Forward Thinking for a CMS

19 December 2007 12:29:24

At work, we’re beginning to develop the next version of our proprietary content management system (CMS) called ACTIVEA. In its current rendition, the CMS has been around for roughly 3 or 4 years. It desparately needs to be updated. Just think about how far web design in general has come in that same period. Yup, it’s about time!

Building a CMS from the ground up has always been a dream of mine, kind of the ultimate “capstone” project for my career. I love the ideas that are addressed; the high-level questions that need answers; the administration of such large projects; the theorizing and planning; the input of users, developers and designers. There are just so many exciting aspects to such a project.

To me, the most complicated aspect of the whole development process is understanding what our users will need. Instead of building a feature set and then fitting our customers into said set, I want a CMS that builds itself around our customers. (Yeah, I know, that statement sounds like some lofty political campaign slogan, but does that make it any less true or honest?) Cameron Moll recently discussed a similar concept over at his site, Authentic Boredom. His post discusses the fact that as an industry, we’re finally getting the concept of a good user experience being beneficial to our customers. Cameron then goes on to point out one “next logical step” in building good experiences: allowing the user to build their own experience. That brings us back to my post and the development of ACTIVEA.

Cameron’s article and the related comments point out a few possible examples of what user-designed experience might look like; but really, we haven’t gotten there. What would such a CMS (or any type of website/application) look like if the experience was really left up to the user? And the most difficult question: How can we design ACTIVEA to accomplish exactly that?

I haven’t the slightest clue.