Intranet Management Software Blog

Frustrated user

Does it sound familiar? It’s a human reaction when we encounter a system which is difficult to use or doesn’t work as we expected it to.

When usability touches a personal level the effect of a simple usability error feels like it has been multiplied tenfold. This post reminded me of one of the best usability books by Steve Krug “Don’t Make me think”. Usability is simple, it’s just common sense yet it’s also an incredible form of art.
I’ve spent more than 8 years working as an Information Architect, designing complex web-based software and many times I feel that I am still learning. Things that are obvious and logical from a technical point-of-view may be totally wrong from the novice users perspective.

We’ve just completely revamped our holiday planner application and one of our clients is currently running a beta test for the application. From a technical point-of-view the new holiday planner is much better than the old one. Some of the new features include an interactive holiday calendar, overview screen, automatic calculation, and a team/manager dashboard.

Apparently things are not going so well with our users. They don’t appreciate all of these wonderful features, what they care about is one thing and one thing only “Their holiday allowance”.

Here is a snapshot of the screen showing a user booking a half-day holiday.

Holiday request

Taking a closer look you might notice several things:

1. The icon representative a half day holiday is correct, a half red square indicating that the user only booked a half day holiday.
2. Duration is shown as 0.5 day, which is correct but in brackets (1 calendar day) which is causing major confusion.
3. Users are very sensitive to their holiday allowance, when they book a half day they only want to see a half day, without any reference to calendar days.

Here are some reactions from the users:

• “Why is duration showing 1 day, I booked a half day only”
• “What is calendar day? How’s that different to a normal day?”
• “Does it mean if I took a half day off, the system took 1 day from my allocation?”

Again, from a technical point-of-view, the reason we display calendar day is simply to give useful information about the overall duration of a users holiday.  For example you may have booked 2 half-day holidays, which means 1 day has been taken out from your holiday allocation. But you may want to know that you have booked 2 calendar days with each half-day holiday.

I can see this piece of information is actually quite useful but having to display both day types has caused major confusion to the user, after all, when a user books their holiday the only thing they care about is their holiday allowance.

Home fun, humor, intranet development, user interface

What an interesting point mentioned in the video above, in the business realms we are trained to execute the best possible plan and punish failure, instead of continuously prototyping and learn from mistake as you go along just like what the kindergarten kids do.

It seems we’ve not learnt our lessons that the best possible plans will always have flaws and there is nothing can substitute the reality. In the software world we tend to create the ultimate plan and concept, which looks good on paper so we can secure funding. This is usually leads to either the result is not fit for purpose or we tend to over complex the situation and not get the basic rights.

In Claromentis, we’re now embracing prototyping worlds, create endless revisions until it’s right, even when the software is developed and deployed the project is not finished, deploy early and quickly learn from it. The  whole point is to create a continues improvement, what works in one environment may not works with others, every situation every problem is unique in many ways and we want to create something that fit to that purpose.

Home, Services fun, information architecture, intranet 2.0, intranet development, intranet software discussions, user interface

Recently there are many discussions among our existing clients and partners about possibility extending granularity of the permission in Document’s folder within Claromentis.

This is our current standard permission where having “Edit” rights to a folder means you simply have rights to add and edit both documents and sub folders.

Some of our clients think that current “edit” permission is not flexible enough, they would like to split simple “edit” into sub-folders and documents.

After digging into our enhancement request database, I discovered that this is just one of the many request around the same subject.
Some says that having permission to view content of the folder should be different from permission to view folder’s properties and audit of the folder (usage statistics).

Others want to have flexibility where not all users with edit permission can run workflow on the same folder.

For a second I thought, “Hey this is getting ridiculous!”  Let’s mock-it up and see what happen if we accommodate all of them:

Can you see something is definitely not right, usability has been compromised to accommodate more granular permission, causing complexity to perform simple task which in most cases we just want simple “Edit”.

This issue raise a philosophical question, “Are we all so stupid so everything has to be over protective?” What’s wrong with a low-tech solution called “discipline”.

My niece is going to celebrate her 1 years old birthday next week. She starts cruising, walking short distances from object to object, she falls often and has many bumps and bruises, but she learns very quickly.

Aren’t we always told that allowing one or two bumps is a good thing?

Solutions Design, document management, fun, humor, intranet software discussions, user interface

Document Management System with Submission Wizard.

Maintaining consistency and integrity of the technical documents is a business critical issue for Crondall Energy Consultant. Crondall Energy is a Floating Production System consultant which helps their clients in many areas ranging from Strategic planning, Market analysts up to Project Delivery and Training.

Claromentis Document Manager

Utilising built-in Claromentis Document Management system, we recently develop bespoke document submission wizard based on specification and guideline from Crondall Energy.

The document submission wizard is not only helping users submitting document into the right storage path (folder), it also automatically creates documents with the right name convention and automatic numbering system.

The same wizard can also be used to make strict control on making revision to the existing documents.

Home, Products Design, document management, intranet consultancy, user interface

Deploying an intranet within organisation can be a complex project. The fact is that a single system has to be created to cater for requirements from individuals with different needs and objectives.

During the Intranet project implementation we often have brainstorming session with representatives from each department and we ask them what is an ideal intranet according to them if they can ignore others and only focus on what they want to see and get from the system.

Here are some interesting examples of intranet design according to their brief.

Executives

Business performance and KPI is something that Directors and executives have inside their head all the time. This type of busy folks don’t have enough time to drill down the detail, they simply want to see everything at glance without hassle.

Designer/Marketing

The look and feel is something that this type of audience cares the most. Sometime they are a bit too creative for their own sake, ignoring the main purpose of the site.

Legal & HR

Distributing information efficiently, securely and compliant is more important than everything else. This is an example of intranet design according to them.

FootNote:

Claromentis supports multiple visual interfaces, enabling the creation of completely different intranet experiences according to the type of user. In most cases we always ended up with a compromise, not the extremes like the examples above.

Home Design, humor, user interface

After applying permission to a folder or document, have you ever wonder that you need to make sure the right person can view the document? Let’s say you added Group:Marketing, until now there is no to find out who are the member of “Group Marketing for instance” unless you have to navigate away to ‘People’ application and run a search or filter.

But now in 5.6.1 we’ve got a nifty solution. It’s called “View effective permission”, as you can see you can now review the permission on every single permission dialog box to make sure the right people has the right permission.

Resources-Technical Claromentis, document management, Prod-Intranet, update, user interface

Claromentis Interview with Sean Boos -  Information Technology Director of Preferred Brands.
Burnsville, Minnesota.

Hi Sean, tell us a little bit about Preferred Brands

Preferred Brands is the parent company to some of the interior design and decorating industries’ leading marketing companies. Included are such brand leaders as Floor To Ceiling – a network of over 200 independently owned and operated retail showrooms located throughout the U.S. Each store specializes in offering a combination of flooring, kitchen & bath products and decorative accessories,best suited for that particular market. Also included in the Preferred Brands family is World of Floors, a leading flooring retailer, primarily serving Michigan and the upper Midwest.

Who were the intended users? How many of them?

We have 200+ dealers throughout the US.

Did the portal itself have a project or codename?

We call the portal: InFlo

What applications were most useful or essential in this project?

Document management and forms were probably the most important things.

What was the user response and take up of the system?

We found that the users have been very responsive to the new portal.  They have found the address book to be very helpful along with the instant messaging.

Is your business more efficient? Have fundamental processes changed?

We have 100’s  of vendors that we do business with which translates into tens of thousands of products which all need pricing files.  The indexing/search and meta data features have been a pleasant surprise within the portal.  The really allow us to provide detail custom properties for each file which makes finding what you want a snap.

Were you under any deadlines – if so what was the nature of them?

We had an extremely tight timeline.  We had our national show in February and InFlo was the primary focus of the show.  All  products tested were becoming disasters in the making.  What we typically found through our testing, was most portals did a great job of providing a hierarchical security model for one business unit, but when you starting to add more business units to the portal the security model really didn’t do what we wanted.
I contacted Claromentis 2 months before our show.  Although I was very reluctant that anyone could really pull this off in 2 months, Nigel assured me that, while the timeframe was tight, Claromentis could meet our deadline.

Did the project meet your deadlines?

Yes.  We actually had it live a week before the show

How involved were you in the design process?

Other than supplying some ideas, most of the design process was done by Claromentis

Do you have any comments on the final design?

As far as the UI, we gave our ideas to the Claromentis design team and after a few revisions, we got it done in about a week.

Do you find the system easy to use from an end user point of view?

We’ve had very positive responses from our end users.

How did you find the Claromentis pricing model?

Pricing, like most small businesses, is a very important part of the equation.  Compared to other portal solutions, Claromentis was the best value for with probably a better feature mix.

“InFlo has allowed us to become more efficient in both time and money.  In these difficult economic times, being able to stretch your dollars if very important.   It has allows us to focus more on our core services and products and better serve our dealers.” Sean Boos.

Would you have any advice to companies considering Claromentis? Were there any special factors that were part of your selection process?

Claromentis is a very flexible platform.  I come from more of a development background and I was amazed at how much I could integrate with the system.

Thank You Sean, we appreciate your time.

Learn more about soluton for franchise based company

Solutions Case Study, collaboration, commercial, document management, e-forms, intranet consultancy, online collaboration, user interface

Working on application design or creation of e-forms, we often make check boxes or drop down selector. In most cases you probably don’t pay much attention setting up the default value of each choice you created. Should a particular checkbox is checked by default or unchecked.  How many items to be displayed per page by default, or which country or age group should be selected by default for instance.

According to behavioural economist Dan Ariely, any value which is set by default will greatly influence decision that majority users is going to make when filling out the form or using a piece of functionality.

For example in Claromentis we have news application with option to set a particular news item as ‘sticky news’.  The idea the sticky news will always be displayed on the Intranet homepage until it’s expired. It is a useful feature allowing an important news item remain visible to the majority Intranet users, otherwise it might get buried down quickly by not-so-important news.

What we didn’t realise the default value for the expired date is set a year in advance by default. For example if you submit a news on the 22nd May 2009, it won’t be off the sticky until the same date next year !

The problem is simple majority users are not even bothered to change the expired date.

The result, intranet’s homepage is filled with sticky news which should have been expired long time ago. In order to fix this problem, an Intranet administrator has to go through each news article and correct the expiry date, which was set incorrectly by majority users.

This problem won’t happen in the first place if the developer put sensible value when he or she typing the code for the news submission form.  Interestingly enough in a much larger scale any default value which may sounds simple can have a huge impact.

Check out an interesting video below (open in new window).

Resources-Technical Design, e-forms, fun, user interface

10. Run Survey / Poll

It’s quick and easy to do, launch regular survey to get user’s feedback on almost any subjects, for a change try to create survey outside corporate agenda, pick casual topic related to everyday life, political debate, sustainability issue, or entertainments here are some ideas:

• Cool movie of the month
• Casual Friday? (yes no)
• Choose company smart phone? (iPhone or Blackberry)
• How do you travel to work?
• How’s your weekend?
• What do you think of Gordon Brown?

Survey and poll are easy to deploy

9. RSS feed

Embedding relevant RSS feed to departmental page is one of the easiest ways to get fresh news delivered to your page. RSS news from HSE (Health & Safety Executive can be added to the corporate Health & Safety Page, or an RSS from popular design blog is perfectly suitable for Creative department homepage for instance. It’s not only help member of your department aware of what’s going on out there it also help staff from other department know more about what you’re doing.

The North Face Intranet homepage with RSS and Video cast

8. Enable commenting

Everyone likes commenting. Sometime reading people’s comments in a blog is more interesting than the actual post itself. We want to hear what people say at the same we like to be heard. Staff’s comments can be invaluable to the improvement of the business and organisation as a whole. In Claromentis commenting can be enabled for documents, news, and publish pages.

News article with comments

7. Classifieds (Craigslist)

Have you ever noticing communal pin board next to the kitchen is full of classifieds, from selling used car, sharing apartments to cheap concert tickets. Having an electronic version of classifieds right in the corporate intranet can help users coming back to the system.  If you still like the pin board, you can print it out of your intranet and post it there!

Classifieds

6. Treasure Hunt

Yes a treasure hunt. Simply hide content within the corporate intranet and run a competition to find it. One of our clients had tried this and it was a success. It’s definitely a fun and exciting way to get users familiarising with the intranet without a boring training.

Prize winner for the intranet treasure hunt

5. Business Dashboard

Businesses are surrounded with data; but they are sharing one common problem. They are not visual enough to draw our attention.  Claromentis dashboard application allows you to generate data visualisation in a form of graph / chart from any data source as long as they are accessible. This can be business statistics, KPI (Key Performance Index), weekly sales figures, real-time number of visitors, stock chart, and much more.

TSG Intranet with business dashboard

4. Up-to-date Content

The essence of a corporate Intranet is storing and finding information, if users can’t find information they want accurately & effortlessly, it almost guarantee that they won’t coming back. The reality is always harder than theory but you can’t underestimate the importance of having the most up-to-date information on the Intranet.

"Content is King"

3. Develop Persona while improving usability

Check your stats & analytics, ask users and identify 3 main areas which are frequently visited on the Intranet. Create attractive shortcuts to access these areas and you are developing persona at the same time improving usability of your corporate intranet.

IPO Intranet homepage with 6 big buttons

2. Implement built-in apps

Claromentis offers business-ready built-in applications which can be implemented straight within a corporate Intranet. These applications include room booking, image gallery, holiday & vacation planner, group calendars, forums and course planner.

Image Gallery application - Care UK Intranet

1. Business processes

Having your business process built right into the corporate intranet is the number on the list. It transforms corporate intranet into something much more than just communication & collaboration platform. The intranet becomes an indispensible business application where day-to-day business processes sit on top of information layer in a single integrated system. Claromentis provides several products such as Process Manager, Sales Manager and Project Manager all can be implemented directly within your Intranet.

Claromentis Project Manager

Have you tried one of these within your corporate Intranet ? Please share your experience.

Solutions Design, internal customer communications, intranet, intranet consultancy, intranet development, user interface

Inspirational talks from Don Norman found on TED. There are three ways in good design which makes people happy. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about  our core values Design, Clarity, Risk Management & Fun to work with, which are going to be the main focus for the future big release of Claromentis.

Services core values, Design, user interface