Why staff visit the intranet.

Organisations often envisage their intranets as integral to the way staff do their jobs. Staff are expected to visit the intranet daily. While this is an admirable goal, it doesn't necessarily match the reality of most intranets today. There are clear reasons for staff to use the intranet, but these are not always well understood. In practice, there are two key reasons for a staff member to come to the intranet: to find a specific piece of information, or to complete a specific task. Recognising this, intranet designers can ensure that intranet resources are targeted in ways that will have

In-house recruitment of users for research.

Getting participants for website research can be difficult, but a few simple steps can help make the process go much more smoothly. This article outlines steps modelled on the approach taken to recruiting users for a recent website redevelopment project for a tertiary education institution. The research activities included interviews, focus groups and usability testing. Gather available information As outlined in the previous article Start user research by talking with staff, an ideal place to start is with a series of staff interviews. These can provide an excellent initial picture of website users and some of the relevant issues. Staff

Start user research by talking with staff.

We all know we should involve users when redesigning a website, but where do you start? There are various methods of 'cold calling' end-users to involve them in research activities (eg interviews, focus groups and usability testing) but there is a valuable source of information you might want to consult first. By talking with staff in your own organisation, you can leverage the vast body of knowledge on customers (aka clients, students, associates etc) who probably make up a large proportion of your website audience. This is an excellent way to not only gain an initial picture of your audience,

11 usability principles for CMS products.

The functionality of the content management system (CMS) is obviously a key deciding factor when purchasing a new product. Equally important is the usability of the CMS. If staff, particularly authors, cannot easily make use of the CMS, then the system will never be a success, regardless of how powerful it may be. The overall usability of CMS products, and their suitability for their intended users, is therefore increasingly closely scrutinised during the evaluation and selection process. One key challenge remains, however, which is how best to define (and ultimately evaluate) the 'usability' of a content management system. While there

Book review: The User is Always Right.

The User is Always Right:A practical guide to creating and using personas for the webSteve Mulder and Ziv Yaar This is a book drawn from the experience of having created many personas for a wide range of different organisations. More than that, the authors have clearly been creating great personas that have had real impact on the websites they support. In a very practical way, the book works through all of the core aspects of personas. How they work, when to use them, the benefits of personas and what they look like in practice. This is all written in a

Separate design and the CMS.

There are two major elements to most web redevelopment projects: the redesign of the existing site, and the selection of a new (or replacement) content management system (CMS). These two elements reflect the underlying issues that typically drive web projects: the problems with the structure and content of the published site, and issues with the management and publishing of the site. The temptation can be to select a single provider to deliver both the redesign of the site and the underlying CMS. This would, however, be a mistake. Instead, organisations are almost always better served by separating out the design