A few weeks back, I wrote about how we use a wiki internally at RD2. I’ve come to use the wiki so much as a sort of knowledge repository, that I installed one for myself on my personal site to store information like grocery lists, project ideas, and information I might need to remember in the future (such as phone numbers or old addresses). 6 Ways to Use a Wiki outlines other neat ways a person could use a wiki to manage their personal information.

One of the most powerful tools we use internally at RD2 is our wiki. What is a wiki? A wiki is a web site with functionality which allows users to add, edit, and delete content from a page within the site easily. One way to think of it is like a public bulletin board which anyone can change or update — anyone can add/delete pages and update/revise content on the wiki.

In the case of the RD2 wiki, we have it installed on an internal server, so it is only accessible on the RD2 network. Wikis can be extremely useful inside organizations for their ability to streamline information sharing. Our team uses it to collaboratively build documents for clients, store reusable code snippets, and archive research. (more…)

While spending my work day doing some online shopping (JUST KIDDING, Chris and Larry!), I ran across this craftily-designed bike repair kit that looks like a water bottle. I thought the RD2 blog-reading cycling contingent might like to take a look.

Link found at Boing Boing. I really don’t spend my day surfing the Lillian Vernon catalog.

I’m out in Irvine, California for a couple of days working on a few projects with NationPoint. Yesterday, I overheard a comment and it made me feel all warm inside: “Awesome picture of you on The Point”.

We designed and built “The Point“, NationPoint’s intranet almost a year ago. To hear that 1) people are using the site and 2) people are having fun with it is just about the best compliment RD2 could receive.

I am always impressed when working with the team on the Verizon SuperPages “Advertise With Us” site. They are very consumer focused, taking every large move they make into user testing to ensure that their product works for the maximum audience.

When Verizon SuperPages released a new marketing style guide with a new color palette, it was time to refresh Advertise With Us and add additional focus on new product areas.

RD2 came in to provide Information Architecture and Design support to the team. After assessing the requirements for the various pages, looking at competitors and other market leaders, and creating the IA plan, our design team set to work. Our approach is typically to have all of our designers take a shot at creating a design with little outside influence other than what is provided in the creative brief and business strategy. Their only requirement: work the new Verizon SuperPages green into the piece. The result of that exercise was eight unique designs that we presented to Verizon.

Here’s where my respect for the team at Verizon went up even more. They picked four of the eight designs and said, “We’ll let the users choose the design from these.”

Let the users choose.

We took the four designs into a quick user testing scenario, where several people were shown the designs and asked to choose their favorite overall and pick and choose their favorite elements from each design. Almost overwhelmingly, the users gravitated to the design that ultimately became the new Advertise With Us site.

The implementation of the new site is a great example of not only doing it well, but doing it right. In our business, we have to approach design scientifically. Research and user testing enable us to do that. When a site is made with the user in mind, a company will mazimize the reach and impact of their message.

Congratulations to RD2 client LogLogic, who yesterday made a big announcement about the release of their new open source tool, Project Lasso.

Project Lasso “promotes rapid development of innovative technologies for monitoring any kind of Windows event…” giving “…auditors a detailed record of user activity, including which files, objects and applications were touched when.”

Last week I wrote about having the opportunity to teach some talented people about blogging. Now, we can talk about our project. Presenting: Nuts About Southwest, the airline industry’s first corporate blog.

The people at Southwest have been dreaming up the blog for quite a while now, and brought RD2 in a few months ago to share our experience in blogging, web design, and development.

One of our recommendations was the use of WordPress to run the blog. It was an easy recommendation to make: we use WordPress on this blog, it is robust, and it was easily customizable for some special needs. For example, Southwest needed a user level that would leave all posts in draft mode, yet allow for uploading of photos. With WordPress’ default setup, you can have one or the other. With some quick searching, I located the Role Manager plug-in, which lets admins configure user capabilities simply.

After our team built out the site, I went out to Southwest’s campus near Love Field and taught a boardroom full of people, most who had only heard of blogging because of being tapped for this effort, how to use WordPress to blog. It was a fun hour, full of questions about blogging and jokes about what types of posts would work for the site. All in all, it was a great look into the potential that this blog has. The room was full of talented, creative, and gregarious people who love working for Southwest and are excited to share it with Southwest’s current and potential customers.

I’m very proud of our collaboration in the two blogs RD2 has built for Southwest: the Adopt-A-Pilot Blog and Nuts About Southwest. It will be fun to watch this new blog take off.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to teach a room full of talented people about blogging for an upcoming launch. In that room was a vice president, a former intelligence officer, and a reality show celebrity. Their project launches Friday. More to come then…

Our team is down in Austin at SXSW Interactive this weekend to soak up some knowledge. If you’re down for the conference, say hi!

One of our newest sites, modmixmartinis.com is among this week’s CoolHomepages Sites of the Week! Awesome job, team!