The Intranet Blog

A new "new Intranet" So what did we do?

2007-05-30T11:13:00.000+01:00

We added another level to the hierarchy.

We had:

The Company
Forms
Health and Safety
Using resources
Working at ##
Arranging work
Status reports

Now we have:

Business Activities

Resources
Quality
Projects
Customer
Products
Schedules
Financial
Pre-Sales
Timesheets

Staff Handbook

Intro to ##
Personal Admin
Personal Development

Health and Safety

Benefits

Social

The Staff Handbook section is pretty much finished, the Business Activities section is where the work is. This is probably going to change quite a bit over the next year. Especially as most of it provides a way to access info which is in the new MIS system, or to post info to it.

For example we are just about to deliver online project time recording and are planning online expense claim processing and there's a lot more work to come.

Good things are that the cultural change is really noticeable. We've gone from people not regarding an Intranet as a useful tool to people actively regarding it as an information sharing point (after a social event, someone was heard to say "Well that's going on the Intranet").

That covers one (large) user group, the next user group is senior management.

The new structure has a new design too, I'll put up a screen shot to show the new appearance.

The new 'operational stuff' section means a new Intranet

2007-01-31T00:09:00.000Z

Well, almost.

When we started the project we could see that there was an unknown quantity in the 'operational information'. This group - which we didn't have a useful label for at the time - was really a list of the things we knew we were going to have to do and things we knew would be useful but it wasn't the time (the mechanisms were unknown, the target users were guessed, the source of the info unestablished).

So we concentrated on the information we had to hand, which was administrative and internal communications - the content of the Staff Handbook (at the time a printed manual in a lever arch file, given to each member of staff - not ideal to update). Even sorting this lot of content took a long time. And the Company's internal newsletter.

Since this has been online and been refined and adjusted we've been able to look at the things we've been asked to publish and it has (mostly) all fallen into the group called 'operational stuff'. We managed (with working and re-working) to find some organisation in this group of content.

Then looking at the area we'd sort of reserved for it in the current structure, it just didn't fit. We would have been making the top level of the hierarchy too large.

We also had reports from people saying they were confused. We found a few reasons for this; they were looking for something which hadn't been published, the item's label was misleading or it was in the wrong place. In the majority of cases we found the item to be in the right place according to the philosophy of the structure but people just weren't getting it.

We'd run articles published on the home page explaining the information architechture, we'd told people where they could find things, we'd run training/presentation sessions, we made the presentation part of the Company Induction....

These things weren't working so it seemed to be time for a major change.

So that's what we've done....and I'm going to describe it in a new post cos other wise this one will be really, really long.

Settling in

2006-09-26T18:57:00.000+01:00

It's been a while :o) 4 months, or thereabouts since the last update.

It's been a period of developing and publishing content, finishing the '"Company Handbook" style' sections off, helping people to produce content, trying to decide the best way to deal with incoming requests to publish things, keeping up with the editorial process.

We've also been adding to the list of things we'd like to do and looking at the next things to come... one of which will be using the Intranet to process 'live' operational data such as online project time recording (which will actually be done by the new finance system which is being implemented, it has a web interface which we have minimal control over).

We've also been checking the search logs to see what people can't find, updating the appearance of old systems which are still in use and available only via the Intranet.

It's a good time to take stock of things now and see how the thing is holding up and it's not doing too badly, however we are finding that people aren't getting the most out of it.

Currently we have all of the 'administrative' style information (such as booking annual leave) categorised and published. The names of items are still not entirely comfortable (but since we've not reached a conclusion on those in over a year they'll have to stay as they are for the moment :( ).

Things are structured and there is a clear logic to the structure, which has held up through all of the publishing we've done, but it's not 'in your face' enough for staff who only ever look at it for a few minutes at a time.

So it's time for a slight adjustment and as we're also approaching the time to design the 'operational' section it's a good time to review the overall structure and see if we can make it easier to see the logic in a shorter period of time.

Now the Intranet exists and people are talking about it and getting used to it and we are getting quite a lot requests to publish information, most of which will go into the 'operational' section which feels quite neat in the timing.

It will be interesting (and might be a bit time consuming) as it involves collaboration across the company and finding the time to get the necessary people together is going to be a challenge.

We're starting off with a plan...

In defence

2006-05-18T12:50:00.000+01:00

We've been doing a lot of work on getting people's things published. As the site structure gets looked at in detail by the people who's content we're publishing they start to think about it.

As they do you can see them go through a sort of digestion process. They see other parts of the site and wonder if they should be publishing their things elsewhere rather than where they are currently being put.

So we're defending the structure a lot at the moment and it's hard work.

It's really easy to wonder if it's wrong when so many people are asking questions about it.

But then after managing to successfully defend the placement of the information you're working on it solidifies the structure even further.

We're having to be really careful because we know that the structure is new and radically different to the old Intranet and people still aren't used to it. This is causing a lot of the occurences of the 'should this not go in a different section?' question.

We also know that some things may be in the wrong place and some things may need a different title because the structure is still settling and developing.

This is a hard time..... :(

So what's the plan now?

2006-05-08T11:00:00.000+01:00

OK, so it's launched, it's been live for 3 months - just entering the 4th.

What next?

Keep it alive! Well, that's the idea at least.

We've had a bit of an unfocussed period

Everyone involved in the new news publishing process was getting used to it. It's really been a case of tweaking it as we go along for that. It has got a lot better. More refined, less re-writing and more actual editing in the editing phase and advance preparation of content.

Having an application that allows the news publication to be scheduled has made this much easier. We knew before having this that we needed to be preparing content well in advance but it was difficult to find the time to do it as some time had to be given to actually publishing the item - and remembering to do it on the relevant day.

Now that we have a system which allows you to publish an article and schedule when it appears we can write, review, edit and publish all prior to the publication date.

The feedback systems are also working. Although people don't make a lot of noise, generally only saying something when something goes wrong or is misreported, at least now they can and they do.

But it's taken a lot of guidance and support from us to get to here. And that has taken time.

We have also been swamped by the amount of content that we're dealing with.

The content owners have never had to prepare their content for publication in this way. On the old Intranet things either got published as they were - in office document format - or were prepared in FrontPage. Usually by someone who knew that this needed to be public but didn't know how or have the time to present it for on-screen publication.

This means all of the 'static' content needs to be prepared. This means collaborating with the content owners to make the necessary amendments.

Some people have taken to this quite quickly and easily, for others it's just not possible with their workloads.

Also, some people still haven't realised the potential of the Intranet.

I know it's up to us to promote it and educate people on its potential.

At the moment we're facing a long list of content to be prepared and published plus general tidying and maintenance, enhancements and future developments. With only one web designer and a colleage and manager working on it this is making very, very slow progress.

We have enough work to employ a content developer full time but for various reasons we can't.

So back into the pile we go...

Names!

2006-05-05T16:48:00.000+01:00

There's been some discussion in various areas recently about names to call the Intranet. That's brand names not rude names... ;o)

I thought I'd make a note here of why we haven't given ours a name because I don't think I have....

We did discuss this and decided against a brand name because:

We would have like to choose one by running a competition - there wasn't time!
The old Intranet had been named by running a competition and ended up with a name that the majority of people hated.
The old newsletter had been named by running a competition - the 'non-process' that surrounded this publication was something everyone hated.

So, to avoid being associated with the old things and because there wasn't time we decided not to run a competition at that time.

That was with regard to the old Intranet and news.

What about the new Intranet?

The new one is radically different to the old one and we knew it would take people a long time to get the old one out of their heads so establishing a brand name for something which had no identity yet was going to be very difficult, if not impossible.

So that's why it's currently just called 'the Intranet'.

The Information Architecture and the pain of getting used to things

2006-04-22T20:17:00.000+01:00

We're experiencing pain now.

We knew this was going to be difficult because we've grouped the information in a completely different way to the old Intranet and are trying to change the old way of viewing the company. It's taking some getting used to.

On the one hand people are not aware that the content has been updated, don't feel the need to look so are barely using the Intranet. This means a lot of people don't know where to find things.

We plan to hold presentations to show people where things are on the Intranet. We did want to leave it for a while to allow people to get used to it but now we really need to make sure people are aware of what's there. We're also demonstrating the Intranet in induction sessions - until the Induction Sessions themselves are incorporated into the Intranet.

On the other hand people are seeing the benefit and potential and there's a very long, continuously growing queue of things to be added.

We're actually swamped by the amount of content. We're finding that we can't hand the items over to the departments who own them to publish without collaborating on what is presented and how. The content has never been prepared for publication on the web so it's mainly in print format and needs serious attention for it to be useful to people - and sometimes even for it to be publishable at all.

We're seeing the need for someone to work on content development full time because there's just so much involved with it...

Help!!

Content development

2006-03-09T09:34:00.000Z

Time to start handing things over...

Lots of content developement required for the remaining sections and it's not possible for us to do it. We can help but we can't do it all. So the next step is finding content owners, asking them to develop content and helping them to structure it.

For the moment we'll publish it and then set up access for the content owners to maintain it using Macromedia Contribute.

People are starting to ask for items to be on the Intranet, which is very exciting but slightly worrying as the content isn't ready!

The danger of the phased release. But the content belongs to others and they are all busy....and we have other projects starting, etc, etc

Well, on we go...

Appearance change

2006-02-21T14:08:00.000Z

Scrolling panel for news has been replaced.

Things now look like this:

Critical point!

2006-02-21T11:21:00.000Z

OK we've launched it. We've finished phase 1. What about phase 2?

We're creeping into it and we're in danger of losing people's interest.

Sometimes work happens and you can't do anything about it.

But we're now at a critical point - get the stuff on there that people need before they get dissatisfied and discouraged from using it!

We want the Intranet to be the central point to access Company info so we need to get ALL the stuff we can on there as soon as we can (without just chucking it in anywhere of course).

There are some people who are really, really enthusiastic about getting things up on the Intranet, using it, seeing its potential. But these are people who will publish to it so will have a different experience of it. They're only one measure of success.

The main success measure needs to come from the people who are using it to get information (not publishing to it). And we're at a point where we can easily lose their support.

So, what to do?

The quick plan is:

Transfer content from the old site as soon as possible
Hold sessions presenting the Intranet to people - as the structure is new and entirely different from the old Intranet
Give people who want to publish a means to update their content themselves
Talk to people, ask them what their experience is of using it etc

There will be a more detailed and structured plan but we need to do something quickly right now!

What's it really look like?

2006-02-01T12:53:00.000Z

Well the other image is an image of the site before it was built so what does it really look like now it's built?

It looks like this:

Now Live!

2006-01-27T11:17:00.000Z

Yaaay!

It's all up and running (well, without the extra sections) but it was ready to go at 5.30pm last night!

What a relief.

A couple of fraught glitches during the day yesterday which were overcome....Phew!

Now we're just tidying up and sorting out and then it's on with the next phase!

Yaaaay!

One more day to go!

2006-01-25T20:17:00.000Z

Well it's that time!

One more day to go, things are coming together but it's getting a wee bit frantic.

We knew that all the separate parts were going to be bolted together at the end but didn't bargain for quite so much to be done in the last week (along with people unexpectedly being off etc).

So we're plowing through it.

We still have some application styling to do and some things will be sorted out later.

It's not absolutely essential to get everything perfect right now because we are doing a phased release and know that there are going to be regular updates to the site.

First things to do once we've launched this phase (on Friday, yikes!) is review the tidying up that needs to be done and then plan for allowing people to update the content themselves.

This will start with the news... the news publsihing system we've designed and built will allow the Marketing department to upload Company news for publication at a later date which will dramatically improve the editorial process... we hope!

Then we have some departmental sites to prepare for people to put up things for their own department alone.

Following that we have the next 3 major sections to deliver:

The Company
Using Resources
Arranging Work

The last 2 still need a lot of development! Using Resources contains a lot of content which needs to be developed. Arranging Work has a lot of information which is supplied by different departments and inter-departmental groups. We need to plan this section carefully so that the information is well structured and caters for all needs.

So there's a lot of work still to do but the 1st major bulk of it is (almost) done at least!

We're anticipating that the build and release will generate some enthusiasm and thought about what can go on the Intranet that isn't there so as soon as it's released we expect it to need to change!

Oh what a thought right now!

Oh well, one thing at a time!

Search facility installed and working!!

2006-01-13T16:49:00.000Z

Yaaay! It worked, it worked!!

We bought a search facility, met to decide what we needed through last year, the guys came and installed it today - few hours later it's installed and working (few minor adjustments to make to appearance and window opening etc) but other than that it's great!

Very exciting!

The Content! The Content!

2006-01-13T10:19:00.000Z

Is the most important bit!

Reviewing content now and there's still a lot of stuff to do on it.... making sure it reads properly from the screen (and properly full stop).

Throughout the content preparation we've added a lot of explanatory stuff for our benefit that sounds strange when you just visit the page.

For instance as a poor unsuspecting person who needs to read the procedure for booking leave...you click the relevant links (2 of them)and get to the annual leave page:

"Appropriate title: Arranging Leave

In this section you will find the instructions for booking leave. To book annual leave follow the instructions given below."

Well, thank goodness for that! No mistaking what you might find there then! So there's a bit of tidying up to do...

There are some serious changes as well, as all of the information (well almost all) came from the printed staff handbook it has already been reviewed and changed to fit online delivery so sometimes things don't make sense...

Also making sure that the format for setting out the content when it links to lower levels is the same on each page....so the format is:

Title

Procedure broken into paragraphs

or

paragraph introducing further information on separate pages followed by a list of links to further information

Not:

Title

Paragraph - link to further information
Paragraph - link to further information
Paragraph - link to further information etc..

Standardising formatting and appearance and checking links and well, generally making sure it all looks OK, makes sense and reads well.

Deadline January 27

2006-01-12T14:25:00.000Z

I know it's the 12th and I'm just making a note of this but it's been busy and Christmas.

Deadline set for the launch is 27 January. The launch will include the following sections

Integrated news on the home page
'Working at ##'
Health and Safety
PR System (which is running but has a different appearance)
Staff Directory (which is new to the company - currently there is only a PDF of phone numbers which is updated frequently from a report)
A 'Forms' section
A book library (this is just a list of all the books the company owns to consult before buying a copy etc)
A sitemap
A search facility (which will search the public website as well)

The remaining sections which will be added as content is prepared are:

The Company
Using Resources
Arranging Work

Anything which is important and located in those sections will be presented in an unstyled manner temporarily.

There's a lot to do !

News publishing update

2005-12-20T12:25:00.000Z

The new news publishing process (a daily news item published on the Intranet home page) has been underway for approximately 2 months now.

It has been very successful but there are a lot of things we can improve.

We have set up a 'Contributors Group' involving members of staff throughout the Company who are in a good position to hear about events in different departments. They can then all contribute stories to the features list. This group has met twice over the past 2 months and all members are enthusiastic about the process.

The current process is:

Author is asked for a story
Editor reviews the story and sends a copy to the secondary review group
Secondary review group make changes/comments and return to the editor stating whether further investigation is required or not
Editor amends as appropriate and sends to secondary review group a second time
Cycle continues until all groups are satisfied with the resulting article
Author reviews the final article
If it is thought necessary a copy of the article is sent to the secondary review group (for instance if the author wanted changes making)
If there are no further changes the article is published

This is a long and time consuming process. Especially because we didn't have a bank of prepared articles when we started off so have found ourselves frantically trying to get ahead.

Once we are ahead things are very much easier and this process works OK - but it does still need to be streamlined. We are still doing far too much re-writing of stories instead of editing them. We have a number of options on how to change this. For example asking the author for a more focused article will help (our subjects have been too broad); asking for people to try and stick to a word limit (we've not set a word limit at all yet).

So, in the New Year we will be making some changes.

The new editorial process will be:

The 'Contributors Group' will decide the editorial schedule based on the features list. At these meetings we will plan the focus and length of the article wherever possible.
Author is asked for an article on a focussed topic of a specified length and sends it to the editor for review.
The editor emails the editorial group to say the piece is ready for wider review.
It's reviewed and agreed or marked for further investigation.
If the further changes are not extensive there will be no secondary review cycle.
If the changes are extensive the article will be reviewed a second time.
Before the article is published the author reviews it.

Things should be easier with advance preparation and planning, a shorter review cycle, more focussed articles and an editorial shedule which is based on the length of each article. We'll review it again after the changes have been implemented and used for some time.

We know there are a lot of changes to make and the process is one which will constantly evolve, however we have to remember the successful part.

Before we started this the Company Newsletter was a very short summary of events in a PDF, published monthly. People were required to send in content but there often wasn't space to include all that they sent. Large cuts had to be made and there was no means for the author to review before publication.

We transformed this in 2 stages:

Delivery format - from PDF to HTML
The process - from mandatory submissions to requests to write by an editorial team

The first stage took the PDF and changed its appearance to be more like a web publication than a print one. Then a website was made and all the stories had a short extract on the home page with the full article in a further page. The design was deliberately bold and bright to draw attention to the fact that it was very, very different.

We did research into the way people read the stories on this website and found that they didn't have time to read such a lot of information in one go - it was still being published monthly. Also there were some usability problems. Due to time and other work pressures the site had only been tested minimally and people were a bit confused. For example, we had tried to keep some similarity to the PDF in the way that the short extracts were laid out on the page. This meant that people didn't expect there to be any further content and so didn't click on the items to read further.

A major change was made to the presentation of the site. We did away with the front page linking to the articles from a short summary and published a full story on the front page and linked to the other stories in categories. These categories were almost impossible to find because they were totally artificial. We didn't get too concerned about about this as we were not planning to keep this format. The bold colour was also changed and the design was very simple and basic. We used this new website for a few publications and then did a usability survey on it.

The main concern that people had was about having the time to read news stories whilst they were at work, in fact most people were not reading any of it. We were fairly certain that this was due to the volume of stories published in one batch at the end of a month. This was also very difficult to manage editorially whilst also producing news that was both informative and interesting.

We asked people whether they would prefer to read a story a day throughout the month but they found it very difficult to tell. Some people couldn't say at all and some people liked the sound of the idea but were concerned that they would have to 'go looking' for news.

Publishing daily news stories on the home page had been our intention for the new Intranet. With so many people unable to imagine this and so many people being concerned about the way to deliver it we were slightly concerned that our plan would need to be changed.

We introduced the daily news stories, publishing them on the home page of the current Intranet to see how well people liked it.

This was a major success. People are reading the stories either daily or at the end of the week (when a weekly review email is sent out by the editor) and they are talking to each other about what has been published.

This position is a huge step from where we started so the overall feeling is very positive and although we have to make some changes to the editorial process we will probably always have to let this process evolve.

About the design and build

2005-12-15T11:36:00.000Z

The design looks like this (identites protected!)

The pages are built using HTML 4.01 with a CSS layout. Minor tweaking required for IE5.2 mac and the PDAs but otherwise all OK.

It was really nice seeing the site come up and work a PDA without any changes to the stylesheet!

Progress - almost, sort of!

2005-12-15T10:12:00.000Z

The pages are built, templates are created. We've had people come to help us pasting in content and linking pages together, the 1st section of the site is really taking shape.

However.

OK - I mean 'but' - we have problems.

The problems are with Macromedia Contribute.

When creating pages based on a certain template the paths in relative links to the stylesheets and the scripts are not updated. So the path remains the same as it is in the template and the links don't work because the new page is saved in a different location to the template. Interesting - Macromedia Support are looking into it at the moment!

It also seems to crash unexpectedly for no apparent reason. (Network problems also caused some of the crashes).

We also witnessed some very strange behaviour - caused by us doing something wrong which triggered the most bizarre situation.

Linking some text to a page on the website by highlighting the text, right clicking and selecting 'insert link'. OK fine, insert link dialogue box appears with the default selection of 'drafts and recent pages'. The page to link to isn't in the list so you go to 'browse to page on website'. You know that you haven't linked to the page yet so you can't browse to it. So then you go to 'link to a file on my computer' browse through the webserver (which you have mapped as a drive) find the file and publish.

Oops! You are not supposed to do this. You're supposed to select 'choose' an option which shows up underneath 'browse to a page on your website' and get a dialogue box with the website folder structure to browse through. OK, we know we did the wrong thing.

However, if you do make this mistake you can't get out of it!

You are prompted with the question (in similar words) 'this file already exists, do you want to either overwrite your copy or save a copy with a similar name'. And it does this with a number of files - like the site stylesheets and images etc. which is very confusing and each time you have to select an option. So to be cautious you select - 'save a copy'. Then it goes on to publish the files and takes ages. You're now thinking 'why would 3 pages take so long to publish?'

Well, it's because it's publishing a copy of all the pages on the website inside the folder you're working in. And it changes the links from documents higher up to point to the copies created!

OK, a stupid situation caused by a mistake, fine. But now there's a whole load of mess to clean up and all for the want of a cancel button!

(The situation has been reported to Macromedia and they are going to make a note of it for the next release).

Getting on with it - pages built

2005-11-28T12:15:00.000Z

The basic pages for the 1st phase release are built.

I had to work from home to get it done though. It's been a struggle to stay focused on the Intranet build.

The daily news publishing is new and so has been taking up time plus another project's website I usually update needed to be updated and there wasn't anyone else to do it at that time (plus the other things that just sort of happen).

But anyway, they're built. They just need to be tested and the drop-down navigation needs to be done. Then I can save them as templates and more pages can be created - the build will finally start to take shape!

The build process we followed might not have been clear from the previous post so this is what happened:

Finalise hierarchy (we just decided when to stop as the naming process which is left could go on for quite some time*).
Decide which items are main navigation and which are secondary navigation for each level in the hierarchy.
Sketch layouts showing different placements for the main and sub-navigation items.
Test the layouts to see which ones people preferred.
Translate the chosen layout style into a Photoshop mock-up of the web page showing design.
Test the mock-ups by showing colour printouts to people and asking them to navigate a path through the site - I tested the chosen one on 8 people (3 of whom were quite close to the project).
The chosen design was approved.
The web pages were built.

*Note: The structure of this site is very different to any arrangement of this information that staff have seen before. It will take time to get used to. We know that this development process will not end once the Intranet is launched and expect some re-naming (and also re-shuffling within the sections) to take place after people have got used to the new structure.

But that's it for now, the next thing will be to test the built web pages to see if they do what people expect and that they work across browsers and at different resolutions (they have been built with this intention and have already been tested from 800x600 up to 1280x1024).

Right - stuff to do...

Summary - Started design and layout phase

2005-11-18T18:30:00.000Z

Well, it's been a while since the last entry because there's been so much to do...

The newsletter is now integrated into the Intranet home page and news items are being published online, once a day. This is using the old Intranet and a manual process managed with Macromedia Contribute. There is an editorial review process which involves an editorial group and the authors of the news items.

A news publishing system is being developed to help streamline the daily publishing. This will automate the archiving and linking between old stories and provide a print basket facility for people to select individual stories to print (a maximum of 5 at a time). This will be introduced in the new Intranet.

The parts of the staff handbook which form the content to be delivered are being reviewed and split into a procedure which will be web-based, linking to a policy (where relvant) which will be a document kept in a database which has controlled production and publishing workflow. This is a lot of work as some of the procedural content is in more than one document and it is important that the policies are not re-written when re-structuring the documents. This process is also showing when procedures need to be written for the first time.

The hierarchy arranging and section naming excercise has been cut off. A decision has been made for the names of the level one sections and any changes will be made after the phase 1 launch.

Layouts have been sketched and tested. Mock ups have been created and are being tested.

The phased launch items have been re-assessed and cut down due to lack of time (interruptions to work on other items, illness, daily news publishing taking longer than expected to implement).

The phase one items to deliver are:

the home page containing links to all sections (although not all content will be available)
the section providing all the things people need to manage their working time at the company such as expense and sickness forms, appraisal info etc
a search facility
integrated news on the Intranet home page
access to the current web application used for making purchases
access to a new staff directory (with contact details, organisation charts and photographs, this is made but not styled)
a book library (the 1st in a series of libraries)
all documents will be supplied from a Document Management System with controlled access and controlled creation.

We now have 4 weeks to build, test and implement these.

It would be more comfortable to move the delivery date into next year but we have involved people throughout the development and they are starting to expect something. We don't want to ruin their enthusiasm by not delivering something at least. But to make sure that it's something worthwhile we've had to reduce the deliverables considerably.

We are only delivering one section instead of 5, the web applications will not be styled to match the new Intranet until later, only one library will be available instead of 3. Any content which must be made available for legal reasons will be provided in a temporary format instead of an updated format (not re-structured, not web-based etc).

So, there's still a lot to do and we may yet have to re-assess our deliverables but until then we're just going to get on with it...

Some thoughts on the process so far

2005-10-04T16:02:00.000+01:00

A number of things have been interesting throughout this process.

Words have been very important.
Words have been very difficult to find.
The process has been non-verbal and subjective.
Testing with the same people throughout has been very valuable.

A lot of the progress we made has been felt rather than described. It has been distinctly non-verbal. Things just feel right.

And that’s what the focus group people show in testing too. You can see when something ‘feels right’ to a person, when they’ve understood the sense behind the information categories (even if the right words haven’t been found to describe the categories yet) because they find things consistently and start suggesting names for the sections.

Not only has it been difficult to find the right words, it has also been difficult to see when the name of a category or item is causing a problem. Sometimes it was very obvious that the words were wrong but normally the wrong words just ended up in a very confused person who couldn’t think where to look for an item.

There has been great value in testing with the same people in the focus groups. Now that the sense of the categories is becoming clear people get excited when they can find things and when the structure makes sense. They have seen us progress through different versions of the hierarchy and can help to clarify things when you’ve become clouded from being too close to the material.

Having a broad range of opinions helped to clarify the philosophy of the sections we created. As this is a very subjective exercise:

Each of the items in the content list will be viewed differently by a number of people.
People in different departments may see a different function for the same item.

We needed to find a structure that the majority could understand the logic of and having a wide range of angles to approach the information from has been essential in helping us to do this.

Status so far: approaching the end of Information Architecture

2005-10-04T12:01:00.000+01:00

Since this has been a long project I think it's going to help to summarise things that have happened so far.

After deciding to replace the current Intranet by building a new one from scratch we

Did research.
Wrote a project plan covering the 3 phases: Information Architecture, Design and Layout and build.
Started the Information Architecture phase by randomly choosing a staff member from each department to create a focus group representing a cross-section of the company.
Interviewed the focus group members.
Interviewed the senior managers.
We asked the focus group to do an open card sort on the content from the current Intranet and all the things we thought should be on there but weren’t.
Analysed the results to form a hierarchy.
Tested the hierarchy using the card based classification evaluation technique described on the Boxes and Arrows website.

Then we were interrupted for a number of reasons for about 3 months.

When we came back to look at the hierarchy it just didn’t look right at all.

During the course of the project all the contents of the Staff Handbook had been added to the Intranet (previously the Handbook was paper-based but certain policies had been available from the Intranet).

We hadn’t incorporated the entire staff handbook in our initial card sort as it was being reviewed. Now it was all there and there was a large overlap between the Handbook and the Intranet contents.

Also the hierarchy was looking distinctly departmental – something we had tried to avoid.

So we threw it away and started again.

We printed a list of the contents and between us (not involving the focus group) we sorted the content according to function and after a couple of rounds of hierarchy testing, re-naming and re-arranging we now have a structure which feels logical and stable.

This is the philosophy behind the main sections:

What the company provides for you, how the company does things.
Things you need to interact with the company and the company with its employees – things required to manage your working life.
Tools, equipment or resources needed to do your job.
Information which is directly related to work, business documents, project documents etc.

The testing results have been good: people find most things on their 1^st attempt and if not then very quickly on their 2^nd attempt. Even if someone didn’t find something at all they felt comfortable with its location once they were told where it was or had the philosophy of the section explained.

We know that the names of the sections are not correct yet and that some of the sub-levels of the sections need to be re-named too but it will be possible to work out the names as we continue the development into the Design and Layout stage as user-testing is planned throughout the project.

Why not do another card sort?

2005-09-07T10:49:00.000+01:00

As you can see from the last post we were dealing with some very confused content.

So why not do another card sort?

Well, we could do another card sort on the contents of the Staff Handbook which were not included in the 1st one. But we aren't going to. For these good reasons:

The company has a deeply ingrained habit of organising things departmentally.
The content of the handbook needs work to split the policies into policy and procedure.
We don't have time.

The departmental habit

I think it would be very confusing to present staff with the handbook content and ask them to sort it in a non-departmental way.

In the earlier card sort we deliberately left out content that was departmental and only included the things that ought to be centrally managed.

The result of the card sorts (with a cross section of staff representing each department) was a departmental organisation of the content.

Part of our aim in our re-organisation is re-education. Some people already get it and some will need more help and more time.

The content needs work

The staff handbook is currently a bit confusing. Some of the policies contain a mixture of procedure and policy. Some of them are purely policy or procedure. Overall they are not clearly formatted to show what you must do and why you must do it (or what must happen and why).

It would not be helpful to present confused material to people and ask them to sort it out into related groups. Before we can do this we need to review the handbook content, decide what we are splitting up and put these entries into our new hierarchy (as I described in some way in the last post, this is what we are doing now).

We don't have time

As I said earlier we had a break in this project to work on something else. We've involved people, we've got enthusiasm and participation. We have to deliver something this year whilst these things are still current. The Intranet re-development was started before and work was diverted to other things and then re-development didn't happen - we can't afford to let this happen again.

Return to content

2005-09-07T09:37:00.000+01:00

Since September last year we've been organising and re-organising content (amongst other things - I mean we haven't spent an entire year doing just this!). But anyway my point is that in the process we've changed the names of some things and other things have been moved, deleted and added.

The hierarchy for the navigation has become a little abstract so it seemed a good idea to get back to the content.

So now we have a note against each item in the list telling us what exists on the current Intranet, what exists in the staff handbook and what we need to create. Now we can see just how much work we need to do on the content. It's a lot.

Also, now it feels more comfortable to radically re-name the items in the navigation hierarchy.

It's important to do this as it could help us with the naming problem I was describing in the last few posts.

We were struggling with names for sections and everyone we asked struggled too. We found that some confusion was coming from the labelling of content items.

When I was looking at the lists one afternoon I remembered how difficult it was to ask people to find certain things because they were listed in our new hierarchy according to what they are now, instead of what they will be.

Basically we needed to re-name things. We did re-name a lot of items during the card-sorting at the start of this process but as mentioned earlier this had not included the staff handbook - as it wasn't on the Intranet at the time.

Our confusion was deep and I'll try and describe it but I'm not sure how much sense it will make.

The items that are on the current Intranet and in the Staff Handbook need work. Intranet content which was poorly named was identified in the card sorting. However, some policies
may need the procedure elements splitting out of them but these were not all listed as their clean, new, rennovated items, they were listed in their current format.

For instance the sick leave policy is a document at the moment which contains a procedure and our plan is to separate it into 2 items, perhaps also combining it with another policy which covers the self-certification of sickness (and also contains some procedure).

So in the new Intranet there will be a section where you can read what you should do if you are ill and how to go about certification (when do you need a form from the doctor? When should you call in? Who should you call? Basically: what you have to do if you are ill) and a link to the policy (how many days sick leave are you entitled to? What happens when you've used them all up? How is long term sick leave dealt with? Basically: what the rules are about absence due to illness).

Here's the confusion: We had 2 items listed called 'Sick leave policy' and 'Sickness self certification policy'. And no entry for what you actually have to do.

For us doing the organisation it was easy to feel the sense of the category as we knew that the items would be split but because this was an evolution it wasn't obvious that confusion was coming from some content items which we still needed to re-name.

So, now we've got to the bottom of it and we're re-naming all of the hierarchy content that needs to be re-named. Hopefully this will clarify the purpose of the categories to others and lead to meaningful names for them.

Phew!

Yay support!

2005-09-02T12:47:00.000+01:00

Found 2 good articles this week that helped me feel clearer about our intentions.

The 1st is Navigation Blindness, an article describing research ino people's behaviour when reading websites. The very interesting point is that people tend to ignore navigation aids.

This made sense to me as a lot of layouts have a top and left navigation with a different background colour to the central content area. The effect is to frame and draw attention to the content area, sometimes probably intentionally.

The solution to this navigation blindness is to give links the right trigger words to help guide people to find what they are looking for. This is very similar to what we're doing with the Intranet hierarchy tests at the moment.

The second thing I found was on Design by Fire in an article called 'Please make me think' about:

"Should you, as a designer, be bound by some ethical mantra to make your work deeper, more thoughtful and complex, not aimed for the lowest common denominator of your user base"

The article goes on to discuss laziness of thought in general and the effect of this on people as well as the premise in the context of making a website.

An interesting thought when you've been buried deep in the details of trying to make something as intuituve as possible so people don't have to think about it. It made me think about our aim of trying to get people out of the 'departmental' habit. The discussion in the comments was all highly relevant but one of the things that stood out for me was in comment no 24, the line that says:

"So did you make them think? No, you made them learn"

That's what we want, exactly. We don't want people to have to think about where to go to find a form or a procedure or a policy. We do want them to learn a new way of representing the company which is not departmental.

Change is good

2005-09-02T12:33:00.000+01:00

The current Intranet (which I've described before) is departmentally organised. The effect of this is that people have to know who is responsible for something before they can find information on it.

The added complication is that nothing is managed centrally so things occur in department areas which don't belong there at all.

With the new Intranet we want to change this because a departmentally structuredIntranet is not helpful to anyone and because the habit of viewing everything in the company departmentally is not helpful.

It is a major aim throughout the company at the moment, to stop people thinking departmentally.

Because it is such a deeply ingrained habit our new Intranet structure is going to meet resistance and cause some discomfort.

This means we have to be extra careful in our testing because, as I said in the previous post, some of the results are negative (meaning someone didn't find an item) because they were looking for that departmental organisation. For instance they looked for a category labeled 'HR' or 'IT support'.

We could get it completely wrong. We may be thinking that people failed to find an item because they are not used to a non-departmental structure, but it could actually be in the wrong place.

The words are evading me

2005-09-02T12:09:00.000+01:00

We still don't have titles for the major categories but things are feeling a bit better.

The items that were in the categories were still a bit mixed up and they are more logical now after testing. The testing was difficult with the category names we had but comments during the tests helped us to refine the names along with the category contents.

We seem to have gone through a cycle:

The names are wrong and the contents are mixed up
The some content gets moved which refines the name
There are still bits of content in the wrong places and the names need to be clarified to help sort the content.

So, the category naming is informing the content that should be in there and the content sorting is informing the category names.

It's a tangled situation and a painful process.

So now we plan to spend time thinking about our category names so we can try and make it clearer what should be in the category so we can sort the content a bit more effectively.

One of the major problems is that the bulk of info is staff handbook stuff - policies and procedures and they are being spread across categories because the Intranet will be the staff handbook when it's made.

Staff here are used to these all being under one heading so that's what they expect. When they see them in more than one location they get confused.

So part of our test results are due to content being in the wrong places and things having the wrong names. Another part is that we are trying to change the way people view this information.

What's in a name?

2005-08-24T12:27:00.000+01:00

Oh dear, the importance of a name!

Whatever we choose will only be useful to some people! Anyway, here's some of the words we've been juggling.

There are 4 sections:

How the company relates to its staff.

Contains: Employment policies (i.e. legal obligations), induction, benefits and recruitment procedures.

How the staff relate to the company and each other.

Contains: Social stuff, individual development stuff, money stuff (i.e. making expenses claims), personal details and 'travel' which we are not certain about

Resources for doing your job.

Contains: The company premises, equipment and how to use it, communications (phone, email web), reference material.

Our work.

Contains: Anything specifically job related like a project for a customer for example.

We went from abstract reminder tags to wordy description sentences and now we need succinct navigation headings.

No problem! ;o/

New hierarchy - not having fun!

2005-08-24T10:37:00.000+01:00

The new hierarchy that we're trying to test is suffering from a nomenclature problem.

The information groups feel right but finding titles for them is proving impossible. It's making it very difficult to test the hierarchy as people can't decide which group to look in 1st as the names don't mean anything to them. (They are currently placeholder labels for us...because we can't find names!).

I'm going to have to think of some way to find better names for these groups! There isn't time to spend ages doing this and there is definitely no time to make a new hierarchy (unless this one is fundamentally flawed...).

It better not be flawed!

Current status

2005-08-22T15:34:00.000+01:00

The posts so far have been describing things that have already happened. So I thought it would be a good idea to say where we are right now.

We are about to start testing the new hierarchy which incorporates the staff handbook and breaks the departmental structure.
We have re-assessed the tasks in the project plan.
We have changed our intentions for how to gather updates on company events.

We will introduce the ad-hoc generation of stories but still publish them in the current newsletter website until December.
We will form a group to gather stories - the 'Contribution Group'.
We will not introduce any software to automate this until the process is working on its own.

Now, I must go and write some scenarios for the new hierarchy...

Return and uncertainty #2

2005-08-22T15:06:00.000+01:00

After returning to the project following an almost 3 month break we needed to re-assess what we would do with the newsletter.

A major change has been caused by the editor leaving to go to a new job and the replacement editor withdrawing their acceptance of the job. Myself, my manager and the Marketing manager have produced the last 2 editions of the newsletter (including the changes mentioned already).

This has given us the opportunity to think about our original intentions.

Our original plan was to have a writer and editor in each department who would produce that department's stories and send them to the editor-in-chief who would publish them on the Intranet home page.

The intention is still to integrate the newsletter and the Intranet but the manner of implementation has changed.

We now plan to form a group of people who can look for things to report and either inform the 'editorial group' (currently me, my manager and the Marketing manager) that a story is available.

The wider group can also generate the story, either by interviewing the person/people who will be involved in the event or by asking the participant(s) to write a report on it. All the editing will be done centrally and not in the department. There will still be a two-way review.

We also plan to start implementing this by applying the process without any automation software.

We have asked certain people to join the 'story gathering group' and identified events to write about for the next newsletter edition. The Marketing manager will advise the department heads that we are going to approach people to write stories and then we will do just that.

There will be support for the people asked to write and if they really don't want to write at all we will interview them to get the story.

The publication of an 'edition' will be gradually phased out and the newsletter and Intranet will be integrated by December.

Return and uncertainty

2005-08-22T14:41:00.000+01:00

So here we were, nearly 3 months since we'd looked at the hierarchy, trying to remember how we got here and why we'd put things where we had....

I felt quite uncomfortable looking at the hierarchy we'd ended up with. And even more uncomfortable when I thought back 3 months and remembered it feeling slightly more comfortable than it did now....

I decided to represent the hierarchy as a diagram, as I suspected something. My suspicions were confirmed. We had initially decided that the new Intranet would not reflect departmental structure. We had deliberately not included the department-specific content in the card sorting exercise or the hierarchy section. Unfortunately our hierarchy showed a very strong deparmental structure... Oh dear. The more I looked at it the less comfortable I felt.

Then I looked at the contents of the staff handbook. I remembered thinking before we left to work on the 'something else' that we would need to integrate the two sets of content. This was just impossible in the hierarchy we had at that point.

What to do?

Even though we had put more than 4 months work into this project already and a lot of research had produced this hierarchy it didn't feel right.

We knew that arranging things according to the departmental structure was a deeply ingrained habit throughout the company. We also knew that this was not helpful and needed to be changed. All the advice, columns, websites etc that we'd read also said exactly that.

The more I thought about it the more the Intranet seemed to be the best vehicle for the Staff Handbook. As the handbook contains, literally, everything, it's very difficult to maintain as a printed handbook in a folder. Updates to policy and procedure have to be circulated on paper.

If the Intranet was to, essentially, be the handbook we would need to make some radical changes.

So, we did. As we completely destroyed the departmental organisation of the handbook and the hierarchy it was very uncomfortable. Now, adding further content to the hierarchy is surprisingly easy.

To get back on top of the project we:

Re-assessed our plan, checking tasks and timescales
Met the HR manager to talk about changing the presentation of the staff handbook

The HR manager feels good about the proposed hierarchy and handbook delivery so we are now ready to test our new hierarchy.

But we now have to face the prospect of delivering something which may, initially, be uncomfortable.

Delay

2005-08-22T14:37:00.000+01:00

La, la, la, tinny, cheesy hold music for 2 months....

As we reached hierarchy revision no 3 we had to stop to work on 'something else'.

As these things go the 'something else' was expected to be 2 weeks work and ended up being more like 2 months work (then it was holiday time...).

Results: Hierarchy Testing

2005-08-22T14:31:00.000+01:00

Following the technique described here: cardbased classification evaluation

We used a paper based hierarchy. All of the sections were numbered and printed out onto paper and a folder made up with all of the printed pages.

As the article describes we numbered the sections like this example:

1. Departments
1.1 Human Resources
1.1.1 Policies

And so on for all of the content. Then we could note down by number what path people followed through the hieararchy as they were following the scenarios we presented.

We amended the hierarchy as we were testing it. So if something didn't work, a document wasn't found for instance, we either, changed its name, changed the name of the section it was in or moved the document to another section.

This was a very flexible technique and showed exactly when something was buried or when a title of a section was confusing.

Results: Structure the information using focus group results and information needs analysis

2005-08-22T14:24:00.000+01:00

After putting together the categories chosen by the focus group and our own categories we had a hierarchy we could test.

This task was entered in the plan to mark the point at which we had done the card sorting; the information needs analysis and created the hierarchies.

This meant we were now ready for the hierarchy testing stage.

Results: Create tasks for hierarchy and interface testing

2005-08-22T14:23:00.000+01:00

We looked through the contents of each category and wrote an instruction to find some information in each of the categories, for example: “Read instructions on booking a meeting room using Microsoft Outlook”.

Results: Amend the content to reflect information needs

2005-08-22T14:22:00.000+01:00

After the interviews we reviewed the content and removed from the list the things that people would be able to get directly from the internet.

For example a section called ‘useful links’ was not kept. We also decided not to include a discussion forum for the 1st phase release.

We decided we needed to concentrate on the things which were absolutely necessary for people to do their jobs and to leave out the things which ‘would be nice to have’.

Results: Information Needs Analysis

2005-08-22T14:15:00.000+01:00

Before testing the hierarchy to see if people would be able to find anything we wanted to check what sort of things people might look for. We also wanted to check that the list of content still reflected people’s needs.

This took the form of an interview on what people did. I did ask what they would like on the Intranet as a final question but not as the main focus.

This followed the recommendation in the Step Two paper regarding stakeholder interviews (http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_interviews/index.html). The people in the focus groups were surveyed and the senior managers.

We found that the information we had in the list was still relevant but that a lot of it was duplicated by the information in the Staff Handbook.

The staff handbook had not been available on the Intranet, it was a series of polices printed and handed out to staff in a folder when they started. Because of this it hadn’t featured in the card sorting exercise. Some of the policies were listed on the Intranet but not the majority of the handbook.

Results: Focus Group Summary

2005-08-22T13:33:00.000+01:00

Once all the focus group members had done the card sorting exercise we used the following technique, again from Boxes and Arrows: Analyzing Card Sort Results with a Spreadsheet Template.

We did find clear categories in the names but clear disagreement on the items to put into the categories.

The names and the placement of the items were used to amend our original categories.

The categories and their names would form the basis of the Intranet navigation so we started calling the categories a hierarchy at this point.

Once we had analysed all the focus group results and finished amending our original categories (keeping a backup, naturally) we moved onto Information Needs Analysis.

Results: Category Assessment in Focus Groups

2005-08-22T13:31:00.000+01:00

We randomly chose a member from each department to be part of a ‘focus group’ involved in the re-development of the Intranet throughout the project.

The 1st task for the focus group was card sorting (http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/ext_cardsorting/index.html).

We printed all the categories we had onto card and cut them into individual items (there were too many to write them out, and my writing is illegible to all but me). We gave each card a number and then mixed the cards up.

We gave each person a set of cards and asked them to group things that they felt were related.

The participants were given 2 hours to do this and 12 people took part.

Results: Category Assessment

2005-08-22T13:29:00.000+01:00

Following on from the Information analysis stage we re-organised the content listed into more sensible categories, in consultation with the content owners.

This re-organisation took a long time to do.

We also included items that were not on the existing Intranet but that would be useful to have.

We had decided that the new Intranet would be built and maintained in a centralised manner. Look and feel would be consistent throughout and would be part of a central build.

Departments wishing to publish content would have access to do that but not to change the design or structure.

With this in mind we set out to create a new set of categories for the Intranet that would have all the information that was relevant to more than one area in a central category.

Once we had reached a satisfactory grouping we used this in the next task.

Results: Intranet Survey

2005-08-22T13:22:00.000+01:00

Looking at the out of date content and the poor usability of the site it would have been logical to guess that no-one used the Intranet at all. However we couldn’t guess, we did an online survey to see how often the Intranet was used.

We had over 50% response rate and of this 50% approximately half said they used the Intranet daily and half weekly.

We couldn’t remove the current Intranet as those people who were using it daily had come to rely on it.

People’s comments requested referred to:

The difficulty finding information (you could usually only get something if you already knew where it was).
Inconsistent style.
Out of date information.

We asked people what they would like on the Intranet and the most popular request was for a staff directory containing photographs. The next popular was a search facility.

Results: Information Analysis

2005-08-22T13:20:00.000+01:00

I started by making a content inventory of all the items on the Intranet.

Then we contacted the content owners and asked what could be removed and what needed to be kept. We also suggested a potential move of the remaining material to a more central location, if appropriate.

This was generally well received by the content owners. They were happy to see that something was happening on developing a new Intranet.

The content list created during this task was then used in the category assessment task.

Results: Usability Review

2005-08-22T13:15:00.000+01:00

OK, now I've desribed the steps I planned to take, what actually happened?

The first thing I did was the Usability Review

I followed all the links in the site and documented the outcome. I found, amongst other things:

Multiple broken links including the link to the Intranet home page being broken on all pages.
No unified style guide – each department’s area was different in layout, fonts and colours (they had been designed and built by different people independently).
No policy governed opening new browser windows so this happened randomly and without warning.
As there was no style guide a number of dept areas had used a default serif font of Times New Roman.
Blinking text and scrolling banners were used on some pages.
Colour choices made text difficult to read (e.g. bright pink text on a gradient pale-blue to white background).
A certain section's page layout was so bad if you didn’t re-size the browser window part of the navigation was obscured by the logo.
On most pages the company logo linked to the company website on the internet except where it was broken and one in dept area where linked it to the guidelines on reproducing the company logo (a PDF). These guidelines were not available from anywhere else.
Content was massively out of date.
Content was duplicated.
Content was found in unexpected areas.
It was sometimes impossible to increase text size.
There were no hover states on some links.
We could not see any way to find something if you didn’t already know where it was.
There was no logic to the arrangement of the content.

The above situation developed because there was no central control over the look and feel or the development of the Intranet.

There was no control over the publishing and each department had complete freedom to design, build and publish.

Then a publishing freeze was called to start re-developing the Intranet and then other business took priority, this caused the out of date content.

The newsletter - part 2

2005-08-17T12:36:00.000+01:00

A new publishing process

The current editor and I changed the appearance of the PDF to make it easier to read from screen and then made a website to replace it.

The intention now is to introduce a publishing process which involves:

The person directly involved in doing something writing about it (not the dept manager or the editor).
The article being reviewed by another member of the originating department who checks for accuracy, commercial sensitivity and adherence to the company style guide.
The dept reviewer sending the piece to the editor for a final check who then publishes it if there are no changes to make.
If the editor makes a change it is reviewed by the dept reviewer or the author in a cycle which continues until both parties are happy with the article.

There will also be the following changes:

Replacement of a ‘magazine’ collecting the updates at the end of a period with articles published individually, when relevant.
The news reading and content generation will be actively supported by the Executive Directors.
People will be actively encouraged to write the news.
People will be actively encouraged to read the newsletter during company time.
The news items will appear on the home page of the Intranet (not in a separate website or PDF) and will be optimised for reading from screen.
The editor will interview people to generate content.
The editor will request articles on specific events from relevant people.

In the meantime we will continue to develop the current newsletter website, making changes until we are close to an interface we can integrate with the Intranet.

The initial newsletter website design was used for 4 editions of the newsletter (4 months) and I have just done a re-design of the newsletter website following a user survey.

The initial design reflected the layout of the PDF too closely which caused some confusion. The new version has been simplified considerably by only presenting one article on the home page and categorising the content.

The problems with this website will not all be solved by this re-design. Some of the practices will help people to get used to reading online (such as using the title attribute whenever possible) however the categorisation will never work because the content just does not suit it.

We have forced the content of this edition into certain groups to avoid using the departmental categories because these are not useful for people. Arranging things departmentally is a deeply ingrained habit that the company is trying to move away from.

There are too many crossovers between the chosen categories. The categories are not well defined and may or may not contain items in the next edition. The content will be different next edition. The items are mostly independent, only the staff, personal and social items can be easily grouped.

This is bad now, for the usability of the current website, but it is good for the future. The plan is to publish these items uncategorised and as they happen, separately to each other. The fact that they can’t be grouped into categories helps to justify this intention.

The progress on the newsletter so far has taken approximately 6 months and has been done in parallel with the Intranet project stages I'll describe in the next entries.

The next stage in the newsletter re-development is to choose a department to introduce the new publishing process to. This will be done without any automation (e.g. Contribute or blogging software) and then once the process has been refined and software reviewed we will automate the process and then involve further departments one at a time.

Progress updates on this will follow after the rest of the project has been described.

The newsletter - part 1

2005-08-17T12:30:00.000+01:00

After discussion with Marketing we came to the agreement that the newsletter and the Intranet should be combined.

In order to do this we would need to:

Establish a new publishing process.
Change the current culture surrounding the newsletter including the way content was generated and edited plus encouraging people to read it at work.

History

The newsletter was a print document delivered over the Intranet in PDF format.
There was a plan to convert this PDF into a website but other business took priority.
As an interim solution the design of the PDF was changed from being black and white and laid out according to department entries to a ‘magazine style’ layout. Bright colours were used to try and make the publication livelier and the content was placed randomly throughout the PDF instead of according to department. Unfortunately this was done according to print layout rules and was not optimised for screen reading, this forced people to continue to print the newsletter.

The editing and submissions process changed too. Instead of sending edited items back to authors for a final check things were amended and then published directly.

Unfortunately this became more than temporary (it has been in use for over a year) and caused the following to develop:

The enthusiasm amongst the company for making an online newsletter died down.
The processes for publishing to the newsletter were not public, transparent or documented and they contained no review stages.
The transition to online delivery was never properly made.
People stopped sending in content to be published although submissions by department heads were mandatory. The mandatory nature was enforced.

However the items sent for publication in the newsletter were sometimes so brief they didn’t say anything. The problem was people were sending in content because they had to not because they had something important to tell the company. The content that was received was not sufficient to publish straight away so the editor had to write articles based on the items received.

Part 2 of the newsletter will be in the next post.

The project plan

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There are 3 overall stages:

Information Architecture
Design and Layout
Build

Information Architecture is further broken down into the following steps:

Requirements Gathering and Site Specification

Usability Review

Information Analysis

Intranet Survey

Category Assessment

Category Assessment in Focus Groups

Focus Group Summary

Information Needs Analysis

Amend the content to reflect information needs

Create tasks for hierarchy and interface testing

Site Structure and Hierarchy

Structure the information using focus group results and information needs analysis

Hierarchy Testing

Design and Layout is further broken down into the following steps:

Make a test layout on paper of the navigation and other items to go on the Intranet homepage
Ask the focus groups to test this layout
Make another test layout using the feedback from the focus groups
Make a sample web page and test the layout
Continue making test layouts until there are no further changes to make
Apply designs to the layouts and test as above
Further test the designs with more people in the company using an online survey.

Build is further broken down into the following steps:

Decide on a sensible set of pages to build for an initial release of the site
Generate any necessary content and update the current content
Convert the paper and other test layouts into web pages
Add the content to the web pages to be built for the initial release of the new Intranet
Test the pages as content is added
Continue building pages for addition to the site as above.

Focus Groups

The focus groups referred to were created by randomly selecting a member from each department of the company to be involved in the development throughout the project. I wrote an email to the department manager explaining what I wanted to do and who had been chosen and they all agreed I could then contact the chosen person directly to arrange their time.

Sometimes there were alternative people suggested as the randomly chosen person was going to be too busy. The participants themselves were also asked if they wanted to take part or if they wanted us to find another person in the department.

Informing the company

The plan described here was made into a presentation (in Macromedia Flash) and is published on the home page of the current Intranet. There is also a graphic tracking the overall progress of the project.

Document Management and Newsletter

Although these are part of the Intranet Re-development Programme they are not described in this plan as they are separate projects of their own.

The newsletter has the greatest relationship with the Intranet so I’ll describe that in the next post. Further posts will cover each of the stages in more detail.

Where did it all begin?

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When I started working for ‘This Company’ (whose name I can’t disclose or I will self destruct in 10 seconds) the Intranet was organised departmentally. Each department had developed its own section; there was no unified look and feel and no common conventions had been followed, e.g. a style guide covering fonts, new window opening policy, graphics, permissible content etc. This had led to a situation where each department had placed content in its area independently.

The problems were (in summary):

Duplication of content
Content in unexpected locations
Difficulty finding content
Lack of use (People didn’t look for content because no-one expected to find anything useful – although there were some potentially useful things stored there)
Difficult to use – Colour and font choices that made it hard to read, new windows opening unnecessarily (within one department area a new window opens for almost every link)

These things were obvious without conducting any usability surveys.

The people who committed these crimes can’t be prosecuted – they were unaware!

What I mean is they hadn’t had any guidance on how to create their sites and were trying to help by making the information available to a wider audience, so my list is not made to point at them and laugh; it’s just to set the scene.

OK, the scene is set, we know what the current situation is, what next?

This is what I did:

Read. Lots. About developing for Intranets.
Made a project plan

The Intranet Roadmap is where we started. We had a meeting to go through all the stages in the Roadmap and filled out all the sections. At the end we had the following results:

We planned to build a new Intranet from scratch and not re-develop the old one.
We needed to analyze the current intranet to asses which content was going to be web based and which document based, this was to be done by me, a colleague and our manager. We would invite people to participate - content owners who had previously published content or who currently updated content.
We would decide on the structure/hierarchy for the new intranet (departmentally structured or otherwise?).
We needed to write a plan for the process of introducing the next intranet including; what needs to be done, what the priorities are, who to include and when. This was also expected to help define an appropriate time to launch the new site.
The launch version of the site would not be the complete site, but must be the basic skeleton of the ‘final’ site so that it can be built upon and not thrown away.
We wanted to learn and practice using Macromedia Contribute to see where and how we could use it.
I was to think about design guidelines and planned to discuss this with the Marketing department to use any existing house styles where relevant.
A business requirement for a Document Management System was established as a separate project to the Intranet. It still relates to it as there will be links to the documents in there from the intranet and some of the current intranet content will need to be in the Document Management System.
An online version of the company Newsletter was required which we would need to develop in conjunction with the Marketing department.

So in the end we had an Intranet Re-development Programme with 2 sub-projects; the Document Management System and the Company Newsletter.

Next I wrote a project plan which I will describe in the next post.

What’s this all about?

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When I'm developing a website I always like to take a look at a range of sites within the market sector, but as I’m building a company Intranet I can’t very easily do that.

The (very useful) information I have found online covers how to conduct usability studies, best practices with CSS, HTML and developing according to web standards (http://www.webstandards.org /)

But, I could not find much information on:

people’s experiences of using the usability techniques I found described,
people’s experiences of developing with web standards for internal web applications and Intranets or
approaches to visual design for Intranets.

Following some conversations I had at the recent @media conference on web standards and accessibility (http://www.atmedia2005.co.uk) I thought it might be useful to add to the available material by publishing a blog of the Intranet Re-development Project I am working on.

Here’s a disclaimer: This is just a chart of the project activity.

I just want to share these experiences and results (where possible). I think it would be great to hear of the different ways other people may have approached similar things.

Here’s another disclaimer: I obviously can’t publish internal company information. I'll be describing the process from the point of view of project plan definition, techniques chosen, results expected and obtained from usability studies, things we learned along the way, that sort of stuff...

The next post will start off with a project description...