James Robertson just posted another great article on usability called 11 usability principles for CMS products. I think all of these principles are worth keeping mind when selecting or building a CMS (or any software for that manner). In response, Adriaan Bloem of Radagio posted this great comment on the CM Professionals mailing list:
Much of what makes web 2.0 examples work is based on the fact that in one way or another their use is much more intuitive than that of “classic” content management systems. Everyone can relate to the fact that a blog places the newest item on top; or that a wiki links through keywords; or that you can simply enter a couple of tags on a photo site and you’ll be able to search those. “They make it look so simple”, yet what we see in CMS interfaces is another turret, flag or tower on the castle and a little bit of AJAX thrown in to be buzzword-compliant.
I can’t even count how many CMS products have added drag and drop sorting to their old “operating system” of a user interface just to claim they understand and deliver a Web 2.0 experience.
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I’m curious how you think some of the open source CMS platforms do in this regard – in particular Plone.
For a product that addresses web and document content management, Plone does pretty well. Limi has done a great job of keeping the product simple and easy to use. With version 2.5 (designated as an “architectural” release with very little user interface enhancements) they added the obligatory drag and drop ordering. I have not yet seen what is happening with 3.0 which is being billed as a user experience focused release.
A big challenge that products face is trimming down the user interface to focus on a specific task. Plone handles this adequately through configuration. For example, if you wanted to use Plone only as a blogging tool, you could disable all the unwanted content types (including folders). Plone is also ahead of the curve on its RSS support (like having feeds on smart folders).
On the drag/drop ordering point I made in my post, I think that this feature solves a genuine problem so I don’t criticize products for adding it. I think products fail when they add this feature and then check off “Web 2.0″ on their feature list. For many products, ordering assets is far from their most severe usability problem. They should be thinking of higher impact enhancements.