Conference papers

Intranet strategies

Addressing User Needs in Intranet Development

Andrew Arch
Director, W3 Consulting Pty Ltd

Natalie FitzGerald
Online Coordinator, Victorian Arts Centre

The Department of Human Services' Intranet was one of the first developed in the Victorian public sector having originally been developed as a trial in the Gippsland region in 1995. It had grown to over 12,000 pages and several large Lotus Notes databases by early 1999 with no serious planning or structured navigation implemented during those growth years. This paper describes the redevelopment process[1], focussing on the user consultation and testing undertaken, to change it from an Intranet that was supply driven by the business areas with the information structured on an organisational basis, to a subject-oriented, demand driven Intranet meeting staff needs. The redevelopment process involved four discrete consultation processes and concluded with an ongoing structured feedback process to allow for further development by evolution rather than revolution.

The Department of Human Services was formed in 1996. The Department's principal responsibilities are:

• Provision of high quality and efficient health care services through the public hospital system, community health centres and ambulance services
• Residential and rehabilitation care for older and disabled persons as well as support and assistance to enable them to continue to live at home as long as possible
• Provision of secure, affordable and appropriate housing to low income Victorians and improve crisis accommodation and support for homeless people
• Provision of a wide range of health, welfare and community services for Victorian families, including the provision of services to vulnerable families and individuals
• Promoting health and preventing illness, disability and distress through education, regulation, early intervention and other services
• Provision of government concessions to low income groups to improve the affordability of key essential services.

Most services are provided by agencies under funding and service agreements with the Department. The Department also provides some services directly. These include public rental housing, intellectual disability accommodation, child protection and juvenile justice services.

History of DHS intranet

The Department of Human Services was one of the early adopters of web-based technology for internal communications within the Victorian Government with a trial intranet developed in the Gippsland region of the previous Department of Health and Community Services in 1995. It had grown to over 12 000 pages and several large Lotus Notes databases by late 1999 with no serious planning or structured navigation implemented during those growth years.

The Department of Human Services' intranet is assessable to all staff - over 9000 staff working in Head Office and across the nine metropolitan and rural Regions. In addition, 5000 community residential unit workers are anticipated to have access to the Intranet by late-2000. The range of Department of Human Service's professions include administrative workers, technicians, managers, planners, doctors, architects, social workers, policy analysts, juvenile justice workers, lawyers, human resource professionals, public housing managers, and many others.

The need for intranet redevelopment

The need for redevelopment had become apparent long before we officially started work; an official project was finally sanctioned in early 2000.

Business drivers for change

Intranet information was previously arranged, in line with Departmental organisational structure, into more than twenty different web sites, each of which is independently owned and maintained by a division, region or work unit. While this approach to intranet structure is common in many organisations, it does have some serious shortcomings:

• The site contained a great deal of valuable and relevant information, however a lack of staff familiarity with the intricacies of organisational structure mean they had difficulty in locating the information they needed.
• Each different site design offers access to material through a different interface, leading to usability problems.
• There was a level of duplication of both content and effort, and a failure to take advantage of economies of scale.

Objectives for the project

• Develop, in consultation with departmental staff, a user-sensitive navigation structure for the Department's intranet.
• To design an attractive graphical interface building a bridge between user needs and the corporate desire to encourage intranet use.
• To map and populate, as best as can fit, a critical mass of existing intranet content within the new navigation and graphic interface.

The inherited site

Major features included:

• Organisation based navigation
• Quick links chosen by IT staff
• New sites published in mid column when requested

Development methodology

A consultative approach was thought to be the best way to gauge how well a proposed navigational scheme and layout would meet the objectives of the project. Support for consultation and user testing is abundant and is articulated in the following quotes:

'The majority of sites are developed and launched without any customer-centred activities and without any usability testing. In effect, usability testing takes place in the field, once the site is launched. The result is very often that sites are rejected at the time when acceptance is most critical - in the marketplace.'

'It may well be that only the technically sophisticated can use any organisation's new site, unless some simple procedures are followed - understand the users, adopt a customer-centred design approach and test the site with real people before launching.'
- Gerry Gaffney[2]

'Experience shows that usability does not happen automatically: Web designs always turn out bad unless the project management takes explicit care to apply usability engineering throughout the design process.'
- Jakob Nielson[3]

The consultative process can easily be divided into four phases:

• Staff Focus Groups - to determine what staff wanted from their intranet
• Senior Manager Interviews - to determine what information they felt staff needed access to
• Prototype Testing - to check that our architecture would meet the needs and wants of the Department
• Final Design Testing - to ensure that what we delivered was going to be acceptable

Staff focus groups

A lot has been written about the use and misuse of focus groups, however they can act as a very useful way to informally gather information about what your users require before you commence interface design[4].

Participant profile and selection criteria

Five focus groups of 5 - 7 staff each were conducted in head office, metropolitan regions and rural regions. Staff were nominated by their managers and had a wide range of professional and web experience. A facilitator was used to conduct the sessions with project staff observing and note-taking.

Objectives of exercise

• To ascertain the feeling among staff about the existing intranet navigation and content organisation and their attitude to a more subject or topic based structure.
• To discover what kind of information they would like to see on the intranet in future.

Outcomes

The focus groups were actually conducted well before the project was officially sanctioned, however the results provided us with additional support for an official project. There was strong support among participants for a subject-based navigation system. A very real need for education and awareness was also apparent from these sessions.

Senior managers

Participant profile

A number of senior managers were interviewed from a cross section of head office and regional Business Areas.

Objectives of exercise

• Determine what information requirements managers had.
• Determine what kinds of information they wanted their staff to have access to.

Outcomes

• Support for subject based navigation.
• Navigation structure which followed a 'big picture perspective' on the role of the Department down to employee specific information.

Prototype testing

We were advised by Acumen Multimedia[5] to conduct paper based testing as this would invite more criticism than an on-screen presentation. Nielson[6] also advises paper-based testing early in the design process.

Participant profile and selection criteria

Only a very small sample is required [7] in order to measure ease of use and other quantifiable aspects of navigation and layout.

The seven users tested represented a range of backgrounds as follows:

• Head office (2 users); metropolitan regional (3 users); rural regional (2 users)
• A range of program and corporate areas including juvenile justice, child protection, public health and human resources.
• They also ranged from novice to very experienced computer operators.
• The users had been with the department from between 6 months to 22 years.

Objectives of exercise

The aims of the test were specifically to assess the logic and intuitiveness of the navigation and the appeal of the layout.

In addition to the above, the test also aimed to test the comfort, inclusiveness and personality of three suggested Intranet names.

Format of the test

The format involved a range of methods for assessing the logic, intuitiveness and appeal of the navigation and layout including:

• Asking specific questions to elicit descriptions about how they wanted to feel about the new intranet and opinions about some potential names.
• Asking Users to perform a series of Navigational Tasks related to real work scenarios
• Observing Users perform tasks to test our prototype navigation and page layout and discussing their experience with them to elicit what was working and what wasn't.

Outcomes

Branding
KnowledgeNet as a name was more acceptable from a comfort, inclusivity and personality perspective than other names trailed with users. This name showed less divisiveness than others suggested.

Layout
Users were asked about their impressions of the draft page structure and layout before undertaking the navigation tasks and again afterwards.

Some User reactions included:

• 'I like the idea of the side descriptions - to help you understand what you will find'
• 'I like the drop downs and search button being obvious'
• 'After a little play, it's better than I expected'

Navigation
Users were asked to complete 6 tasks related to information that many staff would need frequently or infrequently in their work.

Some User reactions included:

• 'It is the best approach you could have taken'
• 'I am really pleased you are going to clean it up'

Prepare a design brief for look and feel

The design brief outlined technical, corporate and aesthetic requirements and was mindful of the following:

• Results of prototype test
• Staff told us that they wanted a site, which was predominantly:
  • friendly
  • easy on the eye
  • clear
  • interesting
  • welcoming
• W3C Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines[8] - a Level A compliance was sought
• Departmental web standards

The design process took several iterations with both external and internal designers before we were satisfied that we would meet users requirements for the new intranet.

Final Design Testing

Participant profile and selection criteria

Testing of our final design was conducted onscreen with live web pages utilising the same participants involved in the prototype (paper based) test along with some new Users.

Using the same participants as previously enabled a cross comparison of results between the Paper Based Test and the Onscreen Test. A further four new participants were sourced to ensure the test results were not biased from familiarity of KnowledgeNet objectives due to previous participation.

Objectives of exercise

To test the reaction to the new design and refined navigation and to test the site onscreen functionality.

Outcomes

The KnowledgeNet design was well received and fulfilled the design objectives as shaped by the feedback from the prototype test conducted previously.

The successful completion of navigational tasks onscreen strongly support the view that the subject based navigation scheme, complemented by the design, facilitates quicker and more intuitive access to information.

Some User reactions included:

• 'If I could find something about Health, which I know nothing about, then I will be able to find something about my own work a lot easier'.
• 'The old one takes forever to find things, this is easier, the six main headings are important'.
• 'The information is more obvious and up-front'.

Launch

The new intranet - KnowledgeNet - was launched at the end of June 2000, barely six months from formal project initiation. The project team has had very positive feedback from staff and management in the months after release.

At launch we had mapped over 800 pages and sub-sites from the old intranet to the six main navigation topics:

• About DHS and government
• Strategies, reports and projects
• Managing and planning
• Legislation, policy and procedures
• Services and resources
• Staff support

Maintenance and refinements

To help ensure that the new KnowledgeNet doesn't fall into disrepair, a KnowledgeNet proactive management is being undertaken:

• a KnowledgeNet manager is being appointed
• feedback is sought from all the core pages to elicit news, new material, ideas and problems
• a partnership is being developed with the Corporate Communications Unit to provide material for the Home Page to highlight activities around the State
• ongoing mapping of existing and new material to the KnowledgeNet navigation structure

In addition to actively managing the site, tutorials were prepared to assist staff with familiarisation and the Home Page is updated weekly with new events, news and happenings under the Spotlight section.

Conclusion

The days of the centrally dictated or anarchic intranet are over. The new regime in large organisations is for users and information managers to work in partnership to ensure that the intranet is a living repository of information and services that continually evolves to meet the needs of staff and management.

By undertaking a series of user consultations during the redevelopment of the DHS intranet we were able to ensure that KnowledgeNet met most of their requirements. The challenge for the management group now is to ensure that KnowledgeNet continues to evolve to meet their future needs.

References

[1] Both authors were engaged by the Information Services Branch of the Department of Human Services (http://www.dhs.vic.gov.au) during this project. A more complete version of this paper is available from the Conference web site (http://csu.edu.au/special/online2001/)

[2] Gaffney, G. (2000) 'The Myth of the Stupid User', p.13, I.T.1 The Age 15 Feb 2000

[3] Nielson, J. (1998) 'Web Usability: Why and How' http://www.zdnet.com/devhead/stories/articles/0,4413,2137433,00.html

[4] Nielson, J. (1997) 'The Use and Misuse of Focus Groups' http://www.useit.com/papers/focusgroups.html

[5] Acumen Multimedia - http:// http://www.acumen-multimedia.com.au/

[6] Neilson, J. (2000) 'Collecting feedback about your Website's search interface' http://webreference.com/new/searchinter.html

[7] Neilson, J. (2000) 'Why you only need to test with 5 Users' http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html

[8] W3C Web Accessibility Initiative - http://www.w3.org/WAI/