How to ensure that corporate intranets are useable and useful

1. How to ensure that corporate intranets are useable and useful Martin White Managing Director, Intranet Focus Ltd. Martin.White@intranetfocus.com Internet Librarian International 2002 www.intranetfocus.com

2. Intranet Focus Ltd • Consulting services on • Intranet content, governance and technology strategies • Information audits • Selection of content management and search software • Product design and marketing for information companies selling into intranets • Clients in 2001 included • Bank for International Settlements (Basel) • International Monetary Fund (Washington), • International Labour Organisation (Geneva), • National Farmers Union (London) • Environment Agency (Bristol) www.intranetfocus.com

3. Agenda • The importance of achieving excellent intranet usability • Usability testing • Key usability issues • Benchmarking intranet use • Intranets need to be marketed • Five intranet success factors www.intranetfocus.com

4. Usability • Gradual, but now accelerating, awareness of the importance of usability in intranet design • On a public web site visitors will either put up with it, or find another site • On an intranet users will take the view that the intranet team should have known better • The usual excuse is that “Staff use it so often they soon work out how to use the intranet” • The reality is that they don’t – but they don’t tell anyone. www.intranetfocus.com

5. Usability elements • Functionally correct • Efficient to use • Easy to learn • Easy to remember • Error tolerant • Easy to assimilate (From T Brink, D. Gergle and S.D.Wood. Usability for the Web. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers 2001) www.intranetfocus.com

6. Usability – the numbers • Assume that through enhancing usability and content you can improve the information access productivity of each member of staff by 5 minutes a day • On an annual basis that is a saving of around 20 hours per person, or 0.6 of a working week • So for every 90 users you gain the working capacity of an extra member of staff • As well as making speedier and better decisions • That is why usability is so important to the bottom line www.intranetfocus.com

7. Usability testing • Usability tests should be carried out with individual, and representative, members of staff • The tests should be based on specific business processes – for example, finding a vacation form, or checking on the progress of a project • Record the navigation path, the timing, and the comments made during the test • Provide feedback at the end of the tests • Time and day of the test could be a parameter www.intranetfocus.com

8. Intranet usability issues • No balance between taxonomy, browse and search navigation paths • No balance between breadth and depth • Illogical list sequences • Reliance on the back button • Central vs decentralised – “Where am I?” • Consistent navigation (search bar, home page) • Inappropriate use of graphics and icons • Not supporting business processes www.intranetfocus.com

9. Increasing intranet use • Intranets have to be developed incrementally to match changing business requirements and the expectations of the staff • Unless there is an initial benchmark it is impossible to gauge the impact of changes in requirements and use • Intranet user populations need to be clearly segmented • Intranets have to be marketed www.intranetfocus.com

10. User survey techniques • E-mail/web surveys • Focus groups • E-mail attachment analysis • Diaries • Web traffic analysis www.intranetfocus.com

11. E-mail/web surveys • Keep them short, no more than two screens long • Single key-stroke entry, or use drop down menus • Respect the privacy of individuals • Make text comments optional, and ensure that the question is very clear • Provide a help desk • Ensure that the results are fed back to staff • A 25% return should be a bench mark www.intranetfocus.com

12. An example • Three main frustrations with the current intranet • Departmental web site inconsistency (89 percent) • The need to know the departmental location of information (50 percent) • Having to print out Word/pdf files to obtain information (45 percent) • Only 15 percent of staff use the Intranet at least once a day www.intranetfocus.com

13. Confidence in Intranet content www.intranetfocus.com

14. Focus groups • These can be set up specifically to discuss intranet issues • Also consider adding intranet issues to regular meetings, so that the intranet can be discussed in a business/organisational context • Ensure that the subject to be discussed is clearly indicated • Keep the discussion neutral • Provide feedback www.intranetfocus.com

15. E-mail attachments • In a well designed intranet the use of attached files to e-mails should be quite small, especially to large (3+) distribution lists • Forbidding attachments never works • Understand why certain documents are sent out by e-mail • Talk to both the sender and the recipients – the issues will be different • Go for qualitative analysis, not quantitative www.intranetfocus.com

16. Diaries • Provide members of staff with a diary on which they can log the use of the intranet • The purpose is not to track the pages used, but the reasons for using the intranet, and the results • This needs careful preparation, and illustrations of the way in which the diary should be completed • Best used to complement other survey methodologies www.intranetfocus.com

17. Survey fatigue • Large scale surveys should only be undertaken no more frequently than quarterly • The better the feedback, and the more apparent the results, the less the fatigue • Always be alert to decreases in response levels, and try to find out why rather than issue edicts • If the mandatory sections take more than 5 minutes to complete then response rates will fall rapidly • Keep the intranet door open at all times www.intranetfocus.com

18. Marketing • Most users will only look at a very small proportion of the total intranet • This is not bad, so long as they are not missing anything important • Ensure that users are kept up to date with new content, revised content, success stories, new functionality, hints and tips, survey results. • Emphasis the “people” rather than the content, and hide the technology www.intranetfocus.com

19. Key success factors • Content that is aligned to business requirements and business processes • A strategy for continued enhancement based on reliable user surveys • Usability tests carried out on a systematic and quantifiable basis • Excellent feedback channels between managers, staff and the intranet team • Maintaining the balance between content, technology and users www.intranetfocus.com

20. Questions? www.intranetfocus.com