About EPSS & Technology - Case Studies: articles about the benefits and lessons learned in designing and developing software and web sites.
Staples.com: Yeah, it's usable
Tech Infobase: "We have five guiding principles," says Jeanne B. Lewis, president of Staples.com: "Listen, watch, prioritize, execute, and stay focused." The usability staff watches and listens to the site's 1 million registered customers (most of whom are businesses with fewer than 100 employees) and continually turns what it learns into improvements. (2001-09-16)Site design as a business decision
CancerNet, the dot-gov site that is the online offshoot of the National Cancer Institute, is often the first Web stop for cancer patients, patients' families, health-care providers, and at-risk individuals. Although the site doesn't sell anything, it understands the concept of customer service very well. In fact, because CancerNet is in the business of dispersing valuable information—something far more precious than any commercial product or service—it felt compelled to listen to its own "customers" more closely. CancerNet now stands as a model for its dot-com cousins, showing the importance of focusing on what visitors need when they use a site. (2001-09-16)A Better Fit
Destination CRM: Despite being North America’s largest retailer of family footwear, Payless ShoeSource Inc. relies upon the day-to-day performance of each associate for its success. The 23,000 employees who work on the sales floors of some 4,500 stores have the most direct influence on customer satisfaction and sales. For this reason, Payless has to shape the daily behavior of its sprawling employee base. After several years of study, in the spring of 2000 the discount chain rolled out its new solution: a just-in-time support system that helps to train workers on the job, gives them better access to inventory and pricing data and provides a vehicle to store and spread best practices. (2001-08-05)The gentoo.org redesign
IBM DeveloperWorks: In this series, Daniel Robbins shares his experiences as he redesigns the www.gentoo.org Web site using technologies like XML, XSLT, and Python. Along the way, you may find some excellent approaches to use for your next Web site redesign. In this installment, Daniel creates a new look for the site as a whole. (2001-07-08)Intuit's Successes and failures on the Web
HBS Knowledge: Three years ago, Intuit adopted an Internet strategy that included creating Web-based versions of its top products, a panoply of Web services, and branching out into new areas such as online mortgages and electronic bill payment. Not all of those efforts have worked, however, as Cook readily admitted. The lessons learned by his company in doing business on the Internet can serve as road markers to any executive thinking about a Web strategy. (2001-07-01)Redesigning the Microsoft Corporate Intranet
This case study presents the recent redesign of MSWeb, the primary portal to the content and services of Microsoft's corporate intranet. First launched in 1995, MSWeb experienced a content explosion, growing to include more than 2 million pages by 1998 and forcing a major redesign. (2001-04-22)Design Changes base on User Feedback
This online presentation shows the problems Vividence evaluators encounter with a web site and how the design was changed to overcome those usability issues. Vividence is a company that performs a form of usability testing through the Web with a large number of evaluators. (2001-02-25)User-Interface Design for Air-Travel Booking: A Case Study of Sabre
Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc.: This pdf document paper explains the development of the Sabre air travel booking user-interface design, which transformed a text-based frame-oriented legacy system into a graphical version used by one-third of the world's travel agents. Design explorations, issues, and resolutions are discussed. (2001-02-04)Rx for Learning
CIO Magazine: Tufts received the CIO's 2001 Enterprise Value Award because it "...is the only health sciences school in the country that has integrated its curricula so that students can transcend course-, discipline- and profession-specific boundaries. "The interdisciplinary implications of this system are very powerful," Schwartz says. For example, medical students studying salmonella in humans can link to veterinary school material to learn about the source of the bacteria, its effect on chickens and cattle, ways it is transmitted to humans, prevention and treatment. "These kinds of concepts can be taught not by new courses, but by cross-disciplinary linkages so that students have a direct understanding," (2001-02-04)Teltech: The Business of Knowledge Management Case Study
Tom Davenport: Teltech, a small ($17 million in revenues) company based in Minneapolis, offers instructive lessons to companies wishing to better manage their knowledge and information assets. The company has built a successful business on helping companies get access to external technical expertise and information. However, some of its strategies and services could be adopted by firms wanting to take better advantage of all types of internal knowledge. (2001-01-14)Designing for E-Commerce
ScreamDesign.com: This is a very interesting report on the process and decisions made during the development of the send.com Web site. According to the author "The second most important thing a design team can do is test. For the upcoming site, my group did a lot of usability testing. We put demo versions of the site in front of people so we could learn about how they would use it even before we were finished designing it. This is a very informative process for a designer. If you take a design that you think is good and put it in front of the people who are actually going to use it, then you quickly find out what you need to improve." (2001-01-01)The Right Tool
Content Magazine: This article describes how Ace Hardware used an online dealer community to increase sales so much that it achieved a 500% return on its investment in the first six months. The company estimates that fully one-third of its dealers use the site at least weekly. Some check in every day. The Ace Hardware dealers use the online community to discuss and post questions about hardware and Tools. (2001-01-01)Web Design Case Study
According to this case study "When Egreetings first launched, they displayed only a few of their most popular top level hierarchies visible, the rest in a pulldown. We saw a severe drop in visits the the catalog pages. (2000-09-30)CRM and Knowledge Management at 3M
According to the CIO Magazine case study "The eServer software gives 3M's customer service representatives intuitive access to critical information. Rather than relying on simple keywords, the agents can use natural language statements to describe a problem. The system lets them define a problem statement as a goal, fact, symptom, change, cause or fix (for example, a symptom might be "The X adhesive isn't sticking the X tile to the X surface" while a fix statement could be "What is the best adhesive to use for sticking an X tile to an X surface?")." (2000-09-04)Intranet Case Study
This case study of the Mitre Coporation's Intranet found an ROI of $62.1 million in reduced operating costs and improved productivity. Al Grasso, vice president and CIO also claims, "Our most important gain can't be as easily measured—the quality and innovation in our solutions that become realizable when you have all this information at your fingertips." (2000-07-01)Reengineering Driven Performance Support at AT&T
This 1995 case study documents the challenges and processes of designing and using electronic performance support components to support the implementation and use of a new computer system.The Future Vision of Maintenance Training at Delta Air Lines
This article looks at the future vision of training an performance support at Delta Airlines, including the use of portable voice activated computers with electronic performance support software. (2000-04-16)An integrated knowledge base helps keep the performance in performance-based training
According to this case study: "Vision ( by FOCUS Learning Corp.) now ties together all of PSE&G’s training information into an integrated “knowledge base” that reflects the entire performance-based design process. The system also links content to each objective in the knowledge base, along with an embedded learning strategy." (2000-01-10)From Online Help to Integrated User Assistance:
This online slide presentation by Craig Marion tells the story of one company's journey beyond the online help paradigm (1999-09-25)A Usability Case study
This case study document the process used to identify the usability problems with an existing e-commerce site and the process used to develop a more usable site. (1999-09-05)A site for sore users
This is a story about the hard lessons AuctionWatch.com learned after not involving their users in a major site redesign. According to this Mercury News article "Though AuctionWatch had warned users that changes were coming, the company didn't ask for their input or test any of the new additions -- a slightly dangerous move for a firm whose business model rests on user loyalty. When users saw the new format for the message boards, howls of protest ensued. They complained that the space for advertising had increased at the expense of readability, the new format was harder to use, and many features, such as the ability to enhance the text of messages, had disappeared." (1999-08-22)Knowledge: Bashful Partner or Leader of the Dance?
This article, by Stan Malcolm, appeared in the August 99 Performance Improvement special edition on EPSS. It "..is the story of a recent project to support several customer service call centers that were being merged into one. Simultaneously, Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) were being asked to support a broader range of calls (i.e., various service plans, each with slightly different terms and conditions). As a case study, the project's evolution raises some issues critical to achieving the full potential of knowledge management in support of business performance." (1999-08-15)