June 10, 2013 at 8:36 am | Posted in digital workplace, governance, help, intranet, mark morrell ltd, mobile, user testing, value | 2 Comments
Tags: digital workplace, governance, intranet, intranet applications, mobile, publishing, research, usability, usability standards, user testing, users
In my previous post in this series on mobile ‘Good governance signals right mobile direction’ I said mobile is one of the key drivers for the transformation of intranets into digital workplaces which could become mobile workplaces but progress is patchy. It is no surprise if I say setting the right direction for your organisation with mobile is critical. Having some good governance principles helps you to continue in the right way and underpin your strategy.
We also need to give people a great mobile experience. But what exactly does that mean? Here are my thoughts on what is needed to achieve this in my last post in this series.
Mobile audience
Firstly, you need to make sure the people who will benefit the most are able to use a mobile device. You need to be clear who will benefit from having a mobile device. It probably will not be everyone. Even if it is, you will need to prioritise who has the greatest need. Factors like the number of people involved, time spent away from their place of work and what contribution they can make, will help decide the greatest need.
When you have the right people then you can find out what information and which services they most need, when they need to use them and how they need to use them, to be able to design and test for a good mobile experience.
Mobile devices
Secondly, you need to choose which mobile devices are the best tool to help people with their work. For example, is it a laptop, tablet, or smartphone, or maybe a combination of more than one of these that is needed? Will you let people bring their own devices to work or will your organisation provide them? These decisions are critical and will depend on your organisation’s corporate values, type of employees, security, funding and speed of adoption. Once these decisions have been made you can then focus on how you start to create a good mobile experience.
Once you know how to support the type of devices and size of screens being used, and the main purpose people will be using their mobile device for, you can start to create a good mobile experience.
Mobile platform
Lastly, you need to make sure you have the right infrastructure to support the needs of mobile workers in your organisation. This means access to the information and tools needs to be 24/7 and not just normal working hours. It means business continuity plans must include how people will still have mobile access to what they need for work. Your organisation needs to consider the different mobile operating systems and devices it will support; what is the cost; what should be the limit; which systems and devices will have most overall benefit?
You also need to give a fast connection when mobile workers need it for their work to the information and tools. Why would you want a mobile device if you find it takes ages to connect to any content or services you need to use?
Good mobile experience
So, what is needed for a great mobile experience? These bullet points help summarise the posts on mobile:
- A mobile strategy aligned to business needs
- Supported by a governance framework
- Helping meet the needs of people using mobile devices
- Research and test with mobile users
- Get the infrastructure in place
- Have a policy on using mobile users for business purposes
If you need any more information please contact me.
June 18, 2012 at 8:08 am | Posted in best practice, beta testing, intranet, navigation, usability, user testing | 2 Comments
Tags: best practice, beta testing, intranet, navigation, usability, user testing
Many organisations are are planning to or already use mega menus on their intranet to help employees navigate to the information or tools they need to use. I have been involved in developing several mega menus based on different business needs while helping with SharePoint 2010. Some have been more successful than others at giving a great user experience……….and that’s what you are really aiming to achieve.
People need to be confident wherever they are in the intranet and with what they need to go and do next. I believe some navigation principles help you decide if a mega menu is for your intranet.
Navigation principles for mega menus
- It helps people get to what they need more quickly.
- The headings are consistently placed in the same position on every page.
- The headings are specific and clearly labelled to avoid any confusion or hesitation.
- The content under each heading is relevant to the heading’s title and links to the right page.
- The content under each heading should only be the most important and popular headings – don’t try to duplicate all your intranet.
- The size of the each section of links under each heading should be limited and be used.
- Test it with a sample of people first before launching or making any major changes every time.
My view is the mega menu must help people to get quickly and easily to the most important and popular pages they need to use on the intranet.
I have experienced both static mega menus (same headings, position nd links) and moveable menus that change as they follow you around from one part of the intranet to another. The feedback has been almost universal from people using them. Static menus work and changeable menus cause confusion and are avoided by most people.
When people are more familiar with and use the intranet more frequently maybe you can test with people want to change to moveable headings and content depending on where they are in the intranet?
February 7, 2012 at 9:19 am | Posted in benchmark, benefit, best practice, collaboration, content management, digital workplace, engagement, governance, homepage, intranet, mark morrell ltd, plan, publishing, research, SharePoint 2010, social media, standards, strategy, training, usability, user testing, value, wiki | 1 Comment
Tags: applications, benchmark, benefit, best practice, beta testing, blog, bt intranet, collaboration, content, digital workplace, engagement, governance, help, homepage, intranet, intranet applications, Mark Morrell, plan, publishing, research, sharepoint 2010, social media, standards, strategy, usability, user testing, value, wiki
Thinking about what is the best way to implement SharePoint 2010?
Are you looking for good examples of managing intranets?
Are you planning how to transform your digital workplace?
Maybe you want to use collaboration tools to increase employee engagement?
Now you can find helpful information on all these areas in one site. It combines my first-hand experience managing BT’s intranet with my knowledge and help improving other intranets to show how you can improve your intranets and digital workplaces.
If I can help you further please contact me whenever you want to.
December 5, 2011 at 7:26 am | Posted in best practice, content management, engagement, governance, intranet, mark morrell ltd, navigation, publishing, research, standards, usability, user testing | 3 Comments
Tags: best practice, content, engagement, governance, intranet, killer content, Mark Morrell, navigation, publishing, research, standards, training, usability, user testing
Since 1996 I have been pioneering the best ways to increase adoption of new tools on the intranet. For the 9 years as the BT Intranet manager and since then as a consultant, I have experienced different ways organisations have encouraged adoption of technology. My top 10 ways are:
Research what people need
Ask what their biggest pain points are. What could be made easier? What is missing from the intranet? What is good and they want more of?
Prioritise improvements
How important is the task to the person and to their organisation? How many people are affected by this? How frequently is it happening?
Early adopters to become ambassadors
Identify adopters who have the most urgent need to try something new to solve a business problem. Involve adopters in proposed changes as early as possible to get their buy-in. Satisfied adopters will be your best ambassadors and spread the word.
Make the first experience a good experience
You need to encourage not discourage usage to avoid unnecessary costs in extra effort. Act on early adopters’ feedback. Test with usability experts. Compare with existing best practice.
Advance communications so no nasty surprises
Manage peoples’ expectations. Clearly explain what it is you are offering and where they can get advice, training and help.
Consistent navigation
Give people a bridge from wherever they were on your intranet to get to another part more easily. Show the same headings and position on every page. Find out what are the best navigation headings that would help people most.
Personalise and target information
Give people the relevant information they need. Give people the applications they need to use. Give people confidence their personal information is secure.
Embed standards into templates
Reduce the barrier for publishing. Make it as easy as possible to do. Focus on what is important – the quality of the information – not how to use the technology. Consistently apply governance. Embed standards in the templates.
Compliance tools give users confidence
Standards need to be enforced when publishers’ behaviour falls below best practice. Compliance tools enforce important standards – business, regulatory and legal requirements – and minimise time and administration. Users’ confidence in the integrity of the information must not be compromised.
Clear responsibilities and roles
Who is responsible for managing the intranet strategy, standards, IT infrastructure? What should everyone involved – publishers, contributors – need to do? Align intranet roles with performance management and job descriptions.
March 31, 2011 at 9:00 am | Posted in application, benchmark, intranet, mobile, publishing, SharePoint 2010, social media, usability, user testing | 8 Comments
Tags: applications, benchmark, bt intranet, intranet applications, mobile, sharepoint 2010, user testing, users
When will organisations start designing and creating applications, web pages and social media tools with mobile devices as the first priority before PC users?
More and more people are using smartphones for their work. While travelling or working remotely from their normal place of work they need to use their intranet.
But we still design for PC users as the first priority. This can mean it is more difficult than it need be when using a smartphone on your intranet wasting unnecessary time or having to involve others taking them away from their work.
When will the tipping point come and first priority be to check that anyone with a smartphone can have a great experience using a new intranet tool?
When the Intranet Benchmarking Forum last benchmarked BT’s intranet they said “BT’s intranet is designed to support mobile workers so it is fully accessible from mobile devices. Mobile users use a text-based interface.”
People in BT can use their Blackberrys to:
With the rollout of SharePoint 2010 it is critical that people can use their Blackberrys to do this. As you can see from comparing these screenshots showing SP2010 sites using a PC and Blackberry that is possible.
How long before the experience is as good or even better when you use a smartphone compared to a PC though?
December 1, 2010 at 9:44 am | Posted in beta testing, blog, intranet, social media, user testing, value, wiki | 3 Comments
Tags: benefit, beta testing, social media, value
While I was at the Employee Portal Evolution Masters conference I was struck by the number of organisations who were interested in using social media tools but were not sure what approach to take.
To justify any investment funding you need to have a strong business case – even more so in these difficult economic times – that clearly shows the benefits to the organisation of adopting social media tools. That justification has to have good reasons backed up by clear evidence of how it benefits the organisation.
Here are a few points to remember and use:
Start small
Have an idea of what you need to do. Try using personas to help identify a typical group of people with a similar need. Find a few volunteers to test out what the tool will do. I talked in a previous post about beta testing with people as you develop a new tool.
Build quick
You need one friendly person in IT, a PC, maybe a small server and the software. You need to make sure it works – no fancy design, just out of the box functionality – before you start to testing.
Go with the flow!
Whatever you think it needs to do let the volunteers testing it set the direction that helps them most. They will be using it in future – not you!
Keep it cheap
It is important to avoid any unneccesary costs. If possible try something for free. By keeping it to a small number of people testing and just one PC or server you avoid high star-up costs.
Next steps
When you have clear evidence of benefits, more people wanting to use it, buy-in from IT, you can then build a business case showing how it will help your organisation. You may be asked for more or better examples but it is less likely you will get a ‘NO!’ response.
Then consider what guidance, training, education and governance is needed.
Good luck!
October 11, 2010 at 10:20 am | Posted in benefit, best practice, beta testing, governance, help, homepage, intranet, navigation, plan, publishing, research, search, social media, standards, training, usability, user testing, value | 2 Comments
Tags: benefit, best practice, beta testing, governance, help, homepage, intranet, navigation, plan, publishing, research, search, standards, usability, user testing, users, value
I have just finished reading ‘Designing intranets – Creating sites that work’, the latest book written by James Robertson. For those of you who have seen James present or read his blog posts, you will know he gives a clear view to help you – whether you agree with it or not.
James is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on intranets. He has used this experience to write this book.
Whether you are new to intranets or, like me, involved as an intranet manager for years, this book will be very useful to you.
This book will cover all you need to know to be able to create intranet sites that work. And it is the ‘sites that work’ words that make this book different to others. It is more than just a pleasing design. It is what else is needed to be researched, planned and created too that will make your time and effort better spent. Even more, you want the people using your intranet to get the best out of it. This book helps you to do just that!
I have found it helps reinforce why BT’s intranet is like it is and why the things I do are important such as:
As I write this blog post ‘Designing intranets’ is by my side. Some parts of James’ book are looking well used already as I’ve thumbed through them several times for tips to help me!
Why not treat yourself? Read James’ book and help make your life easier and your intranet better by reading James’ book.
August 18, 2010 at 4:13 pm | Posted in benchmark, best practice, beta testing, intranet, standards, user testing | 2 Comments
Tags: benchmark, best practice, beta testing, bt intranet, feedback, research, user testing, users
I regularly ask users what they feel about BT’s intranet. I use a variety of methods to do this.
1. Survey - I ask each year questions to compare with previous years for trends as well as new areas to focus on.
2. Beta testing - I ask for people to test out new features to make sure it meets their needs or improve further so it does before launching.
3. Feedback – every page has a feedback link for anyone to ask for more information or raise a concern.
Find out more in Intranet Ideas article ‘Conducting an Intranet Performance Review’ which has comments from me and other intranet professionals.
June 17, 2010 at 1:21 pm | Posted in benchmark, benefit, best practice, content management, governance, homepage, intranet, navigation, publishing, social media, standards, usability, user testing, web accessibility | Leave a comment
Tags: benchmark, best practice, bt intranet, content, governance, publishing, standards, usability standards
When I posted about the latest results for BT ‘BT Intranet 2010 benchmark results‘ I promised to give examples the Intranet Benchmarking Forum highlighted as global best practice.
The first example is about our content. IBF said all pages across BT’s intranet contain author and date information. The content is well structured in headline style, with bullets and sub-headings. BT’s intranet is largely jargon-free and scored well in Flesch comprehension testing, but could be further improved by ensuring all acronyms have explanatory title tags.
We have achieved this by embedding our intranet standards in to the templates used for publishing the different types of content.
This means publishers can concentrate on the quality of the information and not their technical abilities.
For users there is a consistent experience as they move transparently from one type of content to another. For example the BT global navigation bar appears in the same place with the same headings that link to the same place on every page.
We encourage with guidance and training for our publishers to use the right tone of voice and wherever possible to avoid jargon.
It helps to show why 4 out of 5 BT Intranet users are very/satisfied when last surveyed.
April 28, 2010 at 10:35 am | Posted in application, intranet, oracle, standards, usability, user testing | 2 Comments
Tags: applications, intranet applications, oracle, usability, usability standards, user testing, users
Oracle is holding their first Usability Board Europe meeting on May 5th. I’ve been to a previous Oracle meeting and am keen to improve the usability of all applications BT uses.
At this meeting Oracle and founding members will:
The usability issues I will be raising are:
- Out of the box usability must be high
- Better usability does not mean more features. It means features must be more usable.
- Think of users when offering help.
- Don’t focus on making error messages better, aim to prevent users making errors.
I’m sharing some slides I plan to use at the meeting. Anyone want to add anything?
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