Presented at 3|SHARE's EVOLVE'15 - The Adobe Experience Manager Community Summit on August 18th, 2015 at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego, CA. http://evolve.3sharecorp.com

1. AUGUST 17, 2015
TOP 1 0 AE M MI STAK E S MADE WI TH PUBLI SHE RS
Risking the investment
Mark Trenchard
Dir, Digital Experience
Stanford Medicine

2. 2
rai·son d'ê·tre
Speed, ease, and quality of publishing

3. 3
AEM @ Stanford
2 Years live
2 Author instances
3 Publish/dispatchers
3 Design themes
40 components
200 Sites
700 users
20000 pages
40000 assets
5.6.1 SP1
6.1 by Thanksgiving

4. 4
#10
Slacking on the
sidekick

5. 5
What we learned
• The term sidekick didn’t have
meaning to our authors
• The icons provided no meaning
• Default groups were not
meaningful
• Semantic
name
• Groups that
make sense
• Icons that
make sense
• Flatter,
modern style
• Upgraded
perfectly to
6.x
Still to do: rich tool tips that describe component, favorites group

6. 6
Goals
Reduce search time
Increase clarity
Improve access to help
How about the Granite sidebar?
Better, but can use some
love.

7. 7
#9
Dialog
nonconformities

8. 8
What we learned
• UI patterns in AX matter like
everywhere else
• The kitchen sink in a tab can be
overwhelming
• Need options, but UX can help
limit author
• Authors will adopt to patterns
Tab Patterns
Edit Menus

9. 9
#8
Mystery
properties

10. 10
What we learned
• Visual options are hard to
describe and use in simple
selector fields
• Authors are visual
Make visual options visual
file:///.file/id=
367.5895753

11. 11
#7
Refreshing your
way to eternity

12. 12
What we learned
• Latency kills the AX and
becomes a primary blocker
• Authors don’t understand the
need
• Parsys volume has a large
overhead
Attack from multiple angles
Invest in server power
Audit all refresh events
Develop component refreshes
Test under stressed pages
Optimize parsys loads
AJ

13. 13
#6
Find your own
content

14. 14
What we learned
• Authors dislike and avoid
browsing around for content
• Embedding from third party
sources is a hassle (code/ID
pasting, etc)
• Authors don’t always think
about content in #cf
Fill the content finder
Added primary content sources
People, multimedia sources
Pass through authorization to
maintain permissions
From #Twitter: Make CF easier to close and open

15. 15
#5
The great help
hunt

16. • Authors forget easily unless they
use something constantly
• People need help in the
moment of authoring
• Adobe hard-coded help links
are not helpful and misleading
16
What we learned
Help in context
In component
In landing page

17. 17
#4
Using dialogs for
everything

18. 18
What we learned
• Visual layout edits are very
abstract when forced into forms
• Authors naturally interact with
layout tools and are disgusted if
you make them leave the visual
space.
Accordion
Tabs
Navigation

19. 19
#3
Provisioning as
an art and
blank canvas

20. 20
What we learned
• Authors despise waiting for
something they perceive as a
push-button event.
• Large numbers of groups and
nodes make permission setting
frightful
Create a jig
Starter site with sample layouts
Create simply utility
Site, asset, tag nodes
Groups
Permissions
User assignment to groups

21. STEP 3
Add groups and users
STEP 2
Setup Options
STEP 1
Theme
What about the Granite UI?

22. 22
#2 More is better

23. 23
What we learned
• The more we offer authors, the
more they forget and get
confused
• Flexibility without volume of
options is desired and hard to
do
• Clutter and choice are not
positives
Natural combinations
Panels: columns, boxes, rows
Feature box: all teaser layouts

24. 24
#1
Not paying
someone to
advocate for
publishers

25. 25
What we learned
Created a role that still exists:
• Write and approve stories to
optimize AX
• Test against real-life cases
• Train the publishers
• The implementation team was
focused on design, features,
and content development.
• AX was being sub optimized at
best.
Hired this guy!

26. 26
facebook.com/stanfordmedicine@trenchard
linkedin.com/company/stanford-university-school-of-medicine
#me/#us