Wake Up From Your Long Hibernation! A New Virtue for UX Experts and Information Architects: Kissing Alive Intranets!

1 A trunk full of magical methodologies

Our society essentially thrives on a constant exchange of knowledge and information, which are key assets of our time. Companies face the challenge of having to carefully maintain, structure and sometimes tame a constantly growing body of information and documents so that whatever information is needed can be retrieved quickly and easily. Networked knowledge needs appropriate platforms for sharing, as well as efficient processes. In many projects we have implemented, and in many conversation we have had with specialised intranet service providers, we have discovered time and again: The fundamental rule that content must be structured to suit the users has not really taken root in the minds of corporate intranet designers and web service providers or consultants. Typically, and unfortunately so, the many skills required – IT experts who can handle the technology, PR people who know how to write comprehensibly, QM specialists who know their ins and outs with processes, and managers who command all the skills of leadership – fail to join in harmony. Instead, tunnel vision-type scenarios are thrown together and implemented as agglomerations of individual specialist contributions without being embedded in a common context. It would be so easy to learn from well-established, simple methods such as Requirements Elicitation, IA methods, process modelling etc. and apply these strategies to an intranet project in an effective manner. Indeed, one could accomplish small miracles.

For example, guiding functional experts with many years of experience in their respective area of competence within their company and equipped with hard-earned tunnel vision, through a little workshop based on, say, the Personas method, can in fact, as we have been able to observe, cause them to undergo a transformation which may include anything from spontaneous revelations and insights to utter epiphanies with everything such an experience includes – excitement, a sudden, new view of the world and oneself, etcetera. Except that in this case no magic is involved. Only the UX or IA professional’s well-assorted toolbox of methodologies. Once the members of a project team have had this purging experience, they are capable of coming up with entirely new ways of giving life to technology, thereby transforming the company intranet from a boring document burial site into a lively system for intra-company cooperation that supports the entire operational ecosystem. This can then produce any number of positive effects, from shorter, more transparent routes within the employee portal itself to new, innovative processes which would not be able to exist without the intranet, and to an active improvement of the working environment where employees are appropriately included in key processes and empowered to contribute to important matters.

2 A guide for ‘princes’ – six approaches to kiss the sleeping beauty

The latter finding is not new; as a matter of fact, it is quite old. This is exactly what has prompted us to provide a few signposts with this feature issue to guide ‘princes’ on their journey so they will be well-equipped when the big moment comes. For this feature issue we have asked a number of subject matter experts to nurture our discussion with some concise information from their respective fields of specialisation. Their articles show us how experience from beyond the ends of our noses can be of immediate use if we are willing to take their advice and build upon it.

In her article “No more battles – user-centric approaches as key to successful intranets”, Anne-Christine Wagner highlights the importance of users and developers exchanging ideas and views, thereby creating a methodical connecting element for the intranet re-launch process. Dorina Gumm’s piece “No success without purpose” discusses factors that decide about the success of an intranet, combined with the challenge of developing appropriate indicators for measuring success. Heike Häfele’s article “Blessing or Curse: “Everybody knows how to Write” – How can good Editorial Work be accomplished on an Intranet?" describes how an environment conducive to good writing can be provided even for people who do not write frequently, and gives some specific recommendations. Oliver Chaudhuri’s “Social Collaboration: Overcoming inhibitions with Communication” demonstrates how scepticism against media can be dealt with in the context of an intranet. In his piece “Developing Intranet Strategy: An Interdisciplinary Building Block Model”, Thorsten Riemke-Gurzki presents a structured model that incorporates both, the functional / specialist aspects and the dimensions of corporate culture. Georg Kolb proposes Social Intranet Boards as an organising structute in his piece “Call for a Holistic Approach to the Use oft Social Intranets”.

As guest editors of this issue of the i-com usability professionals forum we sincerely hope that these concepts will strike a chord with our valued audience, that the guidance provided will lead your way to a positive outcome, and that this issue will foster further discussion as well as research and development work. To this end we have created the website www.intranet-projects.com. The authors of our concise articles and we ourselves would be delighted to see as many of those ‘sleeping beauties’ as possible being awoken in a professional and passionate manner. Every one of you can be a prince. Or even, a princess!