[thelist] design (?) review

[Jared M. Spool]

Spinhead wrote:

> Just completed our first ever intranet usage survey (very informal
> and totally voluntary) and while most of it makes sense, one item
> made me second guess myself. (Note: I'm making too much of this, but
> it's been a tough day and I need a diversion.)
> 
> One respondent volunteered the opinion that the home page is
> 'unorganized and naive.' My immediate response is, "It's functional,
> not aesthetic." But I'd still like your opinion. I've posted a
> screen shot at
> 
> http://www.magisnetworks.com/images/netmagis_screenshot.gif

Did your usage survey talk about the functions that users want from 
the intranet?

When we've looked into intranet usage, we've found that there is a 
real 80/20 rule that is followed: 80% of the time, users come for 20% 
of the functionality or content. (This is optimistic: we've recently 
discovered that on the Microsoft.com site, 80% of the time, users 
come for 1% of the content.)

My first reaction to the screen shot was that I couldn't tell what 
that 20% of the functionality and content is. This might be the basis 
behind the "unorganized and naive" comment.

If you knew what the most frequent/important functions that people 
needed from the intranet, you could put direct links to those on the 
homepage. (Don't worry about longer pages -- there's no evidence to 
suggest that long homepages are problematic. In fact, most the 
evidence we've seen to date say the opposite.)

A good example of moving functionality to the home page is the US 
Airways site (http://www.usairways.com).  The three most common 
functions (Booking/Pricing a trip, Checking on frequent flyer miles, 
checking flight status) are accessible directly from the homepage 
without having to click and go to an intermediate page to start.

The next most important functions are listed as direct links under 
each category. This design allows about 40 of the most important 
functions to be immediately accessible.

In an intranet setting, users most often come to the site with a 
specific mission in mind. Often, its a mission they've repeated many 
times before. By studying the usage patterns of the functionality and 
content and by talking to the users about the missions they are 
trying to accomplish, you'll get a good idea as to what the most 
important functionality/content is for the site. 

I hope this helps. If you want more information, I think our Getting 
Them to What They Want report available on our site 
(http://www.uie.com) would be very helpful.

Jared


- o - o - o -
Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
242 Neck Road
Bradford, MA 01835 USA
(978) 374-8300  fax: (978) 374-9175
jspool at uie.com   http://www.uie.com