In addition to my keynote at Congres Intranet 2016 in Utrecht, I gave a break-out session on design techniques, as they apply to the digital workplace. This was an interactive session, with plenty of discussion.

Key topics:

• Of the four streams of the digital workplace, design and people focus on how to deliver solutions that are productive for the whole workforce.
• The starting point is to deeply understand the needs and issues of the workforce.
• Field-based needs analysis uses techniques such as interviews, contextual enquiry and workplace observation to dig beneath the surface frustrations with the current intranet.
• It’s important to conduct research with the whole workforce, recognising the value often comes from the edge, rather than supporting the needs of head office.
• My book Designing intranets then provides a well-tested methodology for structuring and designing intranets and digital workplaces.
• This includes techniques such as card sorting, tree testing and usability testing.
• Design thinking involves taking a fresh look at problems, and exploring the bigger picture.
• Intranets and digital workplaces are an ideal playground for design thinking.
• Let’s go beyond aiming to merely reduce frustration, and instead aim to deliver solutions that delight.

Real-world examples shown:

• The Telstra “me” page, a completely new way of designing an HR landing page that slashed the number of calls to the internal service desk.
• The Robin Partington digital workplace, a seamless solution that has helped a London-based architectural firm to be productive and grow.