PORTAL! An Intranet Game

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PORTAL! An Intranet Game

• Workshop on Planning, Designand Implementation
• KMWorld 2005 November 14, 2005

Peter Jones, Nick KizirnisRedesign Research
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Getting Started
Welcome, Who we Are Peter Jones, Redesign
Research Nick Kizirnis, LexisNexis Getting to
know you Name, Organization, and role only -
Our Approach Theres simply too much to cover,
so we will Simulate problems through
discussion Share lessons from experience Learn
from each other in small groups
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About this Workshop
Whats to Learn? You dont need another
lecture You may need to know how to deal
Objectives We want you to come away with I
can do this. This makes more sense to me
now. This helps me fit together new ideas with
what I know. How? By identifying key decision
points. By knowing how to leverage your
priorities. Knowing that you have options.
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How will this work? An Agenda
Start with your business. Drivers and constraints
of business A brief exercise Then Planning,
Requirements, Nick, then Pete talks
briefly. Another exercise (in small groups) The
break for coffee Then Design, Implementation.
What can we say in 20 minutes? A Design
exercise, then wrap up.
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What are the handouts?

• An outline of the content space
• Our outline of the problem space
• We look at practices team practices
• What to do, when, and how.
• These are the Big Ideas for
• Leverage Making the most of your position
• Priorities Focus only on whats important
• Options - when all else fails!

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Cut to the chase

• A definitive report on portal design, usability,
  implementation
• Goodwin and Nielsen (2002-2005)Building
  Intranet Portals - a Report From the Trenches
• We have learned from Nielsens work- but have
  our own experience to add.
• In each content area, we note applicable Nielsen
  findings and lessons learned
• Endorsed
• Critiqued

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Know your Business (Why you have this job)
Business Drivers Prime motivators for action and
change. Business strategy is a coordinated
response to drivers of the industry. -
Competition Strong products - Cost Reduce
systemic costs and waste - Control Improve
operational effectiveness Organizational Needs
- Efficient communication across enterprise a
single portal or communications path -
Self-service of employee benefits and
registrations - Resource for managers - Support
for each business function, operational/product/sa
les
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Business and Organizational Issues

• Inquire about the real Business Needs
• Typical Needs as Given
• Productivity
• Eliminate duplicate technology communications
• Single portal for company communication
• How do you measure ROI?
• When facing portal decisions, call on business
  needs!

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Organizational Infrastructure

• Does legacy pre-determine your portal?
• How do you do portals? By type of technology? By
  function? By organization? By who pays?
• Project types
• Initial Building from scratch
• Conversion e.g. from Intranet to Portal
• Major Redesign Dealing with patchwork
• Update Adding features, search, etc.

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Key Portal Features

• Search
• Single Sign-On
• Integration of multiple intranet sites
• Business Process Coordination
• Document Management
• Self-Service (e.g.. benefits, employee data)
• Personalization

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Organizational Lessons
From Nielsen, 02-05
People issues are the biggest cost in portal
implementation. We agree thats why our focus
on decision-making process. Involving users from
an early stage eases acceptance problems.
(Unhappy users mean low ROI.) Yes, but who are
users? Employees? Managers? How many? Set up a
cross-function steering group (users feel they
have a voice, to overcome resistance). Have 2-3
feedback groups Management steering group,
Customer Advisory Board (CAB), and User
Council. Stop funding non-compliant projects to
speed standardization. Yes, but who, how? Portal
teams do not control that funding! If a portal is
good, people will see its benefits
eventually. Portals take over! Resistance is
futile. Benefits must be immediate.
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Your Exercise 1

• Individual Portal Problems
• Work in pairs, interview each other
• Ask each other take notes
• Tell me about your job
• Your current problem
• Who is/are your customers?
• What do they (customers) want?
• What are you able to deliver?
• Post your notes to flip charts by Project Type

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Portal Planning

• Gather Your Resources
• Who are you and what do you?
• Who else is out there and how can they help?
• Creating the team
• Be a project manager
• Document your work
• Working with teams, scope, budget and schedule
• Be a product manager
• Consider the enterprise
• Know your audience, plan for user research
• Connect back to why you are building the portal
• Know your portal(s)!

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Content Planning

• What is the Content?
• Subjects
• Structure
• Who owns the Content?
• Establish accountability
• Where is the Content?
• Location, location, location(s)
• Centralize or de-centralize
• Tell us all about the content
• Content Inventory/Audit
• ROT Redundant, Out-Dated, Trivial

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Technical Planning

• Take IT to lunch
• Be partners not adversaries
• Checks, Balances and being in the know
• Read the Manual (or the Cliff Notes)
• Potential user, technical, budget, political
  issues
• Its slow systems testing
• How well does the current system work?
• What are the issues?
• How much better is the solution? Really?

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Planning Content Management Lessons
From Nielsen, 02-05
Portals do not solve intranet usability issues.
They can create them. True has anyone launched
a portal that wasnt used? Portal tech may demand
tradeoff between speed flexibility. Decide
which is most important to you. (But having
flexibility lots of design options doesnt
always improve user experience.) Decide on your
priorities before choosing. How to determine
your priorities? Think about the different ways
content might be used once in portal. Dont just
think about find out from your user base. You
will need central guidelines to ensure usable
content. Rules can make users lives easier in
the long run. Consider service-level agreements
for internal providers. (And how is this going?)
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Requirements, a dynamic vision

• Where you discover them
• Organizational Overall business and
  organization needs (See Section 1)
• Team Tools, content, and resources for product
  teams and working groups
• Employee Individual task needs, portlets and
  tools for getting job done

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Enterprise portal stakeholders
Corporate
Sales
Operations, IT, CTO
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HR, Benefits
Corp Communications
2
Product Management
Projects, Development
Workgroups
3
Users
Users
Users
Users
Users
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Requirements Gathering

• Team process with Project Mgt, Business unit
• An actively managed process be proactive.
• Meaning, try thinking like your customers.
• Practices To learn, try one for each customer
• Customer Roundtables
• Focus Groups
• User Surveys
• Personas Task Scenarios
• Organizational line managers
• Employees
• Staff (e.g., HR, Corp Comm, Purchasing)
• Contextual Interviews / Observations
• Usability Testing (Test current identify new)

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Task Content Requirements

• A strong task model simplifies everything.
• Trade-offs between business needs as stated
  tasks.
• Structure content by Function not Department
• What are the tasks all employees will accomplish?
• Document your Task Model (or Use Cases)
• Review with stakeholders.
• Prioritize your features, tools, and gadgets
• Better to have fewer good tools -than many
  mixed-purpose utility

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Being Agile with Requirements?

• Analyzing requirements?
• You will not have time to analyze.
• Instead, creative decision-making
• Setting priorities within among customers,
  features, user tasks
• Rapid, Adaptive Development
• Agile process (Highsmith, Cockburn)
• Requirements largely speculative
• Use prototypes, collaborative design
• Rapid revision, quick feedback tests
• See agilemanifesto.com

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Being Agile means

• Timeboxing
• Establish delivery cycles timeboxes in each
• Deliver once/month
• Developers meet once/day F2F
• Customers once/week F2F
• Requirements change
• Since they will change, welcome change
• If youre collaborating, no real surprises occur
• Leverage your priorities to manage scope
• Continuous development portal is low-risk

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User Experience IA

• Information Architecture (IA)
• Task Workflow models
• Content structure guidelines
• Navigation and site mapping
• Page layout and structure
• Finding tools Search, results, redirection

Effective structuring of content and information
for communication, usability, readability.
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Information Architecture methods
Constraints Scope Search Tech Templates Size,
volume Content Time Legacy data
IA Methods User models Personas Task
models Activity maps Prototypes - Page -
Visual - Info design User Testing Simple
Usability
IA Products Personas scenarios Tasks
Functions Prototypes - Paper - Wireframes -
Mockup- Interactive (Depending on
scale/risk,use one or all)
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User Experience (UX)

• Design considerations
• Site Structure
• Navigation
• Interface and Interaction Design
• Visual and Branding Design
• Content guidelines

Considers all aspects of user interaction with
site, company, brand, products.
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Site Design Lessons
From Nielsen, 02-05
Not all portals have a single home page. - They
can be unified by common navigation. A good
approach to integrating divergent content. Good
portal design is efficient, not fancy. - Busy
users may prefer to get their jobs done quickly
and go home, not play games and personalize their
pages. For most corporate users, content takes
priority over style. Keep it minimal - But
develop a strong internal brand. Portal design
reflects corporate culture (organizational
values). Values can also be used as guidelines
for setting priorities.
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(More) Site Design Lessons
From Nielsen, 02-05
Dont force portal IA to reflect departmental
structures. -It is often better to organize
information by function. Yes but how to
determine functions? Tasks? Product lines?
Internationalization must work globally, not
just locally. A major challenge, hugely time
consuming. Information standards are more
challenging than design layout
standards. Because portal templates set your
design in stone. Content fluctuates wildly so
Process Have a specialist editor in each
content area submit information to the portal.
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UX IA

• User Experience Evaluation
• Alertbox 4 usability methods, also requirements
• User testing
• Field studies
• Design standards
• Customer roundtables
• In the push to release, what gets skipped is
  what can be skipped, and thats often user
  testing.
• Dont skip it do guerilla usability
• Small samples of 5 users (1-3 sets)
• Structured (task-based) testing - and
• open-ended (contextual) observation

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User Experience Lessons
From Nielsen, 02-05
Usability costs extra upfront, but pays off
later. It doesnt cost that much and it pays
off right away. Dont ever assume you know what
users want. Sorry youre not a real user! User
surveys work well for setting direction and
highlighting problem areas. You will always get
responses from a portal survey. But you can
learn a lot from a face to face user testing.
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Implementation

• Development Issues
• Getting the content
• Testing with the team
• Rolling Out
• Communicate!
• Provide guidelines and help
• What did you learn?
• Governance
• Managing features
• Who monitors and evaluates?

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Implementation

• ROI
• What are the costs of this system?
• What do you get for that?
• Education
• YOU evangelist
• Training options meet user needs
• Moving Forward
• The team, board and/or council
• What happens now?

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Keep in Touch -

• Tell us how this went! What to change
• Peter Jones
• Managing Principal, Redesign Research
• peter_at_redesignresearch.com
• redesignresearch.com
• Nick Kizirnis
• Intranet Manager, LexisNexis
• Nick.kizirnis_at_lexisnexis.com
• lexisnexis.com