browser could end up tying into a variety
of content sources,” she says.
Christopher Frederico, president of
Toronto-based Concept Interactive,
agreed. “People are realizing that at the
end of the day, a document is the end result of a process,” he said. “A component
of this has been to go back to centralizing document and records management
and having an easy, accessible way to get
to that information and collaborate with
it, not just within the corporation but
wherever you need it to be.”
LePage said Accelerators would be
useful to anyone trying to speed up a
process. “We’re giving one-click access
back to the users.”
But before you deploy: Make sure the
options you offer users are the ones
they really need. Stuffing commands
into an Accelerator won’t necessarily
change the way people work overnight.
“There is a difference between what
enterprises use and what consumers
do,” says McLeish. “I think there’s not
a good enough understanding of how
people are using browsers today to even
start to think about how they might
look to leverage some of these features.”
Figure out what users know about IE,
then think about Accelerators.
The feature: WEB slICEs
what they do: Instead of leaving certain
tabs open to your favourite Web sites,
Web slices are like widgets that embed
pieces of data from various sources
directly into the Favourites Bar, and
updates changes on the fly. “You’re taking
a page that changes regularly and marking it up,” says LePage, giving consumer-oriented examples like the status updates
of your Facebook friends. Third-parties
such as eBay are already working on
Web slices that would allow, for instance,
users to keep track of an auction in which
they’re bidding, he adds.
Your move: Think about using Web
slices to fill the need for dashboard-style
information which is often being pulled
out of data warehouses or business
intelligence applications. Provide the
marketing department with the results of
an ad campaign, or just give admin staff a
quick way to check Web-based e-mail or
look up additions to a product catalogue.
“It may be more efficient, rather than
bouncing around, to have one sort of entry
point to them that is seamless,” McLeish
says. “It’s really just the UI.” Frederico
says there may be no better place than IE.
“Workers spend their whole day inside
Internet Explorer. They’re not mixed up in
other applications.”
But before you deploy: Not all Web-based information is meant to be sliced,
says Sing Chan, user experience developer with Vancouver-based Habanero
Consulting Group.
“When you create a slice, you are
capturing a part of a live Web page. If
anything ever changes on that page, your
slice UI may no longer be the same. It
may be off slightly,” he says. “In some
cases it may be better for these widgets
to be standalone.”
The feature: VIsUal sEarCH
what it does: Saves users the trouble of
relying on a search engine’s algorithm
alone by tying into the content reposito-
ries of a variety of providers, including
the New York Times, Amazon.com and
Wikipedia.
Your move: If you’re already developing
an enterprise search strategy, why not
become a provider yourself? “Basically
you could just write your own procedures,” says LePage.
“If your metrics are telling you that
when people are searching for a par-
ticular keyword and they’re going to a
particular page or site, then if you can
capture that, it’s definitely good for user
experience,” says Chan.
But before you deploy: As with all
attempts at smart search, “It all depends
on how relevant your results are going to
be,” says Chan. Adds Frederico: “Know
who is doing the search, what their role
is in the corporation.” 084577
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