(AARHUS, DENMARK) “There’s a lot of stories and expirments about wikis… and misconceptions’ says Dorthe Jespersen, an analyst with J. Boye, and co-author of author of the report, Wiki in the Enterprise.

 

Jespersen cites three major myths (or perceptions) of why organizations choose a wiki:

 

1-     Everyone contributes

2-     It’s easy

3-     Information at hand

 

Myth 1: Everyone contributes

 

The most common means or purposes for using a wiki include:

 

• Brainstorming
• Project work
• Meeting agendas
• Encyclopedia
• Manual
• Documentation
• Intranet
• Communicating externally

 

Common corporate refrains (comments):

 

·         “We didn’t know what to expect and how to communicate at all in the wiki.”

·         “No one wanted to write in the wiki. And those who did, got offended when others edited their text.”

 

Unfortunately, for those that have started using wikis well-know, if you build it, they will not come.

 

Myth 2: It’s easy

 

Jespersen points no further than Wikipedia’s editor (editor’s note: if you thought your CMS editor was user unfriendly…).

 

Myth 3: Information (will always be) at hand

 

The wiki is not necessarily going to give you what you need. Jespersen cites the search engine in MediaWiki that produces very unruly and confusing results. Like most technologies, the technology is as only as good as the people involved and their contributions to the technology (editor’s opinion).

 

Jespersen and the J. Boye report Wiki in the Enterprise offer four over-arching recommendations for deploying wikis on the intranet:

 

1. Organisational readiness. Organisational culture is a critical factor for success in wiki projects. Organisations must be comfortable with sharing information and debating openly.
2. Setting expectations. Before deploying a wiki organisations should assess the commitment actually required, both from management and employees.
3. Getting adoption. Adoption of the wiki will not happen by itself; rather it can be supported through a prepared launch followed by training.
4. Content creation. To tackle problems with structure running wild and quality of content, employ training, guidelines and dedicated wiki managers.

 

RELATED READING:

Enterprise intranet wikis

Investment banker uses wiki for employee collaboration

Selecting a wiki

Wiki the intranet

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(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 off  scent 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).
• You cannot design great sites without testing

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