[Sigia-l] Gray is a shade of black

[Paula Thornton]

With all due respect to Patrick (read: don't take this personally), I needed
some fodder for building a soapbox. Patrick obliged:

What is the organization's purpose?
Who are its customers?
What is the website strategy?
Who are the site's users?

Crap, crap and more crap. Look at those questions. Whose perspective are
they from? What defines the purpose of an organization? Find an organization
that not only knows its purpose but can readily define its differentiators
in the marketplace and I'll publicly praise their efforts.

Those questions remind me of the same 'silliness' (though certainly solid
'basics' for lack of anything else) as individuals (I used to be one of
them) who look at a site that they've had no involvement in and 'evaluate'
it. Granted, it is warranted to point out specific 'usability' flaws.
However (note the megaphone being raised higher), the principles of
usability do absolutely nothing for measuring the 'reasonableness' of a
site. It may work perfectly...so what? Did that 'perfect experience' help me
accomplish something of value? How much value did I assign to it, such that
with a little more 'trouble' I might have gained even more value?

Back to the first point. ALL, (emphasis with repetition) all business
activity (read: organization's purpose) should only be couched in the
strengths and potential it has to deliver specific value to its
stakeholders. Just like there is really no such thing as a CIO...they
deliver 'data' not 'information' because whether or not something informs is
determined by its recipient, the 'value' a business delivers is defined by
the recipients (stakeholders).

The list of questions that Patrick listed needs to be put away and
forgotten. They need to be replaced with questions that assess the strengths
that a business has to deliver things that are valued by its stakeholders.
These things cannot be assessed until we better involve, learn to truly know
and continuously re-test the intents of stakeholders.

Paula