The collaborative intranet: Involving users in intranet designs

While doing some research recently I was pointed towards the Drupal 7 User Experience Project by one of its designers. Drupal is a free content management system that allows users to publish, manage and organize web content. I found the project to be a brave attempt to involve their users in the entirety of the design process basically from sketches on the back of envelopes up to the completed wireframes.

The project used free social apps such as Flickr, YouTube and Twitter to suport the project as well as discussion lists. Looking at what Drupal did gave me some pause for thought. If they can effectively involve their users, who are scattered all over the world, in improving their upgrades shouldn’t it be far easier for intranets to do the same? After all we know who are users are and where they are so there are no good reasons why this shouldn’t be done for every major change that is planned for our intranets.

What every intranet manager should know

I get email updates from an intranet group and recently they’ve added a jobs section. So I’ve been having a quick dip in to see what the jobs are like in the intranet world of today. This led me to do a little lunchtime research on intranet  jobs on some of the web jobs sites such as Trovit and Monster. What I found was quite depressing.

Knowledge (Part 2) – an enterprise-wide methodology

In Part 1 of this post I gave an overview to the process of levering knowledge and creating information (KLIC) in the workplace through carrying out a simple knowledge gap analysis or ‘information audit’.  This approach works well when levering knowledge from an individual or small group of people for a particular purpose. But what about an approach that can work across a whole organization as an ongoing knowledge initiative? I was prompted to think about this by a response from someone to the original post who admitted that a lot of this ‘knowledge’ stuff was confusing and was asking for a simple, practical and above all logical methodology or set of tools that could be used by virtually anyone in any organization. 

Therefore in this post I will attempt to outline a metholodolgy for carrying out an organization wide knowledge initiative based on an approach that I have found to work very well in the past - the Quality Circle. The approach is fairly non-prescriptive and should be scalable for organizations of different sizes and with varying resources.

Knowledge leverage and information creation in the enterprise

In my posts on the Enterprise-wide Information System (EIS) and articles on the Lean Intranet I talk about the role that knowledge  should play in the enterprise. Apart from James Robertson you don’t hear many intranet commentators mention ‘knowledge’, yet no organization can function without  the knowledge held in staff member’s heads and the shared knowledge that constitute the informal systems that are often at the heart of an organization’s success. If organizations don’t consider knowledge as part of their overall information strategy then they are missing a very big opportunity to improve their processes through the innovative ideas of their staff. They are also in danger of letting important knowledge walk out the door when employees leave.

It is my belief that intranet and internal communications workers should be contributing to the knowledge debate, especially when it comes to knowledge in the workplace, if only to ensure that a simple, practical approach is arrived at that can be of value in the enterprise. In this post I will try to outline such an approach in the hope that knowledge issues in the workplace might start to get attention I think they deserve.

The elevator interview – ultra quick intranet user research

Want to get some fast feedback on your intranet but both time and resources are very limited? Try the user research version of the elevator pitch – the elevator interview.

I stumbled across this technique when carrying out some user research in one of our sites and the intranet webmaster who was my tour guide for the day kept bumping into people she knew in the elevator (or lift in the UK). She asked them what they thought of the intranet and I was really surprised at how much information could be transferred in a very short time. I also got the feeling that, as time was short, users had little time to be polite and so I got a better picture of their true feelings.

The Lean Intranet: Intranet 2.0 and Intranet 3.0

In the third of three articles on the Lean Intranet, I discuss the implementation of Intranet 2.0 and look beyond to what Intranet 3.0 might look like. You can access the article on the FUMSI website.

If you have any comments I’d be grateful if you could post them here.

Intranet Content – dealing with the technical stuff

A while ago I was surprised to be invited to talk about the ‘Lean Intranet’ at the Intranet Summit in Frankfurt. I was even more surprised when I first looked at the programme and found out that in fact I was to be was the keynote speaker opening the summit. A real honour indeed!

 The summit lasted two days, finishing yesterday, and I enjoyed every minute. Before I launched my presentation I explained that one reason why I was always thrilled when I attend intranet conferences, of which there isn’t enough in my opinion, was that I knew I was with people who have felt the same pain as myself. When I said this it raised a lot of wry smiles. I think that conferences such as the Intranet Summit are vital in raising the morale of intranet workers who can often feel very isolated and under-appreciated in their own organizations.

I need to thank Stephan Schillerwein of the IntranetMatters blog who was kind enough to act as interpreter and especially Bjoern Negelmann and Thomas Koch of Kongress Media who looked after me as if I were a visiting king. Although my foreign language skills are virtually non-existent, and most of the presentations were in German, I found that I could understand quite a bit as they were also using ‘intranet speak’ and some of the screenshots were very informative. The networking afterwards was really rewarding and I must thank everyone I spoke to for switching to English when I was around. That was real hospitality.

 I could go on for longer about what a good time I had but, not wanting to be the boring guy who goes on for ages about how great his holidays were, I’ll get to the point of this post.

Intranets: defining IA and UX in the Enterprise-wide Information System (Part 3)

In Part One I discussed the current state of intranets and other information management components that comprise what I call the Enterprise-wide Information System (EIS). I also graphically represented a generic overview of how these components are currently managed. In Part Two I discussed the holistic management of the EIS, how the EIS approach might work in practice and what benefits an organization using the approach might gain. 

In this third and final part I will try to show you what I think a robust EIS might look like and how IA and UX approaches have the potential to improve every component of the system. In this approach the intranet assumes its proper place and becomes the indispensable hub of the Enterprise-wide Information System.

Intranets: defining IA and UX in the Enterprise-wide Information System (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this post I’ve tried to define a generic Enterprise-wide Information System (EIS) and reflect what is happening currently in many organization’s EIS. I’ve tried to show that the approach to considering information and knowledge transfers is at best fragmented and at worst not done at all. In this second post I’m going to describe the benefits of the EIS approach, how it might relate to IT and knowledge in the enterprise and also to look at the differences in working and managing the EIS as compared to current arrangements.

The Lean Intranet – Part Two: Intranet 1.0

The second part of a three part series of articles on the Lean Intranet, where I discuss how a robust Intranet 1.0 might be achieved, is now available on the FUMSI website.

If you have any comments I’d be grateful if you could post them here.