Internet Usage

Information Architecture for a web site – Sample Web site Concept Draft

XYZ Company Web Site Concept Draft

“Becoming industry’s premier outsourcing solution for managed care services”

Overview

For the past decade, xyz.coom (fictitious) has been the major online presence for XYZ Company for serving the online needs of its customers as well as exhibiting its capabilities and services to the industry. XYZ Company’s core strategy is to continue generating revenues from its outsourcing services in the managed care industry, at the same time provide improved services to its customers for their retention. A project on IA strategy was undertaken to look at the existing web site, analyze its current features and functionality, conduct IA research to understand the business context and content requirements, conduct usability testing to identify critical areas of improvement and arrive at a detailed IA strategy which would recommend the targeted information architecture for the improved web site. This article highlights two major strategic points based on which various modifications/changes would be suggested to the existing website.

Key strategic points

 
IA research has lead to the identification of two major strategic points based on which improvements may be made on the existing website in order to align the site functionality with the business context, content needs and user needs as well as leading to best user experience. Focus is also laid on how overall site services would be improved, leading to effective marketing of XYZ Company’s services. The key strategic points are listed as below –

1. Effective marketing of XYZ Company as the premier outsourcing solution for managed care services
2. Retain existing customers by improved site functionality, thus continue generating revenue
Described in the following sections are the details of what needs to be done to support each strategic point.

1. Effective marketing of XYZ Company as the premier outsourcing solution for managed
care services

 
The following are the major areas of improvements that could be made to support this strategic point –

1.1. Improvements to the Home Page

Home page is the face of the web site, which determines whether users would be attracted and retained to seek and search information and utilize the site services. The
current home page calls for various improvements as far as content organization, labeling and navigation is concerned.
The Home page should give a holistic view of all the available information and services that the site has to offer, thus enabling the user to easily seek and search for
required information. The current home page has a major drawback that the companyspecific content groups are available inside the ‘About Us’ page. Other content groups such as ‘Contact Us’, ‘Glossary’ is not visible on the first load of the page. Even though we have the links to specific user groups, it is not self-evident what kind of service that a user can expect from each of them.

The home page could be modified in terms of re-organizing the content items into related groups, naming them with clear and precise labels and placing them in visually
identifiable positions to attract attention of users. The following specific improvements are recommended –
 

1.1.1. Company Logo and tagline

 
One major step would be to extend the page width with a much more brighter company logo with the tagline. The current tagline is vague, as it does not cover the
complete industry that XYZ Company covers. It might be modified as ‘Providing premier managed care services for 3 million customers’. Tagline is very important to create ata-glance view of XYZ Company intended industry and services.
1.1.2. Content Re-organization, labeling and navigation

Effective content organization is vital to site usability and reaching out effectively to the vast customer base. Following improvements are recommended to effectively
market XYZ Company’s services and capabilities.
1.1.2.1. Organize content hierarchically into following groups and sub groups

o ‘Home’
o ‘About Us’

Mission

Value Proposition

Clients

Company History

Employees

Leadership Team
o ‘Products and Services’

Carrier Services and Solutions

Sales, Marketing, and Distribution Support

Product Administration

Technology and Operations

Voluntary Market Capabilities

Association Programs and Services

Search Products
o ‘Agent’

‘Products/Carriers’

‘Agent Tools’

‘Testimonials’

‘Locate a Provider’

‘My Cases’

‘My Forms’

‘My Profile’

‘My Network’
o ‘Employer’

‘Case Management’

‘Products/Carriers’

‘Quote Request’

‘Testimonials’

‘Locate a Provider’

‘My Cases’

‘My Forms’

‘My Profile’

‘My Network’
o ‘Individual’

‘Benefit Management’

‘Products/Carriers’

‘Quote Request’

‘Testimonials’

‘Locate a Provider’

‘My Cases’

‘My Forms’

‘My Profile’

‘My Network’
o ‘Infocenter’

‘FAQ’

‘Glossary of Terms’

‘Factoids’

o ‘Contact Us’

‘Phone Numbers’

‘Email Us’

‘XYZ Company Locations’
o ‘Careers’

‘Current Openings’

‘Contact HR’

‘HR Policies’

 
The above organization of content focuses on projecting XYZ Company’s core capabilities, what it has to offer its customers and it’s various targeted audiences. The main content label shall identify the main content group eg: ‘About Us’ and the sub-content labels shall be displayed within the area of the expanded tab or pulled down menu.

1.1.2.2. Implement tab based top navigation system

From the above content groups (as identified in section 1.1.2.1), identify ‘Agent’, ‘Employer’, ‘Employee’ and ‘Individual’ as the audience specific organization scheme
that could be potentially be implemented as tab based top navigation bar, which should be visible at the first glance on the web site. Placing this on the top has great
importance, since it is where user’s line of sight falls first and it is an industry standard. The top navigation bar may be visible only on home page.

Create and display image of XYZ Company corporate building on first page load linked to the ‘Home’ content group. The image can be animated with succeeding animations showing clients list, service highlights, satisfied users etc. Create and display audience specific image animation on the specific tab views of each audience content tab. This may be substituted for the current welcome blurb.

1.2. Implement global navigation system

From the above content groups (as identified in section 1.1.2.1), identify ‘Home’, ‘About Us’, ‘Products and Services’, ‘Infocenter’, ’Careers’, and ‘Contact Us’ as specific
content items for the global navigation system which will be consistent throughout the website. The global navigation system should be prominently placed on the very top of the web page.

1.3. Create global login section

Global member login section is essential which should be visible on a prominent location on the home page (top right part of the page or bottom left is suggested), which
would create the idea that site offers login based/personalized services.

1.4. Create new content groups

Create new content groups such as ‘Testimonials’, ‘News’, ‘Carrier/Product search’ and ‘Member Login’ on prominent locations on home page. Each of these content
groups should be placed within clearly identifiable sections with the identified labels (‘Testimonials’, ‘News’ etc)

 
2. Retain existing customers by improved site functionality, thus continue generating revenue

The content organization, labeling and navigation as recommended in section 1 will have a direct impact on improved site functionality and would allow users to easily utilize the site services. The following are some of the other specific areas that could be worked on to bring out effective user experience and satisfaction –

2.1. Implement local navigation system

Local navigation is essential to navigate within local content, especially when the user is logged in under a specific audience group or is accessing content within specific
audience group. For example, when user clicks on ‘Agent’  ‘Agent Tools’, he should be taken to a separate web page exclusively for Agent with the global navigation system on the very top and the local navigation system below it, both clearly identified.
The local navigation will be nothing but the sub-content items of the main content group ‘Agent’ as identified in 1.1.2.1, with an additional ‘Logout’ link. Below local
navigation, there will be specific content areas for ‘Agent Tools’. User can navigate to the Home page without logging out (via the ‘Home’ link on global navigation bar) and
can come back to the Agent section via tab based top navigation system.

2.2. Implement breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are an essential feature to inform users where they are and thus aid them in easy site navigation. The current website does not have breadcrumb feature and
needs to be implemented. Breadcrumbs can be implemented as, say, ‘Agent Agent Tools’, in between the local navigation and the main page section.

2.3. Making features/objects as self evident as possible

This should be one of the most important focus areas when the site is revamped. Make all content objects and/or features as self evident as possible so that users are not
kept thinking about what it is and how to use it. For example, the current home page has links to various audience specific sections such as ‘insurance agent’, which is not self evident as clickable. Another factor that improves site’s usability is sticking on to standard practices such top navigation system, global navigation system, local navigation system etc.

2.4. Consistent and meaningful label formats

Care should be taken that there is no duplication of content labels and that we follow consistent labeling convention throughout the web site. Labels should communicate
information efficiently and should have consistent fonts properties, noun/action usage and should not take up much of vertical space.
 

2.5. Common Footer

It is recommended that the footer contain major links from the global navigation such as ‘Home’, ‘Contact Us’ and additional content items such as ‘Privacy Policy’,
Copy right info and company address & phone number. It is advisable that the footer be common to all web pages and is visible without vertical scroll.

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Ideals of Openness, transparency Vs confidentaility, secrecy

What measures need to be taken to make sure that offshore outsourcing does not adversely affect American jobs?

Offshore outsourcing is a highly debated topic. It would be nice if we reflect on the reasons that has lead to offshore outsourcing -

1. Highly skilled workforce for cheap labor – As Matt, pointed in his post, most of the developing countries offers education that is highly specialized and with focus on international job economy. Difference in dollars and x currency, leads to a favorable situation for companies

2. Current restrictions and huge backlogs in H1Bs and job based Green Cards – If U.S. doesn’t take necessary steps to provide more opportunities for the highly-skilled workforce to migrate into U.S., companies will continue to outsource.

3. Inadequate number of high-tech workers in U.S. – Research shows that there is about 190,000 unfilled IT jobs in the US today due to a shortage of qualified high-tech workers. Companies resort to outsourcing to fill in immediate gaps in HR.

Now looking at possible recommendations to remedy the situation of U.S. economy getting affected, the following steps may be taken -

1. Focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) based education – As the article indicates, children should be encouraged to pursue these fields right from their school education. Provide more funding and scholarships to students who pursue these career paths. This will eventually lead to increased pool of highly skilled workers at reasonable rates.

2. Increase the number of immigrant job visas which will reduce outsourcing for skilled labor.

3. Establish legislative measures to regulate outsourcing so that companies are required to fill in certain percentage of U.S. natives, if sufficient skills are available.

My point on shortage of skilled workers was based on close examination of this report from Office of Technology Policy, the Federal agency working to maximize technology’s contribution to America’s economic growth. Hope that makes some sense.

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)
Get all articles from www.getallarticles.com. Be informed and gain knowledge. Good resource for research and reviews.

Where should cyberlaw enforcement be centered?

I appreciate the study conducted by UCSD that it provides some striking insights into operation of scam engines and their origin stations. Based on this research, policies should be devised to regulate ISPs not to provide services for hosting such websites. Enforcing this policy cannot be done from a centralized location. Why don’t we share the knowledge to other research Universities across the world and create action plan to conduct mass study across the world? Thoughts?

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)
Get all articles from www.getallarticles.com. Be informed and gain knowledge. Good resource for research and reviews.

How pervasive is phishing, and what actions have the authorities taken to eliminate it?

Antiphishing.org links us to various useful means to counter phishing. skimming through the website, here are two things that interested me -

1. The phishing and crime-ware map, which shows world-wide distribution.

2. GAIN technology from InternetPerils which claims highly effective ways to monitor internet traffic using efficient data pattern analysis. Good tool that can be considered for usage by FBI data-fusion efforts.

Phishing on Myspace as this article -MySpace phishing scam targets music fans – exposes how far this has gone. The attack is done by circulating spam email to gather credit card information. What makes the situation worse is that the method used in these attacks is simple and doesn’t involve much programming efforts.

Provision to monitor credit info is also a good idea. I have a concern though regarding accessing one’s credit score more often to tracks malicious activities. Would it lead to lowering of the credit score. I have this option to monitor my credit score on my bank account. I have noticed that my credit got reduced when I used to check my credit info more often. Am I doing something wrong here?

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)
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Should the US recognize criminal law sanctions from other countries when those countries accuse US citizens of violating the other country’s laws?

Cyber-Crime and its big brother – “Cyber-warfare”, have so conquered the ever expanding and versatile cyberspace that we need to establish new international polices and regulations which will enable easy coordinated crime-fighting between nations. Its not about questioning who is accusing who, rather the grave situation here to find am amicable solution for international peace keeping. I personally think that CSIA is formed with this intention and that all nations should support it, including U.S.

As we have seen in the previous lectures and discussions, Internet crimes and the policies that regulate it are insufficient until we create policies that has a global reach. Major areas of concerns are again privacy and national jurisdictions.

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)
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USA Patriot Act and Data mining

I think its the USA PATRIOT Act that gives the right to do this kind of data mining. This actually amended a handful of other Acts such as -

• Wiretap Statute (Title III):
• Electronic Communications Privacy Act
• Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
• Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
• Family Education Rights and Privacy Act
• Pen Register and Trap and Trace Statute
• Money Laundering Act
• Immigration and Nationality Act
• Money Laundering Control Act
• Bank Secrecy Act
• Right to Financial Privacy Act
• Fair Credit Reporting Act

This is as per USA PATRIOT Act as reflected upon in the article – The USA PATRIOT Act

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)
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What limitations should be imposed on datamining of email traffic patterns?

E-mail traffic is one of the main target of intelligence surveillance to detect terrorist and other malicious activities. Its rather easy and result oriented when compared to wiretapping of other data streams. This is because mails send or received can be easily linked to a chain that it belongs to. It can be used to identify the community that the email belong to. I would personally suggest unlimited right to analyze any suspicious traffic identified by pattern analysis. Various accepted methods are being experimented to effect this.

Rather than directly wiretapping and analyzing the content of individual mail in detail, the suggested method is to “look for the critical links that form bridges or betweenness of separate groups” (Muir, 2003). This would bring out a group of people communicating stuff that can include terrorist activities. Suggested method is to use automated pattern analysis to detect for suspicious communication and if any such is identified, intelligence force may use CALEA to further take actions.

Here’s a link to ‘Process Mining’ that introduces a new method of result oriented data-mining to uncover social networks from e-mail traffic. The method works on event logs created by e-mail clients and tries to uncover social relationships that connects people, potentially applicable to trace terrorist groups.

Process mining as applied to email-traffic is to -

1. Create event logs out of email (subject, To-from ids, send/received dates, mail headers etc) such as those handled by MS Outlook, usually dumped into a database.

2. Use the so called ProM framework to mine the event log to uncover social relationships.

It is also true that there should be limitations applied to data mining that will not search for specific content in an email, as there are privacy concerns attached to it. All data mining techniques are to be “privacy-preserving”. Here’s a nice article – Privacy preserving data mining -, in which they outline the current state of this procedure that could be effectively utilized for a controlled data mining in intelligence surveillance, including e-mail traffic.

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)
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Should wiretapping of US citizen internet usage require a warrant?

First of all, I don’t think a search warrant is surely required in such a case as it is against Fourth Amendment. Now after 9/11, the issue of national security became top priority and CALEA was passed with the motive of intelligence gathering and interception of terrorist activities via electronic surveillance. Considering the terrorist’s strength in utilizing inter-networks for communication, intelligence gathering/transfer and other activities a warrantless wiretapping might be required to plot the malicious activity. However the defendant should be given the opportunity to go for appeal and if proved innocent, action should be taken against government authority for violating Fourth amendment right.

As far as I understood from the literature, CALEA is more really about establishing a situation in which lawful interception or wiretapping is allowed on communication channels such as phone network or VoIP. Section 103 of CALEA clearly states that – the carriers need to establish means which can “expeditiously isolate and enable the government, pursuant to a court order or other lawful authorization, to intercept, to the exclusion of any other communications, all wire and electronic communications carried by the carrier ….” So I believe a search warrant or similar lawful notice will be supplied to the party before wiretapping is done.  

Here’s is the wiretap report submitted by US courts – 2006 Wiretap report. Its interesting to note state-wise data on how many intercepts were made, who authorized the intercepts, what was it for, date and number days of interception and so on. The report makes clear that only lawful intercept is allowed, not necessarily through a written search warrant. The report also shows law statutes based on which each authorization is made.

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)
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Will intelligence add-ons to the internet make it easier for hackers to penetrate the internet for criminal purposes?

Here’s a special report that analyzes how the Internet can facilitate terrorist operations – http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr116.html . It reveals the ways in which terrorists exploit Internet resources for various activities. It’s shocking to read how they have been so Internet savvy and have been utilizing it for psychological warfare to recruitment, networking to fundraising and data-mining and networking to planning and coordination.

Here is an excerpt from the report – “al-Qaeda cells now operate with the assistance of large databases containing details of potential targets in the U.S. They use the Internet to collect intelligence on those targets, especially critical economic nodes, and modern software enables them to study structural weaknesses in facilities as well as predict the cascading failure effect of attacking certain systems”. Terrorists and criminal groups are much advanced in conducting the so called ‘cyber-warfare’. Given such a situation, they are sure to be capable of circumventing any intelligence add-ons that the government establish in the network.

As the lecture states, the world of hacking has been now in the hands of black hats and crackers. As governments apply wiretapping to detect criminal activity, these groups might also have similar techniques to sniff out intelligence, especially military, government, economy and business. Adding intelligence to the Internet without sound security will be truly a disaster. Enemy is equally powerful. We need to devise technology to detect and thwart any terrorist networking activities or web-sites on the Internet. Impose ban and offer no support for groups/websites/nations that support terrorist activities. I think CALEA and the changes that it made to make wiretapping possible without a search warrant, lawful, easier is actually a thoughtful decision even though there is mixed feelings.

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)
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