Compendium BlogwareUser Experience Design
About Compendium Blogware
Compendium Blogware provides an enterprise-class blogging platform to corporate clients. By leveraging this platform, the customer maintains complete control over each and every blog post through a secure, step-by-step approval process. Administrators serve as gatekeepers, sending the good stuff out into the world, while keeping other content out of the public eye. By blogging, corporations are able to engage their customers in an active dialogue and reap the SEO benefits of content optimized for today's search engines.
The Challenge
Compendium approached the user experience designers at KA+A to better understand and enhance the user experience of their product. Compendium understood that the administrators (gatekeepers of every blog post) were significant influencers on the overall value proposition of blogging within the enterprise.
The Process
KA+A experience interface designers began the engagement by conducting a rapid audit and triage of Compendium's application interface. The obvious opportunities for improvement were designed and offered back to Compendium for immediate implementation.
The second phase began with a systematic inspection of the user interface. KA+A leveraged contextual inquiry and workflow analysis in order to identify all potential usability concerns. The observations captured were categorized within a functional requirements document. Compendium and KA+A worked in short, scheduled bursts of design and development, chunking out the work and thus avoiding the malaise that can occur within any large development effort.
The Result
KA+A delivered a range of solutions designed to enhance the administrators' experience, including templates, analytics visualization and permissions algorithms. The enhancements have had a visible impact. Compendium and KA+A continue to work together to design the best experience possible for enterprise bloggers.
