HMV stands for "his master's voice". It was originally the U.K. division of RCA Victor, but is now a separate company (I am pretty sure). At any rate, HMV is one of the largest media outlets in the world. While consulting with iXL on Information Architecture, usability matters, and user experience in general, I was called upon by the Senior Management of the Engineering Division of iXL, who "owned" the contract with this very high profile customer, to do a detailed Information Architecture for a refresh of the existing www.HMV.com.
Using known web usability guidelines of the time and knowledge from prior work in the area of eCommerce, I created a detailed Information Architecture in a manner that departed from current practice at iXL, using Visio to create a real software workflow. This was important, as all of the involved parties, at iXL and with HMV, were Engineers, who understood workflow diagrams.
Bottom Line: My client (iXL) and their client (HMV) were delighted with the results. I recently reviewed HMV.com and it is apparent that the extensibility that I built into the Information Architecture has stood the test of time...while HMV's product line has expanded greatly, the workflows I created are essentially intact in the existing system.
I was engaged to re-design iXL's own Intranet based on the reputation for excellence I earned.
Postscript: Largely based on the HMV Information Architecture, my work on the iXL Intranet and some Contextual Inquiry that I performed for another large client, I was offered the first Directorship of the yet-to-be-formed UX/Usability practice at iXL. I received the offer two hours after I had already accepted an offer to manage the UI group at S1 Corporation; therefore I went to work at S1 as business ethics demand.
