Blog Transition from SharePoint to User Experience Design

As time goes on we learn, grow and explore in new areas that make us happy and inspired. I am very lucky to have found that path. Since 2003 I focused on providing great experiences to my clients around a specific tool known as Microsoft SharePoint. I was so invested in this tool that I even wrote a book on how to stretch the limits on customizing it. Over the last couple of years SharePoint has changed to be more stand alone through Office 365.

Within the last few years I have had the pleasure to not only wok for the best company Slalom Consulting but also work for some really amazing clients! My most recent projects have been outside of the world of SharePoint and in all honesty I could not be happier. It is sad to see it go but I think it is time to pass the torch to other great and amazing bloggers that will keep posting technical posts on how to configure and explore new ways of making SharePoint do what they need to present the right information to users at the right time.

My plan is to transition this blog from a technical reference point around a specific technology to a more organic discussion around User Experience Design, Research, and Information Architecture topics. In all honesty this is really what I have been doing for the last 15 years of my career anyways. I am not going to remove or delete any previous post since some of them still can provide value to others that still support SharePoint both in the cloud on Prem.

I have some great UX topics in mind that I think all will gather some insights from. Thanks to all that have supported me over the years and I hope to inspire many others in the future to think outside of the box and create amazing experiences that matter!

Erik Swenson
Principal Experience Designer

SharePoint 2010 Base CSS Classes

This will be the first of many SharePoint 2010 posts. I will be focusing on a few of the main CSS classes used for SharePoint 2010 Public Beta. As the product becomes more final there might be some changes to the class names but I will be sure to create a new post if that happens. This will be quite a lengthy but it should be helpful. The default CSS given below are just highlights of the full CSS attributes for that class. I will be using a basic team site as my base for the screenshots. Here is a basic structure of the main areas that I will cover. Ribbon Row Table Row Left Site Actions Navigate Up Edit Tab List Browse Page Table Row Right Give Feedback Welcome Menu Workspace Body Container Title Row Title ...

SharePoint 2010 Content Query for Blog Posts

I hope this post will help many of you feel comfortable with using the Content Query Web Part. In this post I will walk you through the process of creating a content query web part and configuring it to show custom field types. I will also give details on how to use XSLT to stylize and format the data being pulled. I will be using the following scenario as an example. Say that you had a site collection with a top level publishing site. This publishing site would display a the most recent blog posts from all blog sites within its own site collection. To solve this problem we will use a Content Query Web Part and a customized ItemStyle.xsl using XSLT. Please note that the “SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure” needs to be enabled at the site collection to display the content query web part. Step 1: Add a Content Query Web Part to Page Navigate to the site that you want the blog posts to show up and click on edit page. Under Editing Tools in the Ribbon, Click on ...

SharePoint Reusable Content

I can pretty much say I know my way around SharePoint… But every once in a while you learn about a feature that you never knew was there… Most of the time its those annoying bugs that we call “features” but are true head against the wall things that make you go hmmmm… But this time its a good thing… I was tasked with finding a way to create a header and footer for a publishing site. This header and footer would be consistent across all pages within the content area of the site. My First thought was ok I need a custom page layout, but this would not work since it needs to be easily updated via the SharePoint Interface. So after some investigation I found out that SharePoint has a built in feature called “Reusable Content” Basically all you need to do is simply edit the page of your publishing site and click on a content editor control. If you look at the image below there is a icon next to the image icon. The icon is not very obvious hence the reason why I never noticed it befo...

UX & IA Design Thinking

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