[Sigia-l] Interface for Content Management Systems?

Tue Apr 12 07:47:40 EDT 2005

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> I've been asked to look at re-designing an interface for a internally 
> developed content management. As part of my personal process, 
> I always like to do a competitive analysis or comparison of similar 
> products to get an understanding of potential approaches.  Has anyone 
> addressed a similar problem? Any suggestions on CMS interfaces that 
> work well (or not)? Any advice? 
>
>	
>	Thanks 
>	
>	Dave

Tough one. A lot of the time it's going to depend on the capabilities of
that particular CMS. For example, whether it strictly separates out
content from presentation, allows some form of markup, manages images
from the local file system or via an online library of some kind, etc.
etc.. Then there's the users - how do they work? How would they like to
work if a CMS wasn't telling them how? 

Once or twice, I've wondered whether identifying a "bad interface" in a
CMS is in fact missing the point, and that it's the overall *use* for
the CMS (whatever the interface) in the business that's the problem. For
that reason, I'd put a lot of my time into some contextual enquiry -
then test some mock-ups of candidate interfaces, etc. But you might
uncover some problems that aren't to do with the UI.

Overall though, I don't think you can get very far in this area fishing
about for good examples or best practice.

Jonathan 	

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