[CMS-PR] [ANN] CM Pros Participates in World Usability Day 2006

[Scott Abel]

CM Pros Participates in World Usability Day 2006

Content Management Professionals (CM Pros), the international content 
management community of practice, today announced its participation in 
a global online card sort for World Usability Day 2006.

Silver Spring, MD (PRWEB) October 2, 2006 -- Content Management 
Professionals (CM Pros), the international content management community 
of practice, today announced its participation in a global, online card 
sort for World Usability Day (WUD). The 36-hour event takes place 
Tuesday, 14 November 2006, with events taking place around the globe. 
WUD promotes the values and benefits of usability engineering and user 
centered design, under the philosophy that everyone has the right to 
have things that work better.

CM Pros is partnering with the Society for Technical Communication to 
participate in a global online card-sort exercise. Card sorting is a 
quick, inexpensive, and reliable technique that allows information 
architects and usability professionals to create structures for print 
and online information, as well as suggestions for navigation and 
menus. The WUD card sort exercise will be carried out by participants 
on five continents, with a view to demonstrating regional differences 
in how people think about a single subject.

Rahel Anne Bailie, a member of both CM Pros and STC and driving force 
behind Intentional Design (www.intentionaldesign.ca), chairs a 
committee of members from Canada, the US, Hong Kong, India, Poland, and 
the UK. Working with such an international committee definitely 
enriches the organizing process, and will ultimately enrich the card 
sort exercise. With the input of the various members, we are thinking 
about issues that might have gone unnoticed otherwise.

An important aspect of the exercise is having a sound taxonomy to use 
for the card sort. A well-built taxonomy helps visitors to find 
relations between content items that otherwise would not be possible - 
that is, not without a lot of manual (and in the long term, impossible) 
labor for editors. Of course, a taxonomy must be created with the 
mental model of visitors in mind, rather than the organizations point 
of view. This is a very important rule in usability, says CM Pros 
president, Erik Hartman. Hartman is President of the CM Pros Board of 
Directors and Director of Hartman Communicatie 
(www.hartman-communicatie.nl).

About CM Professionals:
Founded in 2004, with over 800 members, CM Pros provides information, 
expertise, and support to global content management practitioners and 
related professionals and the organizations they serve. Through 
peer-to-peer knowledge exchange, educational events, and advocacy of 
respected practices, the association fosters a better understanding of 
this critically important discipline. Join CM Pros on the Web at 
www.cmprofessionals.org.

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Scott Abel, Vice President
Content Management Professionals
www.cmpros.org
vicepresident at cmprofessionals.org