Developing navigation to ensure the pathways and language are optimised to steer staff to the information they seek is fundamental to a successful solution. A number of familiar and well established user-centred design (UCD) techniques can be called upon to develop this navigation.

Essential UCD techniques include:

• content inventory and evaluation
• card sorting
• information architecture development
• wireframe development
• usability testing

However if the architecture itself is not tested, significant time invested in wireframe development and site build may be wasted.

Having a simple and effective method for assessing the proposed site architecture, before wireframing, allows the designer to refine and retest the site map before developing site visuals which tend to be more difficult and expensive to rework.

[October article by Stephen Byrne, read the full article]

There are many articles and blog posts out there that measure the value of this UCD technique. This article focuses on a more specific aspect of the technique, which comes out of experience conducting a number of projects using card sorting — the use of offline and online card sorting methods.

What is card sorting?

Card sorting is an activity which asks participants to sort a selection of content — web pages, menu options etc — into categories that make sense to the individual or group.

Conducting this activity provides researchers with a user’s perspective into the groupings, and will typically inform information architecture (IA) designs.

It’s a simple technique, and perhaps the most widely used during intranet and website redesigns. Run with multiple groups of staff, it can provide valuable insights.

(August article by Alex Manchester, read the full article)

With four times the content of our last book, What every intranet team should know, this is the definitive textbook for intranet teams planning to design or redesign their sites.

In 275 pages, this book walks through a practical user-centred approach to the design process, richly illustrating each step with full-colour screenshots from organisations across the globe.

We’ve already had some great feedback:

“I cannot recommend this book too highly, and it should be bought by every intranet manager. Even if you are not contemplating a re-design you probably will after reading the book.” Martin White

“In his most recent book Designing intranets James Robertson promises nothing less than ‘creating sites that work’. An over-promise? Not at all!” Lukas Karrer

“Highly recommended: even experienced intranet managers will find something new in this book.” Sam Marshall

Read more and obtain your copy

We first trialled this method in May 2007 for the redesign of an online education and training website. We decided to run design workshops as one of the initial stages in the process in order to explore users’ decisions around education and training, but we wanted to understand what triggered their choices in a broader sense; so we asked users to complete a homework activity.

Deliver a best practice intranet that is intuitive and usable for staff

If the intranet isn’t easy to use, there’s little point in having one! To design (or redesign) an intranet, we need to put staff first, and follow a "user-centred design" approach. This workshop outlines this best practice methodology and provides many examples.

Late last year we launched a brand-new workshop on designing (or redesigning) intranets. This covers key techniques and methodologies in a very practical way, giving intranet teams the knowledge they need to deliver a great site. There is also time set aside within the workshop to do a design review of the screenshots that participants bring along (whether new or old sites).

Kicking off the first workshop of the year, we’ve organised a date for the Intranet Design + Redesign workshop in Sydney on March 25. As for previous workshops, this is an intensive session with just 8 places available.

From the last Sydney workshop:

“I just wanted to say thank you for a brilliant workshop yesterday. I will certainly be recommending your next one to anyone whose path I might cross that I think will benefit from it. I left the workshop invigorated and inspired and have not stopped telling people what a wonderful day I had. I learnt so much and I hope that I can continue the momentum I feel that I gained.”

[Full workshop details]

There are many user research methods one can use, and there are even more variations and names for them. But regardless of what name they’re given, methods should be chosen that are suitable for the situation at hand.

This was a great group, and their energy made the day fly by. (It’s so much easier to run a workshop when everyone’s laughing and having fun!). It seems they enjoyed the day too:

“Great lightbulb moments! James is an engaging presenter who knows his ‘stuff” — he has great stories, responds easily and fully to questions, imparts heaps of relevant information and keeps to time schedule too.”

“Thanks, lots of inspiration and focus.”

“Great! Really informative and now I can go back to work with tools to use straight away.”

“Changed my thinking alot about the role of the intranet and how we can improve it.”

“Really informative, engaging and useful.”

“Useful, interesting, engaging, well presented. Lots of useful tips and tricks.”

“Excellent. Well presented. Great use of visuals and slides.”

“Really interesting! It got me in the mindset to get working on my intranet and intranet strategy. One of the best trainers I have seen.”

“Excellent – knows his stuff, keeps it interesting, injects humour. Would recommend highly.”

This is the second time this year we’ve run a private workshop session in Melbourne, and the format works well. It’s extremely cost-effective for participants, and a great way for us to connect with a tightly-knit group of participants. Drop us a line if you’d like to organise something similar in your neighbourhood…

So let’s imagine that we’re in the process of designing or re-designing an intranet. We’ve done all our user research and now its that scary time when you have to somehow turn the research into design ideas. You have a set of user requirements and its ideation time. Once you’ve generated some ideas wouldn’t it be nice to get some user validation as to which ones might be best for the user?

We often discuss the need for us to be designing for an experience. And we talk about the importance of experience design – and design generally – playing a strategic role in business decisions. But we’re less forthcoming when it comes to discussing what is an experience strategy?

The use of personas as a method for communicating user requirements in collaborative design environments is well established. However, very little research has been conducted to quantify the benefits of using this technique. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of using personas. An experiment was conducted over a period of 5 weeks using students from NCAD. The results showed that, through using personas, designs with superior usability characteristics were produced. They also indicate that using personas provides a significant advantage during the research and conceptualisation stages of the design process (supporting previously unfounded claims). The study also investigated the effects of using different presentation methods to present personas and concluded that photographs worked better than illustrations, and that visual storyboards were more effective in presenting task scenarios than text only versions.