the dotmatrix project

(originally uploaded by Kaj Bjurman)

Scripps Shoots for “Total Category Dominance”

[...] Brown told me that what she’s really concentrating on over the next few months is an extensive rebuild of Scripps’ backend, particularly the CMS, to bring more Web 2.0 functionality to the networks’ numerous sites. “After eight years of the same CMS, it’s time for a change,” she said.

Users won’t see a difference, but will be able to use the sites differently and in deeper, more engaging ways. Methinks this is an issue many media companies are going to have to address — and invest in — to remain competitive, retain audience and attract advertisers.

Guess what dotmatrix has been busy working on?

We’re knee deep in defining the information architecture and internal user experience for the aforementioned CMS, juggling the needs of more than 10 discrete design personae and numerous internal and external systems.

If you’re an interaction designer looking for a challenge, ping me.

(originally uploaded by Benjamin James)

Simply put: The grass is greener on the other side.

Really.

Do yourself a favor and stop and smell it. Or is it the coffee you’re supposed to smell? I remember now — sip your coffee and smell the roses while laying out on a freshly cut patch of grass by your ever trusty John Deere tractor.

Ok, the picture has tulips in it. Cut me some slack, I really tried.

Seriously, though, this past two months of not reading my feed reader from top to bottom while contextualizing a myriad of news items and thoughts into posts as if my life depended on it… well, it’s a pause that I highly recommend to all intra-day bloggers.

I’m sure their loved ones would agree with me.

Since shutting down connecting*the*dots, I’ve been able to shift my focus to a few loves (mm… photography), take care of myself more with semi-frequent trips to the gym after a lunch at Earth Fare and concentrate much more on the foundation of dotmatrix — from client work to infrastructure issues to exploring potential business models.

So yeah, I’ve been busy.

Longing for details? Here are a handful of projects I’ve been working on during the Great Blogging Blackout of 2007:

• dotmatrix has been leading the user experience design of a future-state CMS for Scripps Networks since April, recently bringing two great designers into the mix — David Reid of RadiantUX and Tina Roth Eisenberg, A.K.A. swissmiss.

• Last month, we wrapped up an information architecture project with Rutgers University’s School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (SCILS). During our initial conversations, I lobbied for the introduction of blogs to their professors and staff, proposing that if adopted, the blogs would provide a necessary voice to the online face of the staff and a mechanism for communicating with prospective students, current students, research colleagues and fellow professors steeped in cliques across department lines. The web committee agreed.

  While SCILS won’t be taking advantage of the live web until sometime in the upcoming year — blogging will have to earn its place in the daily workings of professors — the newly designed website is scheduled to launch towards the end of the summer. Longtime friend and colleague, Ray Mancini of Good World Media, led the visual design of the site.

• Another information architecture gig just went live last week; Landwatch is a redesign of an existing property listing service and an arm of the start-up property service, Second Space. Once again, Ray Mancini is the party responsible for the UI.
• I’m currently looking to book three acts for the ConvergeSouth Music Festival to be held at M’Coul’s Pub in downtown Greensboro on October 19th. Okay, so it’s not really a “festival” per se — it’s our first year and I’ll be happy with putting on a great gig with a small number of local/regional acts. Hopefully we’ll have a line-up announcement soon.

Toss in my incessant desire to photograph everything under the sun and my work on a number of personal projects that are just beginning to see the light of day, I’ve kept my hands quite full these last few months.

So I stopped blogging and the earth kept spinning — imagine that.

Sometimes you really do have to just stop and mow the… er… smell the roses.