[Sigia-l] Seeking Best Practices: order for chaos

[Listera]

A.F. Cossham:

> They want a one-stop shop.

That's demonstrably false, in many contexts. Canonical example: TimeWarner's
Pathfinder that tried to "unify" disparate TW publishing properties in one
site. And it failed miserably and TW lost tens of millions of dollars in the
attempt to put up a "one-stop" destination.

> In the same way, it really isn't any use structuring our website to reflect
> the various elements of the organisation if those elements don't mean much to
> those using the website.

Continuing the example above, various TW properties operated pretty much as
disjointed fiefdoms and produced very different publications. Readers/users
of one pub had little to do with another.

As I pointed out to Eric previously, I don't have an issue with
logistics/fulfillment aspects of organizational structure, mostly because
user don't care, as you say. My beef is with branding/UE whereby disjointed
functions/user experiences are artificially conjoined from the top in an
attempt to appear "unified" when the organizational structure and its
products just don't reflect it in real life with which users are already
familiar.          

---- 
Ziya

Best Practices,
For when you've run out of your own ideas and context.