August 03, 2005
my.case.edu Versus Open Content
The Case Portal (my.case.edu) is always a hot topic for discussion. It has previously been mentioned on Blog@Case for IPTV and it made appearances in many people's top (and bottom) 10 lists of IT at Case. Today, I question our implementation of the portal.
The purpose of the Case Portal is in its name. An information portal is a gateway to information. It aggregates information from various sources and displays it (in hopefully an easy-to-read layout). The idea behind information portals is that you choose to visit them because doing so saves you time and effort from visiting the countless locations from which they draw information. I use the word choose deliberately. People should have the option of obtaining the information from whatever source they want. People should not be forced to use the portal to obtain information. Once the portal becomes the sole provider of a piece of information, it ceases to be a portal and becomes a content provider. This is what disturbs me about our implementation. In an attempt to drive up usage, we force people to use the portal. People should not be forced to use the portal; they should be drawn to it because of its usage potential.
By making the portal the exclusive provider of information, we are destroying opportunities for application development. How are we supposed to build specialized applications that utilize data displayed in the portal without having access to the raw data streams? What happens when the portal goes down? What happens when my internet browser cannot access data because the portal is designed for "mainstream" browsers? I understand these issues are being addressed, but they shouldn't be issues at all. If all the content available on the portal was available outside of the portal, then there wouldn't be a problem.
Users should be drawn to the portal, not forced to it. The time we spend devising ways for users to rely on the portal would be better spent improving the portal interface.
Trackback
You can ping this entry by using http://blog.case.edu/gps10/mt-tb.cgi/2072 .
Comments
"People should not be forced to use the portal; they should be drawn to it because of its usage potential. ... People should have the option of obtaining the information from whatever source they want."
Yes!
Again and again everyone says this. What is the other side to the argument? Speak up people; I want to hear the other side. I am starting to think one does not exist.
"The purpose of the Case Portal is in its name."
Are you saying we should call it "Portal@Case"?
What items of data are only available via the portal? IPTV? What else?