1. www.intranetfocus.com 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

2. www.intranetfocus.com 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)

3. www.intranetfocus.com 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

4. www.intranetfocus.com 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.

5. www.intranetfocus.com 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)

6. www.intranetfocus.com 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

7. www.intranetfocus.com 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

8. www.intranetfocus.com 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

9. www.intranetfocus.com 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

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

11. www.intranetfocus.com 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

12. www.intranetfocus.com 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

13. www.intranetfocus.com Confidence in Intranet content

14. www.intranetfocus.com 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

15. www.intranetfocus.com 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

16. www.intranetfocus.com 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

17. www.intranetfocus.com 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

18. www.intranetfocus.com 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

19. www.intranetfocus.com 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

20. www.intranetfocus.com Questions?