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Showcase: Articles
Six Essential Skills for Delivering Information on the Web
By Lola Fredrickson, CEO
Knowing the essential skill sets for designing, developing,
and implementing web sites (including those on intranets and extranets)
is a key to successfully resourcing and managing web site development
projects.
This may not sound like news. But if my experience teaching
and consulting is any indication, the responsibility for creating company
web sites (including intranet and extranet sites) is often placed on just
one or two people who can cover just two or three of the essential skills.
The result is usually a site that is less effective than it could be.
Good sites are the work of good teams bringing all of the
essential skills together to meet well defined objectives. So, what are
these skills? Here's my list:
Technical design: Designing the site architecture
for scalability, ease of maintenance, and, increasingly, for transactions,
personalization, and integration with one or more databases.
Visual design: Creating an attractive, compelling
interface that is also easy to navigate.
Content design: Organizing, structuring, and writing
information specifically for the web, and for the audience using the site.
Usability evaluation: Determining how useful and
easy to use a web site is through heuristic evaluation and user testing.
Instructional design (for e-learning): Organizing
and presenting educational content on the web.
Project Leadership: Shepherding a project from beginning
to end, keeping it on budget and on schedule and delivering a quality
product that meets the defined business and user objectives.
Each of these skill areas requires not only a knowledge
of theory but also of the best tools to put theory into practice. And
the tools available are becoming more varied and sophisticated all of
the time. Some examples include:
- Web authoring tools (like Macromedia® Dreamweaver®
and Flash®)
- Graphics tools (like Adobe® PhotoShop®)
- E-learning courseware and learning management systems
(like Click2Learn, Saba, and Docent™)
- Programming languages (like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP,
Active Server Pages, Java, and SQL)
- Best practices for gathering requirements and user
preferences, creating and evaluating proposed designs, developing and
testing pages, controlling site access, and optimizing site performance.
Given that you can earn advanced degrees or certification
in all of the essential skill areas, it is a rare talent who develops
expertise in all of them. This is why it is so important to use a team
approach on web projects and to delegate tasks appropriately.
Of course, there does not have to be a one-person, one-skill
relationship. Two or three people working together can easily provide
all six of the skills. The key is recognizing all of the skills that are
needed and understanding that they are complex and take time to develop.
I hope this skills checklist serves as a beginning to help
you assemble the best team for a highly visible and valuable job.
Comments or questions? E-mail Lola
See these related topics on our site:
Web Development Services
Usability Services
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