been working with, when planning on a web*site of this type, the vast majority of your time will be spent training–not configur*ing files.
I have long felt that trade unionists should have full control over their web*sites and not be reliant upon techies to do the work for them. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I find myself doing so much training. I don’t want to get an email or a phone call from the union every time there’s a small problem.The fewer emails and phone calls I get will depend entirely on how well I’ve trained the union.
Often the documentation for the tools we use is written by people who don’t remotely resemble the actual users. Fresh-faced university graduates in Silicon Valley may be the ones who write up the documentation, but when ordinary mortals read it, they often don’t get it.
That’s why to properly train trade unionists to use a newly-created website, you have to know them—and it is best to be one of them. There are a whole range of reasons why people have a hard time with technology, so we have to start out with a certain degree of empathy.
The other day I was training a group of low-paid service sector workers in London to use their brand new union site. The subject was ‘how to create an account on the site’. To the 25-year old techie in San Francisco writing the code and what passes for documentation, that’s not even worth discussing. You obviously just click on the ‘create an ac*count’ link, a no-brainer.
I spent probably 20 minutes with the group just on this subject. And it’s not because these people were particularly slow.
We can’t forget that even though most people we work with are now online, that doesn’t mean that they’re proficient in using complex websites. Mostly, people use email, surf the web, maybe they buy stuff.
Most trade union members have never created an account for themselves on a Drupal site, even though techies seem to think that is the easiest thing in the world.
We also need to keep in mind that many of the workers we are dealing with are not working in their native languages. So the on-screen instructions and error messages will not neces*sarily be clear to them.
So when you show someone a screen and it asks them for their user name, you hit the first hurdle. Does it want their real name? Their full name? A nick-name? What if the name is already taken? And where does it ask for their password? (Answer: it doesn’t.)
I find out just how hard it can be to use what we might think of as a simple website by actually sitting down with working people and training them, an*swering their questions, and seeing what is difficult.
The guru of website usability, Jakob Nielsen, calls this kind of testing of web*sites absolutely essential. But I’m certain that most unions don’t test and don’t train properly. Big unions will use large and expensive design firms and train*ing will be minimal. Techies will handle any problems that arise.
Local unions will have websites designed by an enthusiast and he or she will be the only one who actually knows how to use Dreamweaver or FrontPage or whatever tool they used to create it.
Training makes the difference be*tween a stale and boring union website and a great one, between a website that’s just an online brochure and one that’s an online community.
It’s not enough to use the latest, coolest tools nor is it enough to rely on buzzwords like “open source” and “con*tent management system.”
If I’ve learned one thing in a decade of designing union websites it’s this: the most important skill is the ability to listen.
Secret to union web site success
by Eric Lee
Ask people what they think makes for a great union website. Some will say: Keep it fresh with loads of new content. Others will add: Make it interactive. Add a mailing list. Make sure the site is accessible for disabled people. Use a content management system. Don’t use Flash. Do add a search bar.
That’s good advice, but in my experi*ence setting up three websites for three different trade unions in Lon*don this summer, I think there is one thing often neglected when we talk about the difference between suc*cess and failure. I’m talking about training.You can’t just build a website and hand it over to a union. Even if it’s your own union and you’ve built the website yourself.
I’ll give an example. For one web*site I’ve just completed, first I trained the branch secretary for a couple of hours. I then trained two other branch officials because it’s always best to have more than one person involved for a couple more hours. Last week I met with the branch secretary to do another hour-long refresher. This week, he came by for two more hours to work out how to do a whole bunch of things on the site. And we’re not done yet. I’ve asked them to plan on a further training day.
The websites I’ve designed recently use Drupal, a powerful open source con*tent management system. We like to say that running a website isn’t rocket sci*ence and tools like Drupal make it easy for anyone to have a feature-rich website that’s easy to maintain.
But that’s not exactly true. Judg*ing by the number of issues which have come up with the three unions I’ve been working with, when planning on a web*site of this type, the vast majority of your time will be spent training–not configur*ing files.
I have long felt that trade unionists should have full control over their web*sites and not be reliant upon techies to do the work for them. Maybe that’s part of the reason why I find myself doing so much training. I don’t want to get an email or a phone call from the union every time there’s a small problem.The fewer emails and phone calls I get will depend entirely on how well I’ve trained the union.
Often the documentation for the tools we use is written by people who don’t remotely resemble the actual users. Fresh-faced university graduates in Silicon Valley may be the ones who write up the documentation, but when ordinary mortals read it, they often don’t get it.
That’s why to properly train trade unionists to use a newly-created website, you have to know them—and it is best to be one of them. There are a whole range of reasons why people have a hard time with technology, so we have to start out with a certain degree of empathy.
The other day I was training a group of low-paid service sector workers in London to use their brand new union site. The subject was ‘how to create an account on the site’. To the 25-year old techie in San Francisco writing the code and what passes for documentation, that’s not even worth discussing. You obviously just click on the ‘create an ac*count’ link, a no-brainer.
I spent probably 20 minutes with the group just on this subject. And it’s not because these people were particularly slow.
We can’t forget that even though most people we work with are now online, that doesn’t mean that they’re proficient in using complex websites. Mostly, people use email, surf the web, maybe they buy stuff.
Most trade union members have never created an account for themselves on a Drupal site, even though techies seem to think that is the easiest thing in the world.
We also need to keep in mind that many of the workers we are dealing with are not working in their native languages. So the on-screen instructions and error messages will not neces*sarily be clear to them.
So when you show someone a screen and it asks them for their user name, you hit the first hurdle. Does it want their real name? Their full name? A nick-name? What if the name is already taken? And where does it ask for their password? (Answer: it doesn’t.)
I find out just how hard it can be to use what we might think of as a simple website by actually sitting down with working people and training them, an*swering their questions, and seeing what is difficult.
The guru of website usability, Jakob Nielsen, calls this kind of testing of web*sites absolutely essential. But I’m certain that most unions don’t test and don’t train properly. Big unions will use large and expensive design firms and train*ing will be minimal. Techies will handle any problems that arise.
Local unions will have websites designed by an enthusiast and he or she will be the only one who actually knows how to use Dreamweaver or FrontPage or whatever tool they used to create it.
Training makes the difference be*tween a stale and boring union website and a great one, between a website that’s just an online brochure and one that’s an online community.
It’s not enough to use the latest, coolest tools nor is it enough to rely on buzzwords like “open source” and “con*tent management system.”
If I’ve learned one thing in a decade of designing union websites it’s this: the most important skill is the ability to listen.