As a kid growing up in Wales, in the absence of having a TV at home, I used to play chess against my younger brother.
As a result we both got pretty good.
And while these days I hardly ever bother with the game (and was never that strong anyway), I still occasionally read through some of the games of Bobby Fischer. For me, many of his games are a form of poetry in motion and are completely fascinating; not because I still habour any Walter Mitty ambitions to be a decent player, but because they represent a near perfect union of form and function.
Consider, for instance, the following position:
Fischer-Petrosian (7th Match Game, World Championship Candidates Final, Buenos Aires, 1971)
It’s White to move, and Fischer plays:
22. Nxd7+!! …
In this setting, this move looks completely unnatural.
White totally dominates this position, and it exhibits all the hallmarks of a classic Fischer game with its clear-cut advantage in both space and key square control in the middle-game. (And, believe me, once this guy gets an edge he never lets go.)
Instead of Knight takes Bishop, Fischer could play 22. a4 … disallowing the reply 22. … Bb5, with 22. … a5? clearly being impossible due to 23. b5! … which is winning. And 22. Kf2 … is also worth consideration (although incomparably weaker, once you know the answer), anticipating an endgame with the White King at d4.
And yet Fischer chooses at this point to exchange his beautifully placed Knight on c5 for a “bad” Bishop on d7.
Superficially, at least, 22. Nxd7+ … looks like a very “ugly” move and, for us mortals, shouldn’t even be considered (i.e. its doubtful that any other strong player in the world would have played this way “on principle”). Yet according to people watching the game Fischer played this move “instantly”, and that against an ex-World Champion! And what’s more during the game itself he was heavily criticized for his decision by watching Grandmasters (i.e. hindsight is truly a wonderful thing).
Yet Fischer’s logic is unshakable. By trading Knight for Bishop in this position White removes the only Black piece that holds his position together. After its exchange the two White Rooks enter the game on c7 and e7, and there is absolutely nothing that Black can do to prevent this.
The game continued for just 12 more moves. A beautiful sequence of play saw Black reduced to total helplessness and he resigned on the 34th move with White threatening mate.
As one of the most beautiful games in all of chess literature, this is hugely impressive in two respects:
- First, the game is completely direct and to the point – there is little, if anything, that is fanciful about it. (FUNCTION)
- Second, in chess terms, it is entrancingly beautiful, and is literally perfect in conception and execution from beginning to end. (FORM)
This got me thinking ….
The Point
Well, just recently, Storm made a bid for a SharePoint project that included the delivery of an Intranet.
As part of the pitch presentation we had to demonstrate an Intranet design applied over MOSS 2007. And in Intranet design with MOSS 2007 one thinks automatically – because that is what we are taught – about a “Collaboration Portal”.
Consider, for instance, the default of a Collaboration Portal.
MOSS 2007 - default Collaboration Portal - Home
Whilst very functional, with a classic “Inverted-L” navigation design to support a “broad and deep” information architecture (very important for Intranets), one can hardly claim this is beautiful. (And at the pure browser interface, configuring any of the out of the box Microsoft “themes” makes little or no difference to handling this presentation issue.)
At Storm, we have implemented a number of Intranets based on this structural presentation, variously applying themes (with modified core.CSS) or a skin over the top of a base Collaboration Portal, adding both imagery and colour to provide the veneer of a better look and feel.
See, for instance, this treatment over WSS 3.0:
Ethos Community - WSS 3.0
And this, over a full MOSS portal:
Scottish Refugee Council Intranet in MOSS 2007
Ok, both admittedly much better, but still not great (and believe it, our designers are very good).
The fact of it is, is that MOSS 2007 running in Collaboration Portal mode is inherently resistant to design styling (i.e. it is something of a CSS nightmare). It comes back to the tried and trusted adage that SharePoint will do what it wants to do very well indeed; but it’s not so good when you want to do something different.
The latter scenario, a radical suggestion, I know, but it happens.
Anyway, in July 2008 Ben Curry and Bill English of Mindsharp fame in the US released a very good book entitled Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 Best Practices (this is better for non-techies BTW). In one small paragraph of an 800 page title they recommended using MOSS 2007 in Publishing mode to enable an Intranet. And while I instinctively don’t like the term “best practice” – after all, who really knows? – I could immediately see they had a point.
One project later, with the Royal of Bank of Scotland, and I was completely sold.
It transpires that by stripping out some of the rubbish that comes with a MOSS Publishing site (courtesy of Tom Travers in our dev team), we discovered that it is actually possible to style a decent Intranet view (courtesy of Jason Kennedy). And while we had project constraints on look and feel as a result of this particular client’s design standards, the relationship between design and other considerations within this solution felt in far better balance overall.
So coming full circle, we revisit that pitch for an Intranet project that I mentioned at the beginning of this section. After doing some very cursory needs analysis and a basic IA – it was a pitch, remember – it was over to the design team for a flat visual for an Intranet Home in MOSS.
After a few iterations, we arrived at this for a top-level unified comms portal:
Intranet design - using MOSS Publishing site
Does it Matter?
Does it really matter if aspects of the “form” of an Intranet site are relatively weak, if the myriad of other considerations that contribute to the successful creation of an Intranet are present?
Well, these days, I happen to think it does.
Arguably in a mid-to-large corporate setting an Intranet reflects how an organisation perceives itself and values its staff, and a badly presented garden leaves a bad impression on the visitor as they come up to the front door.
And while design is so much more than a user’s perceptions of (mere) presentation, nevertheless the visual aspects of an Intranet arguably matter as much as they do for a Website.
Like chess, however, it’s all about finding that elusive balance between form and function for a “typology” of site that, by definition, should exhibit strong functional and usability characteristics.
And Finally … A Parting Shot
At the chessboard, at least, Fischer was a genius….
His play has that airy quality of perfection – think of the American poet Robert Frost and you’ll know what I mean – that makes everything seem so simple and obvious. And yet is all but impossible to attain in practice.
At its best, his playing style represents form and function in near perfect balance, and in chess it takes incredible flexibility of mind to achieve this without falling prey to either preconception or dogma.
It is as though Fischer looked at every move in the course of a single game with the eyes of a child.
Switch to web design, and I think we know very little about the value, importance and application of design in relation to Intranets. And, sadly, out of the box the user interface presentation and styling of the Collaboration Portal platform in MOSS 2007 does very little to challenge this view, with its stark over-emphasis of function over form.
Alongside other key factors such as information architecture and (site & content) governance, this pronounced imbalance greatly affects users perceptions, usability and interactions with the platform.
As of mid 2009, therefore, I feel our understanding of what is the correct balance between function and form in Intranet user interface design may not have even got out of the starting blocks!
It looks like – after maybe some 12-15 years in this field (and the eighth year of SharePoint) – we are still searching for Bobby Fischer.
Bobby Fischer (1943-2008), aged 14, IQ 187
The message:
If you have an Intranet project on MOSS 2007 don’t even think about using a Collaboration Portal as the start point.
Think Publishing site, as at least this gives you half a chance in the debate about Form vs Function.
You can always add – and try to style! – the Web Parts later….
SharePoint: Websites, Intranets & Solution Design 