We were certainly thrilled to be CODiE finalists in the category of Best Online Science and Technology Service, but we weren’t primed for the win, except when Meagan who is Director of Content Strategies and I, Director of Product Management (Platform delivery) joked about going to the podium to accept the award smiling and holding hands.  During the past year, we’ve developed a symbiotic relationship; Meagan’s stellar management of Knovel’s unrivaled content, and my focus on a feature-rich technology platform combine to make Knovel the product of choice among engineers.

We were up against stiff competition in our category: UniPHY, AIP’s literature-based, professional scientific networking platform; and ChemMobi, an iPhone app from Symyx that provides mobile access to chemical reference information.  The nominees for our category were announced, and  KNOVEL appeared on the screen as Winner.  We made our way to the podium to accept the award, surprised and thrilled.  As we headed back to our seats, a microphone and camera appeared, then the question, “What does the CODiE award mean to Knovel?” Last night, I was overwhelmed, tongue-tied and surprised by the journalistic assault, so allow me to answer in the clearer light of morning.

The CODiE Award is the acknowledgment of a decade of hard work by our dedicated and visionary product development team under the direction of our fervent, zealous CEO Chris Forbes,  as well as the consistent and steadfast efforts of our active customer community and design partners who continue to partner with us to make Knovel a more powerful solution with each iteration.

I’ll admit, I’m still reeling from a 2010 product strategy meeting  yesterday morning, which was heady in itself. Because of the grand plans we’re undertaking this year, the thrill of last night’s CODiE recognition was just icing on the cake.

Last year, with your help and direction, we developed a new authentication system called Knovel User Registration that has laid the groundwork for the personalization features that we rolled out in My Knovel last November. If you have been upgraded and have registered a profile, you already know about creating a personal space for organizing and saving favorite titles, search queries and content that you can recall with a single click. We’re still working through the upgrade process with our customer administrators, but Profile users are starting to appreciate the streamlined access to their saved content and are organizing and sharing Knovel resources with their colleagues.

Recently, we’ve lit up Knovel Lab with a new feature called Clip to Knovel that expands the usability of My Knovel to any information you find while researching the Internet.  Here’s how it works:

First, you install Clip to Knovel to your browser toolbar.  In Firefox, it’s drag-and-drop; Internet Explorer involves a right-click to add to your Favorites (IE8) or Links (IE7) Bar.  Either way, once Clip to Knovel is installed, you can start collecting Web Clips from anywhere on the net.  It’s easy: highlight text from any website, and click Clip to Knovel. A box pops up capturing the page URL, the snippet you highlighted and a customizable title for easy recall. When you go to My Knovel, My Web Clips are stored in 2 places:

1. In Unfiled Items, where you can move them into one of your named folders
2. Under Aggregated Content, in the My Web Clips folder.

It’s waiting for you in Knovel Lab.  Click on My Knovel, and then on My Web Clips, where you can play around with Clip to Knovel.  We’re very anxious to hear from you, and the Knovel Lab exit survey should take you only a minute to complete.  We’ve got more enhancements queuing up for the Lab, and are recruiting for Design Partners.  If you’re interested, drop me an email.

Our team has survived the long journey and we’re really excited about finally unveiling the personalization features of My Knovel. It’s the product of nearly a year of collaboration with Knovel’s team of design partners, who patiently cooperated as we observed them working, quizzed them on how they gather and store information, and asked them all sorts of questions along the way that influenced our design and style decisions.

In other words, My Knovel is a data driven response with our engineering users leading the way. The librarians and information professionals were right there too, most notably explaining that our best bet is to label features with names that are clear and unambiguous. My Knovel, which sits prominently on the new navigation bar, is where users can create folders, organize and store frequently used titles, search queries and content – including PDF sections and interactive tables. We also took the advice of users who encouraged us to clarify G.E.T. (Graphs, Equations, Tables) Search, to reflect a simple and explainable name. We reverted to Data Search, which seems to appeal to our wider audience of users.

We also listened to users who were confused by the different filter controls for Browse and Search that reflect All Knovel Content and My Subscription. We have made it a global setting to eliminate the confusion.

Last but by not least, during the past few months, a small dedicated team has been busy developing and working with our customers to upgrade them to our new authentication and reporting system. Knovel User Registration may be less flashy, but without it, we could never have brought My Knovel to fruition. Our Knovel administrators are delighted with the Self-Serve Administrator’s Toolkit and the improved organizational and reporting capabilities. We’ll keep up the pace until we have upgraded all of our accounts because we know that users are going to love the personalization features of My Knovel.

So I’d like to propose a toast to both teams tonight for a job incredibly well done! Thanks to them for all their hard work. And we know you’ll love it too.

Knovel is introducing a whole new set of features enabling users to configure and personalize their Knovel desktops.  What I hear from engineers all the time is: “Could you make a bookshelf where I can store my favorite titles?”  Or “I’d like to have a project folder where I can store complex searches I can re-execute with a single click.”   Or,  “I’d really like to email a Knovel search result to my colleague down the hall. Can I do that?” With our newest release into Knovel Lab, it’s all there for the taking.  But you have to have a Knovel user account to create your personal space.

We’ve been busy contacting our Knovel “champions” (aka administrators) and working with them to upgrade to our new user registration system.  In my humble opinion, implementing this new user authentication system is akin to taking a cruise in a hurricane  (I’m an old sailor). To say that Information Resource admins are protective of their roles and of their end users is an understatement. They have good reason though, they’re trusted with the responsibility of ensuring that their users know how to access information products reliably at any time and from anywhere; and that users are protected from intrusive use of their  identities; all while defending their organization’s investment in the product. We respect and honor these needs.

We’re close. Really close.  The proof is in Knovel Lab for anyone willing to take a look. We’re also holding a conntest to name the personal bucket, currently dubbed My Notebook.  You have another week to check out the new personalized Knovel and submit your naming entry in the Exit Survey.  I have to say that we have some seriously imaginative users out there! I’m enjoying the submissions so far and I’ll share the winner and runners up at the end of the contest, next Friday, (just in time for Halloween). On that note, a search for Halloween in Knovel results in 13 hits (perfect!) and reveals some interesting results including an ANTEC conference paper about new metal-oxide phosphorescence used in – what else? – Halloween costumes.    Trick or treat everyone!

On the other hand, the news is out that our development team is (and has to be) Herculean in responding to change, and that’s where the project police need to be on patrol.  As the ersatz ‘owner’ of the product, I feel a bit like the Wizard of Oz,  behind the curtain pulling the strings as thousands of decisions are made concerning navigation, functionality, interaction with content, brand and aesthetic design. We answer, not only our customers, but also to a team of executives who have had a long history of wins and a few sidesteps, and who have a personal stake in Knovel’s success.

I am bolstered by the strong showing of customers to Knovel Lab – thank you for all the thoughtful comments -  and I stand behind the design decisions driven by our Design Partners whose willingness to let me watch over their shoulders as they worked resulted in the cleaner, simpler and – we posit -  more aesthetically pleasing search experience of today’s Knovel.

At the most visceral level, there’s functional design and there’s aesthetics.  If we get it right, MOST users will enjoy an overall positive experience. I confess that I am generally more interested in delivering the best answer to a search query, but we can satisfy both.  While the vast majority of our users confirm that we have taken a big step forward, we still have work to do. Not everyone loves the new look; in fact, some even ‘fessed up that change is hard and familiarity is almost always preferable. But in order to progress, sometimes you have to ignore those who fear change, and we believe that this new iteration of Knovel represents progress.

Love the changes? Hate the changes? Need changes for a dollar? User feedback drives what we do here at Knovel, so please leave any and all comments below.

Late last century, when I worked for another software development company, we tested our product in no less than 12 different ‘flavors’ of operating systems including UNIX, Windows, local area network systems, and Web browsers. Legacy support cripples product development and the thrill of releasing radical new functionality is laced with paralyzing fear of destabilizing the software.

A similar scenario is brewing today with Web browsers. Knovel is in a much better position because we develop Web-based software. But there, the picnic ends. Our software engineers generally use the latest browser versions, and our engineers typically prefer Firefox to Internet Explorer.  (Not a judgment, just my own informal survey and personal preferences.)  Our users, on the other hand, use browsers dating back to Netscape Communicator, and a majority of our users are still on IE6.  With the advent of IE 8, we are now mandated to test and support a minimum of 6 different browser versions:  IE6, IE7, IE8, FF2, FF3, FF3.5. And not surprisingly, our defect list tracks more IE6 items than any other browser version.

The engineers say, “Why can’t they just upgrade?  and “These older browsers are far less functional.”

Tom Dahm, writing for NetMechanic, sums it up nicely: “The major difference between two versions of the same browser is their support for newer portions of the HTML language. A new browser is generally better at displaying Web pages than an old one.”

As keeper of the Knovel Product, I grapple constantly with the question of browser version support. We’re aiming high in the product functionality realm and, increasingly, the older browsers are simply not up to the task.

So, what’s the answer? I am painfully aware that most of our users are constrained by strict IT policies that govern what browser(s) are used in their organizations, and how and when upgrades are managed. I am not optimistic that this will change, nor am I under the illusion that Knovel has the clout to force a corporate browser upgrade. What I do suggest is that Knovel will soon add messaging to our product advising users that Knovel is optimized for use with certain browsers [for starters, IE7 and above, and FF 3 and above], and hope to influence customers who use older browsers to consider the benefits of upgrading.

But what do you think? Either from a developer or a user standpoint, what browser related frustrations have you encountered?

One characteristic that unites the community of information professionals is their outspokenness.  One of our users, Kristen Whitman from The Intellogist, wrote, “I feel like I’ve encountered many other search engines with a form called Fielded Search, but they never did anything like searching within tables and graphs, or for ranges of property values, like Knovel can.”  Kristen has updated her information database to point users to Knovel Lab and predicts that our users will be excited about the enhancements we’re planning.  Thanks Kristen!
After collecting the feedback, we huddled together with the name candidates.  Advanced Search was considered first, and rejected as it does not fit the mode: searches the same content with a more sophisticated framework of index and field selections.  Materials Properties Search went down as too confining, as did Numeric Range Search.   How could we convey a search capability that retrieves data that is housed in graphs, equations and tables?   What about Graph, Equation, Table Search? Too long. But the acronym was staring us right in the face; why not GET Search?

We believe that GET Search is a name that does justice to the new and improved design for a powerful feature that delivers results in Knovel’s interactive tools – the Graphs, Equations and Tables.  GET Search goes into the Knovel Lab next week, and, for the next few weeks, we’re inviting our users to come try on the name as well as the new design and tell us what you think.

In a couple of weeks, we’ll be showcasing a redesign of Fielded Search in Knovel Lab. As it stands today, it’s too hard to use except for the most dedicated users. We’ve improved the usability of this powerful search feature by more directly displaying the searchable properties that retrieve information found in Knovel tables and graphs – e.g.,  substances with freezing points greater than or equal to  -22 C; critical properties (temperature, pressure, volume, compressibility) of a particular substance; or alloys with shear strength between 80 and 100 ksi.

Searching in this mode is very different from doing a keyword search that retrieves a section of a chapter in PDF or HTML; these results return data in rows and columns of reference tables and graphs.

Usually, when I demonstrate Fielded Search to new users, they’re thrilled by the power – and then they ask, why they didn’t know about it before?  That tells me we need to make it easier for them to find and use it.  Some even have told me that they noticed the name “fielded search” but they didn’t know what it meant and didn’t have the time to find out.  So, there is a strong consensus that the name Fielded Search needs to change to something more reflective of what it does.  I’ve started asking for suggestions and have received many thoughtful ideas thus far, but I feel like I could use more help.

Here’s a running list we’re considering, alone, or in combination.

Properties Search
Material Properties Search
Numeric Range Search

As always, your feedback matters. If you care to cast your vote, you can email me at dbittern@knovel.com, or use the Feedback link on Knovel.  Thanks!