Tim's Weblog
Tim Strehle’s links and thoughts on Web apps, software development and Digital Asset Management, since 2002.
2013-10-29

Elegant Workflow: Interview with Chad Beer – Director, Digital Assets and Rights Management at American Express Publishing

Dave Ginsberg at Elegant Workflow – Interview with Chad Beer – Director, Digital Assets and Rights Management at American Express Publishing, and Part 2:

“I think search interfaces can be really, really klunky for something that should be so easy to drill down into, especially if you compare search on DAM systems to search on e-commerce sites. And ease of navigability in sort of a fluid, intuititive sense of how you get from one area of a DAM to another tends to be okay, but nothing that users can really teach themselves when you consider how much people can teach themselves about using apps on smartphones. There’s so much good interface design in the world now that is designed around guiding the user to using a new tool, where they don’t have to sit down and take a class. I just don’t see that kind of sweet user-sensitive design in DAMs.

[…] What I would tell anybody to do who’s getting a new system: Pick two to three primary goals they want their system to achieve, or pain points they want their system to address, and stick with those two or three. And don’t go any further – at least not until the system’s in place and successfully addressing that short list. […] People are disappointed by shaving it down. But then once it’s in place, people forget what you didn’t get. They only remember what it’s doing well, and if it addresses one or two or three things really well, people are happy. And you can build on that satisfaction and that success. You can prove your concept that way and then move forward with it.

[…] Having software at people’s fingertips teaches them so much about 1) what the software does well, 2) what they will absorb about the software and 3) what they really need from it. […] You can’t get to nuanced decisions until you’re actually touching software.”