(AARHUS, DENMARK) “The 3-click rule: it’s complete
crap!” says usability guru, Jared Spool, addressing the jboye08 conference in Denmark. “In fact, the evidence suggest
the opposite. If you have hundreds of thousands of pages, it’s impossible to
adhere to this rule… you can have 30 or 40 clicks if each click is
progressively more relevant.”
Good
Content Must Suck (like a vacuum sucks)
Why designing for scent is
more successful than designing for navigation
How to design for scent
How to find out if you’ve
succeeded
What
we’ve found: Scent
The best sites are rich with
content
Content sucks users towards
it
From every likely page where
the user might want that content
Every link gives offscent that users follow
As the scent gets stronger,
the user gets more confident that they are going in the right direction
The secret: Design for Scent
And your content will suck
(them in)!
“If your
users are using the search engine 70% of the time or more, it’s probably
broken.”
Search
Engines are Scentless
Avoid search engines
Users click on them when they
don’t see a link with good scent.
They type in the words they
wanted in the link
We call them trigger words
Users are trying to make
their own scent
Except they don’t know if
the designers have anything that matches
Designing
for scent:
Start with a content page
Figure out from whwere users
will likely want to get to that page
Put links in all the places
people would most likely want to find your content
Good design
= confidence
Every design element that
makes scent stronger contributes to the user’s confidence
Before they click
Link quality, navigation
graphics, info organization
OTHER
LEARNINGS:
Short links don’t emit scent
Short pages reduce scent
Keep links and pages long
The best links are 7 – 12
words
Myth: users don’t want to
scroll. In short, if the content has value, they’ll scroll.
Users were scroll through
many pages of text if the design invites them to do so (editor’s note: I
completely disagree with this… there are exceptions of course).
Horizontal rules across a
page…. Users won’t scroll through it
Site Maps have a lot of
scent… but are hidden by a name with no scent “Site Map”
Try turning site map into
your home page… you’ll get tons of fan mail.
Myth: blue underlined links
are probably the worst combination for a link (men start to lose their
sense of blue in their 40s… women in their 60s).
The world’s biggest intranet, the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI, with a total price tag of about $10-billion) serves more than 500,000 users – mostly marines and sailors in the field.
The end users are happy with the intranet – whether its dependability, support, or the ability to find information – user satisfaction is about 70%. Mission accomplished. Or is it…
NMCI is viewed as a failing project. A report by the Government Accountability Office (see GAO-07-51) is critical of NMCI for never implementing a plan developed in 2000 to measure and report project progress. GAO says that NMCI intranet has met a paltry three of 20 performance targets set for the intranet.
"By not implementing its performance plan, the Navy has invested, and risks continuing to invest heavily, in a program that is not subject to effective performance management and has yet to produce expected results," auditors said.
But the real damning evidence is from management. In two different satisfaction surveys with naval and marine commanders, the intranet was shot to pieces.
“Specifically, on a scale of 0-3 with 0 being not satisfied, and 1 being slightly satisfied with the contractor’s support in meeting the mission needs and strategic goals of these organizations, the average response from all organizations was 0.65 and 0.76 in September 2005 and March 2006, respectively. The latest survey results show minor differences in the degree of dissatisfaction with the four types of contractor services addressed (cutover services, technical solutions, service delivery, and warfighter support),” says the GAO report.
Users can find information and do most of the things that they want, but the intranet is failing to live up to its purpose. If an intranet fails to achieve business objectives and deliver on the priorities of management, then the intranet fails. It’s money wasted, and opportunity squandered.
Design and usability are important, but both are tertiary values compared to planning, performance and content (including governance, process and resources). Despite the incredible hype and emphasis on look-and-feel and usability testing (specifically these ridiculous awards reports and ceremonies), colors, pictures, blogs, and podcasts are all for nothing if the intranet does not have well executed plan that supports management objectives.
The start of a new year brings a lot of predictions – the promise of bigger, better, faster; prognostications for the future; and the annual Intranet Design Annual by Jakob Nielsen et al.
While we’re only 15 days into 2007, the report is promoted as “the 10 Best Intranets of 2007.” I’m not sure how that’s possible, but Nielsen is a master of promotion – which is very, very good. Nielsen is a true thought leader and, by all accounts, a genius. Usability and design is his tapestry and laboratory. And marketing is one of his gifts.
But beware the hype. Only a small fraction of an intranet’s value is design and usability – tertiary aspects to the larger value delivered by content, planning and resources. This value appears to be an afterthought to the authors of the report in years past, but at least they are forthright in promoting the report for what it is: a ‘design’ annual.
The report though is very well written and there are some great case studies and screenshots. At US$179, the report is great value. (Funny, I promote this report every year and despite all my readers I’ve never gotten a note for them… no response ever. Perhaps I’m too frank and not selling it hard enough… though I’d be surprised if this column delivers no less then a few dozens sales for them. Am I becoming an intranet snob?!? J).
This year’s winners (keep in mind that these aren’t really the best of the year, just the best of the submissions and screenshots that Nielsen Norman received) include:
American Electric Power (AEP), United States
Comcast, United States
DaimlerChrysler AG, Germany
The Dow Chemical Company, United States
Infosys Technologies Limited, India
JPMorgan Chase & Co., United States
Microsoft Corporation, United States
National Geographic Society, United States
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), United Kingdom
Volvo Group, Sweden
Here are some interesting tidbits from the report offered up in Nielsen’s latest column 10 Best Intranets of 2007:
Dow uses English for most global content, but translates the most important content into six other languages (Dutch, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish). It also translates selected content into Chinese, Greek, Japanese, and Thai.
The most-used products were: Windows Server, Google Search Appliance or Google Mini, SharePoint, SQL Server, Google Maps, Omniture, and Vignette
Across the first three Intranet Design Annuals (2001-2003), the winning intranets were 4.3 years old on average. Across the three most recent Annuals (2005-2007), intranets were 7.5 years old on average
Across the first three Design Annuals (2001-2003), the average intranet contained 200,000 pages; across the three most recent Annuals (2005-2007), the average intranet contained 6 million pages
This year’s intranet winners have the following owners: 35% were in Corporate Communications, 27% were in Information Technology or Information Systems (IT/IS), and 19% were in Human Resources (HR)
Comcast's marketing extranet has reduced versioning and distribution costs by 50-60% and reduced delivery time even more
Infosys has experienced a 65% drop in help desk calls since launching its redesign
Middle managers spend more than a quarter of their time searching for information necessary to their jobs, and when they do find it, it is often wrong, according to results of an Accenture study.
The proliferation of different information sources within organizations was revealed by the survey as the most important reason why managing information is proving difficult.
Among the key findings:
WASTED TIME:
Managers spend up to two hours a day searching for information
42% said they accidentally use the wrong information at least once a week
57% of respondents said that having to go to numerous sources to compile information is a difficult aspect of managing information for their jobs
NO VALUE:
More than 50% of the information managers obtain has no value to them
53% said that less than half of the information they receive is valuable
POOR MANAGEMENT:
Only half of all managers believe their companies do a good job in governing information distribution or have established adequate processes
59% said that as a consequence of poor information distribution, they miss information that might be valuable to their jobs almost every day
POOR FUNDING:
Only 11% of finance and accounting managers — less than for any other function — said they believe that their company has invested enough in the right technologies to help them get the information they need
The amount of wasted time and money is staggering.
Every year there are several studies touting the same thing: employees are wasting too much time searching for information. But no one in senior management (few) believes these studies. However, I and the staff at Prescient spend hundreds of hours a year inside medium and large size corporations and not-for-profits and find the same thing from the many hundreds of managers and employees we talk to: “we can’t find anything.”
Staff at all levels are wasting far too much time searching for information and the intranet is often a cruel hoax; often touted as the ‘one-stop’ source or gateway to ‘all your information needs’ the intranet almost always fails the unreasonable expectation. The problem is part planning, part information architecture, part process, part people, and part funding.
If corporations would spend more money on their intranets, instead of treating it as a cost center, these same corporations would have more productive employees. Ironically, CEOs and senior management are absolutely obsessed with employee productivity. Employee productivity, along with competitive advantage and shareholder return, is a major priority. But little is done aside from cost cutting.
The onus is on you, you the intranet manager or consultant. You have to build the business case that sells the benefit for rebuilding or redesigning the intranet in such a way that employees spend less time searching, and more time doing their jobs.
Jakob Nielsen is a smart guy. The godfather of web usability knows his stuff. You only need to read his column (www.useit.com) to know that he knows he’s smart. He tends to where it on his sleeve, but he’s earned it – and I enjoy reading it.
As far as usability goes, he’s the king. He’s trying to be a real intranet guru, but he really has not proved he can move beyond usability. He over-emphasizes usability – which is an important aspect, but not the most important.
In my years of working on intranets, I have calculated the value of usability at about 15% of an intranet’s value – with content and planning & resources (governance, process, publishing, funding, staffing, etc.) representing 30% each.
Usability however has its place and Dr. Nielsen has written a great piece on standard deviation and the number of users to test when doing usability testing (see Quantitative Studies: How Many Users to Test?). In short, Nielsen says that testing “20 users typically offers a reasonably tight confidence interval.”
Read the rest of my article Usability overkillat my Intranet Insider blog at Communitelligence.com.
ON A PERSONAL NOTE:I celebrated my 7th anniversary with my darling wife today! (That’s 13 years together now; 2 kids; 3 houses; and far too many air miles and not enough champagne!). We sipped Verve Cliqout next to the creek at sunset…funny how anniversaries slow down as you age up with celebration in close proximity to yet more and more kids!).
Speaking of kids… my five-year old Rachel just graduated from pre-school and will be starting kindergarten in September (French bilingual kindergarten). *Sniff* they grow-up so fast! Congratulations sweetheart!
Why is the Ukraine in the final eight at the World Cup? How is that they’ve had such an easy schedule and teams like Mexico and Czech Republic drew such a tough schedule? Man, great goal by Beckham…. Heart-breaking to see the Aussies go down like that with 4 seconds remaining… I’ve never seen a team such as Italy so undeserving of their position, year after year. I’m not predicting that Ghana will upset Brazil, but if anyone can do it they can do it (though I wouldn’t rule out Argentina or Spain…).
A hearty welcome to our new clients at Prescient Digital Media: Alberta Family Health Practice and the Air Canada Pilot’s Association – welcome aboard!
Intranet managers and consultants are the consummate knowledge workers. And as Francis Bacon has screamed to us from over the ages, knowledge is power!
In particular, an intranet manager needs to intimately know:
·the requirements of the business
·best practices
·the preferences and needs of employees
On the last point, understanding the needs of employees, there are a number of tools at the disposal of managers including log analysis, surveys, focus groups and usability testing.
Each tool has its place and its pros and cons. A recent attendee to a seminar of mine in Chicago asked me: “When is it best to do usability testing? User surveys? Focus groups?”
The answer is, of course, it depends. It depends on…
·the organization’s culture
·the present position of the intranet on the evolutionary curve
·the extent of “research fatigue” at the organization
·what data “sells” best
While not necessarily applicable to other commodities such as, say, consumer packaged goods, I prepared the following table as a quick cheat sheet for comparing the various tools applicable to researching intranet target audience requirements.
What to use first?
The enquiring mind was also having a debate with their boss about what should be done first – in-depth interviews or usability testing or focus groups or survey – when orchestrating their site design. I personally think it’s best to lead with in-depth interviews of the business stakeholders as the first step. It’s critical to understand what the business needs and expects from the site.
Generally speaking I like to do in-depth interviews first, followed by a target audience survey, followed by planning and information architecture and design, followed by focus groups, and then do usability testing once you’ve built a prototype. Focus groups can come at anytime… depending on the issues at play. Sometimes it’s good to do FGs up front if there are contentious issues or you want to explore new ideas or concepts. If not, leave them until after you’ve done your site plans and played with a couple of design concepts.
There are of course many subtleties to site research – and always exceptions to the rule. Many factors come in to play when choosing your research tools and the time to implement each. A lot depends on the culture of the organization and the intranet’s position on the evolutionary curve. For example, if money is the only thing that sells a project, it’s better to invest your time and energy in measuring return on investment.
A final note: never conduct the research yourself on your own product (website or intranet) as your results will be biased and the end result flawed. No, this isn’t a sales pitch (I’m busy enough as is!). I money is an issue there is always a way to conduct low-cost research… just make sure the person spearheading the research knows what they’re doing! (When we recently began work with a new intranet client who convinced us they need not do any employee research as they had recently completed a survey they proudly produced the survey… three questions, all open-ended.)
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