Building your intranet "Home"

by J.D. Shipengrover

Summary

• Introduction
• Content drives design
• Getting user feedback
• Focus groups
• Maintaining feedback
• Monitoring usage logs

An intranet is much more than a storage closet where Human Resource Forms and obscure company policy notifications are thrown together, forgotten, and unorganized. A company intranet should be a "home" for your employees. A place people can turn to when they have a question or a suggestion. They have to know they will find what they are looking for and that it will always be there for them.

Now, don't panic. Building a solid intranet is reasonably easy. My number one rule in developing a new intranet is: There is no difference between how you design, build, and plan a corporate intranet versus a public Internet site. Users are users. They will use your site if it is engaging, entertaining, easy to navigate, and has the information they are looking for.

That being said, you will naturally ask yourself:

1. What is engaging and how do I build something engaging?
2. Entertaining? This is a workplace, why should it be entertaining?
3. Navigation. What am I, a sailor?
4. How do I know what they are looking for?

Say what?

Believe it or not, number four here is the first step in building a new intranet, but before I go into detail on item 4, let me briefly touch on items 1 through 3.

First, the site must be engaging. If a Web site doesn't attract and then hold your attention, you aren't going to stick around long to find out what is really there. Now don't freak out, it doesn't have to be award winning with state-of-the-art graphics and technology. However, all the pieces do need to work together to create an eye-pleasing whole.

Next, entertaining. Why should it be entertaining and what do I mean by entertaining? These are questions I get all of the time and, perhaps, they're a bit controversial. I don't mean it has to be chock full of little games and jokes. But I do think it needs to be fun to use. It needs to be new and different. It can have fun stuff. For example, on an intranet I was recently working on, we put up a bulletin board where the Customer Service Department was able to post some of the more interesting and funny questions and comments it received. Needless to say, it was a very popular aspect of the intranet, as well as educational.

Criteria number 3, navigation, is a culmination of 1 and 2. Outside of content, navigation is the most important piece of design done on an intranet. If the site is not well organized and easy to use, then people will not use it. It is a classic example of product design. Once the content is known, it must be analyzed, categorized, and organized. Then a navigational system has to be devised. (Wow, I almost sound like Dr. Seuss.)

By navigational system, I mean the consistent presentation of how to move around in the site. Consistency is the key. It must be the same throughout the site. Jumping between navigational themes is a guarantee that your users will be confused, frustrated, and unable and unwilling to use the site. In the near future, I will have columns directed at each of these criteria, but until then, let me go into depth on finding out What The People Want.

Content drives design

Of all the various design classes and training I've had through the years, one thing always stuck with me: Content drives design. The theory is this: Nothing can be designed if you don't know what and for whom you are designing. I have never found this to be more true than in intranet/Internet design. At this point I know you are saying, OK, fine, but how can I find out what the users want?

To build an effective intranet you have to have interactivity. Does this mean you have to have on-line games and chat rooms? No. It means you have to have two-way communication.

You send out the information on the intranet and they, the employees, have to have a way to tell you what they want and think.

There are several methods to gather user feedback. The effective ones are a bit time consuming at the get go, but in the long run, you will save yourself time, money, and headaches. Trust me when I say, if you can build it right the first time, your intranet will be successful and you will spend less time re-working and re-building. Staying out of the catch-up spiral does nothing but save you time, money, headaches, and resources.

Getting user feedback ideas and reactions

Here are the five ways I suggest you get information from users:

1.User focus groups.

2.Management focus groups.

3.Beta user focus groups.

4.Maintained user feedback.

5.Monitor usage logs.

User focus groups

Before you even put the first line of HTML on your first Web page, get some employees together. Make sure the employees represent a large cross-section of the entire company, and ask them some specific questions about what they would expect from a company intranet. This step is very "old book" but essential. It may take time away from your development schedule, but do as many focus groups as you can. If you have to, go to the cafeteria at lunchtime, sit down at a crowded table, and just start a discussion. Do this for a week. You will find out what you need to know, and it will be enlightening.

Group discussions will give you a focus and an idea of user expectations. This is important when it comes time to plan your intranet and what will be part of its first phase.

Management focus group

In a separate group it is a good idea to get management's take on what it expects from an intranet. Intranet is a major buzzword in corporate America today. But, management often doesn't understand what an intranet is nor what should be on it. All management knows is company B has one and we are falling behind if we don't have one. (Mind you, this attitude is changing and companies are asking the right questions before jumping into the intranet pool, but it is best to cover all the bases.) Management participation and buy-in is very important in making the intranet work. Ask management what it wants on the intranet and, more important, what it DOESN'T want on the intranet.

Beta focus groups (the dreaded user testing)

Once you know what people want on the site, you need to go through a lot of planning and developing, something I will be discussing here at a later date. For now, let's stick with this two-way communication thing and assume the site is done and in pre-production or beta.

Now, you want to get some employees together, sit them down at computers, and give them some scenarios to go through. Follow up the exercises with some specific questions about the area of the site they were testing as well as some general discussion about the site. At this level, it is probably too late to make major changes, but you will be able to find problems that can be categorized as show stoppers and areas that are not ready to go, as well as be able to identify areas that need to be improved in the next version of the site. Testing is a large part of intranet development and is often overlooked.

I know, at this point I sound a lot like a software developer, but Web development does hold true to a software development life cycle. It needs to be built, tested, refined, re-built, and continually upgraded. Don't expect to put something up and call it day. Intranets need to be constantly attended to, updated, and upgraded. If they are not, the user will know and what is the point if the form on-line is not the right one and you have to call the Human Resources department to get the right one anyway?

Maintain user feedback

Another key to getting user feedback and ideas is placing some kind of feedback form on your intranet. It could be e-mail links to you and your staff on every major section and especially on all new sections. It could be a feedback form that links back to a database and categorizes all the feedback you receive.

Just getting the feedback is not enough; acting on it is very important. I found that publishing a monthly Feedback and Suggestions section on my intranet really improved participation.

I had a simple database set up for feedback submits. Users could select a category, enter comments or corrections to pages and sections, and then submit them to my team. About once a week or so, I would review the comments, implement what I could, and place some larger issues on the weekly meeting schedule for discussion. I would then take the feedback report, comment on each entry with an action notice, and publish the report in an area with relatively high visibility. The report would list who submitted the suggestion, what they suggested, when they suggested it, what action was taken on the suggestion, and when the action was taken. In its own small way, this reinforced that everyone in the company was responsible for making the intranet a success.

One thing to remember when dealing with feedback is that most people will not lift a finger to praise, but they will move heaven and Earth to criticize, complain, and degrade.

I have never run away from publishing negative comments. I believe the site is for the users and the users need to tell me what they want. If negative comments are their way of telling me what they want, then that is fine. I will use it and use it in a positive light. One unique outcome of this project was that I often found people responding to the feedback saying they loved whatever it was that was being picked on. And, usually, positive discussion ensued.

Monitor usage logs

Finally, nothing speaks louder than actions. Make sure you have a site-tracking mechanism in place. This is something your server administrator would do. Study your site's usage logs. These logs will tell you what pages people are using and how often they are using them. It will also tell you what people are not using. It won't tell you why they aren't using it, but this can be very insightful when determining future projects. You can find which pages are working and which ones aren't. The tracker can tell you how to proceed with future development and what areas of the site probably need more thought and development to get the usage numbers up.

Now that you have some idea of what the employees want and you have a mechanism in place to continually get information from your users, you have to build it and then you have to get people to use it. More on this in my next column.

About the author

JD Shipengrover has been in the Intranet developing business for over four years, including building a worldwide Intranet for CompuServe Inc.'s Customer Services department, (A project on such a large scale it took 2 years to complete!) Currently, she consults at BMW Financial Services, designing several Intranets for their dealer networks. She also teaches Web Site Design at a Columbus State Community College and has a BA in Journalism.

Illustration: Metropolis by Rob Porazinski from www.artville.com