PebbleRoad

In addition to the user research, information architecture and usability work, we also a fair bit of e-learning work. You can sample some of our courses over at the National Library Board Academy.

Our approach is to mould effective instruction with stunning visuals and insightful interaction. For example, we did a course for parents on how to tell stories to kids. With the help of a professional storyteller we managed to create a framework of storytelling videos that allowed the learner to not only learn how to tell stories but how to tell stories using different styles.

Learners can play around the telling of a particular story by changing the following: voice, visual aids, interaction. By playing around the different types of telling, learners can identify with a style or styles they are most comfortable with. Learners can also browse a collection of 100 books, each classified by age group, setting and purpose, and then, email the collection out. Now, that’s what we call good e-learning.

The 1-day Masterclass in Sharepoint Collaboration & Governance was a blast! We had a full-house—47 participants.

Michael covered a lot of ground from his two books (which were given to each participant). Thank you all for attending.

You can look up some photos in our post-event coverage. Here is Michael’s write up on the event. 

We’re organizing a 1-day seminar on SharePoint Collaboration. We’re getting Michael Sampson “up” from New Zealand to conduct this seminar.

Here are the details:
When: 5th Nov 09
Where: Grand Hyatt, Singapore
Time: 9a to 5p
Fees: S$500. Early bird of S$420 if you register before Oct 20 09.

Read up on registration details and what Michael will cover during the seminar.

Looking forward to meeting all intranet and collaboration enthusiasts soon!

We’ve got another award! The Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore website, which we designed in 2007, has won top prize at the Ministry of Finance (MOF) Family Website Competition. The conceptualisation and implementation of the methodology for the competition was conducted by an international customer experience research and design company. The judging of the entries were based on three elements - external user feedback, industry feedback & agency’s self-assessment.  The IRAS website was commended on a number of areas including the organisation of content, user-friendly navigation structure and the effective use of website to reduce frontline contacts.

The Health Promotion Board of Singapore redesigned website is up. We did the information architecture and content strategy. Read the short case we’ve written about it.

The new Maritime & Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) website is up. We did the research, IA, visual design, and coordinated the content writing and migration.

The new website signals the coming of age of MPA since it’s establishment in 1996 when it took over the regulatory role as Singapore’s port authority from PSA. MPA’s role has since expanded from simply a regulatory body to the promoter of the maritime sector in Singapore.

The previous website did not have a clear focus or direction; we structured the new website to convey both the promotional and the regulatory roles of MPA, making it more friendly for a much more diverse audience, from a ship owner who needs to find out more about a shipping regulation to a student wondering if she should pursue a maritime education; from someone thinking of setting up a maritime business in Singapore, to someone who is simply curious about Singapore’s involvement in the maritime world.

We trust that this website will help bring more prominence to Singapore as a leading international maritime centre.

The brand new iPrepNS website is now online. The website, owned by CMPB (Mindef) is primarily for Singaporean boys who are about to enter National Service (pre-enlistees).

This has been a tough 6 months of effort for us, including:

• interviewing pre-enlistees, their parents, recruits
• organizing the information
• creating much of the content (storyboard, text, photos, video).

We worked closely with Logical Steps - they did the graphical design as well as the Flash implementation.

The official launch of the website will be on 28 May 2008.

Update:

This project won the 1st prize for Mindef Pride Day 2008, as well as a Gold award for the National IQC Convention 2008.

Yes, the new IRAS website is up. This was one of our most grueling information re-structuring work to date. The previous website was structured along tax types. We restructured it along taxpayer and tax types. We also redesigned the page structure and the overall navigation. Notice that we used the hub-spoke navigation model. This way users don’t feel overwhelmed with the large amount of information available on the website. The big usability improvement is that now users don’t have to go hunting for information they need to do a task; all the related information comes to them, and this includes all the guidelines, policies and the forms.

We did not do the markup or the visual design—two areas we think we should own in the future.

Maish gave a short, informal talk on Web 2.0 in the enterprise and what the stumbling blocks are. Thanks to Patrick Lambe from Straits Knowledge for hosting the video.

CMSWatch, the widely recognized authority in content management, has referenced The Changing Face of Univerisity Websites article. In their article titled, Content Management heads to college, they also caution against those leaving a lot to technology.

The British Council case study on wikis has been included at intranetmaturity.com a initiative by Avenue A | Razorfish. The maturity framework is itself a wonderful discussion starter to those venturing to either design or redesign their intranets.

We completed the redesign of the Straits Knowledge website. We also did a revamp of their blog, Green Chameleon. Welcome to the blogosphere people! A detailed writeup will follow soon.

yesterday.sg launches!  We did the initial blog design and implemented it using ExperssionEngine. The design uses the submission-editorial model where readers can submit stories which appear on the site after it gets a nod from the editors. There are more functionalities in the pipeline depending on how the blog grows. For now, its focused on providing a unique perspective on Singapore's history.  We wish the team all the very best!

Jay Cross reports on Decision Games - a high impact training method that pebbleRoad is involved with.