Hi,

Hope this request is OK for this forum (couldn't find much in the
archives). Apologies if I transgress.

I've been offered a usability position at a consultancy that
specializes in delivering enterprise solutions based on the MS
SharePoint Portal Server platform. Does anyone here have experience
with the pros/cons of such a job from a usability/UX perspective?

My own current thinking is as follows:

- The focus of one's efforts will be more on functional/content
requirements and IA than on interaction design since the latter comes
pretty much prepackaged with the platform

- There will be some lo-fi UI prototyping but there'll be a strong
temptation to move ahead early into building the product, since this
is what the tools of the platform lend themselves to

- There will be a lot of mixing and matching pre-packaged
functionality, at the cost of placing pretty severe practical
constraints on more free-form interaction design

- Page layout, navigation and visual design will be both driven and
quite constrained by the templates of the platform

- Usability testing will be a perennial hard sell to clients b/c
they'll (mistakenly) expect MS to have already taken care of this, and
since fixes to any problems inherent to the platform will anyway rely
merely on hoping MS pushes them to the top of their stack

- It will be very challenging to create IAs that won't unravel over
time, as users start adding content etc to the solution; how does this
play out with SharePoint?

Lastly, I'd be interested if anyone has experience with the using the
product's site usage statistics to inform evolutions of the solution:
Are they any good and do you ever get to make use of them?


Thanks in advance for your thoughts and/or references to more
appropriate forums,
Ulrik



-- 
Ulrik H. Gade
User Experience Professional
Skydebanegade 27, 4. th.
DK-1709 Copenhagen V
Denmark
Landline: +45 3698 1823 (SkypeIn)
Mobile: +45 4088 9884
Skype: ulrik.h.gade
[log in to unmask]
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ulrikgade

The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step

    --------------------------------------------------------------
        Tip of the Day: Forward out-of-office replies to
                    mailto:[log in to unmask]
     CHI-WEB: www.sigchi.org/web POSTINGS: mailto:[log in to unmask]
              MODERATORS: mailto:[log in to unmask]
       SUBSCRIPTION CHANGES & FAQ:  www.sigchi.org/web/faq.html
    --------------------------------------------------------------