Harry Miller -- Systems Professional Website

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Microsoft.com Systems Profesional Web Site
The Systems Professional site provided content and tools that enabled MIS managers, systems administrators, and help desk professionals to plan, implement, and support Microsoft business products. Pulling together original content with links to targeted resources across microsoft,com, the site was a unique combination of "webzine" and reference site, ensuring that the IT professional audience find the resources they need and understand Microsoft's strategic themes as well. Systems Professional was the first webzine to be hosted on microsoft.com, setting the standard for other webzines on microsoft.com with use of a departments and features structure, a strong theme graphic supported by sub-themes in the rightmost column, and a left-hand TOC.
First Webzine on microsoft.com Split site to reflect separate evaluation and troubleshooting mindsets Navigation page bookmarks enable smaller groupings of articles
Systems professionals are very task- and results-oriented. So the design watchwords were simplicity and efficiency. Focus groups and usability testing showed that, despite the fact that they wore multiple hats, users came to the site in one of several discrete mindsets. That meant that information not relevant to the current mindset was seen as "in the way." Testing also confirmed that it is very difficult for most people to find what they're looking for in a list of more than 10 items. Thus, we had to find some way of splitting up the content into smaller logical groups, and still providing easy access to all the content. Since the purpose of the site was to facilitate and empower the IT professional audience, the design had to be engaging without depending on browser-specific technology. That design criteria helped keep the site clean and straightforward.
To address the audience's desire to segregate marketing and implementation content, I created two parallel sites from the SysPro site: One still called Systems Professional featured marketing and evaluation content and maintained a front page that guided readers to important content for both sites. The other, called TechNet ReferenceDesk contained post-sales implementation and troubleshooting content. "Ads" on all navigation pages on each site led users to the corresponding page on the other site. Navigation pages were divided into subsections in accordance with the results of categorization tests as part of usability. Bookmarked tables of contents at the top of each navigation page lead to the section headers.