Best Government Agency and Public

Sector Intranets 2002–2020

26 Case Studies of Award-Winning Intranets from Government and Public Sector Organizations, Reprinted
from the Intranet Design Annuals and the Competition for 10 Best Government/Public Sector Intranets

By Kara Pernice, Amy Schade, Jakob Nielsen, Patty Caya, Mathew Schwartz, Candice
Goodwin, Maria Rosala, and Anna Kaley.

May 2021

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Copyright © 2001–2018 by Nielsen Norman Group, all rights reserved. To buy your own copy, please go to
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Contents

About This Report .....................................................................................3

Executive Summary...................................................................................6

Original 10 Best Government Intranets of 2001.....................................11

Common Themes Among the Winners ................................................ 13
Defense Finance and Accounting Service (U.S.).................................. .15
Department for Transport (U.K.)....................................................... .31
Department for Victorian Communities (Australia)............................... .43
Department of Veterans Affairs Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network (U.S.)..57
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (U.S.) ........................................... 70
Government Offices of Sweden (Regeringskansliet) ............................. .84
London Underground....................................................................... 97
National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research
Assistance Program ........................................................................111
Senate Republican Conference (U.S.) ................................................122
Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario (Canada)..................134
Recommendations for the Intranet Design Process ............................. .147
Intranets Not Selected: Common Issues ........................................... .148
Selection Criteria and Process ......................................................... .149

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 4

Intranet Design Annual Winners ...........................................................151
United States Department of Transportation (2001)................................151
World Bank Group (2002)....................................................................158
United States Coast Guard (2003)........................................................174
Ministry of Transport, New Zealand (2008)............................................. 186
New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, Australia (2008)........215
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a NASA Center (2010)............................264
Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA)(2013) ................... 291
WorkSafeBC, Worker’s Compensation Board of British Columbia (2013)..... 313
International Monetary Fund (IMF)(2014) .............................................347
Saudi Food & Drug Authority (SFDA) (2015)...........................................376
The Swedish Parliament (2016)........................................................... 407
Tourism New Zealand (2017)...............................................................467
Anthem, Inc. (2019) .................................................................. ........495
Dynacare (2020) ...............................................................................574
Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization
(Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS]) (2020)....... 621
United Nations (UN)(2020 .................................................................. 695

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 5

Executive Summary
Compared to the private sector, the public sector faces unique usability challenges. At our
usability conferences, for example, participants often ask why government agencies should
even care about usability. After all, private companies are typically compelled by the
realities of profit making; they embrace usability to increase their customer-conversion
rates and improve their marketing. Government entities, however, don’t have such profit-
oriented motivations.
So why should government agencies care about usability? The answer is that usability’s
return on investment (ROI) can be realized outside the realms of sales and profit. If
taxpayers are already funding an agency’s mission, diverting a tiny fraction of that funding
to improve usability will improve overall agency performance—a desirable outcome. Thus,
any time a government organization’s mission includes interacting with the public or
disseminating information, website usability can easily be justified.
For government intranets, the answer is even easier: projects that increase civil servants’
productivity are at least as valuable as those that increase the general public’s satisfaction.
Most political leaders make it their explicit goal to improve government efficiency, and
increased intranet usability is a key way to achieve this goal.
To spotlight how improved intranet usability can make government employees more
productive, we conducted a design competition to identify the world’s ten best government
intranets.
The winners are:
• Defense Finance and Accounting Service (U.S.)
• Department for Transport (U.K.)
• Department of Veterans Affairs Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network (U.S.)
• Department for Victorian Communities (Australia)
• Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (U.S.)
• Government Offices of Sweden
• London Underground
• National Research Council of Canada—Industrial Research Assistance Program
• Senate Republican Conference (U.S.)
• Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario (Canada)

1
Intranet Design Annual reports are available for download at http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet .

6 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

After many requests for information about such government-specific intranets, we decided
to conduct a design competition focused on this very special group.
Clearly, good government intranets are found around the world, in many different types of
organizations. In addition to traditional government agencies and ministries, we have
winners from the legislative branch and from semi-independent public services.

IMPACT OF AGENCY SIZE

Winners ranged from national to regional to state government or government-related
organizations. The only local-level winner was London Underground, and London is not
exactly a small town. We’ve seen other good intranets from large cities, including New York
City, which was featured in our report about intranet portals. 2 Unfortunately, however, most
local governments don’t seem to produce good intranets for their employees.
This conclusion is supported by the fact that almost all of our winners are fairly large
organizations with an average of 5,200 employees. Still, agencies don’t have to be huge to
have great intranets, nor do intranet design teams. In fact, we have two winners with less
than 1,000 employees, and two winning design teams with only two members.
By contrast, the eighteen non-government winners of our last two annual intranet design
competitions had an average of 88,000 employees. That number is slanted by the fact that
Wal-Mart, a mammoth company, was one of the winners. But even if we exclude Wal-Mart,
the average size of the remaining seventeen companies was 30,000 employees each, or
almost six times the size of the winning government organizations.
Explaining why the best public-sector intranets come from organizations a sixth the size of
the best private-sector intranets is difficult. Perhaps midsized government organizations
have more incentive to streamline their administration. Or maybe the biggest government
organizations are so slow moving that they simply lack intranet maturity, especially when
compared to the unified intranets found at many large companies.

ENCOURAGING AND MANAGING CONTENT CONTRIBUTORS

Many of the winning intranets had explicit processes in place to manage content
contributors, thus overcoming the bane of many an intranet: content that’s stale, obsolete,
or never published on the intranet in the first place.
Strategies include:
• Identify a lead publisher (and supporting publishers) in each organization area who’s
responsible for content in his or her area (London Underground).
• Train the lead publishers to manage the intranet and to understand principles for
online content usability and readability (London Underground).
• For intranet postings, use a simple and easy form to encourage employees to submit
information (the National Research Council of Canada—Industrial Research
Assistance Program).
• Make it easy for employees to update the staff directory with information about their
areas of expertise and special interests so others can find experts quickly (U.S.
Senate Republican Conference).

2
See separate report, Usability of Intranet Portals: Report from the Trenches,
http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/portals.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 7

 • Set expiration dates for all content and use software to automatically track those
dates (Department for Victorian Communities, Australia).
• Centralize content editing to ensure its quality (U.K. Department for Transport).
• Review pages before posting to guarantee compliance with intranet standards (U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network).
• Use templates and a content management system (CMS) to provide a consistent
user interface for publishing (most winners).
• Rely on automated content feeds from outside sources, such as filtered newswires
(Government Offices of Sweden) or medical databases (U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network).

WORKFLOW SUPPORT
A persistent theme among the winners is that usability was dramatically improved by
restructuring the intranet’s information architecture to focus on job support. That is, they
grouped content and tools that are used together in the same intranet area, even if different
departments supply the information. For example, the Workplace Safety and Insurance
Board of Ontario created a special Manager’s Page with various forms, procedures, and tips
for supervisors. The same intranet also had a professional practices page for nurse case
managers.
Unlike our winning designs, many intranets use navigation that mirrors the “orgchart,” and
organize their information architecture based on departmental structure. For many
organizations, basing intranet structure on workflow is a new concept.
At the workflow features level, many good intranets have a calendar of events. The U.S.
Senate Republican Conference takes this basic intranet component two steps further by
highlighting critical, scheduled votes, and providing remote access to the information
through BlackBerry mobile devices. In fact, the Senate Republican Conference intranet has
extensive support for remote access, which acknowledges that senators and their staff often
roam widely and spend significant time at events outside the office.
In our recent tests of the usability of Web-based About us information, 3 users frequently
struggled with government websites because of the sites’ overwhelming use of acronyms
and insider lingo. Although such bureaucratese should be fought on public-facing websites,
it’s highly appropriate to use specialized terms on government intranets. The Government
Offices of Sweden, for example, has a compact navigation bar that provides direct access to
individual ministries’ pages by clicking on a one- or two-letter abbreviation for each
ministry. While you should never expect a member of the general public to click on “J” when
looking for the Ministry of Justice, such abbreviations improve communication efficiency
inside an organization where people regularly use such terminology.

HELP FROM HIGHER LEVEL OFFICES

Most government organizations belong to a hierarchy that peaks at the level of president,
prime minister, governor, mayor, or a similar top-level office. In several cases, this
hierarchy helped our winners design better intranets. Thus, one of the explanations for the

3
See separate report About Us: Making it Easy for Visitors to Find Company Information on Corporate
Websites, http://www.nngroup.com/reports/about.

8 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

success of midsized—or even fairly small—government organizations might be that being
part of the larger government brings benefits.
For example, the National Research Council of Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance
Program took advantage of the look-and-feel design guidelines that the Treasury Board of
Canada developed for all Canadian government intranets. This ultimately saved the agency
time and money; there was no need to reinvent the wheel.
Similarly, the Department for Victorian Communities’ design team started its project by
reviewing usability reports from studies of other government intranets in the State of
Victoria. In the private sector, it’s virtually impossible to obtain other companies’ usability
research, because it’s highly strategic and thus confidential. Despite traditional inter-service
rivalries, all government departments belong to the same larger organization, and should be
able to access and benefit from each other’s usability reports.
Based on this analysis, we have two recommendations:
• Governments should develop an overall intranet strategy and general design
guidelines, and apply sufficient resources to ensure the recommendations’ quality
and usability. They might also develop rough templates and some shared features,
but it’s important to remember that at the level of specific page templates and
features, each department typically has different intranet needs. Departments
should retain flexibility to adapt any centrally provided capabilities to their own
circumstances.
• Governments should establish a repository for usability reports, and institute a
system for sharing intranet usability findings across departments.
While most countries and states don’t have such activities in place, their benefits have been
reported—even by organizations that have only just begun thinking about intranet usability
as a cross-government project.

TECHNOLOGY
Unfortunately, technology chaos continues to reign in intranet implementations. The ten
winners used a total of nineteen different software solutions to run their intranets. This
underscores a fact: we’re nowhere near the point where we could recommend, based on
usability, a few good intranet packages. Currently, there seems to be no relation between
the technology used and the intranet’s quality. In other words, when it comes to intranet
software, it’s a matter of how it’s being used, not which packages you buy.
The winners’ five most often used technologies were Microsoft SQL (60%), Microsoft IIS
(40%), ColdFusion (30%), Lotus Notes (20%), and Plumtree (20%).

USABILITY METHODS
The average winning team employed 3.4 different usability methods during its redesign
project. This is a good deal more than the 2.7 methods used by the winners of our annual
design competition in 2003. In general, combining multiple usability methods is beneficial,
because each makes its own contribution to the final design quality.
One reason government intranet teams employ more usability methods than other types of
sites is that they often have to emphasize accessibility for users with disabilities. Several
winning designs even performed actual accessibility testing with employees with disabilities,
something that’s rarely done in the private sector. As a result of either testing or required
guidelines, several of the winners made good changes to their designs to increase

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 9

accessibility. Most impressively, London Underground has a special accessibility mode that
overcomes many accessibility problems for visually impaired users.
Quite appropriately, user testing was the most common usability method, and was used in
70% of the winning projects. These projects used many variants, including tests of the old
intranet’s design, paper prototypes or wireframe tests of the new design, and post-
implementation testing of the new design. All are recommended steps. Other methods used
by at least 30% of the teams include analyzing the server log files, heuristic
evaluation/expert reviews, card sorting, accessibility testing, and field studies/contextual
observation.

IMPROVEMENTS IN METRICS
Compared to many of the best private-sector intranets, the winning government intranets
seemed to better track their projects’ metrics, possibly reflecting a tendency in government
agencies to closely watch expenses and to have defined processes in place.
As one might expect, the U.S. Defense Finance and Accounting Service, being good
accountants, collected the most extensive metrics on their intranet redesign’s financial
impact, calculating total savings of 200 staff years. Specific intranet areas realized
impressive improvements in usability metrics, including a human resources (HR) page,
where productivity increased by 300% following the redesign. Even more importantly, the
agency’s management recognized the intranet’s strategic contribution to the organization’s
overall productivity. For example, a plan that’s currently underway will reduce the time
needed to generate accounting reports from forty-five days to twenty-one days; the project
involves more than 200 tasks. This truly ambitious undertaking goes far beyond redesigning
individual pages, or even conceptualizing the intranet as a stand-alone entity.
Emphasizing “usability in the small”—targeting specific intranet elements for “quick win”
improvements—is also important because it can generate immediate ROI for an
organization. For example, the U.K. Department for Transportation saved £130,000
($228,000) by relocating its employee newsletter to the intranet. Anecdotally, many
organizations noted other “usability in the small” benefits—such as increased intranet user
morale—after making even small intranet improvements.
The greatest intranet benefits, however, come from utilizing the intranet for business
process reengineering. The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario, for example,
unified information from sixteen spreadsheets into a single intranet tool, dramatically
improving caseworker performance.
Analyzing the winners showed that the largest performance gains came from projects that
finally delivered good intranets to organizations that previously suffered under miserable
ones. For example, London Underground increased the number of employee visits to the
intranet from 1,000 per week to 70,000 per week—an astounding gain of 6,900%. Note,
however, that increasing intranet use by 100% to 200% is a more common result of
improved usability.
Here’s a takeaway if you have a bad intranet that employees are shunning or labeling as
useless: don’t despair. Rather than abandoning your intranet, regard it as a prime candidate
for improvement. In fact, based on projects we’ve seen, you can generally expect a usability
redesign to more than double intranet use. You can thus position the redesigned intranet as
a tool to enhance employees’ productivity, leading to their respecting the intranet, and
ultimately contributing to it and its success.

10 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

Overview of the Winners
We define a government intranet as any internal network that supports a government
agency or other public-sector organization. The organizations we included are mostly
government funded or managed, and their primary activities are in the public sector. We
also included a newer category of semi-independent government-owned companies. We
reviewed local, national, and international organizations (though we have no winners from
international agencies). We also included all classic branches of government: legislative,
executive, and judicial (though we have no winners in the latter category).
The top ten intranets support a wide variety of organizations and users. The tasks
supported range from general administrative—such as news, corporate information, HR
information, and policies—to tasks related to an organization’s specific mission. For
example: the Defense Finance and Accounting Service intranet helps support 121 million
accounting transactions per year; the Department of Veterans Affairs Mid-Atlantic Health
Care Network intranet helps the staff run eleven outpatient clinics in three states that serve
about 200,000 patients per year; the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond intranet helps staff
gather and analyze economic data and contributes to the formulation of national monetary
policy; the London Underground intranet helps staff keep 275 stations running in a system
that serves more than 3 million passenger journeys a day over 253 railway miles; and the
Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario intranet helps employees administer some
340,000 no-fault workplace insurance claims each year.
The ten winners come from five different countries: the U.S. (four winners); Canada and the
U.K. (two winners each); and Australia and Sweden (one winner each). 4
In-house designers and outside agencies can both produce good, usable government
intranet designs. Of the ten winners, five used in-house designers, three hired external
designers, and two worked mostly with an outside agency, but did some design work in-
house.
The number of users the intranets support ranged from 400 (National Council of Canada—
Industrial Research Assistance Program) to 15,000 (U.S. Defense Finance and Accounting
Service). The other eight intranets supported user bases of 600, 1,500, 2,200, 2,500,
4,500, 4,500, 10,000, and 12,000.
As for the intranets’ evolution, most started between 1995 and 1999. The current designs
were typically created only after the organization had implemented and embraced several
other intranets.
Canada’s silverorange won our Design Annual Award in 2001, and was among our winners
in 2003. Now, one of the company’s clients is among our ten government winners—an
impressive showing.
Experience is what makes many great designers. All the designers represented here learned
many constructive lessons while developing their intranets. The Lessons Learned section at
the end of each intranet’s summary contains their invaluable insights.

4
Winners in our last three design annuals have come from the following countries: Australia, Canada,
Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 11

 THE TEN WINNERS LISTED IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
Defense Finance The Defense Finance and Accounting Service team valiantly consolidated more than
and Accounting 200 individual websites and three portals into one intranet. This collaborative
Service (U.S.) workspace provides direct access to more than 10,000 lines of searchable and
reusable content, and helps employees communicate and work more effectively.

Department for The Department for Transport's intranet expedites processes that previously required
Transport (U.K.) considerable time and legwork. Transnet is both a communications medium and a
reference library that helps employees find accurate information and confidently do
things for themselves.

Department for Looking at this intranet’s simple presentation and consistent design, you’d never
Victorian imagine that much of the content was originally taken from seven very different
Communities intranets. Its simple design, plentiful content, seamless integration, and creative
(Australia) touches all help meet the organization’s goal of unifying staff from fifteen different
business units.

Department of What started at nine separate, dissimilar intranets has become one cohesive design
Veterans Affairs that helps employees easily find the information they need. The design team achieved
Mid-Atlantic this by defining simple goals and creating achievable processes for meeting them.
Health Care
Network (U.S.)

Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond intranet is a communication tool that keeps
Bank of Richmond 1,500 users in several different locations apprised of current happenings. Forums and
(U.S.) other information collections keep employees in touch. Persistent navigation presents
the most needed and used applications, and makes this intranet very straightforward
to use.

Government The Government Offices of Sweden’s intranet supports an impressive number of tasks
Offices of Sweden under one attractive design. More striking still is the fact that this elegantly designed
intranet also unites all of Sweden’s central ministries (the highest level of the national
government’s executive branch) as well as the nation’s embassies and foreign
missions. This jam-packed but uncluttered intranet makes it easy for employees to
find relevant information about each other, their organization, and the world.

London Some designers feel that making sites accessible will hamper usability or aesthetics.
Underground On the contrary, considering accessibility during design often leads to interfaces that
are not only accessible for users with disabilities, but are easy for everyone to use.
The London Underground intranet is evidence of this phenomenon. In their list of
target users, designers included people with visual or mobility-related disabilities.
They then devised several designs for accessibility reasons that ultimately helped all
users.

National Research This organization’s intranet (designed by previous-winner silverorange) is both

Council of excellent looking and very simple to use. The system was iteratively designed using
Canada— numerous usability methods, including field studies, basic usability tests, card sorting,
Industrial and heuristic evaluations. But even this excellent intranet would not work perfectly
Research out of the box for NCR-IRAP. The team thus conducted more research with users to
Assistance tailor the intranet for NCR-IRAP’s specific user types and needs, resulting in another
Program award-winning design.

Senate Republican Consistent with its goal to communicate, the U.S. Senate Republican Conference
Conference (U.S.) intranet is available on multiple devices for many staff members around the nation.
The inventive features, exhaustive content, and consistent navigation all make this a
winning government intranet.

Workplace Safety Following much investigation and fabrication, designers of this intranet created
and Insurance imaginative tools and demonstrated their eminent strength—letting users simplify or
Board of Ontario eliminate otherwise painful and time-consuming processes.
(Canada)

12 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

Common Themes Among the Winners
Each of the winning government intranets has a very different style and was designed for
different people, needs, and organizations. However, some of these intranets share common
design attributes.

DEVISE A CONSISTENT DESIGN TO INTEGRATE MANY INTRANETS

In many cases, the designers’ faced an incredible challenge: bring together enormous
amounts of information (owned by others, no less) into one easy-to-use intranet site.
For example, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service consolidated more than 200
individual websites and three portals into one intranet. The Workplace Safety and Insurance
Board of Ontario consolidated information from 300 Lotus Notes databases, taming what
had been a “Wild West” approach to publishing and organizing documents. The Department
for Victorian Communities brought together fifteen business units that were previously
attached to seven host departments, seven IT networks, and seven very different intranets.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond dealt with twelve different district banks’ intranets.
The Department of Veterans Affairs Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network consolidated nine
separate websites. In a very different example, the Government Offices of Sweden’s
ministries had been separate since the 17th Century; when they became one entity in the
late 1990s, the Permanent Secretary also requested a single common intranet.

INCLUDE ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES

Among these winners, we saw far more attention to accessibility in design—making the
intranet easy to use for users with disabilities. 5,6 The London Underground offers a full mode
for accessibility, pages with excellent contrast, and large fonts. The Department for
Transport also offers excellent contrast, and understandable table layout for people using
screen readers. These and other intranets used thoughtful ALT tags so images would be
meaningful and cascading style sheets so pages would be understandable. These
government intranet designers also considered at least a few users types, such as people
with low vision, no vision, coordination issues, and memory-related disabilities.
In our experience, government agencies often lead the private sector in designing for
accessibility. One reason, of course, is that the designers want to make their intranets
usable for everyone. Another reason has more to do with enforcement than desire. Laws in
various countries have become more descriptive and stringent in the accessibility arena.
Typically, government agencies—and those private companies selling them software—are
currently held to stricter rules than private designers.

SUPPORT USERS IN MANY LOCATIONS

Among these winning intranets, several unite people and groups across an office or many
remote locations. Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program intranet lets users easily

5
Nielsen Norman Group’s research report about accessibility and usability for the Web, Beyond ALT Text-
Making the Web Easy to use for Users with Disabilities (Coyne, Nielsen) includes guidelines about designing
usable and accessible websites, and is available for download at
http://www.nngroup.com/reports/accessibility.
6
See the W3C’s Web accessibility guidelines for more information about coding accessible websites.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 13

collaborate with geographically distributed customers and co-workers. The Senate
Republican Conference intranet is available on multiple devices for staff members around
the nation. Remote users can access it using a secure ID card to log onto the Senate LAN.
The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board intranet is part of employees’ daily work in
administering no-fault workplace insurance, performing more than 1,300 distinct jobs in
fourteen offices throughout Ontario.

OFFER AUTHORITATIVE, ACCURATE CONTENT

In several cases, prior to the intranet’s development (or redesign), users had no one place
to go to find reliable information. As the organization’s official tool, the new or redesigned
intranets offer users information that they can find and trust. In fact, some of the intranet
designers—such as those from the Department of Victorian Communities, the Department of
Veterans Affairs, the Department for Transport, and the Government Offices of Sweden—
explicitly stated in their design goals that they wanted the intranet to be the official and
primary place for staff to get information.

ENHANCE CORPORATE GOALS

The intranets in this design annual were not just created for the sake of having an intranet.
Rather, these intranets were actually designed to support and even enhance corporate goals
and visions. For example, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs had a new mission: to be
extremely patient-focused. The intranet supported this by providing tools and information—
not least of which were charting tools to measure throughput, coupled with a short letter
from the director reminding the staff of its mission.
The Department of Victorian Communities united teams that had never before worked
together. To aid in this merging, the navigation is task-based rather than organization
based. Rotating pictures of staff members help employees familiarize themselves with their
colleagues.
The U.S. Senate Republican Conference intranet lets members search for specific bills, as
well as for information about past votes by senators.

CREATE HAPPY USERS

In several cases, designers said that after they redesigned for usability, users were literally
amazed at the content available to them. The easier intranet design actually made it
possible for users to find it all. The Department of Victorian Communities and the
Department of Veterans Affairs, in particular, have great success stories about intranet
redesigns.

14 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

Defense Finance and Accounting Service (U.S.)
Using the Intranet: Intranet Team:
The U.S. Defense Finance and Accounting Service In-house: business integration, information services
(DFAS) is the largest finance and accounting organization, chief information officer, human
operation in the world. DFAS has approximately resources
15,000 personnel at twenty-six locations
worldwide. In fiscal year 2003, DFAS paid more Members:
than 5.9 million military service members, civilian Diane (Dee) Crawford, program manager, DFAS
personnel, retirees, and annuitants; processed ePortal; Norman E. Noe II, chief knowledge officer;
12.3 million contractor invoices; made 6.8 million Altaf Hussain, technical project officer, DFAS technical
travel payments; recorded 121 million accounting support office; Melissa Johnson, program manager,
transactions; accounted for 279 active DFAS content management; Sharon Chapman,
Department of Defense appropriations; managed program manager, workflow projects; John Hall,
$197.4 billion in military retirement and health project manager, communities and collaboration; Ev
benefit funds; accounted for $13 billion in foreign Totten, assistant program manager, DFAS ePortal;
military sales; and disbursed $416.1 billion. John Blagmon, computer specialist, DFAS ePortal; Ed
Kabat computer specialist, technical support office;
Jeff Coffey, computer specialist, technical support
office; Mike Debro, computer specialist, technical
support office; David Richeson, infrastructure
engineer, technical security office; Richard Westmark,
infrastructure engineer, technical security office; B.J.
Bible, technical project officer, Web ePortal team;
Joyce Short, director regional service center, DFAS
HR; Linda Frank, project manager, e-HR applications;
Mitch O’Brien, project manager, corporate planning;
Cory Baumhardt, intern; Adam Ellis, usability testing
lab; Paul Plas, computer specialist, technical support
office; Paul Mele, computer specialist, technical
support office; Grace Greczanik, computer specialist,
technical support office; Thomas O. Morris, computer
specialist, technical support office

SUMMARY
The DFAS team valiantly consolidated more than 200 individual websites and three portals
into one intranet, the ePortal. This collaborative workspace provides direct access to more
than 10,000 lines of searchable and reusable content, and lets employees communicate and
work effectively.
The ePortal hosts more than sixty organizational and issue-based communities and more
than 100 short-term projects. To govern the use of collaborative workspace, the ePortal
functional team established new business rules to transition away from e-mail for
collaborating on issues and managing events. The ePortal provides content version control
and reduces bandwidth requirements for e-mail attachments.
The user’s MyPage offers a glimpse of the intranet’s vast content. The Directors Message,
press releases, and other news keep employees up to date. All intranet pages have a
somewhat similar setup, with titles for sections, and similar items divided into boxed-off
areas (referred to as portlets). The top horizontal navigation is present on all pages.

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 Pictured: The DFAS intranet homepage.

The intranet consolidates business processes and facilitates budget and performance
integration. For an intranet to meet these goals, it must be well organized. The team
achieved this by dividing the content into three main sections: the knowledge directory,
communities, and personalization.
The knowledge directory is essentially a filter. It categorizes massive amounts of
information from document repositories, file systems, and websites into an enterprise-wide
taxonomy that organizes access to communities, projects, and applications.
Communities let business users and administrators create composite applications. Various
teams—including project teams, departments, business units, customers, partners, or the
entire organization—can collaborate and share information through communities, which can
be managed separately, securely, and hierarchically. Like content provided through portlets
and personalized portal pages, communities can include content and functionality adapted
for specific users.
Communities also offer better user support by providing new and accurate content. The Self
Help community, for example, lets content providers find procedures and answers on their
own. Each community also has a portlet that provides contact information if users need
information that they can’t find online.

16 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

 Pictured: An example of a communities page. The Self Help community assists users
with ePortal-related issues.

Users personalize the site on their MyPages area, choosing information, services, and
interactive tools on up to six personalized pages. They can also organize the presentation of
their personalized portal pages with up to three columns and eighteen different color
schemes, meeting each user’s specific needs. Users can also access a low-bandwidth or text
version of the portal.
The intranet offers extensive HR information in the Human Resource community, such as
benefits information, promotion and retirement calculators, promotion and new hire lists,
and a Who Do I Contact? portlet that provides users answers based on their topic and
business line. News headlines about HR appear in the page’s center column, so users stay
abreast of HR happenings. Using the myHR Applications portlet, employees can monitor
their personnel information. They can also view their official personnel record there and
their Total Compensation Statement.
The design team’s recent usability testing and redesign of an HR page resulted in an
increase in effectiveness of more than 300% and a decrease in overall task time of more
than 50%—a fantastic triumph.

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 Pictured: The intranet’s HR community offers employees an enormous amount of
information and numerous options. Users can customize their ePortal’s border color on
this or any other page.

Managers need access to additional information and applications. To make it simple for
them, management-related information resides in the HR community’s Supervisor’s Corner.
The layout is similar to other HR pages, but the content is aimed at managers.

18 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

 Pictured: The HR community’s Supervisor’s Corner, which is tailored for managers.

The ePortal includes many more features, such as eLibrary, which houses searchable and
reusable information. The DFAS Directory stores employee telephone numbers, office
symbols, job titles, and locations. In addition, employees can submit training requests for
themselves, and managers can submit training request for employees. The Rumor Has It
feature lets employees submit rumors to senior management for response.

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 Pictured: Using Rumor Has It, employees submit rumors to senior management for
response.

These and a plethora of other features help DFAS employees work together resourcefully.

URL AND ACCESS

The intranet homepage URL is https://eportal.dfas.mil. All browsers have ePortal set as the
default start page. Every time a user logs onto the agency’s network, it verifies ePortal is
still the browser’s start page, launches the browser, and opens ePortal.
DFAS employees can connect to the LAN and ePortal through dial-up access. Later this year,
the agency plans to deploy the Common Access Card (CAC), a U.S. Department of Defense
smart card for all active-duty military personnel and civilian DoD employees. Using CAC,
“employees with government-issued computer equipment, including a card reader, can
access the ePortal from their homes,” says Melissa Johnson, DFAS’s content management
program manager.
The DFAS employees working offsite at Army, Navy, and Air Force installations access
ePortal through local LANs, using either the CAC or a public key infrastructure (PKI)
certificate. A special team manually creates an account for any off-site agency employee or
customer who wants access, though customers must have corporate sponsorship to receive
a membership.

20 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

CONTENT MANAGEMENT
ePortal uses Documentum’s Webtop client and Plumtree Content Server to manage all
content. “Documentum was one of the only content management systems available during
the initial deployment,” says Johnson, adding that they used it to manage both traditional
HTML Web content and non-traditional content, such as Word documents, PDFs, and
PowerPoint presentations. The team also customized the Documentum rollout to include
DFAS-specific attributes, taxonomy, security, and review processes.
The agency deployed Plumtree’s Content Server in October 2003 to manage HTML content;
in-progress work is managed in Plumtree Projects. The Plumtree Content Server rollout
wasn’t customized, except for presentation templates. Project leaders use Collaboration
Server tools to check documents in or out, maintain version control, and finish content
collaboratively. DFAS is gradually moving all existing HTML content from all twenty-six sites
to Content Server.
Content managers upload finalized content to the agency’s searchable knowledge directory.
“After upload, Documentum automatically starts a customized workflow for section 508
review,” notes Johnson, and a specialized ePortal team in Cleveland verifies that content is
compliant with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. “This law requires that federal agencies
provide employees and members of the public with disabilities access to electronic and
information technology comparable to the access available to employees and members of
the public who do not have disabilities,” she says. If the team doesn’t approve the content,
it goes back to the content owner to make it compliant.

Pictured: The content management console shows content managers, administrators,

and Section 508 reviewers the status of all submitted documents.

That process, plus templates, keeps the intranet content’s appearance consistent.
Documentum flags approved content as “active,” assigns read permissions based on the
content’s “organizational owner” attribute, then forwards it to the Web cache every hour.

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Each day at 5:30 a.m., Plumtree’s Documentum Crawler Web Services software “crawls” the
content and indexes it, after which users can access it via ePortal’s documents tab or
through Plumtree publications.
New Documentum content expires after six months; thirty days prior, content managers get
an automated e-mail notification. To keep content active, they must at least check out the
content, revalidate it, and resubmit it to the aforementioned approval process.
Content owners are drawn from across the agency’s twenty-six locations, generally by
business line, product line, or site. Initially, only webmasters inhabited the role, but non-
technical people joined the ranks as the tool became familiar. “Our goal is to fully distribute
the content management process down to the content-owner level. We are still managing
content organizationally, but plan to transition to a functional taxonomy and information
architecture as our use of the tools matures,” says Johnson. Still, distributing content
management already “eliminates traditional IT or Web-team bottlenecks,” she says.
The DFAS Corporate Communications office manages the look and feel of agency collateral,
and helped design the Plumtree Content Server HTML template.
Despite content managers’ occasional circumvention attempts, most users abide by the CMS
templates.
Content managers receive hands-on and online training, online user guides, and have
access to FAQs in ePortal’s Self Help community. DFAS uses Plumtree permissions to control
community membership and restrict CMS access to the appropriate employees.

TECHNOLOGY
The DFAS ePortal runs on Unix and, as documented above, uses a combination of
Documentum and Plumtree Content Server to maintain design and manage portal content.
DFAS also uses Documentum for everyday document management.
Content Server lets business users with no HTML or programming skills generate articles,
updates, and announcements. It also allows universal searching of all DFAS resources—
including the knowledge directory—which means that users spend less time searching, and
portal administrators only have to manage one search index.

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

1) Manifest the DFAS “one organization, one identity” vision. 2) Move multiple portals and
more than 200 websites to a single enterprise portal. 3) Distribute content management to
the lowest possible levels of the organization. 4) Capture knowledge for reuse. 5) Share
information between and among business and product lines, and with DFAS customers. 6)
Enable sometimes ad-hoc community and project teams to work collaboratively, whether
developing information, designing products, or troubleshooting problems.

BASIC INTRANET FEATURES

As described above, the ePortal has three main sections. The knowledge directory applies
an enterprise-wide taxonomy to information in document repositories, file systems, and
websites, then presents it to communities, projects, and applications. Communities are a
virtual space for business users and administrators to work together. Personalization
features let users establish up to six personalized MyPages with information and services of
their choosing.

22 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

 Pictured: Every user can create up to six personalized MyPages by dragging and
dropping available elements to one of the page’s three columns.

Portlets give users preconfigured tools and services, which can be further customized. Each
page has up to three columns; users drag and drop interface elements when creating their
personalized portal. Low-bandwidth and more accessible versions are also available.
The intranet also offers online project management, and online form creation and
management.
Online project management includes collaboration tools such as threaded discussions with
easy-to-use forums. Team members can create and track project tasks, and even assign
tasks to other users on a group calendar.

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Pictured: The project management template gives project teams access to a shared
calendar, task list, documents, and discussions.

Documents can be checked in or out, or rolled back to a previous version. Users can also
subscribe to various e-mail alerts for such things as new forum postings, document
availability, and community content updates.
The software also lets content managers create online forms automatically. Templates give
them a range of features: data calls, calendars, polls, and surveys. DFAS uses Plumtree
Studio; content managers don’t have to do any coding.
Developers also get an integrated application-building environment. One especially useful
feature is shared authentication resources, which lets developers integrate new applications
into intranet URLs, reducing the number of times a user must log on.

USERS
DFAS has about 15,000 personnel at twenty-six national and international locations. It is
the world’s largest finance and accounting operation.

USER TASKS
• Read news
• Use the employee directory to search by name, telephone number, organization
code, and location
• Train online through the Self Help community, and read its FAQs and tip of the
week
• Collaborate on projects

24 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

 • Learn to use the intranet through twenty-five training modules, which range from
logging in to customizing pages to advanced searching techniques
• Use the eLibrary to access official DFAS information and publications
• Read the Director’s Message, which automatically loads on users’ MyPage
• Monitor personal HR information and access the Who Do I Contact? portlet for
answers to questions based on topic, employee business line, promotions, and new
hire lists.

BACKGROUND
“In the mid-1990s and long before portals were even considered an option, the DFAS
intranet started much like most federal agencies: we had a small group of employees that
were familiar with the working of the Internet, could spell ‘HTML,’ and who were good at
developing and managing applications,” says Johnson. So, DFAS gave the group
responsibility for creating websites, managing content, and driving DFAS’s Internet
strategy.
The approach was successful—perhaps too successful. Frequently, DFAS would develop an
on-location website to support customers, only to find that another DFAS business unit
targeted the same customer with an almost identical website. Besides duplication of effort,
the Web group didn’t scale with the number of sites, eventually making the content creation
and updating process “long and cumbersome,” notes Johnson. On the other hand, the Web
presence represented “a huge leap beyond mail and the telephone,” she says, and
dramatically improved information sharing with customers.
The next-generation intranet was dubbed InfoWeb. Yet InfoWeb lacked a crucial feature—
“the enabling tool set that could foster knowledge management,” notes Diane (Dee)
Crawford, the DFAS ePortal program manager. Intranet information improved and
integration reduced duplicate efforts, but DFAS hadn’t changed its work style to maximize
the new possibilities. DFAS continued to search for a content management tool able to
delegate content creation and allow collaboration.
At roughly the same time, between 1999 and 2001, DFAS leadership was visiting a who’s
who of successful U.S. corporations—Microsoft, Motorola, Hewlett Packard, Ford, IBM,
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Bank of America, and Computer Sciences Corporation—to study
their success.
The companies had one thing in common: a portal. “Each had applied some sort of portal
technology to enhance performance, facilitate customer service, and increase technological
support to management and the workforce,” says Norman E. Noe II, DFAS’s chief
knowledge officer.
Based on its findings, DFAS management created a “one organization, one identity”
initiative. Creating a prototype portal, and migrating multiple portals and over 200 websites
to a single portal, however, would take time.
The initiative got a boost in February 2002 when DFAS director Thomas Bloom stated that
DFAS could not be a world-class finance and accounting firm without implementing an
enterprise portal. Work began in earnest.
The mandate: roll out a prototype in sixty days using existing software and licenses. The
portal didn’t yet have a budget. The intranet design team, formed by representatives from
the offices of business integration, the chief information officer, and technical services,
developed the initial requirements, drafted a deployment plan and methodology, and

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determined which in-production technology could meet their needs. They also built intranet
templates to standardize the look and feel.
“The development and deployment of a prototype portal was intended to represent the
solution to the director’s challenge, however it became evident during the requirements-
definition and development phases that the existing software suite did not contain all the
functionality and technical capabilities needed to implement a knowledge management
methodology,” says Crawford. The team decided to tackle functional and technical
requirements instead.
The prototype was deployed fifteen days ahead of schedule, “and at no additional software
or licensing cost to the agency,” says Noe. “This was a major first step.” DFAS now had an
enterprise portal easily accessible to users on their desktop. While it consolidated electronic
content, however, the portal lacked many features, including single sign-on, searchable or
reusable content, interactive workspaces, and automated workflows.
From April through May 2002, DFAS used the prototype to: document everything an in-
production, enterprise portal should have; write a business case analysis for moving to a
single portal; and create an acquisition plan to ensure the new portal was in place by the
end of 2003.
“If we had stayed with our prototype, we would have had to be our own software company
to build and maintain all of the unique attributes required to operate our business,” says
Crawford. In other words, DFAS needed a new solution using common, off-the-shelf
components. “Software development and the management of infrastructure is not a part of
our core competencies,” says Crawford.
The team was given 120 days to find its enterprise portal software, and $2.5 million—
originally budgeted for another program—was freed for the whole rollout.
One of the team members’ first tasks involved usability. They used research from Gartner
Group and Giga Research to determine which portals best addressed customer
requirements, and which intranet applications were most popular. Beyond guiding
purchasing, this approach had two benefits: it was an independent usability benchmark, and
it focused DFAS’s own application development.
DFAS also visited several private organizations and federal agencies to study their intranet
use, and discuss rollout and development times and their ongoing redesign philosophy.
Organizations visited included Hewlett Packard, IBM, Computer Sciences Corp.,
BearingPoint, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the Army and Navy. “All of these visits and
discussions help to set expectations on what could be accomplished—and how quickly—and
to identify the key steps in the evolutionary process,” says Crawford.
The agency found a product suite with its sought-after features: decentralized content
management, real-time collaboration, and electronic workflows. The team adopted the
software, noting that it would improve customer service and intranet performance, and
reduce intranet operating costs.

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY ACTIVITIES

The DFAS usability lab, part of the HR department, identifies intranet aspects to improve
based on direct user feedback, content manager requests, and, of course, usability testing.
The team also publishes all findings to an ePortal usability community. “The findings and
results of usability testing on one system or part of the ePortal are often directly applicable
to another part,” notes Ellis.

26 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

To redesign the existing portal and take advantage of Plumtree functionality, the team
focused on common, everyday tasks. “We do not focus on fringe scenarios or tasks, but
rather on the ones that will impact the greatest number of people, including the basic
navigation of the portal, customization, search, and collaboration,” says Crawford.
One intranet area offering opportunities to improve service and reduce costs: the HR
benefits section. “The HR benefits area was being swamped with phone calls,” says Adam
Ellis, an HR IT specialist. The existing intranet content obviously wasn’t doing its job, so the
HR content management team increased the amount of benefit information available. The
calls still didn’t stop.
Through usability testing, “it became apparent that the problem wasn’t a lack of benefits
information, but rather that no one could find what they were looking for,” says Noe. The
usability lab subjected the call center to a Six Sigma study (wherein any process outcomes
within six standard deviations from the mean must be acceptable). Through this process,
the lab identified the most common questions, then redesigned the HR portal using usability
testing, heuristic evaluation, and log analysis as a guide.

Pictured: The redesigned HR benefits community targets employees’ questions through

a FAQ, plus directs them to all-new tools containing precise benefit, retirement, and
other information.

Before releasing the new intranet, DFAS also created a series of twenty-five intranet
training modules, to take users from logging in to page customization to advanced searches.

TIMELINE
• February 2002: Team formed to create one portal for entire enterprise using
existing software and licenses. Deadline: sixty days.
• May 2002: With portal requirements finalized, development begins. Though portal
development hadn’t been budgeted, $2.5 million for the entire rollout is re-

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 allocated from the business integration office budget. Goal: finish rollout within 120
days. The team identifies the top twelve private-sector portal-software vendors
available via the federal government’s General Services Administration schedule,
then reduces the list to nine. DFAS gives each remaining vendor two weeks to
respond to a Request for Information. From these responses, DFAS selects seven
finalists.
• August 2002: Conference held with seven finalists to explain requirements.
Vendors give oral presentations, evaluated by the portal development team and
additional experts. Four finalists are selected. Each receives equal time and access
to DFAS’s Indianapolis facility to do an inside-the-firewall presentation. The
intranet team ultimately selects Plumtree.
• February 2003: Intranet deployment and testing begins.
• June 2003: Beginning of phased deployment to load test and evaluate intranet
functionality. All twenty-six sites completed in thirty days.
• Fall 2003: ePortal wins a Plumtree “No Empty Portals” award in recognition of best
practices and high return on investment.
• December 2003: Design, development, and deployment of automated workflow
and content management begins. Target rollout: spring 2004.

RESULTS
As befits a project that constantly met tough deadlines with room to spare, the portal
launched ahead of schedule. The rollout “executed on time and under the government’s cost
estimate, and the portal was deployed agency-wide on a newly designed and tested
production platform before July 2003,” says Noe.
The portal meets the “one organization, one identity” mandate in spades. The new portal
consolidates three old portals and more than 200 websites. Users have access to more than
10,000 lines of searchable and reusable content. Project teams can rely on content version
control and can store documents on the intranet, meaning fewer e-mail attachments gobble
up network bandwidth.
In fact, through new organizational guidelines, the ePortal team hopes to completely switch
users from e-mail to the intranet for such tasks as trading documents or collaborating on
events by the end of 2004. By the end of 2005, DFAS expects all collaboration to be done
via the intranet.
Currently, the intranet contains sixty communities and supports more than 100 business
projects. Many of those were transferred from the previous portal, but new ones have also
sprung up to handle recent projects, such as decreasing the accounting cycle to twenty-one
days (see below).
Based on before-and-after usability testing, DFAS was able to quantify a number of
improvements. For example, reduced sign-on helps employees move more quickly to
different parts of the site, while improving employee access to HR information reduces call
center and printing costs. Overall savings: approximately 200 staff years.
By consolidating many online applications, including time and attendance reporting, e-
learning, a resume builder, and a mentoring-network tool, DFAS reduced the time it takes
to support those applications, saving more than ten staff years.
The new portal also improves knowledge capture and reuse. “One of the growing issues
within the federal government is the aging workforce and the loss of critical knowledge as

28 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

senior managers walk out the door,” says Noe. Capturing that knowledge is imperative. In
addition, the portal helps focus captured knowledge by problem area, and lets different
business lines reapply existing best practices, enhancing efficiency and reducing costs.
Several new tools make life easier for users. For example, one reduces the number of times
a user has to sign on to different intranet applications. “This portlet allows users to enter in
individual application log-in information such as user name and password one time,” says
Noe. The tools then handle reduced sign-on to a number of existing applications.
The eLibrary houses all of DFAS’s official information and publications in a single location.
“This includes all of the information that the agency would consider to be searchable and
reusable,” says O’Brien. Like a well-equipped city library, it’s a one-stop shop for users, yet
accessible via their browser.
A tool called Screaming Media gives users access to many media resources, including
global, financial, and sports news, and weather reports with maps for nine locations. One
community, Around DFAS, includes DFAS-specific news, messages from the director, and
other information to keep employees informed.
DFAS employees now get instant access to their HR information online. For all 15,000
employees, annual HR statements are no longer mailed; they can only be accessed online.
By eliminating mailings, DFAS expects to save $100,000 a year. Looking back, having a
dedicated usability lab has paid off, says Noe. “Reading [Jakob] Nielsen’s [writings] and
attending various usability conferences opened our eyes to the fact that incorporating
usability into product design doesn’t have to cost millions. Not counting the three computers
and TV that HR already had, and the two empty rooms for the space, HR spent roughly
$1,500 equipping the usability lab.”
The usability team is beginning to conduct more intranet user surveys to gauge their
satisfaction with the intranet and design iterations.
The intranet is already supporting an ambitious, mandatory plan to reduce the time it takes
DFAS to generate a suite of DoD accounting reports from forty-five to twenty-one days. “All
of the military departments and defense agencies have different requirements and different
tasks associated with generating their unique accounting statements,” says Noe. The plan is
a huge undertaking, however, as the sites generating accounting statements are spread
across the country. DFAS’s project team has identified more than 200 tasks and 1,400
subtasks to be completed and tracked. Using e-mail or spreadsheets was deemed too
cumbersome; it’s using the new portal instead.
That model holds going forward. By relying on the intranet to support critical, near-term
projects, DFAS expects to create expert users and success stories that will drive intranet
use throughout the organization, and better enable the usability lab to hone the intranet’s
usability. “The real portal integration work happens in the target applications,” says
Crawford. As users learn the portal’s features and capabilities, they can better design new
portal-specific applications and reap additional benefits.

LESSONS LEARNED
Insights from Dee Crawford and Norman Noe:
Employees always resist change. “As the old saying goes, ‘It’s tough to think about
draining the swamp when you are surrounded by alligators.’ While transitioning functions to
a portal would add tremendous value, improve customer service, and foster savings, it’s
hard to start moving toward that when DFAS managers are trying to ensure that the
soldiers in the trenches in Afghanistan and Iraq are being paid correctly. This is not a new

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lesson, but one that is documented in case after case where change is introduced. It’s just
part of human nature: change is hard. To overcome that, development and acceptance of a
new standard is key.”
Real-world success drives use. “Identify a select group of projects, then use these as
initial steps to move forward. Yes, it’s true that this approach will take a little more time,
but the result will be the development of a group of strong intranet users and supporters.
Early business unit successes and aggressive marketing ensures all users will ‘get’ the
intranet too.”
Consider “all-or-nothing” carefully. “Portal software vendors were not restricted to
selling DFAS a single tool—they could partner with another vendor—but the proposal had to
be a single solution. However, while DFAS received a very robust and workable suite of
products, we might have gotten a more integrated toolset if we’d given the winning vendor
more flexibility in making substitutions due to product changes after it was selected.”
Don’t implement everything at once. “Separate the content management from the
workflow and the collaboration, and do them one at a time rather than trying to do them all
at once. This approach provides more time for training, familiarizing users with new
features, and deploys content management—the most used or indirectly used feature—more
quickly.”
Don’t mirror organizational structure. “Our initial ePortal information architecture
mirrors our organizational structure. While this made the content migration from previous
versions of our intranet much easier for both content managers and the ePortal content
management team, it only perpetuated the less-than-usable design and users’ inability to
find information. Our future project list includes a total redesign of the DFAS information
architecture to make it functionally based, and much more intuitive for all users.”

30 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

Department for Transport (U.K.)
Using the Intranet: Intranet Team:
The U.K.’s Department for Transport creates the Visual design by The Team, with templates by
strategic framework for transport services Digitext
delivered through a range of public and private
sector bodies. The central department consists of Members:
about 1,700 people working on transport policy, Iain Anderson, Transnet team technical manager;
strategy, and support services. Policy covers all Robert Elliot, Transnet team assistant internal
types of transport—road, rail, air, and sea—and communications officer; Stephen Foy, former senior
services include finance, legal matters, manager of Transnet; Alison Hadley, head of editorial
communication, HR, and IT. and internal communications; Susan Hinchsliffe,
Transnet team senior intranet manager; Francesca
McMahon, Transnet team assistant internal
communications officer; Kevin Reed, internal
communications adviser; Shilpa Shah, assistant
communications officer; Jim Woodfine, Transnet team
technical assistant

SUMMARY
Transnet, the Department of Transport (DfT) intranet, expedites processes that in the past
required considerable time and legwork. Transnet is both a communications medium and a
reference library. This combination helps employees find accurate information and
confidently do things for themselves.
Transnet began within the parent Department of Transport, Local Government and the
Regions (DTLR) and before that resided in the Department of the Environment, Transport
and the Regions (DETR). In these departments, the intranet had been owned by the IT
Services Division and Information Management Division, respectively, both of which had
diverging views about what an intranet should do and be. DfT’s communication directorate
inherited Transnet with the goal of making it a communications tool. More specifically, the
intranet was to help align communications about external department work with its internal
audience, so all staff members could see how their own work contributed to the
department’s overall plan.
Daily news items are published on the Transnet homepage and users receive a link to the
weekly bulletin via e-mail. The intranet offers users extensive news and information,
including daily press releases, messages from the Permanent Secretary, access to the staff
handbook and the business plan, and news about department management and new
initiatives.
To address criticisms of the previous intranet, the team created an uncluttered homepage
and a properly configured search engine. To simplify navigation, the top horizontal menu
appears on every intranet page, as do breadcrumbs and a simple search field (in the upper-
right corner). The team studied site statistics to learn which site areas got the most use,
and put links to those areas in the left-hand navigation. The right side of the homepage
features the Managing DfT section, which is filled with information about senior
management and the work of DfT.

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 Pictured: The homepage of the Department for Transport's intranet, Transnet.

The intranet offers several accessibility features. After acquiring screen-reader software, the
team used it to assess how the site might perform for seeing-impaired users. Revamping
table layouts is only one major change that they made based on their research. For users
with low vision, the site offers a high-contrast style sheet or the user’s standard Windows
style sheet.

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 Pictured: For accessibility, users can set the site to high-contrast mode.

The corporate organization chart is designed for pleasant online viewing—unlike many other
commonly used PDF “org charts” that feature tiny boxes and impossible-to-read text. Using
the left-hand navigation, users choose the group they are interested in. The group appears
on the main page on the right, and is obviously labeled. The chart provides pictures, names,
job titles, and an e-mail link. Users can also click on a name to drill down and see that
person’s direct reports.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 33

 Pictured: The organization chart includes job titles and photographs.

The intranet gives users access to many online forms, such as accident and incident
reporting, overtime claims, and project initiation documents. It also offers online booking
forms for special events, such as the Equality and Diversity Unit’s program of visits and
talks called “Valuing Diversity.” Users can also advertise items or services for sale on an
intranet-based notice board.
The intranet team developed forms for specific departments as well. For example,
communication directorate line managers must report any team member’s absence to the
directorate’s management. Previously, a global e-mail sent every Monday morning asked
managers to report their team absences for the preceding week, and the process required
much back-and-forth e-mail communication. To improve efficiency, the Transnet team
developed a simple intranet-based form that lets line managers report absences effortlessly,
and eliminates the extra, unnecessary steps for clarification. Managers receive an
automated weekly message reminding them to complete this form.

34 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

 Pictured: This simple intranet form replaces an e-mail to communication directorate
managers, which was sent every Monday morning and required lots of back-and-forth
communication to clarify.

As with any organization, branding is an intricate process. To help the Department of

Transport succeed at branding, the intranet offers its logos and ministers’ photographs and
signatures in various file types. All are easily identified and downloadable. The same page
includes a link to corporate identity guidelines—to help users employ digital assets
correctly—plus guidance on which file types to select for printed or electronic documents. A
similar page gives communication directorate employees easy access to digital versions of
ministers’ photographs and signatures, which they can use to create forwards to
publications or fulfill reporters’ requests for photographs.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 35

 Pictured: A page that offers a few versions of the corporate logo, saved in several
different file types. The link to the corporate identity guidelines ensures that they’re
used correctly.

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 Pictured: Frequently used photographs and signatures of ministers and the Permanent
Secretary are also easily accessible. Rather than having to find the right person and
request these items, using the intranet accelerates the process.

All of these features increase employee productivity.

URL AND ACCESS

Transnet’s address is http://transnet. The intranet is not set as the employee homepage.
When users log on to the intranet, they see a start-up page offering access to two
organizations: the DfT and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
Users can access Transnet from government departmental offices on the Government
Secure Intranet (GSI) using the intranet’s full address: http://transnet.gsi.gov.uk. The site
is also accessible via dial-up using DfT’s remote access software.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT
For content management, the team selected Abacus e-media’s Webstructure software and
customized it to suit the DfT.
“Webstructure is written in ASP, uses a SQL database server back end, and sits on a
Windows 2000 platform running IIS,” notes Iain Anderson, Transnet team technical
manager.
Various DfT divisions and larger business units each appoint a content owner to manage
their intranet updates. As the intranet has grown, so has interest in having a content stake

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in it, and “also in keeping it up to date,” says Susan Hinchsliffe, Transnet team senior
intranet manager.
Templates dictate such features as page titles, summaries, and left-side and right-side
menus. Some templates, such as the weekly online bulletin, enforce rigid design rules. In
general, however, users have some information-presentation flexibility.
“We have style guidelines within the Transnet team to ensure adherence to such things as
headings, fonts, and corporate colors. We follow most of DfT’s general style-guide
recommendations for spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, although certain concessions
are made. You would not find, for example, quite so many semi-colons on the Web as in
printed documents,” says Hinchsliffe.
Template enforcement is evolving. Soon, as part of a move toward distributed publishing,
content managers will submit all content to the Transnet team for editorial approval. “This is
because a lack of professional editorial control was a problem with the previous system,
where material was badly written and frequently out of date,” says Hinchsliffe.

TECHNOLOGY
The team designs more complicated pages—with tables or interactive features—in
Dreamweaver. Mini-applications, such as the staff notice board, accident-reporting system,
and a Windows XP question-and-answer board, run on a Microsoft Access database.
The search engine is Open Objects’ KBroker.

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

1) Make Transnet a must-stop destination for all internal communications. 2) Streamline
business processes by using online forms and databases rather than downloads. 3) Increase
the existing Transnet team’s productivity. 4) Introduce a clear structure and navigation. 5)
Add meta-data to pages to improve searching. 6) Keep content updated. 7) Give the
intranet a more modern look.

BASIC INTRANET FEATURES

The site provides “access to all the online services users may need in the course of their
work,” says Hinchsliffe, including intranets; websites for the DfT, the Office of the Deputy
Prime Minister, and related agencies; online HR and travel planning; search engines; and
online news outlets, including the BBC, ITN, and CNN websites. The intranet also gives
users a range of features to make work life easier, such as accident reporting forms, a
popular pages list, a for-sale board, and online special events booking.

USERS
The intranet is used by the central DfT—known as DfT(C)—as well as by other government
agencies connected to the GSI. Those agencies include the Highways Agency, Maritime and
Coastguard Agency, Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, and the Driver and Vehicle
Licensing Agency.
DfT employs about 1,800 people, and statistics reveal about 2,500 Transnet users, so DfT
knows the intranet is reaching people in other agencies.

38 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

USER TASKS
DfT staff use Transnet to access information about the organization, including guidance on
procedures such as procurement, management, publishing, and security. Frequent tasks
include:
• Read daily press releases and publications
• Read messages from the Permanent Secretary
• Reference the department’s business plans or new business initiatives
• Peruse the staff handbook
• Use online forms
• Reference location services, such as procedures for visitors and obtaining security
passes
• Read the online version of the staff magazine, a2b
Several divisions and business units also have localnets, where they post procedures,
agendas, minutes, and follow-up papers for meetings. Some divisions and units also
post their department’s reference manuals or service catalogs.

BACKGROUND
Understanding the history of Transnet requires a review of the department’s numerous
name changes and several business reorganizations.
In November 1997, the first intranet for DfT—then known as the Department for the
Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR)—was completed. Called InfoNET, it used
Microsoft FrontPage, was pure HTML, and was revolutionary for its user base. As the original
instruction manual noted, “The pages in the InfoNET are connected by links (called
hypertext links). When the links are within text, the text is usually colored blue or red and is
underlined but links can also be within graphics.”
In March 2000, InfoNET got its first major overhaul, with improved usability, interactive
forums, and some online forms. Both search and rudimentary distributed-publishing
capabilities were added, and the online telephone and business directories were updated.
In June 2001, DETR became the Department for Transport, Local Government and the
Regions (DTLR). The immediate intranet change: a redesigned logo.
That October, the communication directorate, which managed DTLR’s website, took over
responsibility for the intranet. Whereas the previous intranet teams held technology-centric
viewpoints, the new team had a mandate: transform the intranet into a communications
tool.

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY ACTIVITIES

When the intranet transferred to communications, the design team immediately gathered
user feedback. Among the complaints about the old intranet were that the navigation and
structure needed improvement, a lack of meta-data impeded search results, content was
often old, and the intranet didn’t look modern.
According to Alison Hadley, DfT’s head of editorial and internal communications, their goal
was to not only redesign the intranet, but make it “the first port of call for all internal
communications” by including daily news, announcements, and business information.

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From inception to rollout, the redesign took about two years. Work began in December
2001; in early 2002, DfT solicited design proposals from outside firms. In April 2002, team
members gave content owners a three-month notice to review their material and discard
anything that was outdated so it wouldn’t be moved to the new site.
When the redesign team began transferring content, however, “it became apparent that
very little of the content had been reviewed,” says Hinchsliffe. “The following year was
spent nagging—it’s the only word for it—and cajoling people into improving their
information.”
Other ongoing constraints were “tight budgets, lack of skills in the team, and low
management priority,” says Hadley.
Then things changed. “Halfway through the project, our organization was split in two—into
DfT and ODPM [Office of the Deputy Prime Minister]—and the project moved up the
management priority scale quite dramatically,” she says.
The redesign team received more resources, but also a new mandate: launch just three
months after a new design was agreed upon. Management wanted to launch the intranet as
soon as possible to support the new government departments. Thus, says Hadley, “we had
to build two sites in that time, then split the team between them.”
Designs were finalized with The Team, an outside design firm, in July 2002. Six people then
spent three weeks transferring content to the new intranet.
By the time the site launched in September 2002, the design team had pruned existing
content pages by half, to about 5,000 pages. Not all content had been thoroughly reviewed,
but everything had a content owner, a date for review, and meta-data from a department-
approved list of keywords and document types.
The team also thoroughly checked all links and menus, and ran the sites in parallel for three
months.
The latest version of Transnet launched in September 2003. “Since then, we have refined
the search engine and, as explained earlier, continued to add interactive features and
different subject areas,” says Hinchsliffe. A Web designer/developer, who joined the
Transnet team in November 2002, produces many of the interactive features.

TIMELINE
• November 1997: First intranet launched.
• October 2001: Communication directorate inherits intranet responsibility.
• December 2001: Intranet redesign project begins.
• Early 2002: Initial proposals accepted for the Transnet intranet.
• April 2002: Content owners given three months to review material.
• July 2002: Intranet design finalized.
• August 2002: Old content migrated to new intranet.
• September 2002: Transnet launches.
• November 2002: Web designer/developer joins team; begins creating interactive
features.
• May 2003: CMS introduced.

40 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

RESULTS
The new intranet, which addresses many of the criticisms users had about the old one,
includes “a very simple, uncluttered homepage, a properly configured search engine, and
the beginnings of a designed information architecture,” says Stephen Foy, a former
Transnet senior manager.
New intranet features include an accident- and incident-reporting form, Windows XP
questions and answers, and a policy briefing area explaining what the organization is trying
to achieve and why. Staff members also have a new version of the notice board, to
advertise things for sale or housing rentals.
Other interesting features include an organizational chart with photos and e-mail links, and
a “popular items and notices” page with links to the most often used pages, plus
announcements for in-house training or events.
“Several divisions—for example, finance and procurement—have put their meaty reference
manuals online, and there is a substantial area dedicated to project management,” notes
Hinchsliffe.
Today, Transnet receives an average of 3,800 hits per day. “Our central staff number about
1,800, but our statistics reveal 2,500 distinct users, so we know that we are also reaching
colleagues in the various DfT executive agencies around the UK,” says Foy.
A recent staff survey showed a 7% increase in intranet users between the old and new
intranets. Compared to InfoNET’s launch—which sparked 300 usability complaints—Transnet
received only three, and those had to do with content.
“The library stopped running training courses because they said the system was entirely
intuitive,” says Hadley. For content authors, however, DfT plans to offer more formal
training. To help drive intranet use, the communications staff includes links to intranet
information whenever it sends important, organization-wide e-mails, such as those detailing
an organizational change. Users typically jump at the additional information. “We can
usually count on around 1,500 click-throughs from that e-mail within half a day of that e-
mail being sent out,” says Foy.
Management now posts its weekly bulletin on Transnet, rather than sending out a hard
copy. “Five years ago, an internal audit found that 80% of staff wanted to receive the
weekly bulletin in print, rather than electronically,” says Hadley. Nonetheless, the change
has met with no staff complaints—and certainly none from management. “By transferring
the weekly bulletin from a printed to an electronic version, we have saved £130,000 per
year,” notes Hinchsliffe.

LESSONS LEARNED
Insights from Alison Hadley:
Use external researchers. “It’s difficult for the team to be objective about their own
work.”
Invest in training. “Improving the intranet team’s professional skills has given us more
influence with content owners, as well as the ability to provide a better publishing service.”
Create room to breathe. “We developed the design over a nine-month period before
introducing the content management system. Although it meant a second migration, it also
meant we were not constrained by too rigid a template at the start.”

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Invest in statistics software. “Having a good statistics software package allows us to
give content owners and managers reliable evaluation reports and helps us refine the
intranet.”
Oversee content production. “Don’t trust content owners to review material. Few have
skills in writing for the Web, and none regarded it as priority work. We could have saved a
lot of wasted effort by moving to central editorial control earlier.
Insights from Susan Hinchsliffe:
Start training early. “Take a basic course about writing for the Web and information
architecture as soon as possible in the project.”
Think accessibility. “Acquaint yourself with the basic rules of accessibility for visually
impaired users.”
Remember that people rarely read word-for-word. “Help them to scan-read your
pages by keeping paragraphs short, breaking up text with graphics and bullet points, using
tables when appropriate—for dates, times, and locations of training classes—and by adding
the syllabus. Use common graphics consistently for e-mail addresses, and Word and Excel
documents. Change the intranet’s front page all the time, and advertise what’s new there;
don’t trust users to surf the site just to see what’s new.”
Plug the intranet. “To maximize use of the intranet site, add links to e-mails, printed
documents, and training hand-outs.”
Give files consistent names. “Establish a naming convention for downloadable files,
otherwise you’ll find the document has a title different from its name—and then you’ll enter
it in the content management system under another name.”
Convey trustworthiness. “Respond to notification of such things as inaccuracies, broken
links, and wrong names and telephone numbers immediately, and get regular updates done
as soon as possible.”

42 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

Department for Victorian Communities (Australia)
Using the Intranet: Intranet Team:
The Department for Victorian Communities In-house: Department for Victorian Communities
represents the Victorian Government’s (DVC), Department of Infrastructure (DOI), and
determination to deliver government services in a Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC)
way that supports and strengthens communities
across Victoria through a more integrated Members:
approach to planning, funding, and delivering Meigan Geileskey, project manager; Melanie Hughes,
services at the local level. communications adviser; Andrea Appleby, internal
communications manager; Gail Nicholson, corporate
administration director; Rosanne Nicolazzo, workforce
development manager; Geoff Olsen, DVC IT project
manager; Robert McIntosh, DOI IT manager; Nada
Bagaric, support and communication analyst

SUMMARY
Given this intranet’s simple presentation and consistent design, you’d never guess that
much of its content was derived from seven very different intranets. The intranet’s
uncomplicated design, plentiful content, seamless integration, and creative touches all help
meet the goal of unifying staff from seven different divisions.
The Department for Victorian Communities (DVC) was established in December 2002 due to
government changes following the Victorian state election. DVC brings together fifteen
business units that were previously attached to seven host departments, seven IT networks,
and seven different intranets. The Department Secretary launched the new intranet, DVC
Net@Work (to celebrate, staff members were given Net@Work mouse pads). “The new
intranet reflects the fun environment and the diversity of people that it has brought
together,” says Melanie Hughes, communications adviser. The intranet supports
approximately 600 staff members primarily located in its main Melbourne office, but DVC
also has offices in other Melbourne locations and in regional areas throughout Victoria.
The intranet provides the right amount of content, elegantly packaged. The homepage’s
news section is updated weekly. Headlines and short summaries give users enough
information to decide whether they want to read further. Understanding the importance of
fresh content, the team addressed this technically and organizationally. First, designers built
the site for distributed authoring. Second, the group immediately established a team of
authors representing each of the department's business units. More content authors will
continue to be trained. There is also an archive that contains previous homepages so people
can refer to past articles.
The rotating Faces of DVC banner includes images of the staff members. Displaying both the
image and name helps staff identify each other. This is especially helpful given that the
department is just over a year old and employees have come from many different locations.
On the intranet, employees get access to procedures, policies, support for work activities,
statistical data and information resources, and information and services related to staff work
conditions and professional development. The About DVC area supplies a department
overview, including facts about ministers, executive profiles, the organization chart, and
strategic and corporate information.

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 Pictured: The Department for Victorian Communities homepage has a clean look,
provides updated news items, and creates department unity by using rotating pictures
of employees in the top banner.

We often encounter corporate intranets that are organized by units and functional groups
rather than by user tasks, which can make it difficult for users to find information—
particularly when they don’t know which group handles which duties. In DVC’s case, the
designers understood their audience and knew that people from the many business units
would each come with knowledge of their own previous processes and terminology. Thus,
the intranet’s left-side navigation is organized by subject rather than by departmental
structure. This makes finding content easy, and also facilitates the integration of business
units’ content. The left-side navigation is persistent across the intranet, and breadcrumbs
help users keep their context. On every page, links to the site’s most popular areas appear
in the second row of the top, horizontal navigation.
Overall, the site’s text is well written. Black text contrasts well with the white page
background, and bold headlines help users to scan text. Pictures are used to enhance
messages.

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 Pictured: The GoVolunteer page uses legible text and a picture that supports the
message. The Printer friendly version link at the bottom of the page makes articles
portable. Also, note the breadcrumbs in the upper-right, which help users maintain
context.

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 Pictured: The Methodology page breaks text into manageable chunks and puts
important words in boldface type. It also offers links to Related documents, which
help users locate similar content pages that they might not have known existed.

In the left-side navigation, clicking a link such as What's Happening expands the menu.
These second-level links are divided into subject clusters such as: Bulletin board, Events,
News, Media releases, Fun@DVC, and VicGov Trading Post. This second level of links
prevents the list of top-level links from getting unruly.
The What's Happening section keeps employees abreast of current events, including DVC-
related activities and seminars, national and international news, and weather. To keep

46 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

employees current on DVC’s outside communication efforts, the page also links to the
department’s media releases.

Pictured: The What's Happening section keeps employees abreast of current events,
including DVC-related activities, Melbourne events, national and international news,
and weather.

Having fast access to current contact information is crucial. The Contacting People
navigation link leads to an intranet section containing links to DVC’s phone and location
directory, the Whole of Victorian Government Directory, public phone books (business and
residential), and key DVC contacts.

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 Pictured: On the Contacting People page, employees can search for users using a
variety of criteria. The feature is especially useful for finding where employees are
located, along with their division and work title.

A New Starters section helps new employees familiarize themselves with the department
and find answers to questions. In studying intranets, we often see cases in which new
employees are too embarrassed to ask a certain question, or don’t want to bother their
manager or administrative assistant. In such cases, having the information available on the
intranet lets them find answers independently and privately. In this intranet’s case, the
information is comprehensive, supplying everything from payroll forms to the code of
conduct. New employees can also enter required information about their personal details
and banking and tax information, as well as apply for a security pass or schedule a training
course.

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 Pictured: The New Starters section gives new employees answers to typical new-
employee questions independently and privately, and lets them quickly apply for such
things as security passes.

This comprehensive intranet succeeds in uniting not only information from various sources,
but the department staff as well.

URL AND ACCESS

The intranet URL is http://intranet.dvc.vic.gov.au. When users open Lotus Notes, the
intranet homepage is the automatic start-up page. For staff in offices outside the
department’s main location, intranet access is available via an extranet at
http://extranet.dvc.vic.gov.au.

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CONTENT MANAGEMENT
DVC uses Enterprise Solutions’ Rapid Web Publisher, a distributed-authoring program that
runs on Lotus Notes. Each business unit has at least one content author; there are currently
forty authors and more are in training. Each author learns intranet style, which includes
specific colors for page titles, headings, rulers, and shading.
An intranet coordinator vets layout and content before allowing pages to go live.
The site uses two templates: one for the homepage with its Faces at DVC banner; the other
is the standard template used for all other pages.

TECHNOLOGY
The Victorian Department of Infrastructure (DOI) hosts the Windows 2000 server hardware
and software running the intranet. DOI handles all of DVC’s information technology via a
shared-services-arrangement contract.
The team selected DOI-developed intranet technology, though it came with some
constraints. For example, users must enter their username and password to move beyond
the intranet homepage. “DVC hoped to avoid this password requirement, but this wasn’t
possible,” says Hughes, adding that it’s a DOI security policy requirement, and DOI hosts
the intranet. Still, she says, “the advantages of using a pre-existing system definitely far
outweighed [the benefits of] starting from scratch.”

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

1) Make the intranet DVC’s primary communication tool. 2) Improve information sharing
within DVC. 3) Ensure that each business unit has at least one content author who posts
content at least once every six months. 4) Transition from a biweekly newsletter to the
intranet as a regular source of information. 5) Work with and around simultaneous projects
to consolidate IT, finance, and HR.

BASIC INTRANET FEATURES

The intranet gives users access to news, job-related information and documents, staff
directories, and more. Every page contains links to high-use applications: the HR Kiosk, pay
and leave information, the finance system, the DVC phone directory, the IT help desk, and
information for new staff.
News on the homepage changes at least weekly.
The homepage features Faces at DVC—randomly rotating staff pictures—to familiarize
people with other staff members, along with links to homepage archives.

USERS
DVC’s intranet supports approximately 600 staff members; most are in Melbourne, but
some are located in regional Victoria offices.
The intranet supports several DVC divisions and business units:
• Office of Commonwealth Games Coordination
• Sport and Recreation Victoria

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 • Community Building and Information (Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages;
Public Record Office Victoria; Government and Community Information; and
Community Programs)
• Local Government Victoria
• People and Community Advocacy (Office for Youth; Office of Women’s Policy;
Victorian Office of Multicultural Affairs; Aboriginal Affairs Victoria; Employment
Programs; and Cabinet and Parliamentary Services)
• Corporate and Organizational Development
• Strategic Policy and Research

USER TASKS
• Find information about DVC news and events
• Access salary and vacation time information
• Pay invoices
• Claim expenses
• Access the DVC phone and location directory, the Victorian government directory,
or public phone directories
• Contact the IT help desk and read IT updates
• Find the organizational chart, strategic documents, and information about ministers
and senior management
• Read messages from the DVC Secretary (the head of the department)
• New employees access key employment documents: tax and bank account
information; security pass applications; key HR policies, including the employee
code of conduct; and information on staff amenities such as parking, bicycle racks,
and shower location.

BACKGROUND
DVC was created in December 2002, following the previous month’s Victorian state
elections.
The intranet was one of five “Establishing DVC” projects begun concurrently. The other four
were to create shared service arrangements for IT, HR, and finance, and move 470 of DVC’s
600 employees to one building.
One of the business unit’s staff, Meigan Geileskey, had extensive Victorian government
Internet experience and was appointed DVC intranet project manager. She immediately
established a provisional intranet. “As DVC staff were initially working on seven different IT
networks and in different buildings, a short-term solution was to develop an interim DVC
intranet accessible via the Whole of Victorian Government Intranet,” she says. As in any
reorganization, the fledging DVC staff members—who were initially located in different
buildings—wanted information. As an example, Geileskey notes that “details about the staff
move to the new building were well sought after.”
The transitional intranet, built in Dreamweaver, lacked distributed authoring or built-in
archiving, but “it served as a short-term solution for the department until the development
of the current intranet,” says Geileskey.

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DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY ACTIVITIES
The design team chose December 15, 2003 as its target launch date for the full-fledged DVC
intranet, because by that date all staff would be relocated to the new DVC building and most
would be on the new DVC IT network.
Work began in July 2003. “From the very start of the project, the scope of what was
achievable for a December launch was outlined,” says Geileskey. The goal: launch no matter
what.
The team decided that the initial design should provide basic content, easy access to some
services (such as HR), and a foundation for improving content and functionality in the
future.
To get up and running quickly, DVC selected the CMS already used by DOI, its shared IT
services provider. “DVC was lucky to build on DOI’s knowledge and expertise and many
years of intranet experience when designing ours,” says Geileskey. “Of course, being a new
department with a different focus, we also had to tailor our site to suit our needs.”
To learn how, the project manager visited other Victorian government intranet managers,
drawing on their experience and usability studies. DVC also created an Intranet Reference
Group, composed of Web-savvy individuals in the business units, to comment on intranet
design iterations, including graphic design, site architecture, and information architecture.
The Web group also kept their business units updated on the intranet’s progress.
Initial intranet testing took the form of workshops. Prior to meeting, workshop participants
were given two questions to ponder: What three aspects do/did you like about your
previous department’s intranet? What are the four things that you would like to do/obtain
via the departmental intranet?
To expand results beyond the existing, Web-focused group, one workshop required each
group member to bring a colleague. The design team thus got feedback on its two questions
from various employees, including a project manager, policy officer, and an administrator.
Workshop participants described parts of previous intranets as “boring,” “formal,” and
“unfriendly,” as well as “cluttered” and “hard to use.”
Yet users also praised some existing intranet elements, including staff profiles and photos; a
clean look; weekly news; short homepage teasers linked to full news items; an HR portal
that offered continuous access to information; easily available policies and templates; and
intranet-based directories and contact information.
The workshops helped focus the design team. “It was a great way to get an initial idea of
how to create the design for DVC,” says Geileskey.
For example, the idea for randomly rotating staff photos on the new homepage was adopted
from the Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) intranet. “Because DVC was new and no
one really knew their colleagues in other business units, this was seen as a valuable feature
for our new intranet,” says Geileskey. Based on feedback, the design team added another
feature suitable for a fledging department: they included staff names under the photos.
Although DVC doesn’t have its own page designers, DPC page designers helped the team
create an intranet prototype, using the DOI intranet as a model and adding DVC corporate
design elements.
“One-to-one consultation proved very useful. Often, in groups, people don’t say what they
really think,” says Geileskey.

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The project team employed several other usability techniques to test prototypes, including
card sorting to determine how to cluster information and create a site architecture, expert
review, and user testing of design prototypes.
Feedback on the first prototype resulted in various changes. A banner with community
photos was used in the original design at the top of the page, but users thought it was
taking up too much prime real estate and the design team removed the photos and reduced
the banner size. Feedback also indicated that news items listed on the right side of the page
were viewed as duplicates; eliminating them created more white space.

Pictured: The first design for the DVC intranet. Feedback from the Web group and
randomly selected staff members from different levels and business units helped
enhance this version to create the intranet DVC has today.

The project team also tested navigation terminology and subsequently eliminated terms
that users viewed as too clever. “We initially based our terms on the successful DOI model
and then tested these on DVC staff,” notes Geileskey.
For example, on the DOI intranet, “people services” refers to professional development
information in the HR section. “This term didn’t make sense to DVC staff because our
department is based on community—people—services, so DVC staff thought that this term
meant what services DVC is providing to the community,” notes Geileskey. The new, DVC-
friendly term is “staff services.”
In the end, “Quite a bit of time was spent on tailoring navigation terms for DVC to ensure
users could make sense of the site architecture easily,” she says.
Finally, the new intranet was branded as DVC Net@Work, and mouse pads were created to
herald the launch.

TIMELINE
• July 2003: Intranet project begins with assignment of project manager and
immediate research into existing Victoria government intranets. Over the next six
months, DVC staff migrates to a common building.

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 • August 2003: Intranet reference group created.
• August 2003: First intranet mock-up ready for testing.
• August 2003: Testing begins on site look, feel, and architecture through
workshops, expert advice, business unit visits, and one-to-one comments.
• September 2003: Approval of LHS navigation and design.
• End of September 2003: DOI’s IT group sets up DVC’s intranet CMS.
• October 2003: Content author nominations begin.
• October 10, 2003: Electronic document center available.
• November 2003: Content authors begin training on CMS; follow-on training
answers additional technical or content-related questions.
• Early December 2003: Intranet information sessions for staff.
• December 5, 2003: Content ready for launch.
• December 8, 2003: Final testing of site begins, including checking content, links,
and structure.
• December 15, 2003: Launch of DVC intranet.

RESULTS
Six months after the project began, and with an ambitious timetable, DVC Net@Work went
live. Today it “provides a central point for access to information for all staff,” notes Hughes.
The intranet has already improved not just staff information access, but cross-departmental
communication. Internal communications at DVC also have a consistent look and feel and
staff members have easy access to major DVC applications, an often-requested feature.
Work Tools and Services, for example, groups such things as procedures, policies, work
activity assistance, and templates for briefings, memos, and letters. Second-level headings
are clustered by subjects, such as finance, IT, projects, and communications. “You can find
everything you need to do a task in one area, rather than scattered throughout the site,”
notes Geileskey. Clicking on Projects, for example, leads to project templates and
guidelines, contacts for project assistance, and departmental project news.
DVC also trained a network of content authors (more are on the way), and expects
continued intranet improvements as authors devise new content.
To keep content fresh, users can set content expiration dates in the CMS. “It sends a
reminder e-mail to the content author and administrator that the content page will expire.
This can be overridden if required,” notes Geileskey.
The CMS archives the homepage and news by date. For recurring events, authors can save
time by retrieving and updating existing content.
The intranet team also created an electronic document center (EDC), a Lotus Notes
database repository of useful DVC documents. Content authors can publish links to the
documents on the intranet, making them easy to share. Typical EDC documents include
reports, charts, procedures, forms, and policies.
Intranet searches return results from not only the intranet, but also the EDC, including a
link, last date updated, and location.

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Many staff reacted enthusiastically to the new site, e-mailing to praise its look and feel.
Another user liked that the intranet automatically appeared every morning when she logged
onto the network, because one morning it carried news of a new DVC “ethical employment
in purchasing” policy. “It alerted me to the fact that there was a new policy which is very
important to a project I am currently working on,” she wrote.
DVC’s new intranet coordinator, Sophia Koulbanis, who started well after the intranet
launched, noted that “the DVC intranet is head and shoulders above the many sites I have
worked with, and unlike past experiences.”
With the intranet in place, new applications are being designed with it in mind. For example,
DVC is consulting with an outside agency on the development of a library services function.

Pictured: The Library Catalogue, an externally built application, utilized the DVC
intranet style guidelines so that the finished product blends with the intranet.

LESSONS LEARNED
Insights from Andrea Appleby:
Make the intranet a team effort from the start. “At the start of the project, a conscious
decision was made to involve as many staff as possible. It’s important to develop an
intranet ‘with’ the staff that are going to use it, not present a completed product that no one
knows about.”
Insights from Melanie Hughes:
Engage people early. “Forming the Intranet Reference Group gave us the opportunity to
utilize expertise across the department and provided the group with the opportunity to give
their input into what they wanted from an intranet. This in turn created more buy-in—a
majority of the reference group members then became content authors and advocates,
encouraging others to be authors.”
Thank your workers. “At the same time as the content authors were trained, we also
promoted their involvement and put their names up in lights as departmental champions
and early adopters so as to cement their participation and highlight their role to
management.”
Create a communications strategy. “A communications strategy was invaluable to
promote, road test, and introduce staff to the intranet prior to its launch. DVC intranet
posters were developed and distributed to each floor of the building. We put regular intranet

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updates in the staff newsletter, highlighted when key milestones were met—such as when
the look and feel was signed off—and showed staff what this looked like, or when content
authors were trained. We organized information sessions for staff, where we demonstrated
key intranet features. We distributed fliers explaining the need for intranet passwords, to
make staff aware and reduce the risk of this becoming an issue. Since the site launched, on-
going communication is still needed to continually educate, and to involve staff with the
site, its uses, and where to find things. Also we constantly look into ways to improve the
site, and maintain staff engagement and intranet acceptance.”
Take advantage of holidays. “The new intranet launched December 15, 2003. This added
a bit of extra stress for the project members before Christmas. But, because most people
were away on holiday over Christmas and early January, this gave us the opportunity to
iron out issues and correct problems without too many people noticing.”

56 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

Department of Veterans Affairs Mid-Atlantic Health Care
Network (U.S.)
Using the Intranet: Intranet Team:
The VA Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network (VISN In-house
6) is one of twenty-one Veterans Integrated
Service Networks (VISNs) established by the U.S. Members:
Department of Veterans Affairs in 1996. VISN 6 Charles Jones, webmaster; Pamela Howell,
offers health services to veterans that range from communications manager
primary to specialized care.

SUMMARY
What started as nine separate and very different websites has evolved into one cohesively
designed intranet that presents a unified message to employees and helps them easily find
the information they need. The design team achieved this by defining simple goals and
creating design processes to meet them.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network (VISN 6) has
eight medical centers and twelve outpatient clinics in three states, and a service area that
includes 1.25 million veterans and 85,000 square miles. In fiscal year 2003, VISN 6 served
more than 200,000 unique patients. Last year, VISN 6’s annual budget exceeded $975
million and it had approximately 10,000 employees.
With so many responsibilities and users to support, the organization realized it needed one
intranet. Originally, the VISN 6 headquarters office and four of its eight facilities had each
created their own intranets. The look and feel of each was distinct, yet much of the content
was similar; VISN 6’s management knew it needed to overhaul this approach and prevent
further duplicated effort. While revamping, management took the opportunity to pursue an
additional goal: streamline the processes and procedures, and align them with the
organization’s goal of being thoroughly patient-focused.
The team established a common interface for the entire intranet, including templates.
Content providers can access information about these templates, as well as appropriate
assets, on the intranet. In addition, content officials who maintain their own content must
receive content-tool training and training on the required templates. Before any content is
published, the webmaster reviews it to ensure that it adheres to usability standards and
design templates.
Enforcing standards can be difficult at some organizations, but for VISN 6 it was surprisingly
easy to implement them, says Charles (Chuck) Jones, VISN 6 webmaster. “Most content
owners are happy that the design has been taken care of for them, so they only have to
focus on content. However, there are a few who express disappointment about not being
able to exercise their creativity.” Another challenge the team overcame during the redesign
process was trying to design the new site while maintaining multiple, local intranet sites.
Now the VISN 6 intranet provides one integrated website that is a source of information for
all employees. Additionally, the intranet helps promote a sense of integration among all of
the facilities, so employees view their facility as part of a larger health care network. “The
intranet site was originally built as location for links to a variety of VA, government, and
private sector websites that would help employees in the performance of their duties, and
enhance the mission of the VA Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network,” says Pamela Howell,

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communications manager. Today, however, the intranet is much more than that. “It has
evolved into the authoritative source for news and information for VISN staff.”
One of the intranet’s biggest benefits is that it houses many of the links to sources that
users previously had to find on their own. This is a great time saver, and also makes
employees aware of other available sources. For example, the intranet provides employees
with links to other VA, federal, and private sector websites that have information they need
to perform their jobs. Clinical staff can find links to a number of highly respected online
medical library references, including the National Library of Medicine and Krames on
Demand. These references assist staff members in their daily work with patients, and help
them prepare and maintain medical records.
Since any VA employee can access the VISN 6 intranet, the design team took care to
explain who has access to which resources. For example, not all VA networks or facilities
have licenses for every medical resource. The Medical Library Online thus uses color-coded
triangles to indicate license types: red indicates VISN 6 only, blue indicates that the entire
VA has a license, and green indicates that just one particular facility has a license. Given
this, users can better determine whether or not they have access to something on the
intranet site.

Pictured: The main page of Medical Library Online. Each page has its own online
holdings and links to different electronic medical library products purchased by
individual facilities, VISN 6, or the VA as a whole. Technically, each facility’s holdings

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 are listed in a separate “include,” and the facility session variable determines which
“include” to show users.

The team also incorporated several Web applications into the intranet. Contracting
personnel can access the VISN 6 Solicitation and Contract Log, for example, which lets them
track solicitation and contract information on requests for goods and services. Public affairs
officials can access an application that lets them update a facility events calendar, local
news articles of interest, and other communications functions, which can then be made
available to all employees.
In addition to job-specific assistance, the intranet also provides more general support, such
as phone and contact information, policies and memoranda, up-to-date performance data,
VISN programs, all VISN and medical center policies and information bulletins, performance
data for the VISN network, links to employment- and benefits-related sites, links to VISN’s
partner agencies, VISN 6 facilities’ news and events, and online educational resources.
The intranet also offers online education—thirty intranet-based courses—to train employees
in a variety of areas. The course page’s methodical layout and class descriptions help staff
members understand course objectives, and the Next button makes pages easy to navigate.
Course contents are well outlined, as is the course length and the students’ standing at any
given time. At the end, students can take a quiz to measure their newly acquired
knowledge. Results are immediately scored, and if a student passes, his or her name, ID
number, date, and course title are logged into a database accessible to educators. If
students fail, they can retake the course or the quiz.

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 Pictured: Course descriptions help people understand the course objectives. Users can
easily navigate the pages via a visible Next button and the course content list.

60 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

 Pictured: Students in VISN’s online courses can take a quiz to measure their newly
acquired knowledge. Results are immediately scored, and those who pass have the
information saved into an educators’ database.

The site also provides timely, accurate news—a feature that users appreciate. “Our
technology has changed significantly over the last several years, and that allows us the
privilege of being able to stay very topical with our news, and actually present it as it
happens,” explains Daniel F. Hoffmann, the VISN 6 network director. “This allows our
employees to tap into the news, not only for their own medical center, but also to obtain
news and events from other medical centers. The other added value to us, from a VISN
point of view, is that it has the mark of reliability associated with it. If it gets on our
website, by definition, it is reliable news. The website has a certain immediacy and reliability
that our employees, VISN-wide, can tap into from their local facilities. They have a greater
appreciation for how they fit into the total schema and care of our veterans.”
With so much news and so many links and applications on the intranet, the team decided to
filter information to help users find what is specific to them. They faced challenges,
however, when trying to offer personalization features, as VA’s headquarters places
restrictions on the use of persistent cookies. The team came up with a creative solution that
still follows the rules: they use session variables, which lets them provide customized

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information based on the facility from which users access the intranet. The default VISN
page, for example, is for users visiting from VISN’s headquarters office in Durham, as well
as for visitors outside the network. If no facility parameter is specified in the URL, the News
and Events area displays upcoming events for all facilities, and indicates which facility is
hosting each event.
When a user is visiting from a medical center, for example, the default address provides a
parameter (such as facility=richmond), which sets a session variable and alters the
information on specific pages. For example, the homepage Events area displays events only
for that facility, and the Mission statement page displays the facility’s specific mission
statement. Users can view other facility’s events or mission statements by clicking the
appropriate links.

Pictured: The default homepage of the VISN 6 intranet. If no facility parameter is

specified in the URL, this page displays. The News and Events box shows upcoming
events and the host facility for all eight facilities in the network.

One of the most unique design features also uses session variables to display facility-
specific information. Jones explains, “Our VISN has an ongoing program where we strive to
see all patients within twenty minutes of their scheduled appointment times. We track data
regarding how we are doing on this measure. We then upload the data to the website
quarterly, so that employees can see how we are doing.”

62 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

To make it easy to compare, the data is used to generate a bar chart for all network
facilities. (A smaller version of this chart is also available on the homepage, with a link to
the larger chart.) The chart is accompanied by a message from the network director,
explaining this goal. A picture of the director personalizes his message. A second chart is
generated for each facility, based on the current session variable, so that users can see
their facility’s data enlarged.
Jones adds, “What makes this page innovative is that the data generates the charts on the
fly. This way, when the data is updated, the charts are automatically updated without any
additional work by the webmaster.”

Pictured: Simple graphs help employees monitor the progress of meeting goals. Data
for the bar charts is generated on the fly, so the information is up to date. A message
from the network director explains the importance of the charts.

Visually impaired users can also access performance results. A version of the page for
vision-impaired users simply lists raw performance data so users can listen to screen-reader
software read the results.

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 Pictured: The performance results page for users with visual impairments. This
version simply lists raw performance data, and users listen to the results using
screen-reader software.

In addition to the specific features, the intranet also has a more symbolic value: The design
and content mirrors and supports a shift in VA’s goals toward more patient-focused care.
The information and applications on the intranet coincide with and strengthen the
organization’s overall goal, as every intranet should.

URL AND ACCESS

The intranet is the browser default on all PCs, and also a bookmark. Given the need to
comply with such regulations as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
(HIPAA), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs builds all PCs from a common hard disk
image to ensure they run applications with the latest upgrades and security fixes. The
browser is preset as part of that image.
The intranet default URL is http://vaww.va.gov/netsix/index.cfm?facility=visn. The “visn”
parameter changes based upon which facility a user is in—for example, “richmond”—so that
the intranet can serve facility-specific information when necessary. Users must access the
intranet from inside the VA firewall; some mobile users can do that via a virtual private
network.

64 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

CONTENT MANAGEMENT
The VA intranet uses templates to ensure a common look and feel. Before content owners
can create content, they’re trained on the page creation tool and in-house style; style
guides are also available on the intranet. Most authors forward content to the VISN 6
webmaster for posting. He also vets it for usability and template guidelines.
“Most content owners want to have their content posted. Most are happy that the design
has been taken care of for them, so they only have to focus on content,” says Jones.
Program heads serve as content owners. For example, the head of VISN HR manages
“employee pages,” including links to job announcements and benefits information.
As an experiment, some users now post content themselves, using a VA-developed tool
called WebPilot, which requires minimal HTML knowledge. In addition, the public affairs
office uses “a commercially available, recently developed content-contribution tool” to post
interesting news articles to the intranet homepage, which keeps it looking fresh.

TECHNOLOGY
The VA Office of Information Field Office in Silver Spring, Md., hosts the ColdFusion
application server and Microsoft SQL 2000 database running the VISN 6 site. For searching,
the intranet uses the VA intranet search engine, which spans all twenty-one VISNs, but
limits returns to results with “netsix” (VISN 6) in the address to keep them relevant.

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

1) Consolidate all VISN 6 intranets. 2) Use centralized Web applications able to return
facility-specific data. 3) Promote a vision of the VISN 6 healthcare network (rather than
separate facilities). 4) Continue to follow national VA guidelines prohibiting persistent Web
cookies.

BASIC INTRANET FEATURES

The VISN 6 intranet gives users access to information they need to do their jobs. Staff
members get important links to other VA, federal, and private websites. Clinical staff, for
example, can access multiple medical references such as the National Library of Medicine
and other databases that are essential for working with patients and creating and
maintaining medical records.
Users also get access to different Web applications. Contracting personnel, for example,
access the VISN 6 Solicitation and Contract Log to track their solicitation and contract
information. Public affairs officials use a Web tool to update facility calendars, homepage
news articles, and communications information.
The intranet also contains staff contact information, policies and memoranda, up-to-date
facility performance information, and online training resources.

USERS
The intranet is available to all full-time VISN 6 employees with PCs or VPN access—about
10,000 people in three states. Users range from physicians to maintenance workers
employed at eight medical centers and twelve outpatient clinics. The intranet is also
accessible to the Veterans Health Administration at large—which has 200,000 employees in
twenty-one VISNs.

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USER TASKS
• Access information about different VISN programs
• Read VISN and medical center policies and information bulletins, and news and
events
• Review performance data for the network and individual healthcare facilities
• Find employment and benefits information links, plus links to partner agencies and
online educational resources
• Access important VA, federal, and private medical resources

BACKGROUND
In 1999 and 2000, the VISN 6 office and four of its eight VISN facilities each created and
maintained their own separate intranets. The look and feel of each was distinct, though
much of the content was similar. In 2002, the VISN 6 network director wanted to
consolidate the various VISN 6 intranets into one to promote a sense of one healthcare
network. A consolidated intranet would be an authoritative source for internal news and
information, and would free many site content managers from creating what was essentially
duplicate content.
In January 2001, VISN 6 hired a new webmaster. For the one-intranet redesign, he met
with the head of each VISN 6 intranet, evaluated what was on the various intranets and
why, and continued to liaison with each intranet head as he designed a new intranet.
“Because some of the facilities had already developed local intranets, it was a tough battle
to sell the concept of one integrated website, so I adopted a ‘bridge’ solution that would
serve as version 1.0,” says Jones. This stopgap intranet standardized design for all intranets
while leaving content creation to each facility.
Before long, sites began repurposing content from the main VISN intranet. “We have very
limited resources, especially in information technology, so having a number of people
creating and recreating the same thing seemed inefficient,” says Jones. The push toward
one intranet increased. Jones also designed several Web applications able to return facility-
specific results from a single database. Now he had to transition from many intranets to
one, and at the same time overcome political roadblocks from the VISN 6 facilities that had
their own intranets.

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY ACTIVITIES

Redesign planning began in 2002. “We questioned everything,” says Jones. The redesign
team reviewed WebTrends reports to see how people used—or didn’t use—the existing
intranet, and studied e-mails and other comments related to the intranet. The team also
interviewed subject-matter experts and power users for site improvement ideas. “For
example, I watched the senior IT person in the network—the VISN 6 chief information
officer—use an application to see what he did, and then made changes based on that
observation,” says Jones.
In March 2003, Jones took the feedback and developed a prototype site using elements
from the existing intranet. He also referred to several trade journal articles discussing
intranet best practices, and found them helpful for conceptualizing the redesign. He vetted
the prototype with the VISN’s website steering committee and the VISN 6 Web Group he
chairs, and incorporated the feedback.

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From April to June, he charted content similarities and differences for all VISN 6 intranets
and derived a new way to organize the content.
In July 2003, he began site development, created site structure and navigation, and
developed, then filled, page templates. He also tested Web applications that let users post
content themselves.
To keep individual facilities happy and target users with location-specific information, the
new intranet would appear customized for each facility.
After testing by the VISN Web Group, the new intranet went live in November 2003.

TIMELINE
• Jan. 2001: Full-time webmaster hired. The VISN office and four of the eight VISN 6
facilities each had independently operating intranets.
• February 2001: Webmaster meets with existing intranet heads.
• July 2001: Design and development of intranet “version 1.0”—nine separate
intranets that used identical templates to standardize the look.
• January 2002: Design and development of intranet “version 2.0” begins. Purpose:
eliminate frames, revamp content creation, and migrate best content to a new,
single intranet.
• March 2002: Version 2.0 goes live.
• March 2003: Prototype of current site created.
• April 2003: Redesign for unified intranet begins, along with content ownership
revamping.
• July 2003: New site development begins. Structure, navigation, and templates
developed; templates filled. Web applications for posting and generating
performance data finalized.
• November 2003: New site goes live.

RESULTS
With one integrated site serving all eight VISN 6 facilities and their headquarters, site traffic
doubled practically overnight—good news for the “one intranet” campaign. Users gained
access to much more content, though much of it was pre-existing. “In the previous intranet
version, content owners had to physically link from the local website to the VISN site, and
many did not do that,” notes Jones.
The new intranet’s shallow information structure lets users get anywhere within three clicks.
Many users e-mailed with positive comments, especially about the new design and content
arrangement.
The new site features a news and events section with teasers on the homepage, which
keeps it looking fresh. Using a Web application, public affairs officers at each site post news
and events directly to their facility’s homepage. “As a result, employees are more aware of
what is happening at their facilities and others throughout the VISN,” says Jones.
The new intranet mirrors changes in VA thinking. “As our organization moves more and
more toward an integrated healthcare network that is veteran-focused, cost-effective, and
value-added, our intranet site needed to be a reflection of that. It was that desire that led

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us to focus on one site for the entire network—versus one for the network, and one per
facility,” says Jones.
Rules for adding website content promote that vision. Content owners must first vet new
types of content with a subject-matter expert (SME) at the VISN level. If the content is
applicable VISN-wide, the SME rethinks and rewrites it, so all VISN employees can benefit.
If individual sites require information targeted specifically to their users, the intranet can
serve facility-specific information. “This allows for content of a general nature to be
available to everyone, while still addressing the need to provide specific localized content
where necessary,” says Jones.
The redesign also gives users access to several coded-once, run-for-any-facility Web
applications. Just as the intranet URL’s facility parameter makes serving facility-specific
information possible, a database and server-side includes can generate facility-centric data.
One example of this is the Performance Data page, which tracks the difference between
patients’ scheduled and actual appointment time. The VISN 6 goal is for patients to be seen
within twenty minutes of their scheduled appointment time. To track progress toward this
goal, each facility monitors and submits actual times, and Jones takes that information and
updates the intranet database quarterly. Whenever the performance Web application runs,
it pulls the latest information, and uses ColdFusion to graph every facility’s performance
while calling out the user’s particular facility. To ensure 508 accessibility compliance, 7 the
system uses PNG files instead of Flash movies; it also includes a link to a text-only data
page. On the homepage, a smaller version of the first chart is available, with a link to the
Performance page.
The intranet also now offers thirty online courses, with more in development. “In the first
two weeks after the VISN’s Netsix Classroom was launched, over one-third of our 10,000
employees completed at least one course in the classroom, and approximately 10% of our
employees completed half of the thirty courses. We even had sixteen employees complete
all thirty courses,” says Jones. Employees have also applauded the classrooms’ ease of use.
“Employees like it because it allows them to quickly meet their mandatory training
requirements. Educators like it because it reduces the amount of time they must spend
giving the same training course, and allows for more employees to be trained in less time,”
he says. The next version of online courses will also let users see which quiz questions they
answered incorrectly.

LESSONS LEARNED
Insights from Charles Jones:
Work with politics. “Pay attention to the internal politics of the organization. It is much
easier if you can find a way to work with it, rather than against it. By utilizing the facility
parameter on the homepage and setting a few session variables, I was able to design a site
that looked, walked, and talked like a facility intranet, but is actually the VISN intranet.”
Start small, delegate well, then build. “Prototype whenever possible. Involve subject
matter experts and make them immediately responsible for content. Also, develop your
policy for posting information before you go live with your website. Most importantly, when
it comes to application development, develop something that works first, then make it
pretty. Don’t try to do both at the same time.”

7
Section 508 includes accessibility related laws in the United States. For more information, see
http://www.section508.gov/

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Success overcomes resistance. “When I first began development of the site, I was
disheartened at times by internal politics and protection of territory. But a few quick
successes can change people’s minds, and that has helped tremendously. Now, people want
their information on the site.”

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Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (U.S.)
Using the Intranet: Intranet Team:
The U.S. Federal Reserve System includes twelve An outside agency, Ironworks Consulting, worked
District Banks and a Board of Governors. The with Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond staff
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond is the fifth
Federal Reserve District, headquartered in Members:
Richmond, Virginia. It serves Maryland, Virginia, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond: Marsha
North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Shuler, senior vice president and executive project
Virginia. Although established by Congress as a sponsor; Lisa Oliva, assistant vice president and
private stock corporation, the Reserve Bank business project owner; Connie Frudden, assistant
operates in the public interest, rather than for the vice president and technical project owner; Sandra
profit or benefit of any private interests. As a Tormoen, assistant vice president and technical
regional Reserve Bank, the Richmond Federal liaison; Kendall Meddows, project manager, content
Reserve gathers and analyzes economic data on and design; Ann Tindall, project manager,
the Fifth District and contributes to the technology; Trisha Grande Meade, content lead;
formulation of national monetary policy. The Dennis Ott, technical lead; Ronnie Anderson,
Richmond Fed supervises and regulates banks developer; Mark Andrachek, developer; Donnie
and financial holding companies in the Fifth Bergh, developer; Anne Hallerman, information
District, processes currency and checks for architecture and meta-tagging consultant/liaison;
banks, and provides financial services to the U.S. Cathy Tyler, project integrator
Treasury.
Ironworks Consulting: Bhadresh Patel,
engagement manager; Catherine Brown, user
experience strategist; Chip Trout, information
architect; Bill Buell, creative director; Chris Hull,
creative designer; Shell Harris, creative developer

SUMMARY
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s intranet, 5Spot, 8 is a communication tool that
keeps 1,500 users in several different locations apprised of current events. Forums and
other information collection keep employees in touch, and the persistent navigation—which
presents the most needed and used features—makes this intranet very straightforward.
To heighten employee awareness of work-related information, the intranet offers a
comprehensive news section for the entire district, as well as local news for Baltimore, Md.,
Charlotte, N.C., and Richmond, Va. Delivering this timely and relevant information can
increase employee knowledge of the Federal Reserve System, the Fifth District, and
departments within the Fifth District, and help users make more informed business
decisions.
The intranet also facilitates business-related collaboration among its users, including a large
group of traveling bank examiners, and operations employees who don’t have PCs at their
workstations. News and forums can also foster a sense of community among departments
and locations in the Fifth District.
The homepage’s center column is reserved for news. Here, users can get a quick overview
of the day’s district, local, and national headlines. National Headlines features a mix of
headlines selected from Factiva—typically about Federal Reserve System banks,
supplemented by general national news headlines. Links to More District Headlines and More
National Headlines provide easy access to complete lists of the day’s headlines.

8
Meaning of the Name: Five spot is a casual term for a five-dollar bill. The number five is significant because
Richmond is the Fifth Federal Reserve District.

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On the main news page, users also find links to news archives, internal publications,
national headlines by subject, and 5Spot’s topical “forum” sections. These sections feature
content on topics that are highly important to the bank and of current interest to
employees.

Pictured: The Federal Reserve of Richmond intranet homepage.

The main news page’s Spotlight calls out the most interesting or important news items. In
addition to dating the items and featuring clearly written headlines, this section offers links
to local news items, which reinforces location.

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 Pictured: The main newsroom page is easy to scan and provides timely news.

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 Pictured: The local news pages display relevant news for Richmond, as this example
shows.

As for traversing the site, persistent navigation makes this a breeze. Menus are organized
by task and employ simple terminology. Designers focused on making menus easy to use,
because research revealed that users had difficulty locating information and performing
tasks on the previous intranet.
In the new menus, top-level choices expand for more selections, which keeps the top-level
list short. Unlike cascading pull-down menus, 5Spot’s expanding menus do not pop-up over
the content area and interfere with users’ view of the current page. Users can also take
advantage of the small plus and minus signs at the top of menus. These signs let users
expand or collapse the entire menu with a single click. The red arrows to the left of the
menu choices indicate subsections.
Breadcrumbs combine with a gray-highlight bar in the left-hand navigation to show the
current page’s location in the site structure. The black heading at the top of each page also
names the main section, and beneath that, a red heading shows the subsection. Third-level
subsections are indicated with a smaller black heading below the red subhead.
The top, horizontal navigation—which the designers call utility navigation—appears in the
black bar at the top of every page. The designers carefully selected this section’s links to

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include the most frequently used content and functionality, such as links to the employee
directory (the Phonebook), technical support, services, and the feedback form.
In the Phonebook, employees can search by first name, last name, nickname, department,
location, or extension. This helps users find people, even with minimal information. Users
can also select from links to other Phonebook views: alphabetical by department; lists of
directors, officers, retirees, building tenants, and prior employees; and a list of contractors
by department.
On the search page, users see a phone number to call if their own contact information is
incorrect.

Pictured: The Phonebook page, where users can search for a person using many
different criteria.

Even with the intranet’s simple navigation, some users will prefer to search. Thus, an open
field is available in the top-center area of every page. For those who want to construct more
complex searches, they can click the Advanced Search link, leading to a page that lets them
enter Boolean searches without having to know the Boolean syntax.
The intranet designers and organization managers realize that quality-of-life satisfaction can
increase job satisfaction. Thus, the intranet offers more personal features in the Employees’
Corner, which is for and about employees—not the bank. The online employee marketplace
is one very popular tool there that lets employees advertise items and services. This

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feature-rich application gives employees a range of options for managing their own listings,
but also makes it possible for busy employees (and those less comfortable with technology)
to create maintenance-free listings by completing a simple form. These listings expire after
thirty days, so no maintenance is necessary.

Pictured: Users can buy and sell personal items using the Marketplace area of the
intranet.

There are many other features in the Employees’ Corner, including cafeteria menus; gym
hours; fitness class schedules; information about health and wellness topics; information

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about the employee Health Center; employee service anniversaries; online scheduling for
massage therapy; FedShop, where employees can purchase Fed logo merchandise and
other personal items; and information security tips for employees’ home networks and PCs.
The bank understands that while such features help draw users to the intranet, content and
tools that help them work efficiently will keep them coming back.

URL AND ACCESS

The intranet’s URL is http://5spot. Users have a 5Spot icon on their desktop, and the
Windows start menu includes a link to the URL. However, if users simply boot their browser,
the first page they see is one level higher: the Federal Reserve System’s intranet
homepage, which is a gateway to all Federal Reserve intranets including 5Spot. (Users can
change their browser’s start page.)
Mobile users with VPN accounts can connect to the LAN, then access 5Spot.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond uses Interwoven’s TeamSite, introduced in August
2003 as part of an intranet redesign.
The 120 content providers use one of twenty templates—built in-house using designs from
Ironworks Consulting—and have a list of which templates to use for a particular kind of
content. There are two style guides, which cover writing and design. “We’ve also distributed
a copy of the sitemap, labeled to show which template should be used in each area of the
site,” says Trisha Meade, 5Spot’s lead content editor.
TeamSite routes submitted content to a department or group manager for subject-matter
sign-off. From there, the corporate communications department reviews and edits the
material for adherence to style guides, then publishes it. Corporate communications also
contributes all corporate- and district-level content. This distributed content-authoring
approach is a legacy of the previous intranet’s organic growth.

TECHNOLOGY
Interwoven’s TeamSite handles content management. The Web server is Sun’s iPlanet. Code
editors and development tools include Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Macromedia
Homesite+, UltraEdit32, TextPad, GNU Emacs, and WebSphere Studio Application
Developer. Adobe Photoshop, CorelDraw, and The Gimp handle graphics. Application servers
are Macromedia ColdFusion and IBM WebSphere. For prototyping, the intranet team uses
Microsoft Access; Microsoft SQL Server runs on the live intranet. ColdFusion’s Verity
software handles intranet searching.

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

1) Give the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond’s employees easy access to timely and
credible information that they need or want. 2) Enable knowledge sharing and collaboration.
3) Automate processes to increase efficiency and reduce costs. 4) Provide a channel for
multi-way communications across all bank levels, departments, and locations.

BASIC INTRANET FEATURES

Basic features include:

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 • Departmental news, key contacts, mission statements, services lists, FAQs, and
organizational charts.
• Centralized access to all forms, manuals, and policy and procedural documents, plus
the bank’s online library.
• News from the entire Federal Reserve System, its Fifth District, and major news
outlets.
• Capabilities for reserving meeting rooms, visitors, catering, and audio/visual
equipment.
• Access to travel policies and forms, fleet-vehicle reservations, and offsite travel
resources.
• A searchable phone directory.
• “Soft news” and services, including internal group and organization homepages,
menus, gym hours, and amenities information. Users can buy and sell goods at an
online marketplace. Fedshop sells Federal Reserve-branded merchandise.
• Centralized support information to reduce e-mails and phone calls to the help desk.

USERS
The intranet supports 1,500 users in Baltimore; Charleston, W. Va.; Charlotte; Columbia,
S.C.; and Richmond. Also, the bank plans to introduce kiosks to serve employees who don’t
have PCs.

USER TASKS
• Access national, system, district, and local news, and view news archives
• Find forms, policies, procedures, and manuals based on a variety of parameters,
including department, topic, need, and form name
• Plan meetings and register outside guests
• Access the employee phonebook, key contacts, or technical support information
• Review cafeteria menus and check the weather at any location
• Access HR information, and view HR and IT training schedules
• Learn more about the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Reserve Bank of
Richmond, and all fifth-district locations
• Access resources available through the bank’s research library
• View archives of news and employee publications
• Buy and sell items in the online employee marketplace
• Access travel applications and information from a central location

BACKGROUND
The Federal Reserve of Richmond’s intranet launched in July 1996, after the Federal
Reserve’s Board of Governors commissioned an intranet and invited the twelve district
banks to join. As each joined, it built its own site; no common guidelines existed. That ethos

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applied within the banks as well—departments created their own intranet sections with no
oversight.
“Not surprisingly, this approach led to a series of sites connected by entry pages, but little
else. Users had to become familiar with each department or group site’s different
architecture and design, and global navigation was not available outside the main page,”
notes Chip Trout, an information architect for Ironworks Consulting. Many departments also
operated without understanding or applying usability principles.
The old site featured contributions from more than 100 people, each of whom had their own
take on design, architecture, and content. This made maintaining a consistent-looking site
almost impossible. The new site’s unified design and architecture, and an added editorial
review (before content is sent to production), help create a much more consistent-looking
site. Some content creators, however, didn’t exactly embrace the change.
“On the old site, departments and groups weren’t required to submit content for review by
an editorial group. So, they were apprehensive, understandably, about that new review—
especially since corporate communications could edit and publish their content without
sending it [back] for further review,” says Kendall Meddows, who manages the intranet’s
editorial team. Editors addressed this resistance by training content providers to work within
the new site’s structure and standards to achieve business goals. They also worked closely
with content providers to build and maintain trust.

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY ACTIVITIES

The redesign team included content area representatives, and staff from IT, the research
library, Web development, and public affairs.
The team’s redesign goals were to improve the site’s information architecture, better focus
the site on needs of users in every district location, standardize site navigation and design,
and implement a CMS.
First, the redesign team hired consultants to conduct an expert review and ascertain users’
needs. This group surveyed a randomly selected group of intranet users and non-users from
every location. A subset of that group participated in group discussions about users’ needs.
“We learned what we already knew from our site-usage reports: employees used the
intranet mostly to check cafeteria menus, review organizational charts, register guests, and
reserve meeting rooms. Users told us that the inconsistencies across the site made
information so difficult to find that it was quicker to pick up the phone and call someone for
answers,” says Meddows.
To improve the site, users wanted an intuitive structure. They don’t have time to dig for
information or determine the fastest available channel to complete tasks. Users in locations
outside Richmond also didn’t feel the intranet represented them. Others, because of their
job function, didn’t have access to either computers or 5Spot. Future projects will rollout
kiosks for those employees.
To collect feedback about the new architecture and labels, the consultants created an online
survey.

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 Pictured: A wire-frame version of the homepage, which was tested during
development.

However, the test did encourage the team to add more routes to existing information. “For
example, if a user wants to set up an online meeting, he might expect to find that in the
Meeting Planner section, as well as under Forms and References. So we decided where
content would live and then, based on the test results, put links in other areas where users
had told us they would look for it,” says Trout.

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The redesigned information architecture freed information from departmental silos, placing
things where users expected. Parking information, for example, isn’t just located in the
Building and Equipment Department’s section—it’s also grouped with directions on each
office’s About page, next to weather, local information, and restaurant links. Parking-related
services information is also available via the Services link at the top of every page.
The team faced some surprise delays. For example, creating content-provider training and
documentation took a long time. The reason is that project team members had little
professional training experience, and the tight schedule didn’t allow time for the in-house IT
training group to learn the content management tool and specifics of the bank’s
implementation, then develop new curriculum before the launch. Other parts of the project
that took longer than expected included: testing and refining the CMS’s templates,
redesigning existing applications to fit the new 5Spot look, and creating new content.
Regardless of obstacles, the project’s deadline loomed. “The only area in which we had
flexibility was scope. So, to make up for delays, we launched the site with about 70% of the
planned content, and scheduled most new functionality for future phases,” says Meddows.

TIMELINE
• October 2002: Current and proposed content analyzed. User survey developed and
released.
• November 2002: Conducted user group discussions. Created user profiles.
• December 2002: Started information architecture design. Developed a functions
and features list and a site map.
• January 2003: Developed screen layouts. Started work on label testing, wire-frame
testing, and analysis. Finalized homepage and template designs. Started training
plan.
• February 2003: Wrote style guides. Began modifying existing applications to fit the
new 5Spot look and feel, and started creating the technical environment.
• March 2003: New tool development began on the meeting planner, QuickPoll, and
weather-information feed.
• May 2003: Completed design and QuickPoll tool development.
• June 2003: Began testing applications.
• July 2003: Began creating new content for launch. Completed application-
development work.
• August 2003: Completed content creation and editing. Conducted final testing.
5Spot launched.

RESULTS
The redesigned intranet improves information location, employs a CMS with better
publishing workflow capability, and adds features to improve employees’ productivity.
Whereas the previous site lacked news, for example, employees can now access national,
district, and local news, updated daily, on the intranet.
The new site is also more inclusive, with content creators at different offices contributing
location-specific news. “Users told us that the previous site was Richmond-centric, with few
benefits for users outside Richmond. Now users in every location can find information

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about—and of relevance to—them,” says Lisa Oliva, assistant vice president of corporate
communications and the redesign project’s business owner.
Bespeaking the site’s improved usability, the average-monthly page views increased from
280,000 to 800,000 after the redesign, and the number of unique visitors rose from 3,000
to 4,800.
The new site includes many more forms and reference documents, and improved
departmental and group-services information. “Thanks to a new roll-up application, all of
these items are available from multiple places on the site, including global lists, which users
can sort using a variety of parameters, including department, subject, need, name, and
number,” says Ann Tindall, project manager for the redesign’s technology.

Pictured: The services roll-up application, accessible via a link from any intranet page,
lets users sort departmental and group services by title, department, or subject.

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The previous intranet’s information architecture was organized by department, and users
had to jump from section to section to complete basic tasks. By contrast, the redesigned
site groups similar elements to speed task completion and links to those elements from
multiple sections.
Some Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond print publications are almost exclusively online
now, resulting in printing-related savings, including fewer software licenses and reduced
training for designers.
Take Fedcaster, a weekly newsletter read by over 2,000 current and former employees.
“We’ve built a 5Spot template for this newsletter so that everyone who’s trained in
TeamSite can produce this weekly publication,” says Oliva. Moving Fedcaster’s marketplace
online reduced printing costs and time spent editing employees’ advertisements. Employees
now list their own items for sale online. “Sometimes these ads alone would require as many
as three print pages. When you add the time to edit these advertisements—done by
corporate communications—to the printing and distribution costs, including postage, for
more than 2,000 readers, the marketplace was costly,” notes Oliva. Now that users have a
tool for listing goods online and corporate communications no longer reviews
advertisements, there are no additional print or resource costs associated with extra-long
advertisements, images, or running for-sale items for extended periods of time.
Likewise, the Charlotte location’s weekly employee newsletter, Southern Accent, was
previously a print-only publication and is now a popular intranet fixture, with similar results.
The intranet-based room-reservation system, popular on the previous site, also benefited
from the intranet redesign. “Since the reservation system has been on 5Spot, we’ve
definitely received fewer calls asking for directions [about how] to access the system,” says
Chris Brooks, content provider for the bank’s Building and Equipment Department. “5Spot
has made it easier for our customers to interact with us.”
Despite the improvements, the redesign team faced obstacles, some of which persist.
Templates, for example, were no silver bullet. “We were surprised by how difficult it is to
achieve design consistency using templates,” says Meddows. Just creating templates
doesn’t ensure consistent presentation. “When we first tested the templates, before training
content providers on them, we found that the templates would have to be extremely
restrictive to force true design consistency.” Yet that would mean many more templates and
increased time to maintain them. Instead, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond chose
another approach: keep templates flexible and educate users to use them consistently.
One way to assist users is through field descriptions—boxes at the top of each template that
give instructions. These descriptions change as the content creator navigates from template
field to field. Still, authors interpret these descriptions in many different ways, necessitating
continued refinement via usability studies, plus ongoing training and dialog.
Of course, change takes time. “We’re still struggling to overcome ingrained preferences for
broadcast e-mail as a primary channel for announcing internal news,” notes Meade.

LESSONS LEARNED
Insights from Sandy Tormoen:
Intranet development is different. “We tried to apply application-building processes to
intranet development, but this project was too complex. Analyzing issues from afar didn’t
work either. You have to just get your feet wet and go.”
Insights from Kendall Meddows:

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Watch contributors’ numbers. “Balance the publishing power of more contributors with
the lower cost of involving fewer people. Don’t underestimate large-group-management
challenges either, such as relationship maintenance, communication, support, and training.”
Resist compromise. “True, trying to build the perfect site means you’ll never launch, but
project time is gold. In our case, dedicated intranet employees split time between ongoing
maintenance and building future features post-launch. Things that take months in project
mode take much longer in maintenance mode.”
Know your content’s limits. “Don’t just count on content to draw users. Build
applications they love to use; make difficult tasks easy. Get users hooked, and then you can
feed them news and other information.”
Insights from Trisha Meade:
Nurture relationships: “To make the intranet the source for all news and critical
information, make time to help your organization’s leaders understand that your channel is
the best one for achieving their business needs.”
Insights from Lisa Oliva:
Ready your cheerleaders. “Get support from senior management and other opinion
leaders. You’re going to need cheerleaders; start with ones your audience already respects.”
Early usability studies speed later decision-making. “User research and other usability
work pays off. We were able to complete project parts in a relatively short time because we
had sound data to make decisions.”

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Government Offices of Sweden (Regeringskansliet)
Using the Intranet: Intranet Team:
The Government Offices of Sweden represent the In-house: the Information Department of the
highest level of the executive branch of Sweden’s Government Offices (Information Rosenbad) and the
national government. They form an integral Government Offices’ ICT division. Scarptor, an
public authority comprising the Prime Minister’s external consultancy, offered initial design support
Office, the ten government ministries, the
Permanent Representation of Sweden to the Members:
European Union, and the Office for Administrative Tracy Mitchell-Björkman, graphic designer; Anette
Affairs. The Prime Minister leads and coordinates Jansson, central intranet editor and administrator;
the government’s work, the ten ministries handle Anna Liedbergius, Cecilia Palm, Eva Sandström, and
government business in their respective fields, Johan Hall, former central intranet editors and
and the Office for Administrative Affairs provides administrators; Eva Ekskog, technical and production
the administrative services required by the manager; Magnus Eriksson, technical and graphic
government offices. The ministries, which had production
been separate agencies since the early 17th
Network of ministries’ intranet editors: Bill
Century, were integrated into a single authority
Nilsson, Katarina Storm Åsell, Charlotte Nording,
in 1997. All government decisions are reached
Helena Myrman, Josef Salih, Tobias Nilsson, Lisa
collectively.
Arvidsson, Maria Brunzell, Mikael Lundgren, René
Guthof, Sanna Johansson
The initial project group: Lennart Fahlén, project
manager; Eva Ekskog, technical development; Johan
Hall, publishing routines and organization; Ann-Britt
Rosdahl, information structure; Kristina Thorén,
training and information; Inge Gustafsson, senior
intranet editor

SUMMARY
The Government Offices of Sweden’s intranet supports an impressive number of tasks, all
joined in an attractive design. What’s more striking is that this simple design and single
intranet actually unite all of Sweden’s central ministries (the highest level of the national
government’s executive branch) as well as Sweden’s embassies and foreign missions.
Most of those working at the Government Offices—political appointees and civil servants
who work as administrators, legal advisors, analysts, and secretaries—are involved in
drafting and processing government bills, reports, and national legislation. All Government
Offices’ employees—approximately 4,300 in Stockholm and 600 at Sweden’s missions
abroad—have access to the intranet. The intranet can also be accessed on security-
approved laptops. Through the intranet, all of Sweden’s national ministries’ can access
information, news, and tools presented in one consistent structure with a common look and
feel.
The intranet supports tasks such as: accessing organizational and HR information, policies,
and handbooks; searching external news feeds; accessing law texts; viewing job listings;
accessing the Government Offices’ registry; signing up for internal training programs;
booking travel arrangements; searching for and booking library resources; accessing
various forms; and reviewing and editing employee profiles and locations in the telephone
directory. Examples of less vital but nonetheless popular tasks include viewing cafeteria
menus, posting items for sale, and taking interactive surveys.
The elegant homepage alone offers many features. At the top of the homepage, the color-
coded tabs link to the main pages of the Prime Minister’s Office, each of the ten ministries,
and the Office for Administrative Affairs. The links in the upper right go to the government’s
external websites in both Swedish and English. The right-side column has links to the

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intranet’s most popular and commonly accessed areas, including: breaking news, lunch
menus, information about the Government Offices’ efficiency measures, working
environment, corporate health programs, employee surveys, and job search. The main
menu appears in the left-most column on all pages. It includes an A to Ö (the last letter in
the Swedish alphabet) index, a calendar, About the Government Offices, administration, HR,
IT, and internal news archives.
The homepage’s center column, Insidan, 9 displays news and bulletins pertaining to
government ministries. The intranet team pairs articles with relevant images, avoiding
generic embellishments. This news section gives a quick and easy overview of the latest
organizational news, and because the news is updated frequently, employees refer to it
often.

9
The name of the central section, Insidan, translates as both “the inside” and “the inside page” (sida denotes
both “side” and “page” in Swedish). The names of the ministry sections are, for example, “the Justice page,”
Justitiesidan, or “the Environment page,” Miljösidan, for the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the
Environment, respectively.

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 Pictured: The Government Offices of Sweden intranet homepage. The simple and
consistent design across the intranet helps users to navigate easily. The homepage
includes news and bulletins in the center column. News headlines (from January 26,
2004) include: Preventing Genocide Conference, Learn jazz dancing!, Interested in the
Government’s trainee program for 2004?, The Prime Minister visits Ireland,
Information on business travel, and Places in EU-course still available.

While the summary news items on the homepage are helpful, employees are also able to
explore more news using the intranet’s Newsservice/Nyhetstjänsten feature. The Registry
link accesses the Government Offices’ registry through a central database. Employees can
search back to 1992 across ministry borders and easily get a list of archived items.

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The Newsservice feature scans 1,500 Swedish and foreign news sources on the Web and
updates them every five minutes. There are 40 search profiles built into the service: one for
each of the twenty-two ministers; one for each of the ten ministries; the Prime Minister’s
Office; two for the Administrative Office; plus five general profiles including breaking news,
editorials and debate, the EU, Sweden in foreign press, and TT 10 in the media. Users can
limit searches to certain languages, countries, or sources. They can also select a subset of
items they’re interested in. For each article, the headline, source, and time are shown by
default, and users can define other parameters. For example, they can ask to see an
introduction, the sixty latest articles, last updated date, and print options, and to send e-
mail. Most ministries have breaking news within their own profiles posted on their first page
in the upper right-hand corner. The intranet also offers an analysis tool that can show how
often a certain issue or person has appeared in different media.

Pictured: The Newsservice/Nyhetstjänsten main page, which gives users access to

1,500 national and international news sources. Users can limit news searches by
language, country, or source.

The intranet uses a common design throughout. This reduces confusion when users look for
information, contributes to a single-organization culture, and cuts down on learning time

10
TT is the Swedish equivalent of the Associated Press.

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when people change jobs within the Government Offices. There is some flexibility within the
structure to accommodate particular ministries’ differing needs.

Pictured: Main pages for two different ministries show the similar page designs. On
the left is the Ministry of Culture/Kulturdepartementet. On the right is the Ministry of
Justice/Justitiedepartementet.

As on many intranets, the Government of Sweden’s employee directory is one of the most
popular features. Users can search by name, telephone number, ministry, or department.
Search results include employee information such as name, extension, cell phone, forward
to, title, department, and e-mail. This intranet offers not only employees’ basic
organizational information, but also something far more innovative. It gives information
about the employee’s current whereabouts, such as if an employee is away on a business
trip or gone for the day, and when he or she will be back. Other intranets provide this
feature, but because users typically must log in to the intranet to update it, the information
often becomes stale and inaccurate. In this case, however, the employee can easily change
this information via telephone or through the central switchboard, and the information is
automatically edited in the intranet’s employee directory.

88 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

 Pictured: Employee directory search results. The page shows the employee’s basic
organizational information, plus current daily activities and location.

This jam-packed though uncluttered intranet makes it easy for employees to find relevant
information about each other, their organization, and the world.

URL AND ACCESS

The intranet URL is http://insidan/, and it launches automatically when users log on to the
LAN with a username and password. There is no separate log on for the intranet. The
intranet can also be accessed on laptops with security clearance.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT
A custom-developed intranet tool, built in 1999 with ASP for the front end and SQL
database for content storage, lets designated employees publish short news items. They can
also preview content, and set a go-live date and time.
Intranet and Web editors publish longer articles using Microsoft FrontPage, guided by the
intranet team’s templates and graphics guidelines.
A document server handles documents in Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat formats.
Any part of the intranet that is database-driven can be updated through a Web interface.
The IT department manages the technology, and content owners update their relevant
databases.

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Content owners are responsible both for parts of the intranet and for information
dissemination about their expertise areas, regardless of delivery mode. For example, the
person responsible for the Government Offices’ gender equality policy is responsible for
information published about the policy on the intranet, website, or in print, as well as for
meeting with people to discuss it. Each ministry has its own intranet manager as well, who
is responsible for all content on the respective ministry’s start page, as well as for designing
the ministry’s intranet page structure.

TECHNOLOGY
Developers use Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 for development and maintenance, Photoshop for
graphics, and FrontPage for handling HTML pages. The intranet runs on Microsoft IIS 5.0
Web server and Microsoft SQL 2000 databases, on three Windows 2000 servers.

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

1) Be the primary source for organizational news, bulletins, policies, and information. 2)
Provide central access to tools and databases for vital functions, information, and tasks. 3)
Promote a single-organization culture. 4) Let each ministry control its own publishing, yet
maintain a common framework with a unified design.

BASIC INTRANET FEATURES

The central homepage and ministries’ homepages have links to each other’s external
websites. Each homepage also has its own specific “quick links” to relevant information and
sites.
A central intranet section (Insidan) includes news, bulletins, information, and features
related to some or all ministries; the section is administrated by the Government Offices’
Information Department (Information Rosenbad).
Each ministry’s intranet section—such as the Ministry of Justice’s Justitiesidan or the
Environment Ministry’s Miljösidan—can be accessed directly from the homepage, and
includes ministry-related news, bulletins, information, and features.
A portal section, accessible from all intranet pages, includes links to such vital internal
functions and services as news feeds, training courses, a travel service, library and law
databases, the Government Offices’ registry database, and the central employee directory.
The Government Offices Registry, served by a centralized database, gives employees a list
of archived documents back to 1992.

USERS
There are around 4,300 users in Sweden (most of whom work in Stockholm) and
approximately 600 located at Sweden’s missions abroad. Users include political appointees
and civil servants who work as administrators, legal advisors, analysts, and secretaries.
Most of those working at the Government Offices draft and process government bills,
reports, and national legislation.

USER TASKS
• Access employee information, policies, handbooks, and law texts
• Search external news feeds and the Government Offices’ registry, and search for
and book library resources

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 • View job listings
• Sign up for internal training programs
• Book travel arrangements
• Review and edit employee profiles in the telephone directory
• Read cafeteria menus
• Post items for sale
• Participate in interactive surveys

BACKGROUND
The intranet began when e-mail and Internet access were simultaneously introduced in
1996; it consisted of a single start page that offered Web links and e-mail access.
In 1997, the ministries—separate since the 17th Century—became a single entity, and the
Permanent Secretary requested a common intranet for all ministries. Employees from IT,
information, library, and HR departments comprised the design group; they started the
project by studying users’ needs.
The team faced users who were still adjusting to the change—after all, things had been
done a certain way for 400 years—and who were in culture shock. “One of the first
comments from a ministry employee about the intranet was, ‘But how do we keep the other
ministries from seeing our information?’” says Lennart Fahlén, the initial intranet project
manager. While that attitude is no longer a problem, “it does illustrate the major shifts in
thinking that the organization has gone through, and is still going through—and not only
with regard to the intranet.”
The first full-fledged intranet was launched in 1998.

Pictured: The first cross-ministerial intranet homepage (March 1998).

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“The vision, as formed by the project group, was that of a central, personalized, and role-
based intranet that opens automatically on the desktop and includes vital functions—such as
‘drafts circulated for comment’—that are administrated via the intranet, and where all
ministries, including the foreign missions, are fully integrated,” says Fahén. That vision,
however, “was ahead of its time.” Simply put, the organization wasn’t ready—at least not all
of it, or not right away. Still, “it has served a purpose in focusing the efforts of many people
through the years, and we are gradually realizing many of the viable components of the
initial vision,” says Fahlén.
The first redesign, in 1999, produced the ministries’ individual intranet pages.

Pictured: A black-and-white version of a color original of a first-generation, individual

ministry page (for the Ministry of Culture).

“What we think is rare, if not unique, is the fact that all of Sweden’s central ministries—the
highest level of the executive branch of the national government—as well as Sweden’s
embassies and foreign missions are united through a single intranet,” says Fahlén. Note that
the intranet doesn’t include the whole of Sweden’s central government. When the Swedish
constitution was created in 1632, Sweden’s executive branch delegated much of its
operating power to national agencies, unlike the U.S. or Britain.
In 2001, a redesign improved the individual ministry pages, added an index, and spiced up
visuals.
For the latest redesign, users wanted better search and more exciting visuals.

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DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY ACTIVITIES
The intranet editor group meets at least once a month to discuss intranet content and
design; IT representatives also attend. In a user survey in 2001 and various workplace
interviews, users indicated a need for better visuals and a new search engine, as well as an
improved information architecture.
Any redesign faces many constraints. “We have one full-time, central-intranet editor, and a
part-time, dedicated technical production manager. Our situation is one of keeping things
going, but not having the time to manage vital central development on a routine basis,”
says Tracy Mitchell-Björkman, the intranet’s graphic designer.
Since each ministry has an intranet editor, however, they’re able to keep content updated
regularly, plus handle communications-related tasks such as external website content,
printed materials, and communications information.
Another constraint is that the intranet lacks a decent search engine, due to the use of static
HTML pages, which is due in turn to limited funds. Budget has been a constraint for every
redesign. “But that can also mean that we’ve had to think creatively,” notes Mitchell-
Björkman.
One legacy of the static pages and minimal technology investments is that “the publishing
process is unnecessarily time-consuming and ineffective,” says Anette Jansson, the central
intranet editor and administrator.
A recent study, which included a broad user survey, usability analysis, workplace interviews,
and focus groups, confirmed the need for a more dynamic approach, and better integration
of search and work tools—among other functions.

TIMELINE
• 1996: First intranet launched: a single page offers Internet links and e-mail access.
• January 1997: Ministries merge under one authority.
• 1997: Vision formed for a central, role-based intranet.
• 1998: Editorial board created to govern content and structure. Ministry intranet
editors begin extensive coordination.
• 1998: Launch of first full-fledged intranet.
• 1999: First intranet redesign creates a common structure and design for all
ministry pages.
• 1999: Intranet adds access to the government's registry, online training courses,
and law databases.
• 2000: Library databases and job postings move to the intranet.
• 2001: Intranet redesign clarifies information structure, improves the indexing and
search, and increases visual appeal. Organization-wide employee directory
launched.
• 2002: Design team adds intranet voice-mail management tool and online business-
travel booking.
• 2003: Organization-wide news feed and for-sale forums launched.

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RESULTS
The redesign gave all of Sweden’s national ministries a refined information architecture and
design, plus better access to needed information, news, and tools.

Pictured: Redesigned homepage for the Office of Administrative

Affairs/Förvaltningsavdelningen (FA). As with all redesigned ministry homepages, it
includes ministry-related information, news, and links.

To create a new search engine, the redesign team got creative. “A decent search engine
was too expensive, so we worked on clarifying the structure, together with developing an
extensive index. This has proven to be a usable and fairly maintainable tactic, even if it
does take time,” says Jansson.

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To help differentiate links to different ministries’ sites, “we added the colored bar across the
top of the page for the direct links to ministry pages to add visual interest. We also work
with an illustrator for theme illustrations and try to use photographs from within the
ministry as much as possible—as opposed to generic clip art, which we try to avoid,” says
Jansson.
Despite not giving users exactly what they asked for, “the simple addition of the colored bar
created a surprisingly large and positive response from users,” says Jansson. In fact,
designers often find that users do not actually know what to ask for. Just watching users
and deducing what they need often produces the best results.
Intranet use increased after the redesign, as it has for the past six years, according to
surveys. In 2001, 61% of the organization used the intranet daily. After the redesign, 85%
used the intranet daily, and 98% used it weekly.
Surveys show that employees continue to see the intranet as a credible information source.
“This is due in part to the frequent content updates, plus the information’s high accuracy
rate. Plus, the structure is fairly simple, allowing for easy access to much of the information
on the site,” says Mitchell-Björkman.
The redesign improved the central and ministry areas, clarifying their content. Users can
more easily find information about both their own and other ministries.
New functions and databases increase work productivity. For example, the intranet houses
and updates most central forms that employees need, and printed versions of most forms
have been eliminated. A consistent and easily recognizable architecture also cuts the time
required when employees change jobs within the Government Offices, which is “something
that is encouraged, as it gives valued employees a chance to develop and advance within
the organization,” says Mitchell-Björkman.
Another interesting new feature is the Newsservice/Nyhetstjänsten, which is available to all
employees. It scans 1,500 Swedish and foreign Web-based news sources and updates its
index every five minutes. “There are 40 search profiles built into the service—one for each
of the twenty-two ministers, one for each of the ten ministries, the Prime Minister’s Office
and two profiles for the Administrative Office, plus five general profiles: breaking news,
editorials and debate, the EU, Sweden in foreign press, and TT in the media,” says Mitchell-
Björkman. Most ministries pipe breaking news—sometimes limiting search based on
countries, languages, or sources—to the upper-right-hand corner of their ministry’s intranet
start page.
An upcoming study will analyze how to create a next-generation intranet site that is able to
better integrate publishing, news feeds, work tools, and processes. Following the study’s
completion, the team hopes to begin the next redesign.

LESSONS LEARNED
Insights from Tracy Mitchell-Björkman:
Think big. “Even if the organization isn’t ready and all the necessary technology isn’t in
place, and even though the intranet team may be years ahead of its organization,
remember it takes time for ideas to develop and show their worth. The path is not always
straight.”
Think long-term. “Consider long-term maintenance—both editorial and technical—from the
beginning.”

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Remember users. “Keep the users’ viewpoint foremost. Technology should serve, not
lead.”
Get senior-level buy-in. “Support from top management is essential. Otherwise, uniting
and synthesizing the many viewpoints that inevitably arise becomes very difficult to
manage.”

96 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

London Underground
Using the Intranet: Intranet Team:
London Underground provides a transport system In-house
to meet the expectations of Londoners. With a
history dating back to 1863, there are now 275 Members:
stations within the system serving over 3 million Lucy Shaw, intranet webmaster; Luke Oatham,
passenger journeys a day over 253 miles of intranet administrator
railway. About 500 trains serve the system
during peak hours, and the staff comprises more
than 12,000 people.

SUMMARY
Many designers think that making sites accessible will hamper site aesthetics—and even
usability—for users without disabilities. On the contrary, considering accessibility when
designing often leads to interfaces that are not only accessible for users with disabilities, but
are attractive and easy for everyone to use. The London Underground intranet is evidence
of this phenomenon. By adding people with visual- or mobility-related disabilities to their
target-user group, designers created accessibility-driven designs that ultimately helped
every user. Two examples are giving all links concise names, and using scalable, rather than
fixed, font sizes. Using hidden links and a special accessibility mode vastly improves the
user experience for people with disabilities, yet it doesn’t affect the productivity of
employees who are not using assistive devices or software.
The overall goal of the London Underground’s intranet is to offer staff members up-to-date
information and ensure that all staff, including those with visual and mobility impairments,
have unfettered access to that information. The intranet designers were therefore highly
aware of their users—train drivers, station staff, and administrative office staff—and
potential accessibility issues. Designers linked all pages to style sheets, so people can
choose between the provided accessibility style sheet or their own style sheet. Also, the
fonts are not hard-coded, so users can take advantage of the browser’s function that lets
them increase (or decrease) text size.
The team took accessibility to a higher level by implementing an accessibility mode for
users with visual- or mobility-related disabilities. One feature, for example, lets users
change the page background and text colors. This makes for clearer viewing, and in some
cases makes otherwise illegible words readable. 11 The page design also gracefully resizes to
any window size.

11
For more information about visible colors for people with low vision, and information about good contrast for
all users, see Lighthouse International’s recommendations at http://www.lighthouse.org/color_contrast.htm.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 97

 Pictured: The Marketing & Planning main page.

Pictured: The Marketing & Planning main page as viewed with large fonts. The page
resizes gracefully, and users with low vision can take advantage of the browser’s
features for changing the font size.

98 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

 Pictured: The Marketing & Planning main page as viewed in accessibility mode.
Allowing users to view the text and background with different colors helps some users
read words that would otherwise be illegible.

Using the accessibility mode is far better than creating a completely separate text-only site
for users with disabilities. It also complements the current site, and adds no clutter or
confusion whatsoever for sighted users. The first link on every intranet pages is a hidden
link with an ALT tag. Although invisible to the typical user, people using screen readers will
hear the link first, and have the option of switching to the intranet’s accessibility mode.
Users can also use a shortcut key, “Alt-X,” to access accessibility mode.
Any user can access accessibility mode via a visible link in the quicklinks bar, though an
interstitial page first explains what accessibility mode is, to reduce help-desk calls from
people who think something’s wrong with their display.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 99

 Pictured: The London Underground homepage provides useful information and is
aesthetically pleasing. What you don’t see: a hidden link offering an accessibility
mode for people using screen readers.

The link labels, which are concise and meaningful, are an especially useful feature for
screen-reader users. The designers avoided commonly used but unnecessary words, such as
“click here” and “go now,” which reduces useless chatter for users listening to links being
read. This also helps people using screen magnifiers scan for the phrases they’re looking for
more quickly.
Accessibility mode also hides banners and the main navigation, streamlining screen-reader
users’ navigation options. Graphics-intense applications also got an accessibility translation.
For example, on the intranet’s calendar, green, yellow, and red dots represent confirmed,
tentative, or canceled events, and all have ALT tags with those terms so screen-reader
users don’t miss out.
Font size is fully adjustable. Using Internet Explorer’s built-in font-size capabilities, the
design team created pages with fonts that change size relative to the page’s base size. This
feature works whether users are in accessibility mode or not.
Most content, including menu links, is textual; intranet pages only uses graphics to help
reinforce a message. This improves accessibility as well as page-download time. Because
people using screen readers often encounter difficulties accessing content in frames, the
team has a “no frames” policy for all pages.
Accessibility and usability elements don’t end there. With more than 23,700 pages on the
intranet, having a consistent look and feel for all pages helps users tremendously, though
the intranet design team had to work very hard to achieve this. The layout on all pages is
consistent, but the top banner and menus are color coded for each department, helping
users to quickly tell where they are. Today, the team is working on reorganizing the intranet
by tasks rather than by department.

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 Pictured: The main pages in the intranet’s Finance and Human Resources sections.
Using the same design elements and consistent look and feel helps users quickly
familiarize themselves and be more productive.

At many organizations, finding images for presentations and publications can be a struggle.
To address this, the intranet offers a graphics Image Library, and users can submit their

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own images for inclusion. The search feature really makes this library accessible. For users
in accessibility mode, all images return a description and comment. A typical tag, for
example, reads: Description: High Barnet station entrance off Barnet Hill. Comment:
Uploaded by the National Control Centre.

Pictured: The Image Library features graphics for use in publications and
presentations. Users can submit their own images, and the search features make this
library accessible.

Pictured: Results page from an Image Library search. The images are clear, obviously
named, and include descriptive ALT tags for visually impaired users.

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For navigation, the persistent left-side menu makes it easy for users to acclimate. All pages
have a left-hand menu that gives top-level options for the currently selected department
area, which might also have a context-sensitive right-hand menu linking to further options
within that area. Breadcrumbs and search offer users additional ways to traverse the
intranet.
Pages are reviewed monthly for popularity and the intranet team uses the information to
populate the quicklinks bar. The company logo also links back to the intranet homepage,
and the footer bar includes information about the page’s publisher and his or her contact
details, plus links to Help and Feedback.
Overall, this intranet achieves excellent usability and provides users with an array of useful
features.

URL AND ACCESS

The intranet’s URL is http://intranet.lul.co.uk. It’s the default homepage for all employees,
and users can’t change it. Mobile users can log on to the office network with remote-access
software. The design team is also experimenting with access from Internet cafés at Acton
Town, a station with a large waiting area that’s conveniently located for many staff
members.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT
The intranet has over 23,700 pages and more than 100 content publishers.
Intranet content is served via ASP, with template elements stored centrally in a global
library. Only the intranet team has access to the templates, which are designed using
Macromedia Dreamweaver.
Users with permission to publish can only do so to predefined site areas. The intranet team
maintains those permissions via FrontPage 2000 settings; all content creators use it.
Content creators get development server access for uploading content, which they can
make live whenever they choose. (The organization is planning to migrate to content
management software.)
The search engine is Microsoft IndexServer, though London Underground plans to replace it
with MondoSearch.

TECHNOLOGY
The intranet is hosted in-house on a Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 server using IIS 4.
The intranet team uses JAWS software 12 to test page accessibility for the visually impaired.

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

1) Provide staff with quick and easy access to all company literature, including policies and
standards, reference material, news, and events. In other words, “provide staff with a
‘single source of truth,’” says Lucy Shaw, the London Underground intranet webmaster. 2)
Ensure that all staff, including the visually and mobility impaired, have access to that

12
JAWS is a popular screen-reader software application. It is produced by Freedom Scientific,
http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_products/software_jaws.asp.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 103

information. 3) Work with minimal funding. 4) Rein in content owners’ tools—they imbued
too much power.

BASIC INTRANET FEATURES

The intranet offers a range of information for London Underground employees. Features
include a site-wide search engine; a comprehensive FAQ; organizational charts; information
about partner organizations; copies of standards and procedures; a broken-link e-mail
generator that notifies content owners whenever a user browses to a broken link; a most-
popular-links bar; an expanded history of the London Underground; clear content creation
guidelines; a list of content owners; and social and special-interest pages—including the
restaurant’s lunch menus.

USERS
Of the 12,000 London Underground employees, approximately 6,500 have regular access to
the intranet through networked PCs. That will increase with imminent thin-client monitor
installations in many of the 255 stations managed by London Underground; only fourteen
lack network access. (Note there are twenty additional stations, which London Underground
doesn’t manage.)
The intranet team is experimenting with new methods to extend the intranet to staff
members without frequent PC access. A pilot project enables intranet access for 400
operations staff at an Acton Town Internet café. In the future, the remote intranet access
could be extended to PDAs, Internet kiosks, or an extranet.
A small number of London Underground intranet users have visual impairments.

USER TASKS
Users often use the intranet to:
• Locate people or personnel information via the phone book
• Read news, press releases, staff bulletins, and organization notices
• Access commonly used forms and letters
• Peruse the restaurant’s lunch menu
• Get PC help
• Access publishing guidelines
• Find reference material, including standards and procedures, manager’s daily
reviews, and safety information
• Examine train timetables, see which trains are in service, and view station
refurbishment schedules
For HR-related activities, users can:
• Request annual leave
• Enter timesheets
For projects, London Underground employees can:
• Reference key milestones
• Find project contacts

104 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

BACKGROUND
The London Underground intranet was created in 1995 and overseen by the IT department.
A number of homegrown sites subsequently emerged, each with different and sometimes
quite ornate navigation mechanisms and graphics-heavy pages. These sites often contained
many PDF and Office documents. In short, the intranet grew organically and was difficult to
use.
By 2001, there were a handful of intranet contributors—enthusiasts—as well as several
hundred poorly maintained pages. The focus was more on technological mojo than usability.
“People would use different fonts in different sizes and colors, tables with ‘interesting’
background colors, and there was no consistency from one page to the next. Some content
contributors saw themselves as Web graphic designers,” says Luke Oatham, the London
Underground intranet administrator. “At one point we had a page with moving clouds on the
background with an image of a rotating head in the middle. It was a case of ‘look what I can
do’ rather than people concentrating on the content that they were meant to be providing,
and the best way of displaying that content.”
That year, control of the intranet shifted from IT to the communications department,
mirroring its shift from a technology endeavor to a communications vehicle.
Over time, a publishing structure was implemented: each of the eleven directorates would
have a lead publisher and support publishers. All publishers received training on: how to
request a new site or upload changes to the development server, how to improve content
for readability and usability, and where to send new publishers for further training.
The organization also made lead publishers accountable for the information they posted and
limited their scope: they’re only permitted to post information pertinent to their directorate.
Intranet-designated FrontPage permissions enforce that.
“We decided that this approach was best for our organization as it allows content to be
supplied directly from people with knowledge of their area of the business. It also ensures
that information is not duplicated,” says Oatham. The organization’s simple rule is: If you
don’t own the information, you can’t publish it. This approach also leaves page design to the
intranet team.

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY ACTIVITIES

With the oversight shift in 2001, the communications department’s intranet team made
immediate changes to the basic London Underground template based on knowledge gleaned
from troubleshooting the intranet and regularly fielding requests. “We started making
changes to the template before doing any research—something that we would not do
again,” notes Oatham.
The problem, he acknowledges, was the intranet team’s redesign worldview: it was only
based upon feedback and service call information, and neglected the crucial step of
watching users at work. As a result, “a lot of the initial changes were based upon what we
thought was best rather than asking our users what they wanted,” says Oatham.
On the flip side, the immediate moves simplified the intranet. The old, fixed-width template
was replaced with a template that works on many screen sizes. Migrating content from the
23,700 static HTML pages and PDFs, to the new ASP template took time, but now any
template changes can be applied site-wide. “Despite navigation not yet being standardized,
for the first time the intranet had a consistent look and feel,” says Oatham.

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One immediate result was increased intranet use. Frequent content updates, including daily
homepage changes, put London Underground employees on notice: things had changed.
“Areas of the business not previously represented started to sit up and take notice. Not
wanting to miss out on the action, content requests soon turned into new sites, tools, and
contributors,” says Shaw.
The next task was getting intranet feedback from London Underground employees. Using a
digital camera prize as incentive, the team distributed a survey both online and in print to
all employees. The survey asked users for information such as their department and role;
how often they used the intranet; which pages they accessed most frequently; what
navigation methods they used; and which information was hard to find. It also asked users
to rate various pages for usefulness and accuracy. The team received 308 responses, and
also analyzed responses to a feedback option at the bottom of every intranet page.
The intranet team then selected and interviewed a broad cross-section of users by age, sex,
role, grade, and previous intranet experience. Interview topics included employees’ daily
roles and tasks, and reactions to the current intranet—particularly the homepage. From
these interviews, designers got some direction for which tasks to assign during usability
evaluations.
Finally, team members began usability testing. They honed a new navigational structure
based on a card-sorting exercise, in which and participants performed specific tasks, such
as locating intranet content. The team recorded and transcribed all interactions.
One major discovery: information was difficult to find. This was in large part because the
intranet presented information according to departments and directorates, rather than
users’ tasks or roles.
Also, existing banners weren’t working. “One of our biggest surprises was that the top
banner, which was designed to let users know where they were in the structure of the
intranet, was being ignored. People were so used to Internet banner advertising that they
instinctively blocked them out,” says Oatham.
Finally, the intranet team learned that not all of their users knew how to use a browser or
understood Internet-oriented language. Because some didn’t need a PC to do their job,
intranet terminology didn’t make sense.
As a result of the testing, the intranet group identified a number of areas for change, and
created short, medium, and long-range goals.
In January 2003, the intranet team standardized navigation across the intranet. They gave
every page a search box, a link to advanced search, a “you are in” breadcrumbs bar, and a
quicklinks bar to commonly accessed items. They also added a one-level-deep sliding menu,
which replaced the previous JavaScript-based menu (which had been an accessibility bane).
Next up, the team sought to further improve accessibility. “Under the UK’s Disability
Discrimination Act Part 2, disabled users can take you to court if you’re not making
reasonable adjustments to enable them to do their job,” says Oatham. “We also had a blind
user who was requesting accessible features within our intranet.” Team members worked
with the man, who uses a JAWS screen reader, to learn how he used it to ‘browse’ the
intranet. They also studied how he grouped links together and his mental approach to
drilling down to find information, discovering that he expected progressively fewer link
choices as he approached the desired page.
Navigation, however, remained a problem. “In a site our size, a lot of global navigation is
inevitable. At the time we introduced the accessibility mode, there were about twenty global
links on every single page, with probably another ten to twenty links that were global to a

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subsite,” says Oatham. For screen-reader users, that could be a frustrating nightmare. “You
could be one click away from the content you need—something a sighted user could
instantly identify by the fact that there’s just one link in the content area of the screen—but
not be able to verify this unless you listen to the whole page,” he says. To contend with
this, the accessibility mode pares navigation to bare minimums.
To inspire their accessibility efforts, team members studied the Web Accessibility Initiative
(WAI) developed by the World Wide Web Consortium. 13 “We worked hard to ensure our
content is compliant with at least priority level 2 of the WAI guidelines, including removing
many of the dynamic components, without comprising the overall design of the intranet,”
says Shaw.
The team is still grappling with PDF files, however, and whether to open them in new
windows. “W3C guidelines encourage not opening new windows. However, our screen-
reader software does not support a ‘back’ feature when viewing a PDF,” says Oatham, which
means after opening a PDF file, screen-reader users would lose their place if the PDF wasn’t
opened in a new window.
Results from accessibility testing led to a change in content writing, with important
information moving to the top. Links had to be meaningful and descriptive: no “click here”
or “for more information” links allowed. Color-coded information was also out, links that
opened new windows had to be labeled accordingly, and audio and video files required a
text alternative.
One key accessibility element was the hidden link at the top of every page for screen-
reading software. The link loads an accessibility template that skips the navigation and
quicklinks block found on every page. Accessibility mode also uses high-contrast pages and
larger text, and removes graphical elements and menus.
In June 2003, the intranet team laid the foundations for moving from the Microsoft Index
Server search engine to MondoSearch. They gave all pages descriptive titles, meta-data
descriptions, and keywords, and slotted them into a predefined category—which in fact
immediately improved Index Server search results. The team also eliminated the Advanced
search link after discovering that most users search on only one or two words.
Because PDF and Microsoft Office documents impeded user efforts to find information, the
team now excludes them from search results, nudging users away from using them. When
such documents are necessary—using PDF for documents designed for print, for example—
the style guide advocates using an “index page” that summarizes the target information and
offers links to the content.
In July 2003, the team unveiled consistent navigation. Each page has a fixed left-hand
menu (with contents that vary by directorate), and a right-hand menu with context-
sensitive links.
Next, the team introduced role-based content portals—such as one for station supervisors—
with links to common forms, manuals, tasks, and procedures.

13
For more information about the W3C WAI see www.w3c.org.

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 Pictured: The Station Supervisors role-based portal with links to common forms,
manuals, tasks, and procedures. The intranet team plans to develop more role-based
portals.

In September 2003, the intranet team began preparing content for migration to a CMS.

TIMELINE
• 1995: London Underground intranet created under IT directorate; volunteers
maintain content.
• 1999: Previous intranet style guide created. Pages, graphics, and navigation
dissimilar across the intranet.
• 2001: Intranet oversight moved to communications directorate. The new motto is:
“Content is king.” Publishing structure reorganized, content creators trained.
• October to December 2002: Moved to new template suitable for many screen sizes.
All content cut and pasted into new ASP pages. Template changes now applicable
site-wide.
• January 2003: Standardized navigation added to every page, including search box,
quicklinks, and a one-level-deep sliding menu to replace the existing JavaScript
expanding menus.
• May 2003: “Accessibility mode” work begins with new templates and navigation.
Content creators get new guidelines to facilitate more accessible text.
• June 2003: Migration from Microsoft Index Server search engine to MondoSearch
begins. All pages get titles, meta-data descriptions, and keywords, and are slotted
in a predefined category. Search engine results immediately improve.
• July 2003: Current site navigation implemented: fixed left-hand menu (variable by
directorate) and context-sensitive menus on right.

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 • August 2003: First role-based portals introduced; others to follow.
• September 2003: Content preparations begin for migration to new CMS. Target live
date: spring 2004.
• Current: Pursuing long-term tasks, including content management software,
revamped search, and analysis software to study intranet use. Working to eliminate
redundant pages.

RESULTS
The intranet grew from a few hundred pages in 1999 to over 23,700 today. The initial 2001
redesign particularly boosted content-author participation. Today, the intranet receives
70,000 site visits per week, and continued rollouts—especially to users without a PC at
work—should increase uptake.
Getting there required some tough love. The intranet team—only two people—centralized
template design, nudging would-be amateur graphic designers to focus exclusively on
creating and improving content. At the same time, the team encouraged management to
include intranet activities as part of employees’ job descriptions, and to authorize ongoing
training for all content creators that emphasizes writing easy-to-scan documents, putting
important information at the top of the page, and creating descriptive hyperlinks.
Clarity carries over into each page’s “you are in” breadcrumb bar. The information is
generated by the names of Web server folders and files, driving content creators to keep
things simple, and enforcing good housekeeping. As an added benefit, it also improves
search engine efficiency.
Content creators now have the tools they need to keep site content fresh and usable, plus
an Image Library full of pre-approved images.
One especially useful new feature is the broken links e-mailer. Whenever a user receives a
“page doesn’t exist” error after clicking an intranet link, a behind-the-scenes e-mail is sent
to the relevant content contributor. “Since the introduction of this feature, the error page
has gone from being the most frequently viewed intranet page—at 21% of total page
views—down to below 1% of page views,” says Oatham.
To maintain the site, the intranet team constantly analyzes the most visited pages, using
the information to populate the quicklinks toolbar.
The intranet team’s approach is working. Average site visits per week have jumped from
1,000 in 2001 to 70,000 today. “We attribute this to changing the homepage daily; well-
thought-out, up-to-date content; and enhanced usability,” says Shaw.
Accessibility work also paid off, but for more than just visually impaired users. “There is also
a visible link to the accessibility mode for people not using screen readers and this mode
has been useful for people dialing in from outside the network as it gives faster download
time,” says Oatham. As so often happens when designing more accessible software, other
users—in this case, mobile ones especially—also prize the new functionality.
Moving forward, the intranet team plans to integrate four company intranets into one
intranet that will be available across the Transport for London Group. “The London
Underground intranet is by far the largest and oldest of all the intranets in the Transport for
London Group,” says Oatham. “We hope to apply a lot of our knowledge and lessons learned
to this new project, to avoid making the same mistakes again.”

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LESSONS LEARNED
Insights from Lucy Shaw:
Keep it simple. “Minimizing graphics, writing content with information up top, and only
creating well-described links not only makes life easy for content creators, but makes the
intranet more easy to use for all.”
Rely on knowledge of users, not just impressions. “Don’t just jump in. Talk to real
users, lay the groundwork with measurable objectives, and then proceed.”
Don’t assume browser competence. “Especially for organizations where not everyone
sits at a desk, not all employees will know how to use a browser. Education can bring them
into the intranet loop.”
Enlist management to marshal large-scale change. “When we first introduced the new
template we faced a lot of resistance from certain areas of the business—mainly our
wannabe Web designers. I was doing battle on a daily basis and in the end often ended up
just taking over and dealing with the arguments afterwards. It has certainly helped having a
particularly proactive head of communications and ‘final say’ from a director-level steering
group.”

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National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research
Assistance Program
Using the Intranet: Intranet Team:
The Industrial Research Assistance Program is a Outside agency, silverorange, with NCR-IRAP
program of the National Research Council of
Canada with more than 400 employees working Members:
in ninety communities across Canada. The NRC- NRC-IRAP: Brian Wilson, project lead and systems
IRAP intranet is based on the award-winning analyst; Lorrie Loewen, Internet communications
silverorange intranet platform. The platform was officer
updated and customized to the needs of NRC-
silverorange: Nathan Fredrickson, technical director;
IRAP by silverorange, in collaboration with
Steven Garrity, creative director; Daniel Burka, lead
internal staff.
designer; Dan James, CEO; Stephen Des Roches,
Web developer; Isaac Grant, programmer; Nick
Burka, programmer; Dave Peck, systems
administrator and programmer; Mike Gauthier,
programmer

SUMMARY
The silverorange intranet platform has proven to be an attractive and very easy-to-use
system. In fact, designs from silverorange have made the top ten in not one, but two
Nielsen Norman Group intranet design annuals. The silverorange designers created the
intranet platform iteratively employing a combination of usability methods, including field
studies, basic usability tests, card sorting, and heuristic evaluations. Even this excellent
intranet, however, wouldn’t just work perfectly right out of the box for the NCR-IRAP. The
design team, consisting of NCR-IRAP and silverorange employees, needed to do research
with the specific users and target the design accordingly. In fact, by studying the NRC-IRAP
server logs, the team discovered that few employees were using the old intranet tool, and
some had even begun developing pirate sites to meet their needs. The silverorange team
helped deploy an intranet tailored to NRC-IRAP’s needs, before it was too late, ultimately
producing yet another award-winning design.

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 Pictured: The NCR-IRAP intranet homepage. The page includes news, a summary of
recent items, and top-level article and content categories.

NRC-IRAP employs more than 400 people, including a network of field agents—Industrial
Technology Advisors (ITAs)—who operate throughout ninety communities across Canada.
ITAs work independently or in teams to assess and enhance clients’ technology growth
potential. Their mobile work environment can make keeping in touch with clients and
coworkers a challenge, but the intranet facilitates this important communication. Users can
post items on the intranet, including messages, tasks, events, checklists, work reports, files,
and news. Other custom item types are available too, including frequently used forms. All
items can have file attachments and allow for threaded conversations.
The Post a New Item link is always visible in the left-side navigation and leads to a simple
form for creating a new posting. Using basic drop-down menus, users can assign an
importance level to a message, and can relate messages with projects and folders. The
easy-to-use editor, which looks similar to the familiar Microsoft Word interface, allows even
users who do not know HTML to add links and basic formatting to the message. Required
fields are indicated with yellow stars, and effective tips—such as What do priorities mean?—
help prevent errors before they occur. By selecting other item types from the right-most

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drop-down box, users can quickly switch to similar forms to perform those tasks.

Pictured: A simple form for adding a new posting. Similar pages with additional fields
can be used to create other item types, such as tasks, events, and checklists. The
simple “WYSIWYG” editor allows users who don’t know HTML to add links and basic
formatting to their post.

More ambitious users can set rules that will inform them of updates through e-mail or other
notifications. Front-page alerts, for example, keep users apprised of any intranet activity
since their last login. These alerts are like e-mail alerts, but appear on the user’s front
intranet page. Users can subscribe to different ones or choose only alerts for particular
users. The NRC-IRAP intranet’s core consists of a set of tools and work areas called forums.
Users access their forums by clicking the Subscribed Forums or All Forums links in the left-
hand navigation bar, or by using the search tool, which includes results from forums.
Content pushing, a persistent theme on this intranet, eliminates noise and ensures that
people see the information they need—crucial for a site with 145 forums. This allows the
same intranet to be used by many different types of users with different tasks, from client
communication to high-level management work. For example, a user working on three client

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projects, two internal projects, and one management committee would see only the content
and users pertinent to those particular forums.
The list of forums is plainly laid out. Categorize forums lets users create their own
categories and add subscribed forums to them, making organization easier. Users can also
sort by their categories and easily rename or delete them. New items notes appear near
forums on the main forum page, and let users know whether they need to delve in.

Pictured: The NRC-IRAP intranet is divided into forums that can have any number of
members and folders. Users can belong to any combination of forums, depending on
which teams they’re working with, and they see only their own forums.

Each forum has its own main page with a list of members, content folders, and other
management functionality. Users can also search by forum-only, a very nice feature—
especially for larger forums. Users can also change the order of the folders in the forum list.
Any user can create a forum, and either become the owner/moderator or designate
someone else to fill that role. Owners determine content and folder managers; they also
control access rights—granted to either groups or individuals—and can grant read-only
access, and add, delete, or change members’ access levels.

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 Pictured: An example of a forum page, where users can read or post files.

The left-side navigation and top-horizontal menus are available on every page of the
intranet. These and breadcrumbs help users navigate effortlessly. The keyword search
appears as a plain, open field on every site page as well.
Users can view the calendar tool, which is always available on the left-side menu, by day,
week, or month. The tabs to select the views are obvious and provide both text and icons
for quick scanning. Users can easily choose the month and year from drop-down lists. They
can also easily add a new event. For jam-packed calendars, the application provides filtering
tools that show only a certain type of item, items from a specific forum, or items assigned
to a particular person. For example, a user could show only his or her own assigned tasks.

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 Pictured: The calendar tool as seen in month view. Users can also use filtering tools to
choose which types of events to display.

The NRC-IRAP intranet had to work in both of Canada’s official languages: English and
French. This challenge proved minimal: it was accomplished through a French technical
translator’s expertise and through the silverorange intranet platform, which is
internationalized and multi-lingual.
Another challenge: like all Government of Canada websites, the NRC-IRAP intranet must be
compliant with the clearly defined set of Common Look-And-Feel Guidelines set by the
Government of Canada Treasury Board. 14 Designers customized the silverorange intranet
platform to meet those look-and-feel guidelines. Adhering to them wasn’t oppressive, say
the designers. “We learned that we could still be creative and expressive. And, as opposed
to constraining users, the CLF guidelines and corporate branding actually made our tools
easier to use and saved us time and money,” says Loewen.

14
The guidelines can be found at http://www.cio-dpi.gc.ca/clf-nsi/index_e.asp.

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URL AND ACCESS
The homepage URL is https://intra.irap-pari.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca. It isn’t bookmarked by default
on users’ browsers. Employees can access the intranet from any Web browser, PDA, cell
phone, or wireless device by entering the URL, then their NRC username and password.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT
The NRC-IRAP intranet is a custom-developed intranet based on the silverorange intranet
platform version 3. Additional technology includes PHP and SQL.
The intranet CMS differentiates between two types of content: user-generated and articles
and content from outside the organization.
Content tools include both WYSIWYG and code-view HTML editors, multiple languages per
article, a check-in and check-out system, and multiple-author capability.
NRC’s senior management went a step further than the Common Look-And-Feel Guidelines,
mandating a common look and feel for all of NRC’s sites. The silverorange intranet platform
was customized to meet all of those guidelines, and reflect NRC-IRAP branding.

TECHNOLOGY
Using Adobe Photoshop, silverorange developed NRC design concepts and graphics
elements.
The silverorange intranet platform runs on Dell servers with Microsoft IIS, Microsoft SQL,
and PHP4. The search engine was custom developed by silverorange. Additional in-use
technologies include XHTML, cascading style sheets, and PHP. The silverorange software is
internationalized and multilingual.

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

1) Integrate NRC people, processes, and information. 2) Promote collaboration and
knowledge sharing across departments—regardless of location, work language, or
technology skills—to meld distributed expertise with distributed field agents. 3) Create
familiar, shared spaces with the NRC look and feel. 4) Overcome cultural resistance to new
ways of working. 5) Save travel costs and time.

BASIC INTRANET FEATURES

Selected features include the ability to post messages, tasks, events, checklists, and files.
All items can have both file attachments and threaded conversations. Users can set alerts
and notifications using Outlook-like rules, which then trigger e-mails to users. Users get
breadcrumbs for easier navigation, and can customize some intranet features.
Content authors get both a WYSIWYG and HTML-code-view Web-publishing tool. Content
and intranet managers can delegate access and route approval based on workflows.
Users have access only to specific intranet forums, each of which contains its own tools—
including a calendar—and work areas.

USERS
Over 400 NRC-IRAP employees work at the national office in Ottawa and in ninety different
Canadian communities, with 260 field agents often operating independently or in small
groups at client sites across Canada.

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USER TASKS
Common user tasks include:
• Share knowledge and ideas in collaborative forums
• Search for people and information
• Upload news and photos
• Read news and online guides
• Locate an office or facility
• Access HR, computer support, and health and safety information
• Share large files that the network’s e-mail attachment file-size limits would
otherwise block
• Post success stories

BACKGROUND
In 2001, an audit by the NRC-IRAP communications department revealed that fewer than
10% of IRAP employees used the intranet. Yet most employees said their tool of choice
would, in theory, actually be an intranet. Follow-up testing revealed employees weren’t
Luddites; intranet usability was poor, leading some users to even “develop ‘pirate sites’ to
meet their needs,” notes Loewen. That’s no surprise since IRAP’s field agents, scientists,
and engineers—known as ITAs—work across Canada, evaluating clients’ technology needs,
then lending their skills. They also value technology for trading ideas and information. “Each
ITA is a knowledgeable guide who works in-person and on-site to lead you to the resources
best suited to your situation. Your ITA will help you set priorities and establish the most
direct route to achieving your goals,” says Loewen.
For example, ITAs helped find technical solutions for Frantic Films, which develops software
for animating fluids ranging from water to tar. “NRC-IRAP provided us with technical
expertise when we wouldn't otherwise have been able to afford it,” says Ken Zorniak, the
company’s CEO.
“IRAP is around to say ‘let's get this idea off the ground.’ And even if an idea doesn't lead
you exactly where you wanted to go, it still leads you to something else,” notes Hadi
Husain, director of research and development for Zenon Environmental Inc., another NRC-
IRAP client.

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY ACTIVITIES

To create an intranet NRC-IRAP employees would use, the design team devoted the better
part of three months to usability testing. They watched users contribute to a threaded
discussion, post documents, create a simple page with a photo and news story, and post an
event. The team also visited employees in remote locations to study their intranet use, and
analyzed file-access server logs to determine which parts of the intranet were popular—and
which were not.
“We studied user feedback, held training sessions, and watched people work, then built
results into our user requirements, invited new user groups to test tools, gathered
feedback, and created a strategy for redesign,” says Loewen.
The intranet team then created a strategy to meet both CLF compliance and users’ needs,
and worked with silverorange to customize its intranet software. “Our users also tested

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other platforms and let us know which features would be valuable in accomplishing day-to-
day activities and sharing information,” says Loewen, adding that the design team
implemented many of those recommendations.
Using card-sorting exercises with a variety of business groups helped hone intranet
terminology into real-world language. Users also pushed for quicker information access—
fewer clicks to reach their goals—and helped hone the forum’s tree views.
To absorb lessons from other intranet rollouts, the intranet team attended government
usability seminars and Nielsen Norman Group conferences, and also studied Paul Tao’s
“Roadmap to a Successful Intranet” article (available at http://www.intranetjournal.com/).
In March 2003, the design team brought in Web Accessibility Testing Services (WATS), a
Canadian government program “to help webmasters view their sites through the perspective
of users with disabilities,” says Loewen. WATS team members have visual and motor
disabilities, and a Canadian National Institute for the Blind guide dog. Using JAWS, Dragon
Dictate, and Dragon Systems “Naturally Speaking,” the team tested the intranet on PDAs, a
BlackBerry two-way pager, and text browsers such as Lynx. For its browsing, the WATS
team used a low-end computer, an “adequate” display, and low-speed dial-up connection,
to “better reflect the level of technology still being used by many Canadians,” says Loewen.
The WATS team also inspected intranet code and cascading style sheets to ensure they met
accessibility guidelines.
The design team says the WATS analysis was especially helpful. “The insights our team
gained from the review by these experts enabled us to view the site in a manner that truly
reflects the user experience,” says Loewen.
The final WATS report helped silverorange ensure that all code and cascading style sheets
met accessibility guidelines, and introduced a number of enhancements including
accessibility features such as form and image labels, scalable text to replace small
navigation graphics, and enhanced form-adding controls.
Designers also added JavaScript onFocus and OnBlur event handlers to any JavaScript that
was or might be used for accessibility. Without these event handlers the site would be less
accessible because JavaScript typically processes events on Web pages, but for accessibility,
designers can’t just rely upon people using the mouse. Events must be device-independent
or paired with a keyboard event handler. Such event handlers also validate and submit form
data when users click any Submit button.
Toward the end of the redesign, after the intranet team built an online Help guide, they
turned the IT team loose—with no upfront training—to test the new intranet, and made
improvements based on the resulting feedback.

TIMELINE
• January to March 2002: Intranet development strategies formulated.
• April 2002: Usability testing begins.
• June 2002: Design requirements finalized.
• July 2002: Developers begin coding website.
• October 2002: Intranet beta testing begins.
• December 2002: Deadline for compliance with NRC-wide common-look-and-feel
policy.
• January 2003: New intranet goes live.

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 • March 2003: Canadian Web Accessibility Testing Services team tests NRC-IRAP
intranet. Results used to hone site accessibility.
• November 2003: Intranet update released.

RESULTS
The redesigned intranet gives users what they need: a way to easily collaborate with a
geographically distributed workforce.
One surprising result from the redesigned intranet was that a common look and feel made
the intranet tools easier to use, and clarified some working processes, ultimately saving
users’ time.
The new NRC common-look-and-feel standards helped clarify and simplify the team’s
intranet redesign approach, ultimately saving time and money. “With the new standards
that conform to the official languages, groups gained the ability to collaborate privately in
the language of their choice, publishing in both official languages only when they complete a
project and need to share the information across the entire organization,” notes Loewen.
Previously, IRAP translators ensured that any content postings appeared in both English and
French. Eliminating this translation requirement for private collaborative forums not only
saved money, but also enabled a more ad hoc, fluid intranet work style.
Whereas NRC’s organizational structure was the basis for the previous intranet, the new
intranet emphasized collaboration in its terminology. “Card sorting showed us that users
work better with an intranet designed around tools to help them collaborate, rather that the
organizational structure,” says Loewen. For example, they relabeled “Projects” as “Forums,”
which is closer to in-house lingo and refers more explicitly to community and
communication. When users said that they didn’t understand the meaning of “Make a new
post,” the design team renamed it “Post a new item” (“Afficher un nouvel article” in the
site’s French version).
The new intranet improves several existing features, including search, user and forum
creation wizards, and WYSIWYG functions. Users get management tools for forum posting
and folders, and for personalizing side menus with their subscribed-to forums. They also get
three views of forum postings: the default tree view, chronological listings, or a preview
mode that shows the first three lines of each post. Users have access to My Personal Forum,
a shared space open to whomever they choose. Common uses for this forum include project
collaboration and even sharing holiday photos with workmates. The goal is to reduce stress
on the e-mail servers.
Users have embraced the new intranet. As one user noted in the communications
department’s regular user surveys since the redesign, “the ability to utilize forums as an
interactive space for program and policy management has been extremely beneficial and ...
helped to strengthen communication lines and ensure efficient information dissemination
across the regions where we deliver programs.”
Management support has also been a crucial redesign success factor. “We needed support
from management to encourage employees to try the intranet and new ways of working.
Now, more employees are using the intranet, and are beginning to move away from e-mail
and collaborate more efficiently to accomplish key business processes,” says Loewen.

LESSONS LEARNED
Insights from Lorrie Loewen:

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Usability research pays. “Spending a good deal of our time in usability research, and
determining business requirements at the beginning, led to a site that met most of our
users’ needs from the start. We continually work to improve the site according to changing
user needs.”
Bring in experts to help users. “Don’t be afraid to have experts in usability and
accessibility test your site. The benefit and cost savings of any suggested design
improvement will well outweigh the small investment.”
Follow up with users who still don’t like the intranet. “After working with these
people, we have been able to either win them over to the redesign or have incorporated
some of their suggestions into improving the site.”

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Senate Republican Conference (U.S.)
Using the Intranet: Intranet Team:
The Senate Republican Conference (SRC) is the Senate Leadership Technology Team; GSL Solutions
formal organization of Republican senators in the
United States. The form and frequency of Members:
conference meetings has depended upon For the Senate Republican Conference: Tim Petty,
leadership personalities and legislative director of information technology; Aaron Broughton,
circumstances. Since the late 1950s, the information communications manager
conference has met at the beginning of each
For Republican Secretary: Laura Dove, deputy staff
Congress to elect leaders (who serve two-year
director
terms), approve committee assignments, and
attend to other organizational matters. There are For Republican Policy Committee: Tom Pulju,
currently fifty-one Republican senators; SRC legislative policy advisor/systems administrator
assists them by providing a full range of
communications services, including graphics, For Republican Whip Office: Nan Mosher, office
radio, television, and Internet. manager; Marlo Meuli, former systems administrator
For GSL Solutions: Tyler Clendenin, senior Web
designer; Michael Gaines, CEO and Web designer

SUMMARY
Consistent with its goal of facilitating communication, the Senate Republican Conference
(SRC) intranet is available for staff members nationwide on multiple devices. The inventive
features, exhaustive content, and consistent navigation all make this a winning government
intranet.
SRC’s intranet enhances communication and research possibilities for all fifty-one senators
in their Capitol Hill and state offices. There are more than 2,300 registered intranet users,
including senators, their chiefs of staff, administrative personnel, and interns.
The intranet is whimsically named TrunkLine, a nod to the longtime Republican Party
mascot, the elephant. The straightforward homepage offers a balanced combination of
features and news. The center column, On the Floor (an allusion to the U.S. Senate floor) is
updated daily with recent news from the White House, Department of Defense, Majority
Whip’s office, and other offices. The Announcements area, including significant speeches,
events, and television spots, is updated weekly.
The left-side navigation (Legislative Shop), the Google search box, and the top horizontal
navigation are available on every intranet page. In the upper right of each page, including
the homepage, is a simple open search field that lets users search for a bill by its number or
name.
The homepage’s right-hand column, In the Gallery, lets users click and view press releases
and previous items from the Recent News area.

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 Pictured: The homepage for the U.S. Senate Republican Conference’s intranet. The
simple design balances news content and navigation.

The user’s name in the homepage’s upper right corner links to a form that lets users enter
their contact information. The field labels are understandable and the form itself is relatively
brief. Users can also input their interests and affinities so that other users can search by
those criteria.

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 Pictured: Users can enter information about themselves and their areas of interest.

The Policy Papers link leads to Republican Policy Committee papers organized by month and
year. Users can choose the month they’re interested in from a drop-down list, or view all
papers at once. A brief introduction helps users locating the papers they’re looking for. Each
paper is available in PDF format.

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 Pictured: The Policy Papers area houses all papers written by the Republican Policy
Committee.

The Leader’s Calendar has a legible, predictable layout, and includes information such as
when the Senate will next convene and which items it will debate or vote on. The calendar
also shows an especially vital piece of data: how many items have been “hotlined.” Hotlines
are brief statements about critical upcoming votes. Hotlined items can be accessed on
BlackBerrys and Palm Pilots, as well as on the intranet. In fact, TrunkLine users can log into
the intranet on PDAs and two-way pagers from any location and read the recent news and
announcements, or browse the archives. Although most TrunkLine users are based on
Capitol Hill or in senators’ state offices, they’re not restricted to office access, which makes
the intranet especially convenient.

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 Pictured: The Leader’s Calendar, managed by the Republican Secretary’s Office,
includes information about when the Senate will next convene and what items it will
debate or vote on.

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 Pictured: Hotlines are brief statements about critical upcoming votes. User can also
access hotlined items through PDAs or BlackBerry pagers.

The intranet also supplies a Member Voting Record, with multiple ways to search and
compare or report votes made or missed by senators. The archive includes all Congressional
sessions back to 1981.
Another unique feature is the intranet’s database design. Database information is laid out to
transfer easily to wireless devices on multiple platforms and to increase the number of
contributors, even if they’re not Web-savvy. For example, staff members in the Majority
Whip’s office and the Republican Policy Committee (RPC) can update sections of TrunkLine
daily without knowing HTML.
When it comes to everyday tasks, the intranet is extremely accommodating. For example,
legislative correspondents and chiefs of staff use TrunkLine to search information that
comes from Senate offices, the White House, the Republican Policy Committee, the
cloakroom (the Republican Secretary’s Office for Senate floor management), the Majority
Leader’s office, and the Majority Whip’s office. Press secretaries access TrunkLine to retrieve
talking points for the media and to stay updated on television and radio interviews (offices
can save audio files to TrunkLine). Many staffers use TrunkLine’s Key Staff Directory, which
includes all TrunkLine users, to find contacts within a particular Senate office or committee,
or to locate specialists by issue or subject.

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URL AND ACCESS
The TrunkLine URL is http://gop.senate.gov (the Republican Party is also known as the
GOP, for “grand old party”). The intranet is available only to those affiliated with Republican
senators. Users access it via the Senate LAN; remote users must use a secure ID card to log
on.
TrunkLine remembers user login information and automatically logs users out if they’re
inactive for 30 minutes.
Users can set TrunkLine as their browser’s default start-up page. This is not done
automatically because the Senate’s Sergeant-at-Arms, an organization without political
party affiliation, issues all Senate computers.
Given the approval of the SRC chair, users can access TrunkLine on wireless devices, such
as PDAs and BlackBerry pagers.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT
A product from GSL Solutions, SiteDirector, handles content management. Among its
features is the ability to restrict content authors’ changes to their own intranet areas.
To change or upload content, authors use a pre-existing, Web-based template, pasting
information into text boxes, filling in vote data, or inserting links, pictures, video, or audio.
“This form of content management was custom developed so that each section that is
managed does not look identical to any other section. Different offices have different
preferences for how and what they would like to communicate, and we want to ensure true
‘ownership’ for each content manager,” says Aaron Broughton, information communications
manager for the SRC. The intranet team customizes the content management templates to
suit each individual department’s unique workflow. Content owners include staff from the
SRC, the Republican Policy Committee, the Majority Leader, the cloakroom, the Joint
Economic Committee, and all fifty-one Republican senators’ offices. Each is responsible for
its own content.

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 Pictured: The CMS lets intranet staff customize content-publishing workflows for each
individual office and content manager.

The content management template was jointly designed by IT representatives from each
office.

TECHNOLOGY
The intranet runs on four Compaq Proliant Web servers, running Microsoft IIS on a mix of
Windows 2000 and 2003. The application software is Cold Fusion MX.

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

1) Improve communication and research sharing for the Capitol Hill and state offices of all
fifty-one Republican senators. 2) Have as much useful content available to GOP members as
possible, including both archived and up-to-date information. 3) Let authors post content
without having to know HTML. 4) Help GOP members find each other more easily. 5)
Continue to enhance content by involving new offices. 6) Complete the project with just two
full-time staff members and a minimal budget.

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BASIC INTRANET FEATURES
TrunkLine was designed to enhance communication and research sharing among Republican
senators in both their Capitol Hill and state offices. Users therefore have a range of features
that let them access resources such as impending votes, a roll-call schedule, position
papers, briefings and briefing packets, and talking points. They also have tools designed to
build community and facilitate knowledge sharing, including a search engine that can search
by self-identified areas of interest (agriculture, appropriations, and banking, for example)
that users can enter in TrunkLine themselves.

USERS
There are more than 2,300 registered TrunkLine users, ranging from senators and their
chiefs of staff to administrative personnel and interns.

USER TASKS
All users:
• Read recent news
• Read the Whip Alert, which contains summaries of Senate floor proceedings (the
whip is the Senate’s second-ranked Republican)
• Find talking points on a variety of issues
• Access fact sheets
• Reference archives for any of the above material
• Use the Key Staff Directory
• Search for bills (proposed legislation) by number
• Find issue or subject specialists
• Search senators’ cast and missed votes
Legislative correspondents and chiefs of staff:
• Search information originating from Senate offices, the White House, the
Republican Policy Committee, the cloakroom, the Majority Leader’s office, and the
Majority Whip’s office
Press Secretaries:
• Retrieve talking points for the media
• Keep up to date on television and radio interviews

BACKGROUND
The SRC launched TrunkLine in 1995. “TrunkLine was created to remain functional over
multiple platforms, and to store data in a secure, traditional database format,” says
Broughton. It was designed to attract new users without their having to know HTML, and to
make it easy for them to update information on a daily basis. The database-driven approach
also makes it easy to repurpose information for a PDA or two-way pager.
Redesign means constant evolution, says Broughton. One ongoing challenge, however:
“time and resources,” he says. There are only two full-time staff members for TrunkLine
support, design, updates, training, and marketing.

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The goals of the TrunkLine redesign were to continue to refine its usability so staff could
share information more quickly and easily, add requested and otherwise helpful features,
and incorporate design ideas from well-executed, commercial websites.
For the new version, “we wanted the user to be able to easily identify a thoughtful order to
how information is organized on the Web page. We wanted announcements and new items
to stand out, yet not be overwhelming,” says Tim Petty, director of information technology
for the SRC.

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY ACTIVITIES

SRC began this redesign (number fifteen), in early 2003. “A website is never finished,”
notes Petty. Departments frequently request new tools or features. After usability testing
and prototyping, these are further tested then rolled out to all, appearing in the next
intranet version.
For this redesign, Petty studied server logs to determine popular links, and also watched
people use the intranet in their own offices. The team also asked users for information
directly. “We post a questionnaire once a year—however most of the development comes
from watching and working with staff,” he says.
Petty also regularly surveys working groups related to legislation, policy, votes, and
research to find out the features or applications they desire.
But the intranet team understood the particular importance of watching users—rather than
just questioning them. “By monitoring common questions, tasks, needs, workflow, and daily
processes,” he says, “we not only wanted to provide people with features that they wanted,
but with features they did not even know about.”
Once he builds an application prototype for a department, Petty will build it for other
departments that find it useful as well, performing usability testing and modifications along
the way to improve its usefulness.
“The first major step in this evolution was reformatting the display,” says Broughton. The
old intranet homepage used “mouse-overs,” which he wanted to eliminate to make the page
more user friendly.

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 Pictured: An older intranet version. Among other changes, the redesign team removed
the mouse-overs.

One surprise during development, says Petty, was “the high demand for customization for
each application.” In fact, when the different leadership offices were ready to add
information to the site, they first wanted to improve their office’s content-input processes.
“They asked for us to help streamline their process. It was good to learn the process and
build a back-end content management workflow to meet that need,” he says.

TIMELINE
• 1995: Joint Senate Republican intranet created.
• 1996: First intranet redesign.
• 1997–98: Additional intranet features and applications added.
• 1999: Major redesign.
• 2002: Major redesign.
• 2003: Latest redesign (three months from start to finish).

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RESULTS
Today, more than 2,300 of the approximately 2,500 employees of the Republican Senate
are registered TrunkLine users. Each Senate office continues to post and manage its own
content.
In contrast to the old homepage, which used mouse-over functionality, the redesigned
homepage is “not only more user friendly, but allows space for developing new sections of
information,” says Broughton.
The space now offers the information that users access most. Recent news first grabs their
attention, followed by such things as the summary of Senate floor proceedings (Whip Alert),
talking points, fact sheets, briefing announcements, GOP news releases, and an issue log.
“No less common is referencing the archives of these materials,” notes Petty.

LESSONS LEARNED
Insights from Tim Petty:
Real-time pays. “Users always appreciate exchanging information as fast as possible.”
Good word of mouth increases users. “Plan for more users than you might think.”
A website is never finished. “Build a website that can be easily expanded to
accommodate new ideas.”
Query users. “For design inspiration, always ask users what they want, what format they
want it in, and give them what they want.”

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Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario
(Canada)
Using the Intranet: Intranet Team:
Ontario's Workplace Safety and Insurance Board In-house
promotes workplace safety and administers no-
fault workplace insurance for employers and their Members:
workers. WSIB administers some 340,000 claims Maura Murphy, knowledge services technical
annually. Its staff of approximately 4,300 people coordinator; Carolyn Archer, information resources
performs more than 700 distinct jobs in fourteen manager; David G. Williams, manager knowledge
offices throughout Ontario. multimedia design/publishing team; Deb Oakley,
knowledge services technical coordinator; Gordon
Vala-Webb, director of knowledge services; Arnold
Sooknanan, knowledge services technical coordinator

SUMMARY
Employees at Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) appreciate their
intranet, CONNEX. Before it existed, employees had to hunt through many different sources
and types of media to find the answers they needed to do their jobs. With CONNEX, staff
members can now access numerous tools that simplify their work, as well as current
information from a variety of sources, in one clean package.
The homepage, My WSIB, contains information of interest to all staff, such as corporate
news and messages, job postings, and recent publications. Designers, upon learning that
finding employee phone numbers was a common task, placed the telephone directory on the
homepage’s upper-left side. Using it, employees can search for a person’s phone number as
soon as the intranet launches. Search criteria include first name, last name, and location;
they can also search for employees by phone number. Users can also opt for advanced
search features, or generate a phone list for a particular team or working group. Below the
search-by-person area, links let users find a particular office location. Given that WSIB has
fourteen different offices, this is an especially helpful feature.

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 Pictured: The homepage, My WSIB, contains information of interest to all staff, such
as corporate messages and job postings.

The intranet is the main source for HR information, such as policies, vacation request forms,
and the employee assistance program. The most frequently accessed content on CONNEX
relates to the PeopleSoft Integrated Financial Systems software. CONNEX provides a
gateway to the application, along with resources to help staff submit and approve expenses,
generate cost and budget reports, and more.
In addition to basic corporate information, news, and general support, the intranet also
offers applications that directly enhance core business tasks. For example, claims
adjudicators can use a tool to help with one of their everyday tasks: determining average
earnings. Before this tool was created, adjudicators had to search many different
information sources, making the task time-consuming and labor intensive. Policies,
procedures, and guidelines were scattered across hardcopy manuals containing hundreds of
documents. Letters, forms, and worksheets lived in various electronic databases. Lists of
“helpful tips” and FAQs didn’t even exist.
To repair this process, the intranet team worked with different business areas to gather the
most current and approved content, policy and procedure documentation, relevant
background material, and online worksheets. They then designed a tool—integrated with the

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existing workflow—to simplify the decision-making process. The tool has been so successful
that it’s now the design team’s template for developing new decision-support tools.

Pictured: A decision-support tool for determining average earnings. Claims

adjudicators use the tool, which includes a dynamic, interactive flowchart.

Pictured: The tool for determining average earnings links to current policies and
information.

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The service codes and fees tool simplifies yet another process at the organization: making
heath care payments. Before, users had to scroll through sixteen different Excel
spreadsheets to find their answers. Now, using this tool, employees can type a code, dollar
amount, or keyword into a clear, open field, then quickly get an answer, presented in a
table with obvious headings. A behind-the-scenes database and simple front end create the
magic here. Even better, authorized users can update the database at any time, ensuring
quick and accurate decision-making for health care payments.

Pictured: A tool for finding service codes and fees. This simple tool replaced sixteen
Excel spreadsheets and the myriad headaches that arose from having to search them.

Another example of how the intranet consolidates multi-source information is the Managers’
Page. This page encapsulates all things management-related, such as processes and forms
for training, job reviews, and pay ratings. The page also links to any legal information
managers might need and offers links to magazines to help keep them well informed on
management issues.

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 Pictured: The Managers’ Page offers management tips and links to job-related forms
and procedures.

The intranet designers conducted not one, but several usability tests, understanding the
need for iterative testing and design. After a detailed investigation of users’ needs, the
designers fashioned imaginative tools aimed at simplifying or eliminating previously painful,
time-consuming processes.

URL AND ACCESS

The URL for CONNEX is http://w3.wsib.on.ca/connex/. The intranet is the default URL for
users’ browsers; they can’t change it. Mobile users can access the intranet using remote-
access software to log on to the WSIB corporate LAN.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT
The CMS is a Lotus Notes application that was designed in-house. Ten content owners,
drawn from HR, communications, administrative services, and specialized claims, have
access to the application and can post, format, and edit content. Once they’ve implemented
the forthcoming Content Contributor area, the intranet team expects to recruit more content
contributors. “We have been very cautious about opening the floodgates so far,” says
information resources manager Carolyn Archer.

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Current content contributors use an online form to submit content, and also to enter details
such as content type, intended audience, suggested intranet location, keywords, and meta-
data. “While we don’t use or enforce specific templates for content design, our Knowledge
Multimedia Design and Publishing team includes several editors and designers who can work
with clients to ensure that content is formatted according to organizational style and
editorial standards,” says Archer. A recently completed style guide will also help, and WSIB
plans to implement templates soon to maintain intranet design.

TECHNOLOGY
The intranet portal software is Plumtree 4.5WS, which interfaces with a Microsoft SQL 2000
Enterprise edition database. There are four servers: a Web server, database server,
gadget/application server, and search server. Internet Explorer 5.5 is the standard browser.
The intranet team designs pages using Macromedia Dreamweaver 4.0 and PhotoShop 6.0,
and develops applications on Lotus Notes 4.6. For metrics, the team analyzes CONNEX Web
server logs using an Access database that was built in-house and analyzes intranet use by
page, document, and user group. WebTrends software provides other statistics, such as
page hits.

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

1) Make CONNEX an essential business tool by providing a single source of information that
is complete, accurate, and up to date. 2) Consolidate the information spread across almost
300 Lotus Notes databases. 3) Continue rolling out new decision-support tools and
organizational information targeted to employees’ roles.

BASIC INTRANET FEATURES

CONNEX has an array of features to help users do their jobs more quickly and productively.
Among those features is the intranet’s starting page, My WSIB, which contains such
general-interest information as corporate messages, job postings, and What’s new. The
homepage also lets employees search the staff directory, access a variety of tools that
replace paper processes and manuals, use various online medical resources, review their HR
information, and share documents and messages.

USERS
Approximately 4,300 WSIB users perform more than 700 distinct jobs in fourteen Ontario
offices.

USER TASKS
• Read the latest corporate news and updates
• Use the phone directory
• Read the weekly job postings
• Read HR information, request vacation time, and seek assistance for training
• Submit expenses for approval
• Generate cost-and-budget reports

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BACKGROUND
The CONNEX rollout in May 2002 actually started as two separate projects: select and
implement an enterprise portal, and develop a WSIB knowledge management strategy. For
an effective knowledge management strategy, the design team realized they needed
business groups to take responsibility for owning, creating, and updating content. In other
words, the intranet needed a CMS able to support distributed authoring. Many users,
multiple offices, and no publishing standard resulted in thousands of documents in dozens of
databases and a “Wild West of publishing and organizing documents,” says David G.
Williams, manager of the Knowledge Multimedia Design and Publishing team. “Our challenge
was to corral this.”
The first redesign kicked off about six months after CONNEX went live, because WSIB
needed to upgrade from Plumtree 4—which the software maker was no longer supporting—
to 4.5WS. “This provided an opportunity to piggyback needed improvements, utilizing user
feedback and enhancement suggestions,” says Maura Murphy, a knowledge services
technical coordinator.

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY ACTIVITIES

To begin the redesign process, knowledge services staff members who had usability training
conducted a heuristic site review and identified areas for improvement. For example, they
recommended making the search window more prominent, shrinking the banner’s vertical
span on every page, replacing tabs with drop-down menus to eliminate horizontal scroll,
and make gadgets—now known as portlets in Plumtree parlance—conform to the intranet’s
design aesthetic. They also suggested a “hot doc” tool to let users flag frequently used
documents.
The redesign team gathered additional input from the intranet feedback database and the
original employee survey on intranet satisfaction. One quick fix: discarding proprietary
Plumtree lingo for real-world names. “For example, Directory was changed to Document
directory to differentiate it from the staff’s phone directory,” says Deb Oakley, a knowledge
services technical coordinator.

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 Pictured: Renaming “Document” to “Document Directory” helped users differentiate
links to this page from the phone directory.

The redesign team faced a number of challenges; some persist. For example, many
employees still don’t consider CONNEX an essential business tool, making it difficult to
procure needed technical resources or content-owner buy-in.
WSIB’s existing technology infrastructure is also complicated, perhaps partially a legacy of
government frugal-spending. “Ideally, the intranet should provide a seamless gateway to all
tools of the trade, but the costs of trying to integrate mainframe-based legacy systems and
off-the-shelf applications in a highly security-conscious environment has limited our success
in this area,” notes Murphy.
Given those constraints, the redesign largely targeted low-hanging fruit, she says, and
because of needed software upgrades, developers spent most of their time on the software
conversion, leaving “only limited time available to work on design improvements.”
Other complications included the “limitations of the Plumtree product,” says Murphy. “The
rather rigid gadget-column structure imposed by Plumtree makes for busy-looking pages.
To combat this, we expended a lot of resources developing the cleaner-looking Employee
Services page and have since used this model to develop pages that appear ‘gadget-less,’
while still conforming to the Plumtree infrastructure,” she notes.

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Pictured: The Employee Services page modified existing Plumtree architecture to
balance graphics and white space, resulting in a page that employees described during
usability tests as clean, easy to use, and attractive.

As the rollout progressed, WSIB moved from Netscape 4 to Internet Explorer 5.5. “By
upgrading and standardizing the browser for all users, the WSIB is able to better control the
user experience,” notes Murphy.
After an initial round of changes, the intranet team conducted one-on-one usability sessions
with WSIB users. “The responses were generally positive in that users liked the design
changes and saw the value of the simplified navigation and improved search function,” says
Oakley.
One surprise finding, however, was users’ strong resistance to technology. “Users don’t
want to find answers on an intranet, they want classroom training,” says Murphy. She
attributes some of that resistance to users’ limited PC skills and comfort only with Lotus
Notes and mainframe interfaces. Others had a high threshold for learning—it had to be vital
to their job before they wanted to take the time.
Another surprise: after usability testing, participating users had much better intranet
familiarity. While usability evaluations should never be conducted to educate users, they can
be educational for two reasons: 1) the test sessions encourage users to try things they
might otherwise never try, and 2) at the end of the sessions, just before users leave, the
test facilitator can explain some of the functionality. “Interestingly, many of the usability
participants found the session extremely educational and went away with a better
appreciation of how CONNEX could enhance their work experience,” says Murphy.

TIMELINE
• November 2001: First CONNEX pilot, combining content management and portal
efforts, begins in a regional office with twenty teams and 430 employees.
• May 2002: CONNEX rolled out to entire organization.

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 • January 2003: First decision-support tool goes live.
• February 2003: Intranet redesign begins, continues through June.
• May 2003: With usability testing complete, upgrade to Plumtree 4.5WS begins.
• June 2003: Redesign launched.
• November 2003: Pilot rollout of CMS.
• January 2004: Managers’ Page launched; more role-focused pages on the way.

RESULTS
The redesigned portal gives users quick access to policies and procedures. “It has become a
virtual desktop file cabinet for staff—no more need to stockpile forms in desk drawers,” says
Arnold Sooknanan, a knowledge services technical coordinator. The upgrade also fixed
several technical issues; improved the search engine, navigation, and information design;
and brought portal design in line with corporate branding.
The improved design is already having an effect: hits to CONNEX have doubled in the past
year. Based on a November 2003 user survey, intranet use among core users increased by
18%, and “user feedback and anecdotal evidence suggests intranet usage has gone beyond
the early adopters,” says Oakley. Management and staff now present more ideas for
content, demonstrating a growing interest. Employees also have new tools to facilitate their
jobs. The team’s design lessons will soon be applied to content. “We are also working on a
content contributor gadget for CONNEX that will include a link to the CMS, style guides, tips,
and templates. It will be an ‘everything you need to know to contribute content to CONNEX’
tool,” says Williams.
To aid the redesign rollout and test Plumtree’s collaboration features, the team had created
threaded discussions for enthusiastic early intranet adopters, who, as expert users, have
also touted the intranet’s benefits to others. That approach is now being applied to other
WSIB communities as well. Nurse case managers, for example, now have a professional-
practices page with threaded discussions. While not targeted at a specific WSIB rollout or
project, the informal, online community space allows individuals with similar interests and
day-to-day challenges to learn from each other—or just blow off steam.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 143

 Pictured: Nurse case managers have a professional-practices page with threaded
discussions.

Many November 2003 survey respondents detailed how the intranet now saves them time.
One user, handling a client’s spinal-cord injury claim, needed more information about
atypical symptoms. “I was able to find information [in CONNEX], which reviewed all this and
more, [and] reviewed further treatment options as well as success rates for these
treatments,” the user wrote. “There were even pictures available to demonstrate the client's
injury. This work took me less than five minutes.”

144 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

 Pictured: One Health Page feature is the ability to get injury-related information by
clicking on a part of the skeleton.

Another user fielded a call from a worker claiming he was entitled to expense his roundtrip
ride to a physiotherapist by taxi—the bus stop was too far; walking would aggravate his
injury. “I was able to verify this by using the [city] transit map in CONNEX, and I was able
to immediately reconsider my original decision with the worker still on the phone,” the
employee wrote. Still another user raved, “I wonder how I ever did my job without
CONNEX.”
Success stories validate the time and energy the intranet team devoted to the redesign. But
the team can’t stand still. “In some ways, the portal is becoming a victim of its own
popularity. Many users now feel that there is too much information on CONNEX and that it’s
becoming difficult to find what they’re looking for because of the sheer volume of content,”
says Oakley. The team plans a 2004 redesign to address those issues.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 145

LESSONS LEARNED
Insights from Maura Murphy:
Value usability testing. “Until you sit in a room with ‘average’ users and watch them
perform assigned tasks—observing where they hesitate, hearing their comments and
questions—you can’t truly evaluate your design changes.”
Go beyond round one. “Do more than one round of testing. After the first three users, we
had a pretty clear idea of what needed to change. We still had two more users scheduled for
that round, but we didn’t learn much more. Once we implemented some changes, however,
the next three user sessions were extremely valuable, and if time permitted, we would have
benefited from another round of testing and tweaking.”
Recruit widely, to a point. “Understanding the importance of buy-in from across the
organization, we invited other departments’ representatives to participate in the redesign
process. While this fostered a positive sense of collaboration, it often resulted in ‘too many
cooks,’ with everyone wanting to put their team’s stamp on the project, causing us to bog
down a little on more subjective redesign elements. In the future, we’ll better define the
scope and requested input. Instead of saying, ‘tell us what the banner should look like,’ we’ll
say, ‘pick one of these three banner designs.’”

146 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

Recommendations for the Intranet Design Process
In addition to reading the lessons learned from these good intranets, there are also process-
related things you can do to improve intranet usability. Based on the above cases, the
Intranet Design Annuals from 2001-2003, and our other intranet testing experiences, we
offer here a few recommendations for designing usable intranets.

CONDUCT MANY USABILITY EVALUATIONS AND VISIT USERS

Plan to do not one, but several different tests of your design. Test the current system if
there is one. Come up with areas that are already good and those that need improvement.
Use this information as the basis of the next design, then watch people use that iteration.
Then make more changes and begin again. Viewing a design iteration as “done” results in a
design that won’t reach its potential. Instead, address all designs as works in progress,
keeping an eye out for areas you can improve.
Intranet users are generally easy to find, and often work in your building. Ask people if you
can watch them using the intranet. Don’t have a meeting—just watch. After the session,
you can certainly ask and answer questions. However, simply watching people for an hour
or so at a time is invaluable.

MAKE ACCESSIBILITY DESIGN A PART OF THE PROCESS, NOT AN

AFTERTHOUGHT
One way to yield an accessible intranet is to include users with disabilities in your usability
evaluations. Making these users part of your target user group will help your design team
remember accessibility issues. Also—and more importantly—use accessibility guidelines in
your design processes. Guideline examples include: always use ALT tags for images, and,
when you’re writing ALT text, imagine hearing the ALT tag without seeing the image. When
you offer developers and content providers accessibility guidelines, you cultivate a smooth,
steady process, rather than a frenzied catch-up period when the issue is forced upon you.

PARTNER WITH YOUR CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS TEAM

The most well-received intranets are those that have new, accurate information that people
need and want. One way to keep such content updated is to partner with people in your
corporate communications department; they can often provide very useful news and
corporate information.

TRACK YOUR SUCCESSES

It is difficult to keep track of everything you do, but measuring the effects of design charges
will help you to determine your intranet’s value. The easiest items to correlate with
improved usability include decreased training costs and decreased support calls. You can
also gather employee testimonials and productivity gains. To do the latter, consider timing
users and counting their success rates during usability evaluations. As the design changes,
test the same tasks and take the same measurements. Ideally, you’ll find data that
supports the claim that people can complete certain tasks far more quickly with the new
design. 15

15
If you are looking for help on ROI, see these publications: Measuring Return on Investment, Gilutz, Nielsen,
www.nngroup.com/reports/roi; and Cost-Justifying Usability, Bias & Mahew, ISBN 0120958104.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 147

Intranets Not Selected: Common Issues
The ten intranets featured in this report were selected from thirty-three submissions.
Although we won’t name or show examples from intranets not in the top ten, the following
are some of the major problems we saw across the submissions not included in this report.

HOMEPAGE LACKED INFORMATION

Some intranets did not offer any news or information on the homepage. Only links. This
creates a boring and uninformative first impression. It also misses the opportunity to quickly
reach the user with important announcements. In several other cases, the designers
attempted to offer “snapshot” content on the homepage, but it was rather useless: a
weather report or old policy information, for example.

POOR PAGE LAYOUT

On some intranets, users were faced with a sea of links. Several intranets had so much
information that users were forced to scroll for five pages or more. Some of the submissions
had so much text and so many links that users stood no chance of finding what they were
looking for. Designers often believe that if they don’t offer information or links at the top
level, then people will never find them. Actually the opposite is usually true. If you offer too
many choices are at the top level, users suffer from information overload. It’s better to
prioritize which text will appear on the homepage page, and to write concisely.
In some cases, the designers attempted to organize their numerous links. Their efforts,
however, typically resulted in too many distracting headings and graphic block borders
surrounding the information. Some of these pages had very little white space. All felt very
cluttered.
Several intranets had the inverse issue—designers failed to take advantage of page real
estate. In a few examples, they wasted the entire top half of pages on useless graphics
(usually a textured background). We also saw other types of useless window decorating,
such as a picture of a computer on an HR page.
Pages with embossed backgrounds, such as the organization’s seal, made the text over
them extremely difficult to read, as did garish colors such as sun-yellow text on a grey-blue
background.

NAVIGATION THAT IS NEITHER CONSISTENT NOR PERSISTENT

Some intranets relied on features such as an A-to-Z index or a site map. Such features were
sometimes given prominent links on the homepage. This would be okay, except that on
several intranets the main menu completely disappeared on several pages, and features
such as the A-to-Z index were the only navigation offered. In other cases, a main menu was
generally available, but the structure and content changed haphazardly. For example, the
main menu appeared as tabs on one page, a colored bar on another, buttons on another,
and plain links on another—all on the same intranet.
In a few cases, the designers over-categorized items, forcing users to go through too many
landing pages that had links but no descriptions.
Through card sorting and usability studies, you can best determine how to categorize and
name menus and links so users will know where to look for subpages.

148 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

Selection Criteria and Process
SUMMARY OF SUBMISSIONS
We reviewed a wide variety of intranets, receiving submissions from thirty-three
organizations of different sizes, with different goals and designs. The submissions came
from five continents: North America (25 entries, with 21 from the U.S. and 4 from Canada);
Europe (3 entries); Australia (3 entries); Asia (1 entry); and Africa (1 entry).
Government-related industries represented in the submissions include: aerospace (1);
archives (1); country government (1); defense (1); disease (1); energy (2); finance (3);
health (5); housing (2); infrastructure (1); interior (2); law (1); legislature (1); media (1);
military (3); outreach (1); technology (2); town or county government (2); and
transportation (2).
Of these submissions, twenty-three were created solely with in-house employees, which is a
larger percentage than we see in our private sector intranet designs. Ten of these
government intranets were designed with help from an outside design firm.
There was not an overabundance of submissions. We typically receive at least three times
as many for our Intranet Design Annual Contests. Of course, this contest was targeted only
toward government-related intranets, so the available pool was smaller to begin with.

REVIEW PROCESS
We posted the call for submissions on www.nngroup.com and on www.useit.com in January
of 2004. Submissions included: screenshots of the intranet, explicit descriptions of the
intranet’s design and how it works, notes about the design process (including usability
methods employed), detailed information about users and potential users, and the intranet’s
goals.
To judge the entries, we used a four-step process: 1) initial design reviews and numeric
rankings; 2) design sorting, followed by thorough design reviews to choose the top ten; and
3) follow-up interviews with the top ten.

INITIAL DESIGN REVIEWS AND RANKINGS

Based on the initial submission information, the three judges (see About the Authors)
conducted simple design reviews and whittled down the entries to the tier-one submissions.
In addition to written commentary, we rated each site numerically. We based these ratings
on criteria typically viewed as key to intranet usability, including some criteria that emerged
from submissions and trends in our previous contests.
We rated the following criteria in each submission on a 0 to 3 scale (with 3 being the best
rating): main navigation on every page; consistent/easy navigation; consistent style across
the intranet; no horizontal scrolling; reasonable vertical scrolling; good contrast between
text and background; easy-to-read text; easy-to-read links; good use of graphics; right
amount of text; right amount of links; clean design; consistently available search; good
search design (ideally, a simple open field at the top of pages); personalization/catering to
different offices or cultures; organization-related news; information about internal groups;
employee directory or search; engaging homepage design; well-written text; content
posting and editing capabilities; simple forms; support for the main corporate functions;
pleasing aesthetics; encapsulation of the organization’s spirit; and use of innovative/fun
features.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 149

After collecting this extensive information from site designers, along with information about
their users, goals, and internal usability evaluations, we thoroughly reviewed the intranet
designs. We evaluated them based on usability, look and feel, and elegance. We also
considered the target users, their tasks, and how well the site’s applications might help
them complete these tasks. We did not conduct usability evaluations with test participants.
However, we do believe that intranet usability studies are best conducted with users, and
plan to involve them in another research study we are conducting. 16

DESIGN SORTING AND THOROUGH DESIGN REVIEW

Next, we reviewed the intranets and sorted the top thirty designs based on numeric ratings.
We then conducted more thorough design reviews of the top twenty-five sites, and from this
selected the ten best.

FOLLOW-UP INTERVIEWS WITH TOP TEN

After choosing the top ten submissions, we asked the site designers many follow-up
questions about the site, design decisions, their usability evaluation methods, and lessons
learned. We then asked them more specific questions, some exclusive to their particular
intranet and some more generic. For example, the more generic questions included:
• How did the intranet start? How has it evolved since then?
• What does it do and what kind of information does it contain?
• Who are content owners for different parts of the intranet?
• Whose idea was it and what goals did he or she want to achieve?
• What were the constraints, for example, on time, budget, and language?
• Describe the development process and usability findings. Tell us the story of how
you initiated any redesign.
• Who was involved in the project and what are their roles in the organization?

16
The report about intranet usability is based on usability evaluations of 27 different intranets. Intranet
Usability includes guidelines about designing usable intranets, and is available for download at
http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/guidelines.

150 [email protected] 48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD., FREMONT CA 94539-7498 USA

U.S. Department of Transportation: DOTnet
The U.S. Department of Transportation is DESIGN TEAM:
the government department charged with Burke Consortium
implementing and maintaining the country’s
transportation system. It encompasses 11
different agencies dealing with
transportation by air and on land and
water, and has over 100,000 staff
throughout the U.S. Its headquarters are in
Washington, D.C.

Pictured: homepage

SUMMARY
The DOTnet intranet has a very clean look, with graceful color choices, clear
headings and categories, and easy-to-decipher links. Graphics are used appropriately
and sparingly. The personalization features help employees find the information
specific to them quickly. Some of these features include bulletin boards,
communities, chat rooms, and local news, weather, and traffic..

DOTnet also has several productivity-specific offerings. For example, the site’s Work
Tools section offers various applications and information sources people need to do
their work. The Communities are a nice way to present information, and allow access
restrictions for specified content for particular users. The community calendar,

48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD. FREMONT, CA 94539-7498 USA [email protected] 1 51

What’s Hot, the number of members, and access levels are visible. And, the Visitor
Center is a nice way of camouflaging the same old Help feature.

Overall, data entry on DOTnet is simple. For example, the search feature is
presented as an open field in the upper-left, followed by a Go button. The login
function has two fields labeled Logon and Password. This simplicity is very good.

The DOTnet site also makes good use of information on several other government
sites. It’s smart to link to these, leading readers right to the source and not
duplicating data. The info-message that pops up every time you are leaving the
DOTnet pages, however, does interrupt your train of thought, is a bit annoying, and
can be an accessibility issue. A better option might be to note the source at the link,
so people know then that they are leaving the site.

There is a little too much text on some of the pages, and the clutter makes it difficult
to read. Some of the text is very small, and there is not enough contrast between
the text and the page background, which probably create accessibility issues for
people with low vision and motor skill issues.

Scoring
Simple Simple Consistent Visible Simple Limited Clear Clear
look navigation navigation search search (and well- labels links
across bar (or presented) (name
pages button) page text and
marks)

2 2 2 3 3 2 2 2

INTRANET
DOTnet is an intranet for all the DOT staff, providing features such as an employee
directory, library facilities, and electronic calendars, as well as role- and
organization-specific communities.

BACKGROUND
The U.S. Department of Transportation is not lacking for intranets: 10 out of its 11
operating administrations — such as the U.S. Coastguard and Federal Aviation
Authority — have developed their own systems. The DOT, however, is keen to
improve efficiency by sharing best practice across departments. They see the
introduction of a single, department-wide intranet as a way to achieve this aim. Last
year, the department hired a services company, Burke Consortium, to build a new
DOT-wide intranet to replace the existing system, which was built a year earlier by
the DOTs internal IS team.

As for the existing intranet version, few staff had been persuaded to use it in
addition to (let alone instead of) their own agency-specific systems. To be successful,
the new version had to look appealing and offer employees features they couldn’t get
elsewhere.

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

Information exchange was the number one goal for the new DOT intranet, called
DOTnet. The IS team wanted it to include online communities with community tools

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for each group to make information sharing easier. For example, they wanted the
staff involved in enterprise architecture or procurement within the various functional
areas to be able to exchange examples of best practices and share resources
common to them all.

At the same time, the DOT didn’t want employees to regard DOTnet as a monolithic
system that didn’t reflect their individual needs. So, another priority was
personalization tools that let users adapt the system to their own requirements.

The third important goal was that the system be easy for the DOT IS department to
maintain internally, without ongoing service costs. The system design had to reflect
that goal, and the application needed a built-in CMS.

Not only did the designers have to complete the intranet in a short timeframe, but
they were also limited by some political decrees. For example, designers were
required to use the official DOT color scheme: blue and yellow. Further, the design
had to be sufficiently generic to not exclude or appear to favor any one of the DOT’s
individual agencies. An early prototype design featured a rotating logo that showed a
truck, then a plane. The DOT rejected this as too specific.

To be compatible with all the DOT’s workstations, the design had to be optimized to
work well with screen resolutions of 800 x 600 and older versions of Netscape. This
constraint limited the length of screen items such as form fields.

The application also had to comply with Section 508 of the Americans with
Disabilities Act, which specifies that all information presented on a public site must
be accessible to people with hearing or visual disabilities. “This makes it difficult to
include media such as video or audio because, for example, a hearing-impaired
person can’t benefit much from video on Web. You have to limit the number of
graphics to ensure the page is accessible to everyone,” says information designer
Matt White.

However, this constraint has also had the benefit of making it easier to create a
multilanguage version of the application, if required. “Though the application is all in
English now, because of Section 508 we give the ability to upload an alternate
version of every bit of content — which means we could put in a Spanish version at
the same time as the English version,” Matt says.

THE REDESIGN PROCESS

In November 2000, the project kicked off with a day-long meeting among the five
staffers responsible for maintaining the old intranet in the DOT’s Central Information
Office (CIO), and the four members of the Burke development team. The DOT had
already provided Burke an outline of the existing intranet system, what it thought
worked and what didn’t, and new features — such as communities — that it wanted
in the updated version. Burke’s team had analyzed the site, and used log data to find
out what information was viewed most regularly. They came to the meeting prepared
to present ideas for desirable features, such as an employee directory and a calendar
for department-wide and organization-specific events.

48105 WARM SPRINGS BLVD. FREMONT, CA 94539-7498 USA [email protected] 1 53

Pictured: employee directory

Following the initial meeting, Burke prepared a basic information design and the two
teams met and conferred again. Once the DOT approved and modified the design,
Burke started to prepare visual designs and functional templates, outlining what the
pages would look like and how they would work. The Burke team submitted three
designs to the DOT team, who in turn selected a combination of two designs, which
Burke used to create the final version.

DESIGN
To facilitate easy maintenance, the DOTnet design is entirely template-driven, with
around 30 templates in all. Most of the templates are three columns, with a few two-
column pages. Within these templates users can customize their screen layouts using
various arrangements of the two basic design modules: a single narrow column and
a double column.

Navigation, too, has been kept simple, with the aim of one-click access to most
areas. It includes a Home button and four tabs to take users to the main areas:
Employee Information, Employee Directory, Communities, and Calendar. Some
areas, such as Communities, provide sub-navigation. The My Dot area gives users
access to personal modules, such as a private calendar and library, plus personalized
weather, notes, and news.

PERSONALIZATION
Because the DOT consists of multiple agencies, one obvious approach would have
been to provide users with a personalized agency site view driven by their login, so
that coastguard users would see a coastguard view, and so on. There were two
reasons, however, why the DOT wanted to avoid this. First, the organization wanted

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to promote the idea of department-wide information and resources, and felt that
taking users straight into an agency view would dilute this message. Second,
employees may belong to multiple communities: they might work in procurement,
and also be a highways expert. Having community areas within a standard intranet
makes it possible to reflect this diversity.

Pictured: community page

Users can customize their homepage by adding personal modules such as weather,
personal notes, and a calendar, and arranging them as they see fit. Screen layout is
customized using the My Modules option in the My Dot section.

In addition to this customization, community leaders and administrators can set the
screen layout for the site areas they are responsible for maintaining. For example,
the procurement community’s leader can arrange the Procurement Community
homepage. This type of customization is carried out from within the CMS.

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Pictured: content management system

USABILITY
The DOT planned to decide on the intranet’s content and structure simply using input
from its CIO team. “They didn’t see the need for much user testing, but we
convinced them we needed to go through one round of it,” White recalls. “Most of
the challenges didn’t come up until we gave the application over to users to look at.”

Around 20 test users were involved in the usability and functional testing, which
started in February 2001 on the first iteration of DOTnet. Most of the test users were
employees who’d expressed interest in the intranet project along the way; in cases
where agencies weren’t represented, the team asked for volunteers to fill the gaps.
They varied widely in their IT experience. “Some had used the old intranet quite a
bit, others didn’t even know what a scrollbar did. So the whole thing had to be very
easy to use,” Matt says.

Users were given several tasks to carry out using the CMS, which was seen as the
most complex part of the application. For example, users had to enter a news article
along with its headline and summary. The team designed the tasks to ensure that
test users would work with most of the intranet’s features.

The team tried to observe as many of the test users as possible as they worked
through the tasks, and got comments from all of them. “From that, we got a whole
slew of proposed changes to work through,” Matt says. “People were having trouble
understanding the method behind CMS — it was very foreign to them that they could
put content on the site themselves.” Burke incorporated the user feedback and
change requests from the DOT CIO team into a second version.

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Because many of the DOT’s users were fairly inexperienced Web users, Burke carried
out a training program just before the launch. They held a one-day crash course in
using the system for 20 core staff members who could then train others. Staff
members were also given a number to call with any questions, and Burke had
someone standing by for the next two and a half weeks to deal with inquiries. Burke
team members set up a bulletin board, and also dropped by occasionally to check on
how users were getting on with the system.

RESULTS
Because of the limitations of the DOT’s network infrastructure, DOTnet usage is still
restricted to the 50,000 employees in its Washington, D.C. headquarters, but the
aim is to make it available to regional offices and home workers via a virtual private
network. Burke has provided for this with features such as regional weather reports
based on ZIP Code.

DOTnet went live in June, and attracted three to four thousand users in its first
week. Although it’s too early to judge its ultimate success, community use appears
to be burgeoning, and one community already has 20 private groups within it.

TIMELINE
• November 2000: The project began.
• Requirements definition: 5 days.
• High-level information design: 7 days.
• Visual design (three design studies): 25 days.
• Functional template design: 18–25 days.
• Build prototype: 34 days.
• Testing and documentation: 16 days.
• Launch: 5 days.
• June 2001: The intranet went live.

LESSONS LEARNED
Burke Consortium is now applying the lessons learned from building DOTnet to
creating a general-purpose community tool. According to information designer Matt
White, they learned three specific lessons from the DOTnet project.
AVOID POP-UP WINDOWS
“While it worked for the DOT — because they wanted to maximize screen space and
do a lot of multiplexing — we don’t feel they are the most usable thing and we have
eliminated them in newer versions of our own tool.”
KEEP MENUS SHORT
Because long lists are difficult to manage, they often have to modify news items.
They learned from their focus groups that they needed to break longer stories into
more manageable chunks.
PROVIDE LOCALIZED SEARCH
DOTnet had just one general search engine, and although it could be categorized by
news, calendar events, surveys, and so on, users were still faced with a long list to
wade through. Burke now offers the option of localized searches in key areas, such
as a calendar search.

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World Bank Group and Satyam Computer Services
USING THE INTRANET: MEMBERS:
The World Bank Group is one of the
world's largest sources of financial aid WORLD BANK: MARIA DOLORES ARRIBAS BANOS,
TEAM LEADER AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
to developing countries.
OFFICER; ISABELLA NUNEZ DE MAGALHAES
Headquartered in Washington D.C., the
CUNHA, CONSULTANT IN CHARGE OF INTRANET
Bank has employees working in country
MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT; DAVID CLINGMAN,
offices throughout the world.
VALERIE STEWARD, AND MICHAEL BETTERRIDGE,
COMMUNICATIONS AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT;
DESIGN TEAM: ANGELA FAN, METADATA MANAGEMENT;
World Bank’s Internet Working Group VIRGINIA FOLEY, REGIONS/COUNTRIES
and Usability Team; and Satyam MIGRATION; CHATCHARES CHITVARANUND,
Computer Services, an Indian IT TECHNICAL SUPPORT; BAKKIYA MURUGABASKAR,
services company, which is MANAGES THE TECHNICAL STAFF; ALOK JAIN,
implementing the CMS and designing MAIN DESIGNER WHO WORKS WITH A DESIGN
the input and display templates. TEAM IN INDIA

Pictured: The intranet home page is uncluttered, but still provides a

comprehensive picture of the World Bank's online resources.

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SUMMARY
The World Bank has more than 10,000 staff worldwide, and is headquartered in
Washington D.C. All employees are not only allowed to post content on the intranet,
but are encouraged to do so. Many corporate communications and IT departments,
and intranet designers have said they cannot let users contribute to the intranet
because of company rules governing content. But in this case, the intranet succeeds
because of the commitment to the intranet by many different departments and
individuals. The necessary reviews and approvals for submitted content do not just
fall on the Web team’s shoulders. Instead, submitted content is routed to the right
people, and those people and departments review and actually post the approved
information. This helps the organization balance controlling the intranet’s
submissions and overall content, as well as how it is displayed.

The intranet home page provides a comprehensive big picture of the Bank's online
resources, and consolidates corporate communications, both internal and external,
while maintaining an uncluttered look. The internal communications appear in the
middle section of the page, and external communications (Bank in the News: press
releases and press reviews) appear in the left-hand navigation. Employees can
suggest articles for each section; the Internal Communications team and Media
Relations team facilitate and prioritize the content. The advertising icons toward the
bottom of the left-hand column highlight items, such as annual meetings, that will be
posted for more than a day.

The intranet is the perfect place to advertise internal events and seminars. What
better way to ensure that all groups are included than to let people post their own
events? On the World Bank intranet, all Bank staff can publish their seminars and
events using the Kiosk tool. A Kiosk administrator monitors the entries to make sure
that the audience for the event is big enough that it makes sense to publish it for all
employees.

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Pictured: The events calendar, Kiosk, where users can read the calendar
of events or post their own events.

The services portal lets users browse by service category, by service provider, and
by headquarter services versus country office services. It integrates decentralized
service catalogs with the yellow pages, and lets units that do not have a service
catalog submit an entry into the yellow pages directly from the services portal. The
yellow pages administrator reviews and approves submissions for the yellow pages
catalog.

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Pictured: The services portal lets users browse by service category, by
service provider, and by headquarter services versus country office
services.

The designers chose templates with a standard and simple look and feel, light pages
that load quickly, and a consistent user experience. There is a prominent place on
the header for local branding, such as pictures and logos, while the rest of the
header components remain constant across the site. Most of the categories on the
left-hand navigation are optional, and there is room for free categories that are
specific to a particular group. Much of the content is data-driven, but in most cases
owners have the option to reject or accept content coming from an institutional
source.

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Pictured: A country page, demonstrating the templates’ standard and
simple look and feel.

For performance reasons, the designers chose to separate the people search from
the site search. Because the employee directory search is the intranet’s killer app at
many large organizations, it’s imperative that this feature is visible, simple, and most
of all fast. The site search combines a metadata search for frequently used
repositories with a crawl search that uses Google’s intranet search appliance for
uncataloged content.

The search results page repeats the search query, which is always a good idea. The
page is easy to scan, the title links to the full document, and the short descriptions
further describe the documents. The Hide Descriptions link is a nice feature, which,
obviously, hides the descriptions and lets the user see more results at once.

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Pictured: A search results page.

The breadcrumbs, standard navigation, and consistent page layout make this
intranet’s behavior predictable, but not boring. The bold colors and exciting pictures,
plus pertinent and ever-changing content make this intranet a place people will want
to return to when they conduct their everyday tasks.

Scoring (3 = best)
Simple Simple Consistent Visible Simple Limited (well- Home page
look navigation navigation search search presented)
and design text on pages
2.4 2.8 2.5 3 3 2.7 2.8

DESCRIPTION OF THE INTRANET

Though the World Bank is a multinational organization, the intranet is mainly
presented in English. It does, however, include documents in different languages,
and the search facilities make it possible to search for content in a specific language.
Where content is available in a choice of languages, the link to the other language
versions appear at the top of the page, letting users toggle back and forth through
the language versions.

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BASIC FEATURES

• News subscriptions, staff news, corporate news, and newsletters

• HR services, such as pension benefits, salary increases, resume updating,
and job applications
• General staff services, such as visitor passes, conference room booking,
coffee services, and cafeterias menus
• Health services, such as health room schedules, info on vaccinations for
traveling staff, and gym schedules
• IT services, such as ordering a Lotus Notes account and requesting
global/remote access
• Operations services, such as travel requests and travel expense
processing
• Various documents and reports, publications, and information on projects
and loans.
• Staff directory
• E-discussions
• Events calendar
• Announcements to employees, extracurricular announcements, and a
bulletin board for buying and selling items
• Extranet applications with clients

The intranet also includes a knowledge management system. Although content

creation is completely decentralized, with the implementation of the CMS, the
company has standardized the tool used to update the page and design templates.

URL AND ACCESS

The intranet is the default page when Bank employees open their Internet browser,
unless they manually change it. On the standard desktop, the browser always opens
at start up, so the intranet home page is the first thing employees see when they
start their computer. An exception to this is country offices staff, who sometimes
have slower connections.

BACKGROUND
The Bank has had an intranet since about 1994, but started out by letting about 400
internal content providers around the world contribute on an ad hoc basis, using
their own tools and design ideas. “Everyone could do what they wanted: create
pages in HTML, Lotus Notes, and so on. Same for design — we had a few standard
templates, but that was pretty much it,” says Maria Dolores Arribas-Banos, team
leader and information management officer.

As the intranet grew in size and scope, it became increasingly cumbersome and hard
to maintain, and content became increasingly hard to find. In September 2001, the
Bank embarked on a three-year intranet redevelopment project, which would also
harmonize the internal and external sites. Although the technology department

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owns the project, a steering group of representatives from various Bank areas
approved the budget.

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

There were two main goals for the redevelopment project. First, the Bank wanted to
provide a common technical infrastructure for the intranet and public website to
reduce development speed, create an easily maintainable structure, and integrate
navigation and search so that information is easier to find. Second, it wanted to
transform the intranet from a basic information source into a full-blown corporate
portal that offered personalization features and provided a platform for Web-based
applications.

In pursuit of its first goal, the Bank is now migrating existing intranet and Internet
content into a central CMS, with a dynamic publishing capability. As it introduced a
common technical platform and common look and feel, the Internet Working Group
(IWG) wanted to ensure both that content providers retained control over their
content and that departments and regional groups retained some individual identity.
“The templates we had before were very rigid. We wanted to provide some flexibility
and local branding,” Arribas-Banos says.

So, content creation will still be decentralized, but the IWG will centralize and
manage template management and overall design. Also, some content owners have
the same content on the intranet and external Web; the CMS should save them time
by making it easier to repurpose content.

One of the technical problems the team had to resolve was improving the search
facilities. “Before, you pretty much had to go to each individual repository to find
something,” explains Arribas-Banos. Now, the Google search engine lets users
search the whole intranet or narrow the search to a particular section.

All 10,000-plus Bank employees have intranet access, some from country offices
with less than optimal Internet connectivity. The intranet also has to serve mobile
employees as they travel throughout the world, and therefore has to work well even
over low-speed and mobile connections. This means, for example, a strict limit on
use of graphics. But, set against that constraint, the organization’s standard desktop
gives the design team the advantage of only having to develop for one browser:
Internet Explorer 5.0.

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY ACTIVITIES

The team divided the intranet redevelopment process into four stages: requirements
gathering, development, usability testing, and content migration. The intranet is not
yet completed, and the team continues to carry out the final three stages on various
parts of the site.

Requirements gathering lasted about six months, from July to December 2001, and
involved about 400 different content providers and users throughout the
organization. Satyam, the Bank’s development partner, created a detailed
questionnaire covering issues such as the goals, target audience, content type, and
workflow requirements for each section. The team sent this out to the main regional
coordinators around the world, who were asked to review it with the different
country webmasters.

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One finding from this exercise was that questionnaires had to be worded quite
carefully to get the desired result. “We found that the responses to the
questionnaire were a bit too general, and in many cases we had to go back and get
more specific information,” Arribas-Banos says. Once the exercise was completed,
the results were consolidated into an overall requirements document.

In addition to sending out questionnaires, team members met with representatives

of various departments at the Bank’s headquarters to discuss their requirements. To
create a more user-driven information architecture, they also asked Satyam
consultants to carry out card sorting exercises with user groups for both the overall
site and individual subsites to determine where users would expect to find certain
content.

The team learned some lessons while using card sorting to elicit requirements.
“Card sorting gives you some insight about how content should be organized, but
you have to be careful in how you use the results, because it may not be the case
that people really want it that way,” says Arribas-Banos. “We found the responses
would vary widely depending on the person’s background; depending on who you
asked, you would get a completely different organization, and when you played the
result of the organization they had chosen back to them, they didn’t always like it.”

The team addressed this issue by creating a flexible structure that lets users
navigate to the same content in different ways. Users can find data on Angola, for
example, by going to the data page and browsing by country, or by going to the
country page and browsing by data.

Finally, team members conducted a content inventory to determine what content

was currently on the site, whether any of it should be deleted, and if any key content
was missing. They also looked at metadata issues, such as which content required
cataloging (for example, press releases), and what information they needed to
capture.

Using all this information, the team created an information framework that included
the overall site and navigation structure; basic template definitions; what approval
processes were needed; and any special requirements, such as specific workflow
processes.

They also specified a basic color palette and a page design framework, which they
called the C-clamp, consisting of a header across the top, left-hand navigation, and a
footer. In addition, local branding goes at the top left in the main menu bar, search
is always in the top right corner, and help and feedback buttons are mandatory on all
pages.

Once the information structure and workflow was established, the team started work
on building each section’s input and display templates, using either existing
templates or producing customized templates to meet departmental requirements.
“Some departments, like General Services, need very specific templates, so it was
very much demand-driven,” Arribas-Banos explains.

Before the designers started working on the site templates, they consulted with
content owners to come up with a preliminary content structure. Once the initial
design was set and the standard components were developed, they built a basic

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storyboard using Lotus Notes to show where the page elements should go, and
defined the page behavior.

Pictured: Designers built a basic storyboard using Lotus Notes to show

where the page elements should go, and defined the page behavior.

Being able to specify the storyboards and page behavior in electronic documents is
particularly important, given that the Bank is working with an offshore design team.
Face to face meetings are almost impossible, and they carry out most
communications via email, phone, or video conferences.

Early on in the project, team members developed a migration plan setting out where
existing content should go — basically, they had to decide whether it should migrate
to the CMS or a document management system, or just be deleted. The final
migration stage is now underway and the aim is to complete the bulk of it by the end
of 2002. The data migration is proceeding in parallel with the portal implementation,
which includes the staff portal, projects portal, managers portal, and so on, plus
extranet applications such as the donors portal. This stage also includes training for
content providers, editing, and testing.

In January 2002, the team launched a pilot site, including news and events on both
the intranet and the external Web. By introducing the new system to users in small
steps, the team hoped to avoid the culture shock associated with a “big bang”
approach. “So we decided to go with a pilot and have the owners of those sections
bring the business on board, and this approach worked well,” Arribas-Banos explains.

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Rather than appearing as a series of staged releases, the intranet design evolved
gradually, with some pages going through up to 200 small iterations. The home
page is one example of a design that went through many design changes. The
Bank’s old home page design had about 50 links on the first screen, visible even
before scrolling down. The page contained too much information and redundancy
within each category. “It was just too busy,” Arribas-Banos explains. “People
couldn’t spot changes in content.” Furthermore, because all the sections were
automatically populated from the source material, there was no way of highlighting
priority items, and, since new material replaced old items, there was no way to
highlight items for longer than a day (or in some sections, a few hours). Also, users
found the black top menu bar hard to read, and tended to miss menu items,
including the search feature. They were also confused by the cascading menus,
which were activated by mouse over.

Pictured: The previous home page design, which was too busy.

In October 2001, Satyam presented its first attempt at a redesign. However, several
of the problems identified on the previous intranet remained, so the design was
rejected, and it didn’t get as far as the Web and user communities. “It wasn’t fixing
any of the problems we had,” Arribas-Banos says. The page was still cluttered, with
almost the same amount of information as before. And, while the search option was
more prominent, it didn’t solve another existing problem: that most users didn’t
think to change the default search option — people search — resulting in frustration
and complaints.

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Pictured: The first attempt at a home page redesign. Several of the
previous intranet’s problems remained, so the design was rejected.

Several further iterations resulted in the next version. “We liked this much better
and felt it was much clearer,” Arribas-Banos says. The search problem had been
fixed by having two separate boxes for people and site search, and the site had a
more professional-looking design, most of which has been retained in the current
version. In addition, the new version included a name for the intranet, Staff
Connections, and a new section, Kiosk Announcements, where staff can more easily
submit their own announcements, enhancing the sense of community. Because the
Bank wanted more regional input on the home page, the team introduced an In The
Field section to carry daily regional news. However, this turned out to be
impractical, and had to be dropped.

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Pictured: A later iteration of the home page that was better, but not final.

Even with the improvements to the home page, a number of user criticisms
remained. These included unclear priorities for the daily news; no way to highlight
items for longer than a day; and poor visibility for HR content, one of the site’s most
popular areas. The users also disliked the people image used in the top left corner
with the Staff Connection logo. Users felt that because the Bank has a multinational,
multicultural staff, the image should reflect this diversity.

In the latest home page design, the controversial photographic image has been
replaced with a neutral silhouette, and the logo was redesigned. To solve the
problem of being able to highlight items for a longer period, the left-hand menu
column can now include graphic buttons (such as Millennium Development Goals)
linking to special items of longer-term interest. But the page continues to evolve in
a process of ongoing development.

The latest design also addresses a longstanding issue by having content from the
Bank’s internal communications and external news departments appearing under the
same Bank’s World Today banner. User feedback showed that users did not see the
difference between the two sections, which both essentially cover news about the
Bank, and found them confusing. The solution is a compromise.

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The drive toward less clutter and greater simplicity is reflected in changes to other
site areas. The old services page had a long list of services categories and used
cascading menus. Since there was no formal process for content publishing, services
were often cataloged by the service providers — again by the central yellow pages
administrator, with help from the services site manager.

Pictured: The old services page, with its long list of services categories
and cascading menus.

In the new service portal, the number of service categories was reduced to nine, but
users have more ways of browsing them: by service category, service provider, and
headquarter services. Decentralized service catalogs will be integrated with the
central yellow pages. Units without a service catalog can already submit yellow page
entries directly from the services portal.

One of the problems the design team faced was providing central control over the
intranet’s structure and look and feel, while also providing a measure of local
autonomy. Setting the rules for the information framework, template definitions,
and page behavior upfront was vitally important. Before individual departments start
to look at page design proposals, they have already agreed on the basic ground
rules. Their own designers can be involved in the process, but must work with
design guidelines, such as a standard color palette. In developing the Bank’s World
Today section, for example, this meant much fewer interactions were needed
between the intranet team and the department, because the templates already
included the intranet’s standard components.

In an organization with more than 10,000 employees, getting representative user

feedback in manageable volumes is a major challenge. “Of course you want to hear
everyone’s feedback, but we have a lot of staff and everyone has an opinion and a

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preference,” Arribas-Banos says. “So we set a time frame for listening, then we had
to go ahead and make a decision.”

Principle feedback comes from the IWG Community, which any Bank employee with
any interest in the Web can join. The IWG Community distribution list currently
includes more than 600 people.

New proposals for the intranet are circulated to the IWG Community with a request
for comments. The intranet team also puts a link to any new pages on the intranet
home page, partly to get feedback and partly to alert users that a change is
imminent. “We might put up three mockups and ask them questions; we keep them
up there for maybe fifteen days or longer,” Arribas-Banos explains.

The intranet group can call on the Bank’s in-house usability team, which carries out
both heuristic evaluation and user testing for page designs as they evolve. “We do a
heuristic evaluation ourselves and then, once we're comfortable with the design, we
send it to the in-house usability team,” Arribas-Banos explains. “They will find the
most obvious usability issues and fix them; most of the problems you can fix right
away but others need more changes. Once the final templates are ready, we send
those to the team and they do an evaluation with real users.”

Team members initially focused the user testing on the input templates used by
content providers; they also extensively tested display templates. They carried out
tests with groups of three to five users, who were given a list of tasks to complete
and a questionnaire to fill out. One compromise the group had to make was on its
samples of test users. “It’s a challenge to get a representative group, because
people are busy, so you tend to end up working with the people who happen to be
wherever you are,” Arribas-Banos says.

TIMELINE

• November 2000: World Bank starts to look for new CMS; sends out
questionnaire to gather requirements from all content providers.
• September 2001: Work starts on the intranet metadata model.
• November 2001: Satyam starts work on page designs. Pages developed
on an iterative basis.

RESULTS
Before the project started, the World Bank hired a contractor to run out a baseline
assessment of the previous intranet, identifying indicators such as number of broken
links, time spent configuring subsites, how many consultants were hired to do site
design, and so on. When the current system is completed, the same indicators will
be measured to give quantitative results.

The intranet team also conducted a user survey when the old intranet launched and
the team plans to do the same survey once all content has been migrated into the
new version. The team also analyzes statistics of site usage, conducts surveys of the
organizational webmasters, and logs comments sent in by users via the feedback
button.

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The change has not been painless, and initially many staff found it hard to agree to a
standard look and feel. “All the units had technical people who would need to work
from centralized templates,” says Arribas-Banos. “Change management was the
most difficult part of the process.”

Change management measures have included inviting outside speakers to offer

presentations on the benefits of a consistent user experience across the intranet, the
benefits of using standard templates, and how sales increase as a result of
introducing corporate standards. “When someone from outside comes and tells you,
you pay more attention, particularly when they're talking about very specific bottom-
line improvements,” Arribas-Banos says.

Though the site is still at the pilot stage, there are already informal indications that it
is achieving its goals, with an increased number of users reporting confidence in the
intranet. The improved search function has proved highly popular. “Search was a
huge win,” says Arribas-Banos. “People actually called us up to say how well it was
working, which was a pleasant surprise.”

The Bank also expects to make savings by using the CMS to more easily repurpose
content between the intranet site and the public Web site.

LESSONS LEARNED
Insights from Maria Dolores Arribas-Banos:
Change management is more challenging than any technical issue. “People
don’t like change. If you encourage them to participate by sending feedback, they're
more receptive to the new system.”

Anticipate requirement changes. “If you need to deal with changing

requirements and you're working with a contractor, make sure you set up the
contract to allow for change.”

Involve content providers early on. “Content providers need to know the
capabilities of the new system and its potential before they can submit realistic
requirements. You have to go to them with a straw man and let them break it
apart.”

Go for process rather than perfection. “If you're aiming for perfection the first
time, you’ll never get anything done. Aim for continuous improvement instead.”

Get buy-in from decision makers. “Sponsorship and top management support
are vital.”

Plan for staff adjustments. “Don’t forget transitional activities like training,
ongoing support, and deploying staff whose skills are no longer used in the new
system.”

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United States Coast Guard
Using the Intranet: Design Team:
The US Coast Guard is one of five branches of the The CG Mission Advanced Collaboration Network,
US Armed Forces, and falls under the jurisdiction branded as CG Central, uses a COTS BroadVision
of the US Department of Homeland Security. The portal framework. The Coast Guard team (including
Coast Guard is the country's oldest continuous military, civilians, and contractors) designed custom
seagoing service with responsibilities including features and integrated other data systems for
search and rescue (SAR), maritime law personalized information delivery.
enforcement (MLE), aids to navigation (ATON),
icebreaking, environmental protection, port Members:
security, and military readiness. The system will CG Central’s design is governed by the Configuration
be accessible to all 80,000 CG employees, Control Board (CCB), whose permanent membership
reserves, and CG auxiliary volunteers worldwide is made up of the following: LT Scott Masterson,
(military, civilian, and contractors). Glenda Campbell, Richard Nesler, LT Dwayne Morris,
and Claudia Isaacoff, tab managers; LT Tom Shelton,
project officer; LCDR Janet Stevens, program
manager; and LT Keith Rauch, Innovation Council
representative. The Board’s ad hoc membership
includes: Steve Flowers, a performance technology
representative; ETCM Richard Kramer, an enlisted
workforce expert; Gabriel Paulson, Maintenance
Logistic Command (Pacific) intranet design expert;
Bruce L Miller, a USCG District thirteen support
expert; and Deb Miller, a USCG remote support
expert from Kodiak, Alaska (Electronic Support Unit).
The functional area manager, Robin Nichols, leads the
development team: Brian Hersh, Jeremy
Hettenhouser, Monika Foster, Mike Lacey, Jason
Smith, Curtis Dyer, David Crim, Duane Barb, and
Frank Henderson.

SUMMARY
The CG Central portal is designed to help project teams and individuals in the US
Coast Guard inform and be informed — critical tasks for military personnel, especially
in times like these, when the US homeland requires scrupulous protection.
The aesthetics are attractive, but not fussy. The Coast Guard seal at the top shows
the site’s official nature. The blue and gray color scheme is reminiscent of water and
creates a calm tone. Text is legible and photograph quality is quite good. Links are
obvious, indicted by bold, underlined text.
The homepage keeps morale and spirits high with the Features from the Field area,
which showcases various personnel and tells their individual stories, complete with
high-quality photographs. On any intranet, demonstrating what people and teams
are working on can be inspiring and educational.
The US military’s hierarchical nature helps keep this colossal organization steaming
ahead. On the homepage, a section cleverly named From the Helm includes the
Commandant’s Biography, a photo, and a link to Commandant’s Message, and helps
reinforce the command chain and remind people of the organization’s strong
leadership. The Leadership Voices also helps individuals work as a team with clear
goals and missions.
Links under the Organization Information section deal with administrative and
project areas.

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The Force Protection/Infocon section in the upper-right shows the threat level and
specifically indicates to Coast Guard personnel how they must act and react.

Pictured: The United States Coast Guard Intranet homepage, before a user
logs in. It shows everything from news to leadership and military threat level.

Using a knowledge-centric architecture gleaned from A Way to KM Solutions by

Matthias Liebman, the team created several basic modules, including: Communities,
Teams, and Experts; Real-Time Collaboration; Data Analysis; Content Management;
and Search. Top-level navigation is sorted into five tabs: 1) CG Directory provides
quick information for all units. 2) My Workspace provides information that directly
affects the user, including special interests, career opportunities, and so on. 3)
Resources gives users a library of information pertaining to their jobs and includes
services, occupational groups, and directives. 4) My Unit gives all members of a
specific unit information that specifically affects them. 5) Our CG includes new
information about the Coast Guard and ongoing major projects.
The intranet delivers personalized and customizable features. Once logged in, users
see a different page, which they can customize to show areas pertinent to them. Of
course, for security purposes, the user’s name shows in the top right corner, as does
the log out button. The default tab is Our CG, which presents a broad overview of
current events and other Coast Guard matters.

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 Pictured: A page that appears once a user logs in.

The My Workspace tab gives users information that pertains to their daily life.
Assignments, alerts, and publishing are examples of areas important to individuals.
CG Central pulls information from a personnel file to give users alerts and
occupation-related information. Links to microsites also give users access to the
information they need most. Groups and units use microsites for discussion forums,
announcements, documents, checklists, and to conduct asynchronous online
meetings.

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 Pictured: The My Workspace tab gives users information pertaining to their
daily lives.

Other group collaboration features include delivering announcements, setting tasks,

and uploading documents. With the addition of the collaboration groups, the need
for meetings and travel may be significantly reduced.

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 Pictured: A microsite on the US Coast Guard intranet. Groups and units use
microsites for discussion forms, announcements, documents, checklists, and to
conduct online meetings.

To post information on the intranet, personnel can use a very simple form with a few
clearly labeled fields.

Pictured: The form to publish information in the portal.

The CG Directory tab breaks down the departments into an easy to search glossy.
Each unit has its local services, plan of the week, local announcements, directions to
the unit, and unit procedures to help give the user precise and up-to-date
information.
The My Unit tab gives users departmental information, services and benefits, and
duties pertaining to their position.

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 Pictured: The My Unit tab gives users departmental information, services and
benefits, and duties pertaining to their position.

The CG Central pilot project has been very successful thus far. The Coast Guard
plans to extend it from the current 1,000 users to 40,000 users within a year, so
many more people will benefit from this comprehensive and practical intranet.

URL AND ACCESS

To access CG Central, users enter mycg.uscg.mil. For security reasons, users must
connect or dial in remotely through a VPN.

CONTENT MANAGEMENT
The US Coast Guard chose the BroadVision portal product because it offered content
management integrated with personalization and open standards.

TECHNOLOGY
CG Central is written in Java and currently runs on Oracle 9i and a Windows 2000
server. The US Coast Guard plans to migrate it to an Apache server running under
Solaris. The Coast Guard currently uses BroadVision’s FastSearch technology to
search the portal site only, but is introducing Google for whole-site search.

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

1) “Dramatically improve” a Coast Guard employee’s access to critical information,
as well as improve their ability to process transactions themselves, to collaborate,
and to learn. 2) Institutionalize content, and collaborative and knowledge-
management processes. 3) Link and align IT initiatives. 4) Enhance interoperability.
5) Communicate value. 6) Capitalize workforce talents using innovative tools. 7)

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Provide a consistent, efficient framework and mechanism to manage content,
including content posting and use, and measure how effectively the content supports
mission performance.

BASIC INTRANET FEATURES

The intranet offers great personalization and workflows. Basic features include: role-
based access to the Coast Guard Readiness Management System; forums for
communities, with threaded discussion, secure chat, meetings and announcements
management, and shared folders and documents; press release publishing; people
search; project team document sharing and discussion forums; and Web content
management with simple workflow.

USERS
About 40,000 users access key US Coast Guard information using the Coast Guard's
portal. This includes all active-duty military enlisted personnel and officers, plus
about 6,000 civilians.

USER TASKS
• Access all essential Coast Guard information including: authoritative
doctrine, policies, and procedures (such as marine safety inspections, law
enforcement boardings, and fisheries patrols); mission essential applications
for reporting performance; the Readiness Management System; and current
content such as news, leadership messages, and strategic initiative updates.
• Receive alerts for subscription-based content.
• Search for information.
• Search for people, including advanced and sensitive searches such as:
a) Users can easily search for Coast Guard personnel by location and
title, such as an emergency medical tech in Kodiak, Alaska; a
qualified Law Enforcement Boarding Officer in Boston; or a First
Class Boatswain's Mate.
b) HR managers can use search for staffing assignments, easily
searching for a pilot, engineer, or female member to augment a
promotion board's composition, for example, or for other
specialists and operators to quickly build teams in local areas.
Such HR tasks used to require custom scripts, and a few days
would pass before programmers could respond; now the tasks take
minutes at most, seconds at best.

BACKGROUND
The 4,000 or so units that make up the US Coast Guard are dispersed around the
US, including Hawaii and Alaska, and on ships at sea in the nation’s coastal waters.
In the early 1990s, many of these units began developing their own intranets, which
were loosely connected on a wide-area network. “We had a decentralized WAN in
which there were a number of Web servers coughing up content in an unstructured
way, depending on what individual Web masters came up with,” says Lieutenant Tom
Shelton, project officer.

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In 2000, the Coast Guard installed the AltaVista search engine to give users a way to
search information on the WAN. The search engine revealed a wealth of information
resources that were not being deployed as effectively as they could be. This sowed
the seeds of the CG Central project, which is currently in a pilot phase.
“First of all, it’s all about helping CG people to do more of what the nation really
needs CG people to be doing,” explains Shelton. “For example, we have people
whose main job is to save lives, some who protect the nation, others who check
navigational aids, and still others who enforce our laws. But we are a little service,
and so most of us do it all. And often, we have to make sure that the engines on our
rescue boats are working, report the number illegal immigrants picked up or drug
runners arrested, and then program our intranet websites with the latest news,
results, tools, guidance, or policies. People want to put that information online, but
after 9/11, we can't afford to have a person who should be fixing an engine going to
Dreamweaver classes. CG Central will help make that happen.”
Another CG Central goal is to help people find content reliably and authoritatively.
This was a constant problem in the old, decentralized system. For example, the
personnel manual is the definitive source of information on all matters relating to HR
management for military members — their time off, pay, benefits, and promotions.
Many sites linked to the manual, but each time the manual was revised or moved,
the links were broken. To get around this problem, some sites resorted to
republishing the manuals, but then users couldn’t be sure which version was most
current and thus correct.
The Coast Guard also wants CG Central to provide tools that let people work
virtually. Unlike its bigger Department of Defense brothers, the Coast Guard consists
mostly of small, geographically dispersed units. Its people need to work closely
together across units, states or countries, and time zones, but its collaboration
capabilities are somewhat limited. With online collaboration tools, the Coast Guard
could help its people share insights and best practices, and get work done faster with
less expense. “Even though we are still in a pilot phase, the field overwhelmingly
reports that collaboration is CG Central’s home-run capability,” says Shelton.
Awareness of the need for a portal system was emerging around 2000, but
development of CG Central has been intimately linked to the Coast Guard’s funding
process and the federal government’s budget cycle. Thus, work did not begin in
earnest until mid-2002. “We never knew until the last minute whether we would get
the money to complete the pilot project,” explains Lieutenant Commander Janet
Stevens, manager of the portal program. “CG Central has been accomplished with
rounds of funding from different offices and sponsors.”
Before the development proper got underway, the team built a series of increasingly
detailed demos and prototypes to drum up project support within the service. In
November 2000, the team released a “quick and dirty” demo of a basic, functioning
portal system at a senior leadership conference, followed by a further demo in May
2001. Finally, a strategic partnership between the Coast Guard Innovation Council
and the Coast Guard CIO proved to be the project’s missing link. The Council
stepped in to fund the portal’s first release.
In March 2002, the first round of funding arrived and the portal project got underway
in earnest. In May 2002, an improved prototype was released at the Innovation
Expo, an annual event where Coast Guard and Industry meet to highlight innovative
practices and share knowledge affecting Coast Guard missions. By September 2002,
Coast Guard’s leadership was convinced of the portal’s value.

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DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY ACTIVITIES
Proper project funding made it possible to hire a dedicated staff, and by May 2002 a
full Web team was on board. The major issue they faced was how to present the
Coast Guard’s mass of information resources clearly and simply through the portal.
To tackle this issue, they used a new approach: they would first develop a Coast
Guard taxonomy, then design the portal site to effectively deliver personalized
content.
Team members also evaluated other government agencies’ collaboration portal
projects, and borrowed what they saw as their best features. “We liked how the
State of California delivered its services in a federated portal; the Department of
State had a neat collaboration capability and a clean interface; the US Navy
integrated applications well,” explains Stevens. “But the US Air Force had content
that was similar to us, so we benchmarked with their taxonomy and their top-level
layout. Instant messaging was added to CG Central based on the Air Force example.”
The team viewed personalization as an important portal feature from the start,
especially when it was combined with personnel system data. “Most of these people
share computers, and they might only have a few minutes to come in and do what
they need to do,” Shelton points out. “We wanted them to not have to use a search
engine to find what is important to them — we wanted the content to find them. But
if they need it, we also wanted a search engine that works without a fuss.” Using
personalization, individuals get the information that’s most relevant to them
delivered according to their login. Their profiles are automatically updated every
day, so when someone transfers from California to Washington DC, their policies,
career info, and personalized unit information is updated within 24 hours.
Before the team could start building a taxonomy, they needed a good fix on the
existing information. The problem was that very few pages had been properly
tagged, making them inaccessible to the search engine. Analysis showed that only
about 10% of pages had the required metatags, and 50% of them had serious
tagging problems.
The team partnered with a Web expert from the Coast Guard’s legal department to
develop and deploy a Coast Guard spidering application, known internally as
MetaValidator, that let the 850-plus part-time webmasters tag existing Web content
with vital information that the design team needed. Its target was to insert metatags
for more than 60,000 pages.
In the end, it succeeded in tagging about 40,000 pages and granting waivers for a
few thousand others. “If content was not tagged or waived, it was scripted to be
flagged and taken offline,” Stevens says. “In other words, if the publishers had not
reviewed the site's content in the past year, there was a good chance we were not
best meeting the needs of the CG community.”
The Coast Guard chose BroadVision software to develop the portal partly because it
included an off-the-shelf collaboration package. From that package, the intranet
team built a prototype collaboration workspace that included the ability to work on a
shared document and provide “light” version control. The working group itself used
the collaboration features to discuss and manage the project’s progress.
At this stage, the team invested some of its precious resources in external
consultants to help build the system’s taxonomy.

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 “Depending on external consultants as heavily as we did in the beginning — that’s a
decision we won’t make again,” Stevens recalls. “We hired them because we
thought they were smarter than us, actually, they were only smarter than us for a
couple of weeks. It takes a lot of organizational knowledge to build what we need.
They came with application deployment, plus business and commerce knowledge,
but they never really adjusted and adapted to the needs of government. Coupled
with their high turnover of consultants, it was a very expensive and frustrating
experience.”
“The taxonomy they came up with really had nothing to do with Coast Guard needs
in Coast Guard language,” Shelton adds. “Things like, what in the business world
people know as HR, we call ‘Worklife.’”
The experience did, however, show the intranet team that inside knowledge, not
outside advice, was what the project needed. But it was hard to get people to think
in terms of a taxonomy based around tasks rather than organizational structure.
“We needed to change the paradigm — unfreeze them a bit,” Stevens says.
So, in December 2002, the team embarked on a radical new approach: a joint
application design (JAD) project involving the intranet team and Coast Guard
representatives. This proved to be a big step forward.
The team set up a collaboration microsite, and assigned content managers for each
of the prototype portal’s tabs: Our CG, My Unit, My Workspace, Resources, and CG
Directory. Each tab manager represented a particular community and would work
with that community to define the section’s content structure. The wider community
helping to develop CG Central was about 200 strong.
From December 2002 to April 2003, the intranet team and tab managers met every
two months for three-day sessions, and met virtually every few weeks as needed.
The tab managers, sometimes accompanied by employee representatives, would
return to either forum with new community feedback as the developers completed
pilot improvements.
“Especially after each three-day session, our developers would go away and change
things, and at the next meeting we'd show them onscreen what we'd done according
to what was in the minutes, and ask them ‘Was this what you wanted?’” Stevens
explains. “It was a very structured approach. We had an agenda and everyone left
with homework and people they had to talk to.” The approach was a breakthrough in
getting feedback from the user community: “Hundreds of things came out of these
sessions.”
Version one of the portal was frozen at the end of April, and the development team
moved into a month of functional and integration testing.
After a few months of close collaboration with the extended portal team — consisting
of about 200 users and key tab managers — the development team released, in
phases, a working pilot to profiled and non-profiled users at the Coast Guard’s 2003
Innovation Exposition. CG Central was “briefed to every admiral and executive in
the Coast Guard — we extended our passion about the project and we got them all
fired up. Just months before, we’d completed a marketing campaign to ‘sell’ it up
the Coast Guard chain of command. Our lead supporters were the Chief Information
Officer, the Chief of Staff, and the Commandant, the Coast Guard’s CEO,” says
Stevens. “Now, we have very strong and clear backing from the admirals at the top
of our organization, and with that behind us, we’ve been able to make policy changes

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that are helping us to reach our goals — like centralized content repositories all
managed under the CG Central system.”
The portal got Coast Guard final go-ahead in early June 2003. Old sites are being
migrated into the new portal gradually, a process that is likely to take a few years.
As users are migrated, the team is collecting direct feedback from them as well as
feedback that comes up through the chain of command.

TIMELINE
• 2000: US Coast Guard leadership establishes the Coast Guard vision.
• Nov. 2000: A demo portal, including AltaVista search engine technology, is
shown to the US Coast Guard leadership to introduce the need for an
intranet portal to unify scattered information resources.
• May 2001: Another demo portal is introduced at the US Coast Guard’s
Innovation Exposition, demonstrating personalization and the content
management capabilities of BroadVision’s software.
• Mar. 2002: First round of funding arrives for the full-blown portal project.
• May 2002: Another portal demo at the USCG Innovation Exposition; the
demo includes a taxonomy benchmarked with the Air Force, and
BroadVision’s improved portal framework with collaboration workspaces.
• Dec. 2002-Apr. 2003: Joint application development with user
representatives.
• Apr. 2003: Development of CG Central Version 1 is frozen.
• May 2003: Testing phase/government acceptance.
• June 2003: CG Central Pilot goes live; users begin migrating to the new
system.

RESULTS
Since CG Central went live in June 2003, the Coast Guard has been gradually
phasing users in and moving slowly toward a fully operational system. Of the Coast
Guard’s 40,000 staff, about 5,000 profiled and unprofiled users are currently using
the system.
It’s still early to assess the Coast Guard’s goals of improving employee productivity
through the portal. In the longer term, however, the team plans to measure how
well the content provides mission support as part of its content management
framework. “At this point, I know we have some extreme time savers, such as faster
people search, faster information search, and fewer programming skills needed to
publish information,” says Stevens. “We will be working out a more realistic ROI
based on user behaviors, customer feedback, shutting down of several servers and
systems, and so on, and reporting our performance to the CG Readiness
Management System to ensure our system meets the needs of users afloat and
ashore.”

LESSONS LEARNED
Insights from Janet Stevens:

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Don’t overreach yourself. “Start small, promise small, and deliver valuable, usable
segments. Make sure you have enough money to complete and deliver what is
promised.”

Publicize the benefits. “Project return on investment from small successes — the
leadership of any organization wants this information upfront and early on.”

Make it worth users’ while. “Reward users for participation and quality outcomes.”

Don’t turn to outside experts when you really need is internal knowledge.
“We hired consultants because we thought they were smarter than us. Actually,
they were only smarter than us for a couple of weeks. They didn’t have the
organizational knowledge we needed.”

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Ten Best Intranets: Ministry of Transport (New Zealand)

Ministry of Transport (New Zealand)

Using the intranet: Design team:
The Ministry of Transport (MoT) works to ensure In-house, by an internal team that worked with
that New Zealanders have the best possible Provoke Solutions Ltd. (project management, IA,
transport system by developing and providing implementation, development) and Capiche Design
transport policy advice to the government. It’s an Ltd. (visual design)
information-based organization and, as such,
MoT staff access and analyze information from Members:
many sources, develop and present policy papers Ministry of Transport:
and reports, and facilitate the implementation of Claire Johnstone, General Manager Corporate; Murray
government policy through various transport- Wills, Acting IT Manager (former); Martin D’Souza,
related agencies. Senior IT Adviser; Hamish Denston, Intranet Project
Manager (current); Stephanie Beath, Intranet Project
Headquarters: Wellington, New Zealand Manager (former); Julie Frampton, Intranet Project
Manager (former); Jess Takarangi, Communications
Number of employees the intranet
Advisor
supports: 200
Provoke Solutions:
Sales: N/A—Government Agency Ian Oliver, Account Manager; Jasmin Wilkins, Project
Manager; Zef Fugaz, Information Architecture; Isha
Hartono, User Interface Integration; Chandima
Kulathilake, MOSS Solutions Consultant; Ari Bakker,
MOSS Consultant; Zac Smith, MOSS Consultant;
Callum McNeill, Developer; Jason Foote, Developer;
Mark Watson, Developer
Capiche Design:
Nicki Stephens, Account Manager; Megan Birch,
Visual Design

SUMMARY
The New Zealand Ministry of Transport (MoT) intranet supports about 200 central
government workers. Letting employees post their own news content, and offering a
sound IA and fun style, all help to make the MoT intranet “the” place to be—and no
travel required.
At MoT, employees access and analyze information from many sources, then develop
and present policy papers and reports, and facilitate government policy
implementation through various transport-related agencies. In short, these workers
provide transport policy advice to the government; thus, MoT is an information-
based organization. And, because these people are working to ensure that New
Zealanders have the best possible transport system, the intranet had better be good.
Luckily, it is.
The look of the MoT homepage conveys a happy mood, with bright colors and
cheerful images. The theme image on the homepage rotates, depicting different
upbeat scenes, all about some form of transportation.

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Ten Best Intranets: Ministry of Transport (New Zealand)

Pictured: The theme image on the homepage rotates.

The easily visible tabs across the top of the page are green on a contrasting blue
background, and are clearly clickable. The selected tab color changes to white (the
same color as the background), so the selected tab becomes a seamless part of the
page. This makes it very apparent which section of the intranet is currently
selected—an important indication that helps users orient themselves.
The search feature appears at the top of the page. Although the site allows for
scoped section searching, the default is the best option and returns results from the
intranet as well as MoT’s public website.
The three main sections below the rotating image offer different types of news,
including Alerts and Announcements. The Noticeboard houses items that are less
urgent, but still interesting.
Clicking the Add link in the lower left of the homepage tools opens a simple form that
lets all users make posts to the Alerts, Announcements, and Noticeboard sections.
Because everyone can post information, all employees are better informed.
If users simply want to read more, they can click the More button. Clicking this
button takes the user to a list of the requested content type—such as All Alerts—
ordered by date.

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Ten Best Intranets: Ministry of Transport (New Zealand)

The Daily discovery area in the page’s far right column posts different fun facts about
transportation each day. An image usually accompanies the blurb, to bring home the
message. These trivia are not only fun, but actually teach employees facts about
their industry. And that can’t be bad.

Pictured: The MoT homepage has a rotating theme image, plus Alerts,
Announcements, and other news.
The Have Your Say poll at the bottom of the page allows employees to answer timely
questions. They can also see what their colleagues answered by clicking the view
results link. The question is repeated in a pop-up window, as is the user’s answer. A
bar chart quantifies all the answers.

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Ten Best Intranets: Ministry of Transport (New Zealand)

Pictured: Users can view the homepage’s poll results. A simple graph makes
the answers visible at a glance.
If users wave their mouse over one of the bars, a pop-up appears showing the
percentage and actual number of votes for that category.

Pictured: A rollover with specific stats for the bar appears when users mouse
over it.

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Ten Best Intranets: Ministry of Transport (New Zealand)

Alerts are important; they shouldn’t be displayed only on the homepage. Here, even
if users leave the homepage, they can still keep abreast of Alerts through pop-up
messages. For example, a message might tell users about a change to the internal
phone or voicemail system and specify the alert type (phone or otherwise).

Pictured: Alerts open to inform users of important happenings.

Homepage news and Alerts aren’t the only source of news communication on the
MoT intranet. The News and Events tab offers content that includes generic (default),
event, announcement, alert, and classified.

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Ten Best Intranets: Ministry of Transport (New Zealand)

Pictured: The News and Events tab offers content such as generic (default),
event, announcement, alert, and classified.
Because training is considered an event at MoT, training schedules are housed within
the intranet’s News & Events area. Users can view training by day, week, or month,
and can collapse the views to show more items with fewer details. By default, the
view shows the course name, the time it begins, and the price, plus additional
information when applicable.
Users can click an event to view details, then integrate the chosen events with their
Outlook Calendar.

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Ten Best Intranets: Ministry of Transport (New Zealand)

Pictured: The Training Calendar displays the day, time, title, and price of
training classes at the organization.
Anyone can add items to the News & Events area. The input form makes this very
easy. Field labels are straightforward. Fields are the right size for the information
users are expected to enter. The drop-down lists for the calendars and times make
this selection simple. And, to avoid having the many content providers forgetting
important information, necessary fields are marked at required.
Two niceties are the checkboxes: Make this an all-day activity that doesn’t start or
end at a specific hour, and Make this a repeating event.

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Ten Best Intranets: Ministry of Transport (New Zealand)

Pictured: Anyone can enter events in the Training Calendar. Simple and
required fields in this form make this process run smoothly for the person
entering and the would-be readers of the information.
Being a research organization, documents are of utmost importance. To make the
organization’s many documents accessible and possible to find, people post them in
the Tools & Resources tab in the Document List area. This allows users to browse all
site content using tags that are presented as navigation and column filters. Users
can see documents and sort them by many categories, including Type, (which also
shows an icon denoting PDF, PowerPoint presentation, and so on), Name, Content
Type, Date Created, and Created by. Having these categories increased the chances
that users will be able to find their desired documents. For example, they might
recall only the rough date when the document was posted. In that case, they can
sort by data and view document titles around that date.
Users can take several actions in this area as well, using a simple green toolbar at
the top of the page that contains four commands: New, Upload, Actions, and
Settings.

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Ten Best Intranets: Ministry of Transport (New Zealand)

Pictured: The Document List area helps MoT employees do their research and
communicate it with each other. The list is sortable and easy to manage.
The MoT intranet makes it effortless to communicate research work and news. The
design team considered tasks and simplicity, while always promoting the
transportation theme in subtle and pleasant ways.

URL AND ACCESS

The Ministry of Transport named its intranet “Discover” to fit with MoT’s internal
branding and as a mandate for users: “Get Up and Go: Discover!” The intranet’s URL
is: http://discover and the site is every user’s start-up page. Users have access to
the intranet from within the agency and remotely.
Currently there are no requirements for users to access the site via mobile devices,
but the design team took that possibility into consideration when choosing the back-
end technology. The site is served from Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
(MOSS) and this platform provides out-of-the-box functionality to enable mobile
browsing should the agency decide to use it in a future site release.

TECHNOLOGY
The MoT’s intranet technology platform has evolved from a Lotus Notes resource
library—containing a several databases populated with MoT manuals and policies,
email functionality, an instant messaging application, and two contact databases—to
its current platform of MOSS 2007 and Exchange/Outlook 2003.
The underlying technology for MoT’s intranet is Microsoft-based and consists of the
following components:
• Windows Server 2003 Enterprise SQL Server 2005
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 and 2.0

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Ten Best Intranets: Ministry of Transport (New Zealand)

• Internet Information Server 6.0

• Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
• MOSS 2007 Enterprise
The development of the intranet followed the Microsoft Solution Framework
development guidelines as well as the MOSS development framework that Provoke
Solutions’ created for MoT.
In future releases, MoT wants to provide direct integration with CRM 3.0,
collaborative workspaces, document management, and workflow to meet its need for
comprehensive contact database management.
“There are a significant number of external contacts required for ministry staff,” says
Jasmin Wilkins, Project Manager for Provoke Solutions. “And ensuring visibility of the
CRM details for these people via the familiar interface of the Intranet enhances the
user ability to maintain communication and locate contact details.”

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Managing Content with Templates

Discover’s content management is controlled via a browser interface that leverages
MOSS’s Web content management capabilities. Intranet template administrators use
the SharePoint Designer tool for layout design and look and feel. The templates and
design are centrally controlled via a master template and CSS. Some rich-text
editing is permitted for content such as classified ads to let users personalize and
highlight relevant portions of their content.
MoT has not established any further template guidelines, as none are necessary.
“The initial site definition process was intensive, and identified the range of
templates required for the IA of the site,” says Wilkins, “with the intent of being
comprehensive, and minimizing any need for additional template creation.”

Content Authoring
One person—a content publisher—manages the site’s content, with individual
business units responsible for their own content areas.
“Formal content updates are managed centrally (such as policies and procedures),”
says Wilkins, “With the nominated staff member from that area of the organization
updating content and providing signed off updates to the content administrator.
Content that’s more informal (notices, social events) is authored directly by the staff
member concerned. The informal content is frequently updated, giving a dynamic
site, whilst the formal business content is more stable.”
Changes are tracked via version control that is enabled across all document and
page libraries. This change management functionality is native to the CMS tool.

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Ten Best Intranets: Ministry of Transport (New Zealand)

INTRANET TEAM

Pictured (from left): Jasmin Wilkins, Project Manager (Provoke Solutions);

Martin D’Souza, Senior IT Advisor (Ministry of Transport); Isha Hartono, User
Interface Integration (Provoke Solutions); Claire Johnstone, General Manager
Corporate (Ministry of Transport); Murray Wills, IT Manager (Ministry of
Transport); Zef Fugaz, Information Architecture (Provoke Solutions); Ari
Bakker, MOSS Consultant (Provoke Solutions); Hamish Denston, Intranet
Project Manager (Ministry of Transport); Ian Oliver, Account Manager
(Provoke Solutions).

Site Operations and Ownership

MoT employs just one full-time dedicated staff member, Hamish Denston, the site’s
Project Manager, to manage the site’s day-to-day operation. This is possible because
content creation responsibilities are distributed to subject matter specialists across
the ministry. MoT looks to outside vendors to provide additional assistance for
discrete design and development projects and upgrades and enhancements as
needed.
Intranet ownership within MoT is within the Corporate Group, with IT providing
oversight, infrastructure, and first-tier support. Corporate is responsible for core MoT
services including: communications and regional stakeholder relationships, HR, legal
advice (internal), finance, audit and budget management, information management
and technology, and administration.

It Takes a Team to Build an Intranet: A Team of Agencies

Because MoT is an information-based organization, its site users need to access and
analyze information from across many sources. MoT employees use this information
to develop and present policy papers and reports. And, prior to the intranet’s
development, much of that corporate reference material lived in Lotus Notes
databases and organization-wide communication was done via email. The decision to
move these functions to an intranet was intended to improve communications and
information dissemination throughout the organization and thus improve MoT’s
ability to deliver on its responsibilities.

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Ten Best Intranets: Ministry of Transport (New Zealand)

With only one dedicated internal resource, MoT has relied heavily on outside
agencies and expertise to plan, design, and build the intranet since 2005 when the
Communications Team initiated the intranet project.
The intranet project’s impetus was a result of two things: Claire Johnstone, MoT’s
General Manager of Corporate, engaged Murray Wills, a contract IT Manager, to
create an IT architecture and roadmap for MoT, and “a successful Treasury bid to
improve MoT’s IT capability to meet our responsibilities to the New Zealand public,”
says Denston.
In response, the Communications team hired an external consultant to provide MoT
with conceptual design and intranet strategy. The consultant completed the
requirements analysis and conducted user research. She also created the original IA
concept, which was later modified by Provoke Solutions and adapted to suit MOSS
requirements.
When the design and strategy consultant ended her contract, an internal MoT team
member took over ownership of the business requirements and project management
(with support from Hamish Denston, who at the time was the Communications
Team’s Webmaster).
When this initial phase was complete, MoT moved the project to its IT Department
and IT engaged Provoke Solutions, a company specializing in business-focused
software using Microsoft technologies. Provoke used these technologies to define the
functional specification, design and build the CMS solution, and extend the site’s IA
beyond the initial consultant’s design.
In addition to the Provoke team, Capiche Design won the contract to deliver the
visual design.
When the site’s beta release went live in October 2006, Denston assumed sole
responsibility for site management. He says he believes that the involvement of the
many participants in the site development process has ensured a level of quality in
the end product.
“The change in participants throughout the process has ensured every decision is
reviewed,” says Denston. “This has increased the time taken, but it does act
effectively to make sure all decisions are well thought out and appropriate—which we
believe makes the site more effective in the long run.”
Discover (the current site) was launched in May 2007, followed by a round of site
enhancements to improve interactivity. These enhancements included out-of-browser
Alert notifications via a Windows taskbar alert; online surveys, with results rendered
using Microsoft’s Silverlight; and extending MOSS OOTB Search functionality by
customizing search Web Parts and integrating the search with external data sources.
These enhancements were rolled out in August 2007, shortly after the site launch.

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Ten Best Intranets: Ministry of Transport (New Zealand)

DESIGN TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES AT A GLANCE

MoT Internal Staff Initial External Provoke Solutions Capiche Design
Consultant
Project Conceptual design IA wireframes Visual design
management and and intranet Technology set-up
oversight strategy and integration
Front-end and
Back-end
development

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

Goals
The efficiency and effectiveness of information flow is fundamental to MoT. The
intranet was designed to address disruptions to that flow and inefficiencies affecting
staff productivity.
“Staff were having difficulty locating and updating key documents (policies and
procedures) leading to lost productivity from long searches/browsing and to asking
colleagues,” says Denston. “Also, the email ‘chatter’ was damaging the usefulness of
email as a business tool.”
The goal for the intranet was stated as: “Ensuring users with differing needs, skills,
and experience are engaged, and the functionality enhances rather than challenges
their day-to-day work life,” says Denston.
The team’s specific intranet goals were to:
• Improve information flow throughout the organization by providing
accurate and consistent information for better cross-Ministry
communication and collaboration
• Improve information “findability” to reduce staff time spent looking for
information
• Provide a central repository for internal policies and processes and
improve access to business-critical information
• Reduce the risk of misinformation through human error in updating
multiple copies of documents
• Reduce the risk of misinformation through terminology that is meaningless
to the reader
• Support and strengthen the MoT culture and improve staff morale and job
satisfaction by having the intranet be a channel for staff interaction
• Align with the e-government guidelines (accessibility standards)
• Reduce the amount of email communication between staff by creating a
functional and attractive communal space

Constraints
MoT struggled with the usual list of project constraints: budget, timeline, and choice
of suppliers. “In terms of budget,” says Denston, “the Ministry are constrained by the

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fact they are a government organization, and have a limited IT budget, and a
responsibility to the taxpayer to use funds wisely. The timeline for implementation
was reasonably tight due to the length of time taken for analysis and design, and
enthusiasm by the Ministry’s leadership to launch the intranet.”

USERS
MoT’s intranet supports a staff whose primary job function is to draft policy
documents and identify problems and opportunities in the New Zealand transport
sector. The majority of the site’s users are involved in researching policy options and
making recommendations to the Minister of Transport, Associate Minister of
Transport, and the Minister for Transport Safety.

USER TASKS
MoT’s design team conducted a “persona hypothesis” workshop and identified the
primary tasks the intranet should support. The workshops also generated user
scenarios that helped the team determine a short list of user tasks.
The scenarios included the following use cases:
• Respond to a Ministerial Inquiry about the number of aircraft fatalities in
New Zealand between 2001-2005
• Receive Alerts on modifications made to a document
• Write a new policy
• Draft letters responding to an insurance enquiry
• Post information about an upcoming social club event
• Email the HR policy manual to a staff member
Common tasks the intranet supports include:
• Access current and historical policies, Parliamentary bulletins, internal
news, Cabinet meeting times
• Search for documents and other information sources
• View organizational structure and identify personnel
• Access internal and external contacts (names, phone numbers, and email)
• Access internal policies and procedures (such as “How-to” documentation)
• Contribute to site content
• Subscribe to site update notifications

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Pictured: The Tools and Resources tab, which is used to locate content. The
user, looking for “leave,” has selected Human Resources from the items
grouped by Business Unit.

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Pictured: The document library filtered for Human Resources, with the
“applying for leave electronically” PDF highlighted.

Pictured: The Tools and Resources tab, which is used to locate content. The
user, looking for “leave,” has selected Manual from the items grouped by
Type.

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Pictured: After users select an item from the Training Calendar, this screen
shows the available course details.

FEATURES
The Discover intranet offers many features, including:
• Browse and filter content by:
o Content Type
o Audience Type(s)
o Title
o Name
o Date Created
o Topic
o Transport Mode
o Origin

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o Rights
o Ministerial Portfolio
o A-Z
o Author
o File Size
o Document Type
• Search
• Upload documents/content
• Alerts/Announcements/Events
• Classifieds
• Desktop alerts
• Quick Poll
• Tagging (controlled vocabulary)
• Contacts Directory

A Need for Collaboration Tools

During the initial analysis and planning phases, the team quickly realized that MoT
would greatly benefit from collaborative team sites and project sites. “The team sites
and project sites are necessary to extend the intranet to support online work-related
communities,” says Wilkins. “Both by business unit, and by project group, providing
a space to share content and manage change.”
Functionality for these sites is being considered for a future phase, not because of
constraints, but because the team felt that users would benefit from gradual releases
of functionality and features. “The project has been phased to ensure users are not
faced with too much change at once, which can create stress,” says Zef Fugaz,
Information Architect, Provoke Solutions. “In addition, the deliverables for each
phase are clearly defined, and can build on the learnings from the previous phase(s),
optimizing the solution fit with the end users.”
Plans for the collaboration sites include utilizing the site’s existing tagging engine.
Relevant templates and content for each project or team will be displayed within
these sections. Staff will see a list of tasks assigned to them and will be able to
trigger task-flows themselves. The team is also considering wikis for knowledge
sharing and versioning tools to track work-in-progress.

Community Tools
Although team collaboration tools are being planned for future phases, the intranet
already contains several popular community-building features. “The Alerts,
Announcements, and Classified functionality has been enthusiastically adopted by
users,” says Wilkins. “and has resulted in a significant reduction in internal emails
sent to large numbers of staff members.”
Different levels of announcements are distributed via the homepage, news section,
and taskbar alerts. Announcements can include alerts, general announcements, and
classified advertising. The intranet also contains MySite: an out-of-the-box
personalized space where staff members can upload personal documents and create
pages, blogs, and wikis. This content can be shared with peers.

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“The MySite functionality has been adopted more by some users than others,” says
Wilkins, “but has not currently been actively promoted to users. When teamsites and
project sites are implemented, there will be more focus on MySite functionality also.”

Search Technology
The site uses MOSS search technology.
“In previous projects, we [the implementation team] have used other search
technologies such as MondoSoft and ISYS,” says Chandima Kulathilake, MOSS
Solutions Consultant at Provoke Solutions. “It was decided that the OOTB
functionality of Microsoft Search in MOSS provided the expected business outcomes
for search.”
“Since the intranet was being deployed on MOSS, the search capability of the
platform was evaluated and identified as the best solution for the business
requirements,” says Kulathilake. “The extensibility and ability to interface and
surface results from various other line-of-business systems provided a strong
argument for using the platform capabilities.” But, he says, the search tool needs
further refinement (such as clustering similar results). The team also plans to extend
search functionality to other areas, such as shared drives, and to address
opportunities to enhance search as user expectations increase with use.

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Pictured: Search results page for the query “Christchurch Office”

(Christchurch is a city on New Zealand’s South Island).

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Pictured: Intranet search results for “press AND ministry.”

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Pictured: All Sites Search results for “public holidays.”

Data Visualization
MOSS comes with a basic out-of-the-box survey tool. But MoT wanted one that was
more visually compelling and had more of a “fun factor.”

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With the recent launch of Microsoft Silverlight (similar to Flash), Provoke Solutions
saw an opportunity to experiment with the new technology and meet MoT’s needs at
the same time. With cooperation from MoT and Capiche (for consistent visual
design), Provoke Solutions created a simple online survey tool.
The survey is displayed on the homepage. It asks users a question and they select
from the multiple-choice answers. On submission, the results are animated to display
a bar graph.
The poll fills a need for MoT by creating a collective voice for the user community.
It’s quick, simple, and fun. And, according to Denston, the survey is something the
staff can look forward to on a weekly or daily basis.

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY ACTIVITIES

Redesign Goals
The primary redesign goals were to:
• Streamline the IA: Refine Discover’s IA (which was applied in phase
one) to better fit with current business-user requirements.
• Establish consistency: Review the content templates and metadata
model; identify a set of key content templates for business unit areas and
also add workflow for the templates through MOSS.
• Increase uptake: Increase the number of people using Discover by
creating a clean, simple, and visually interesting workspace.
• Distinguish work vs. play: Create a visual divide between serious
business content and more relaxed, “fun” aspects of the tool.
• Encourage collaboration: Offer employees the opportunity to take a
break, express their individuality and creativity, and interact with others
via features like Announcements and the Noticeboard.
• Create interest: Stimulate employee interest in information.
• Inform users: Push information that is new or important.
• Enhance the site’s aesthetics: Improve intranet uptake through visual
stimulation and greater design consistency.
• Enable out-of-browser message notification.
• Refine and re-envision content management: Streamline content
management tasks as much as possible. Encourage distributed authoring
for communication content to build a platform that will ease the move to
fully distributed ownership and content management in the future.

Usability Methods
The first consultant MoT hired provided business requirements and a conceptual
model for the site. This information, combined with insights from MoT’s internal
intranet team, provided the basis for Provoke’s redesign work.
Given budgetary constraints, behavioral research (usability testing, conducting
interviews, or observing staff using the site) wasn’t possible, so the Provoke team
chose instead to conduct a short workshop with the MoT project team to identify

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primary personas. They created personas on-the-spot during the workshop. These
personas served as the team’s core usability research tool during planning.
“We began by identifying all the roles at the Ministry (based on job title),” says
Fugaz. “We then clustered similar roles and prioritized each cluster based on likely
intranet usage. For the priority clusters, we identified two primary user-types (based
on information-seeking behavior), identified user goals, and common task
scenarios.”
Time constraints dictated that the persona profiles that resulted from the workshop
were very basic, but they proved sufficient to help the IA identify a taxonomy and
navigation structure.
To augment the personas, the team relied on their collective knowledge and
experience, some field observations by Denston, and some research (including a
previous NN/g Intranet Design Annual). This data comprised the basis for the project
assumptions, and the team acknowledges that these assumptions will likely to lead
to the need for changes down the road. They have built that likelihood into the
system design, which helps compensate for the lack of upfront research.
“A lot of the IA work was based on assumptions,” says Fugaz, “so the tag-driven
system we’ve created allows flexibility for future iterations.”
“In terms of user navigation—pathways to information—the intranet relies on
appropriately tagged content,” he says, “While this requires a minute of upfront time
when uploading and tagging new content, we believe the benefits come later by
greatly enhancing the findability of content. Users can browse to content using a
variety of pathways, and via taxonomy which makes sense to each individual.”

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PRIMARY PERSONAS—FROM THE USER ANALYSIS WORKSHOP

Persona 1: Karen | Advisor
About
Karen is a 34-year-old university graduate in Political Science with average computer
office skills. She has been with The Ministry of Transport for less than a year.
Scenarios:
• Responding to a Ministerial Inquiry about the number of aircraft fatalities in
New Zealand between 2001-2005
• Receive Alerts on modifications made to a document
• Write a new policy

Goal: Find information needed to write a policy or answer the minister

Needs:
• Access to internal and external contacts
• Easy access to current and historical policies, Parliamentary bulletins, internal
news, cabinet times
• Easy search functionality generating accurate results

Also represents: Contractors

Persona 2: Sharon | Administration
About
Sharon is 25 years old. She has moderate office computer skills and is generally
unfamiliar with using the Internet, but is a quick learner.
Scenarios:
• Draft letters responding to an insurance enquiry
• Post information about an upcoming social club event
• Email the HR policy manual to a staff member

Goal: Keep MoT running smoothly by supporting staff

Needs:
• View organizational structure and identify personnel
• Access internal and external contacts (names, phone numbers, and email)
• Access internal policies and procedures (such as “How-to” documentation)

TIMELINE
Phase One—Project Planning and Design
(August 2005—October 2006)
August 2005: Intranet planning phase begins with one consultant scoping
intranet strategy and developing conceptual design
October 2006: Intranet launched, running on beta version of MOSS07, and
included the floor plan and org chart

Phase Two—Enhanced IA, Functionality, RTM MOSS

(November 2006—May 2007)
May 2007: Technology upgrade to RTM MOSS07; finalized information structure,
templates and so on.

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Phase Three—Visual Design implementation, additional functionality

(May 2007-August 2007)
August 2007: Visual design and enhancements applied, including Alert
notification and survey results rendered using Microsoft’s Silverlight. MOSS OOTB
Search functionality was extended and enhanced by customizing search Web
Parts and integrating the search with external data sources.

RESULTS
The redesign’s primary results have been qualitative thus far. Based on feedback the
staff has received, the intranet has increased user satisfaction across the
organization.
“We’ve had overwhelmingly positive feedback from staff and higher uptake of the
intranet,” says Denston. “My observations show that staff are exploring the new
design and features—and as a result discovering information they initially missed.”
Denston says the redesign results go beyond just general satisfaction—they’re
having a positive effect on staff productivity as well.
Prior to the intranet, employees communicated to all staff or to a group of staff
members using email. The content of these messages ranged from time-sensitive
matters to mundane requests, such as someone looking for the location of a laptop.
The email volume was significant, as was the demand on staff time in dealing with it.
These emails have been replaced with the intranet’s Alerts and Announcements
features, and the notifications are now unobtrusive.
“This has been beneficial not only from a network perspective,” says Denston, “But
has helped to reduce the stress on staff of having a build-up of emails—that may or
may not be relevant—cluttering their in-boxes.”
Hamish Denston lists a few tasks users can do now that they couldn’t do before:
• Receive message notifications outside their browser (Windows taskbar
alert)
• Post messages to the whole Ministry without creating email “noise”
• Search for information and obtain weighted and indexed results
(previously, search returned a result set that was not sorted in any way,
which didn’t assist users in locating the information required)
• Contribute to online polls and surveys

LESSONS LEARNED
As can be expected from a complex development project, the lessons learned depend
somewhat on the team member’s role in the redesign effort. Following are insights
from various MoT team members.

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Hamish Denston, Project Manager, MoT:

Communicate with your users regularly—before, during, and after the
project phase. “Don’t try and surprise them with cool features they might
not use or like, and always talk through their concerns. Let them know the
release at the end of the project phase is not set in stone, and to speak up if
they have issues with the intranet. And don’t be afraid to change something
that isn’t working.”
Release and test. “Don’t be afraid to put something out there that isn’t
perfect—sometimes something imperfect is better than nothing at all, and
users can contribute to the improvement process!”
Jasmin Wilkins, Project Manager; Provoke Solutions:
Consider a simple solution. “Give very serious consideration to additional
functionality and whether the user utilization will justify the development.
Sometimes simple functionality that hits the spot causes far more excitement
and uptake than technically challenging components!”
Don’t skip the planning. “Although everyone is always extra keen to get to
the build phase, the importance of the analysis and requirement
documentation stage cannot be overstated. Every question not addressed at
this stage requires significant time invested and has implications for other
functionality if it’s not addressed early. There will always be questions that
come up at this point, but do take the time to be as thorough as possible!”
Trust, honesty, and buy-in from all stakeholders are critical. “Without
the support of senior management, and faith in each other, overcoming
obstacles such as server builds, and other requirements utilizing resources is
time consuming and detracts from the delivery. We have had great support
from senior management through issues that have occurred, such as our beta
license expiring(!), and a willingness to be pragmatic and agile to resolve
issues, which has been fantastic.”
Control the scope! “Everyone needs to buy into the fact that last minute
changes can have a huge impact on the end product. Maintaining a cohesive
structure and image is extremely important. If it doesn’t ‘fit’ properly, or you
can’t do it well, don’t do it. The users will notice, and it’s like an unfinished
hem on an otherwise nice dress: it makes them wonder what else hasn’t been
done properly!”
User-centered design works. “If users don’t like the way things work, they
won’t use it. You don’t wear shoes that torture your feet everyday to walk to
the office—and users don’t want an intranet that tortures their brains every
day. Every hour spent taking one minute out of a task, or enhancing the
‘obviousness’ of the site is worth it for that moment when someone using it
for the first time doesn’t even think about performing a task, and then asks
why on earth it took so long for it to arrive!”
Things will change. “There will be things that need to be altered after
delivery. For example, we needed the default people search to be internal
rather than external contacts as people voiced their expectations. Don’t let
one squeaky wheel drive change, make sure there is a case for the majority
of users to benefit from a change, however tempting it is to give in to a
persistent user. Try talking it through and offering alternative options to
achieve the required outcome for that user.”

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Isha Hartono, User Interface Integration, Provoke Solutions:

Build an IA specification. “Have an easily readable but detailed IA
specification to work from. This is an artifact that can be understood by the
client, designers, and developers alike.”
Understand your CMS. “Know the limitations of implementing visual design
on the CMS platform that you’re working from, and be prepared for
challenges that will crop up from using proprietary CMS software.”
Zef Fugaz, Information Architecture, Provoke Solutions:
User research provides a solid foundation. “Due to budget constraints for
this project, little time was spent analyzing the user tasks and scenarios. In
hindsight, this made the design process more difficult as a UCD process relies
on a solid foundation of user research. If you have to make assumptions
about users, then make sure the project team understands the risks of this
approach: a higher probability of rework further down the track.”

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New South Wales Department of Primary Industries

Using the intranet:
New South Wales Department of Primary
Design team:
Industries (NSW DPI) is an Australian In-house, by the agency’s Internal Communications
government agency whose primary focus is to Unit, which did all intranet planning, design, IA, and
manage and regulate the use of the state’s development
natural resources and the industries that work Members:
with them; promote healthy and safe primary
Kate Needham, Manager, Internal Communications,
industries; drive improvements in the
Penny Wheeler, Web Content Officer
productivity and sustainability of primary
industries; promote trade by protecting and
enhancing access to markets; and encourage
industries to use natural resources in the most
efficient and sustainable ways possible.

The department is also the largest provider of

research within the New South Wales
government.

Headquarters: New South Wales, Australia

Number of employees the intranet supports:
3,500 staff members at more than 120 locations
throughout New South Wales
Sales: n/a (government agency)

SUMMARY
The New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (NSW DPI) is a government
agency that works with industry, rural communities, and other public sector
organizations to foster profitable and sustainable development. NSW DPI offers a
wide range of services, and the intranet helps enormously in supporting the very
diverse set of workers who deliver them.
The intranet, InSite, also helps to unify the four departments—Mineral
Resources NSW, NSW Agriculture, NSW Fisheries, and State Forests NSW—that were
unified to form NSW DPI in July 2004.
Just after the organizations merged, the intranet helped people to see where they
actually fit in to this much larger organization. Knowing the intranet was the ideal
platform to keep everyone informed of new department’s role and vision, the
intranet team worked quickly to get the site up and running.
Now under the Communications Branch, intranet team members immediately
populated the intranet with relevant content needed by the users. But the team
knew the communications could not be just one way, as staff had a lot of questions.
To ensure that employees felt heard and got their questions answered, the intranet
team added a form that let people submit questions and have them answered in the
FAQ area.
The exchange of ideas continues today, almost four years later. In the homepage’s
top middle section, there are tabs for Announcements, Events Calendar, and an RSS
subscription to Industry News. Users can also read archives or subscribe to news
types they’re interested in.
The homepage feature story, which appears in the upper left, changes at least twice
a week. Two scientists are showcased in this example, exalted for their latest
contribution to a trade magazine. This section usually comprises stories written by

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staff members, enabling people to share with the whole organization what they’re
working on. Reciprocally, staff members reading the stories will learn more about the
different happenings at their organization.
The Staff Achievement Awards section appears just below that. This area encourages
people to nominate a colleague to be recognized—one more way staff can feel good
about themselves and their co-workers.
The homepage also displays, on the left, links to Media Releases. This is important as
it lets people within the department know what kinds of messages are being sent out
to the public.

Pictured: The InSite homepage of the government agency New South Wales
Department of Primary Industries offers stories and news that helps
employees keep each other informed and maybe even motivated.

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On any intranet, it’s important to keep the news current and to ensure that a variety
of topics are covered. Having many news sources helps to alleviate this problem, as
does making it easy for users to submit news.
At NSW DPI, all staff members are encouraged to submit news and photos describing
what they are or will be working on.
The submit a news item appears on the homepage under existing news items.
Clicking it opens a clean, short form where people can add a story or an idea for a
story, plus upload related photos and images. The user’s name and email address
are required, so site editors can ask questions as needed when they’re editing the
story. The form allows users to enter the story right there, and browse to upload any
images. Clicking the Submit button at the bottom sends the information to the
Internal Communication Unit, where it’s edited and prepared for publication.

Pictured: A short and simple form enables all employees to submit a story
idea, or a story and accompanying photos.
All of the news and announcements are informative. Plus, the intranet allows users
to access their email over a VPN when they’re out of the office. The Webmail link is
under the Support Services tab, a good classification for the function. Once selected,
users are asked to log in with a username and password. At the bottom of the page,
there’s information about Help for users who are lost or simply forgot their password.

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Pictured: People can check their email over the intranet via a VPN.
The intranet supports 3,500 staff at more than 120 locations throughout New South
Wales. These people hold a wide range of job roles, including: clerical and
managerial staff; field staff (such as mine safety inspectors, veterinarians, foresters,
and fisheries inspectors); operational staff (such as farm hands); scientists and
researchers (such as horticulturalists, entomologists, geologists, and chemists).
With all of these roles come many different types of tasks—far different than at more
traditional organizations. For example, some staff members need access to vehicles
to do their jobs. The Department maintains a fleet of vehicles at a few locations, and
staff members can book these vehicles for work-related travel. A simple form on the
intranet makes this possible.
The form is easily found in the intranet’s Administration section. The top of the form
asks for Driver details, where users type their names and choose a booking location.
The form lets administrative staff or other colleagues do bookings on behalf of
others, offering fields for both the Driver name and Your name. The Travel plans
section collects information about departure, return, and trip distance. The Vehicle
requirements and Special requirements sections allow users to specify the type of
vehicle they prefer, plus any other requirements.
Like the form for submitting news, all field labels are short, simple, and
understandable. There is only one column of fields; left aligning all of the labels and
fields makes the form neat and easy to scan. The section headings help users keep

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their context as they answer the questions, as does the subtle yellow background
differentiating the sections.
At the end of the form, there is a Submit button (and a Clear button, which we don’t
usually recommend for forms, as users often accidentally clear their work). The
Submit button is visible and comes first (before the Clear button); when users click
it, the request is routed to the relevant fleet manager.
Historically, employees booked vehicles by calling their location’s receptionist, who
would take the details over the phone and enter the details into a fleet management
system. The new system is a good example of the intranet supporting work tasks
and helping to reduce costs.

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Pictured: Users can book vehicles from the motor vehicle fleet. The form has
simple field labels that are left aligned, as is the single column of fields.
It’s not easy to make an intranet that works well and looks good doing it. That NSW
DPI achieved this was no accident. The intranet team designers wanted to use a lot

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of white space so users could focus on the content. The team was disciplined,
keeping active white space on the intranet’s pages rather than cluttering them up.
The foundation for this discipline is at the template level; the template itself is
designed with a lot of white space. The team also published much documentation for
publishers, including guidelines on keeping pages “small” and eliminating non-
essential images. This is especially important considering that many of the staff are
in remote locations on slower connections.

Pictured: Much white space in the content templates ensures that the user’s
focus is on the content.
Designers also considered their typical users’ screen resolutions (800 x 600 and
1024 x 768) and designed accordingly. Through CSS and Javascript, the fixed-width
design changes automatically, depending on the width of the user’s browser.
The intranet’s role is as integral now as it was just post-merger. With an abundance
of news, plus very elegantly designed forms, people can effortlessly give and receive
information at NSW DPI. This exchange of ideas is all made possible through InSite,
the organization’s robust yet simple intranet.

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Pictured: The fixed-width design changes automatically to accommodate

either 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 resolutions.

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URL AND ACCESS

The URL for the site is: http://intranet.dpi.nsw.gov.au. The intranet is the default
homepage on the browsers of all new computers. “Staff can change it, but tend not
to,” says Kate Needham, Manager, Internal Communications. Access from outside
the department is done through VPN.
Mobile browsing is supported through style sheets, but according to Needham, there
has not been great demand for mobile access so far.

TECHNOLOGY

Prototypes and design Photoshop

IA/analysis/card sorting Excel

Wireframes PowerPoint

CMS Squiz MySource Matrix

Search Search module in the CMS (Squiz MySource

Matrix)

Server Sun Fire X4600 server with 4 x AMD Opteron

Dual Core CPUs, 32 Gb RAM, and 2 x 73Gb HDD
running Apache

Operating system Linux Redhat 5

Database PostgreSQL

Analytics A W Stats

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

CMS Technology
NSW has been using Squiz MySource Matrix to manage both its public websites and
intranet since 2004. NSW decided early on to use the same CMS for its public
websites and intranet, primarily to keep costs down. “Using the same system has
allowed us to share content and ideas, share knowledge and resources, and has
simplified publisher training,” says Needham.
Squiz MySource Matrix is an open-source PHP-based CMS developed by an Australian
company. It runs on a PostgreSQL database. The product is only about five years
old, but according to Needham, there is already a large user base within the public
sector. “The open source nature of the product means that it is constantly changing
and growing in complexity,” says Needham. “We upgrade the system about four
times a year, and each upgrade comes with new features that we try to figure out
how to take advantage of.”
Despite the advantage of using an open source solution, the downside to this
particular technology is that it can be somewhat difficult to use.

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Content Authoring
With limited staff to manage the intranet, distributed publishing is key to keeping the
content up-to-date and relevant. “Like many large systems, the CMS is not an easy
application to use,” says Needham, “and tends to be overwhelming for people who
aren’t using it day to day, and who only need to perform relatively simple publishing
tasks.”
The department received training and implementation support from Squiz when they
first installed the system, but the training happened at approximately the same time
NSW DPI was created in the four-department merger. “There was a lot going on in
terms of communications and the need for integrated platforms,” say Needham. “We
were keen to start building sites, including an intranet, in the system in order to
have a centralized source of information, so we had to learn a lot about it in a
relatively short period of time.”
To address some of the system’s complexities, the department developed an
alternative interface, which is much simpler than the administrative interface, and
gives content authors access to perform routine content management tasks, such as
adding and editing HTML pages and publishing and updating files.
The department currently has approximately two-dozen content publishers in its
various branches. Most of the content publishers who are trained on the simple
interface are from the Corporate Services Division (finance, HR, library services,
asset management, IT, occupational health and safety, and so on). It’s their content
that is used most often, and impacts the operation of the other areas of the
department the most.
Needham and her colleague, Penny Wheeler, Web Content Officer, have also started
to train people from other areas of the department. “The people we train come from
a variety of job roles, including researchers, librarians, managers, and clerical staff,
but tend to be the latter,” she says. “We don’t have any dedicated intranet
publishers outside of the Internal Communications Unit. All of the people who have
been trained are doing intranet publishing in addition to their regular jobs. Once
people are trained, they are given access to specific areas of the content
management system to maintain content.”

Training CMS Publishers

The department has a waiting list of about 50 people for the publisher training.
Anyone can apply and it’s offered as a one-day course about once a month. “We
haven’t really started to promote the course,” says Needham. “We are about to roll
out a significant training program which we expect will see the number of publishers
swell to well over 100.”
The CMS automatically applies templates and builds the navigation as pages are
created, allowing publishers to concentrate on their content. “We have a handful of
templates that can be applied (with or without left-hand navigation, for example),
with guidelines for when and how each template should be used,” says Needham.
“All of the templates have standard features, such as the top banner with the search
field, global navigation, utility links, and a footer with contact details, and use style
sheets, ensuring consistency throughout the site.”
The CMS logs changes to pages and documents, and has version control, so site
administrators can see when something was last updated, and by whom.

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“We also have comprehensive standards and guidelines on the intranet to guide our
publishers on accessibility, writing for the Web, using images, and structuring their
content,” says Needham.

THE INTRANET TEAM

Pictured (from left): NSW Department of Primary Industries intranet team:

Penny Wheeler, Web Content Officer, and Kate Needham, Manager, Internal
Communications.
The Department of Primary Industries was formed in July 2004, when four
departments (Mineral Resources NSW, NSW Agriculture, NSW Fisheries, and State
Forests NSW) were joined. According to Needham, these four departments were
merged in order to create efficiencies within the public sector, to give rural and
regional people in New South Wales a stronger voice in government, and to better
support primary industries.
“NSW Agriculture and NSW Fisheries (two of the agencies that merged), had been a
single department in the past,” she says. “The trend in Australian government,
particularly at a state level, has been to consolidate departments. Other states
already had large departments looking after primary industry issues, so our state
(New South Wales) was really just following suit.”
When the department was formed, responsibility for the four agencies’ intranets
resided in different areas of each organization, including: IT, records management,
education, and publications. When the new department’s structure was being
developed, the intranets became the responsibility of the Communications Branch,
which is also responsible for PR, events, branding, community programs,
publications, and public websites.

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The intranet is managed by the Internal Communications Unit (which is part of the
Communications Branch), and is staffed by two full-time employees: Needham and
Wheeler. A Website Administrator from the Communications Branch’s Web Publishing
section provides server administration and CMS support. “Due to the size of the
team, we are both required to work across a broad range of disciplines, such as
information architecture, usability, content management, design, and developing
technological enhancements,” says Needham. “The size of the team also means we
need to rely on other people in the department to keep the intranet content current.”
The intranet team resides in the same department as the team managing the public
website, and this proximity means the two teams have a close working relationship.
They share a CMS, rely on the expertise of the same developers, and, according to
Needham, “we often help each other out when we have big projects on.”

The Intranet in a Post-Merger Environment

When the department was formed, the intranet was an ideal platform to keep all
parties informed and help the different agencies understand where they fit in the
newly merged structure. “Everybody had a lot of questions,” say Needham. “It was
also important to be able to communicate the role and vision of the new
department.”
“We quickly set up a site and started to populate it with regular bulletins from the
executive, organization charts, frequently asked questions, major announcements,
an integrated staff directory, forms, and links to relevant content on the legacy
intranets,” she says. “To ensure that communication flowed both ways, we set up an
online form where staff could submit questions, and have them answered in the
frequently asked questions. As a result, the intranet became a key tool in forming
the culture and identity of the new department.”

Merging Four Sites into One

Because the NSW intranet incorporated the four departments’ assets, each brought a
legacy intranet to the merger. Each site had its own structure, technology, and
assets, and each was at a varying level of sophistication.
“They had all started as flat HTML sites in the late 1990s,” says Needham. “One
agency had been using a content management system built in-house, while another
was using a system designed by a vendor that was no longer in business. A couple of
the intranets hadn’t changed in years.”

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Pictured: The Forms index from Fishbowl, the former NSW Fisheries intranet.
Content was organized in Communities, which required users to know who
owned the content or resort to searching.

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Pictured: Homepage of the former Mineral Resources NSW intranet. The

design was dated and the navigation (based on rocks and minerals) was too
simplistic for the requirements of the larger, merged organization.

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Pictured: The Forms index from the former NSW Agriculture intranet. The
navigation (on the right) was based on the organization structure and too
simplistic for the requirements of the larger, merged organization.
Immediately following the new department’s formation, a temporary intranet was
created to smooth information distribution during the transition.
It was during this time (September 2004) that the department decided on Squiz
MySource Matrix for the CMS—to be used by both the public-facing site and the
intranet. “The new system presented a huge learning curve for everyone involved in
its implementation,” says Needham. “By early 2005, a second iteration of the
intranet, using the new system, and combining much more of the information from
the legacy intranets, was launched.”
The new site that was being built out of the legacy intranets was constructed without
much consultation with users. This was because there wasn’t much time to devote to
usability, and what time the team did have was being directed mostly to learning the
new CMS and the huge task of content migration. As a result, the site’s design and
navigation was developed mostly from concepts borrowed from the legacy intranets,
and ideas from intranets outside the department and publications such as Nielsen
Norman Group’s Intranet Design Annual.

Developing a New IA
Migrating content from the legacy sites presented the team with the problem of
where to put all the content. “The structure of the site had become unworkable,”
says Needham. “Not only were we getting complaints from the users, but we were
having trouble finding a home for the content we were migrating into it. It became
clear to us that the navigation was not going to work in the long-term, so we decided
to redesign it.”
Once the initial content migration challenge was complete, the team could focus on
involving users in the redesign process. “We put a call out for volunteers to be part
of an ‘Intranet Reference Group’ that would take an active role in reviewing and
redesigning the navigation, as well as providing an ongoing source of focused user
feedback.”
The group’s members participated in a virtual focus group (via a blog), card sorting,
and user testing activities, and contributed to helping the design team create the
site’s new IA and navigation. The ideas that were generated from the Intranet
Reference Group sessions were integrated into the new design, which was launched
in July 2007.
“The virtual focus groups were a real success story in the redesign,” says Needham.
“It allowed us to involve a broad range of users, and to keep the costs to a
minimum.”
According to Needham, this latest iteration of the intranet, called InSite, provides
“much more intuitive navigation, greater integration of corporate applications, a
strong recognizable design based on the department’s new corporate identity
standards, and is part of a family of branded internal communication vehicles—which
includes InBrief, a weekly email newsletter, and Inside DPI, a printed staff magazine
produced three times per year.”

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Pictured: Homepage from the second iteration (version 2) of the intranet.

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Pictured: The navigation and overall IA of the old intranet (version 2) was a
constant source of complaints from users.

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Pictured: Topic page from the second iteration (version 2) of the intranet. The
inefficient “flyout” navigation on the left was a major usability problem. The
new version has local, contextual navigation that expands to two levels.

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Pictured: The new intranet has a strong, recognizable design based on the
department’s new corporate identity standards, and is part of a family of
branded internal communication vehicles.

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Pictured: Landing page for the Administration topic section.

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Pictured: Sample topic page (Human Resources). The team made a concerted
effort to avoid structuring content based on the organization structure. This
was particularly important in a post-merger environment, where the
organization structure was not well understood and was likely to change
frequently.

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Pictured: Sample content page providing links to relevant policies and

procedures.

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Working with Agencies

All intranet planning, design, IA, and development was done in-house.

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

Goals of the NSW intranet:
• Support the creation of a single culture and shared understanding within
the new department
• Provide a single, centralized, and coordinated communications channel for
all staff
• Provide a single, centralized access point for corporate applications
• Enhance employee communication and access to information
• Support work processes, activities, and task completion
• Support knowledge management
• Reduce operating costs
• Support the implementation of the new corporate strategy
Ongoing constraints:
• The size and skill set of the intranet management team
• It was difficult to identify content owners on the former agencies’ legacy
intranets, which impacted on the speed of the content migration to the
new site
• The former agencies’ infrastructure (servers, networks, and so on) and
information systems are still being integrated, which has made integrating
information difficult
• Lack of organizational support for distributed publishing

USERS
The intranet supports 3,500 staff at more than 120 locations throughout New South
Wales, in a wide range or roles including:
• Clerical and managerial staff
• Field staff (including mine safety inspectors, veterinarians, foresters, and
fisheries inspectors)
• Operational staff (such as farm hands)
• Scientists and researchers (such as horticulturalists, entomologists, and
geologists)

USER TASKS
Using the intranet, staff can:
• Read internal news, media releases, and industry news
• Submit news and photos to keep the homepage fresh and relevant

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• Subscribe to RSS feeds for content update alerts

• Search for staff in the staff directory, which sources data from the HR
management system to ensure that data remains up-to-date (staff can
also update their own details)
• Find subject matter experts
• View a calendar of upcoming events
• Submit events for the calendar
• View the Training Calendar and enroll in courses
• Participate in surveys
• Book travel; submit travel-expense claims
• Book a vehicle
• Order business cards and other stationery
• Raise and approve purchase orders
• Look up pay information and leave balances
• Apply for leave
• Log and track an IT support request
• Book display material for events
• Order uniform and corporate clothing items
• Access email while away from the office (Webmail)
• Search the library catalog
• Search for and download images in the image catalog
• Download forms and templates
• Download logos
• Download organization charts
• Search for policies
• Share documents
• View internal job vacancies
• Undergo the induction program (for new employees)
• Take a guided tour of the intranet

BASIC INTRANET FEATURES

Navigation
• Consistent, intuitive, user-designed navigation across all pages
• User-centered, task, and topic-based navigation (not based on
organizational structure)

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Design
• Simple, clean design (lots of white space and emphasis on hyperlinks)
• Consistent design across all pages
• Minimal use of graphics (no gratuitous images)
• Resizable text
• Standards compliant design (including CSS-driven layout)
Search
• Search available from every page
• Search the intranet, staff directory, or Internet from one field
• Search results include “best bets” to help users quickly locate relevant
information
Content
• Distributed publishing
• Comprehensive intranet design standards and guidelines for content
contributors
• Department-wide news and announcements (with archive) and RSS
subscription service
• Seamless integration with major corporate applications, including
purchase requisitions, travel bookings, vehicle bookings, and Webmail
• Content owners identified on every page to enable quick, targeted
feedback via a link to an email address
• Simple, easy-to-use forms
• A-Z index and site map to assist users in finding content
• Key contact lists for content topics
• Web 2.0 integration (Google maps) for office location maps

Specialized Content Areas

Team Areas
Each division and branch has its own intranet section where it can put content and
links to other online resources that are specific to its needs. The site also has areas
that support cross-organizational project teams, interest groups (communities of
practice), and committees.

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Pictured: There are special site areas dedicated to cross-department interest

groups and communities of practice.
Support for Mission-Critical Tasks
There are a wide range of applications available via the intranet that have been
designed to support specific job roles, such as mining and fishing license registers,
an interactive Web mapping system to support emergency response teams and
regulatory operations, a research projects database, and a system to manage the
department’s publications.
New Employees
There is a special intranet section designed to manage the new-employee orientation
process. It includes a welcome message from the Director-General, links to useful
intranet resources, new hire processes for both the supervisor and the new
employee, and profiles of staff members from throughout the department.

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Pictured: A special intranet section designed to manage the orientation

process for new employees.

Collaboration Tools
“We don’t currently have any collaborative areas,” says Needham. “Some teams use
Lotus Notes teamrooms, but we have a project looking at using blogs and forums to
support geographically separated teams and to foster communities of practice.”

Data Visualization
Because one of the department’s primary roles is to lead the response to agricultural
and animal emergencies, such as exotic disease outbreaks, the intranet provides
access to Front Gate, an interactive mapping system. As Needham notes, “this
system was specifically designed to support emergency planning, response, and
recovery operations, as well as ongoing regulation and compliance activities.”
Front Gate lets users generate an array of customized maps and reports—
incorporating a wide range of data—for any area of the state.

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Pictured: Front Gate, a specialized mapping and reporting application,

supports the department’s role in responding to emergencies, such as floods,
drought, and exotic disease outbreaks. Using the system, employees can view
geospatial data and produce a range of reports for any area of the state.

Search
The intranet template has a multi-search field available at the top of every page. The
same field can be used to search the intranet, staff directory, and the Web (via
Google). The NSW intranet uses the search module that comes packaged with the
CMS, Squiz MySource Matrix. It’s limited to searching content contained in the CMS,
but there are a range of information repositories the intranet draws on. “We are
currently looking at implementing a Google Mini search appliance to search the
intranet and other information repositories,” says Needham.
The department regularly tracks search logs, and in an effort to improve search
results, it applies log information to adjust the metadata included in the most
relevant content items.

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Below are screenshots for a few searches, including:

Sample searches Search term(s)

A specific product or service unique to “PROfarm” (industry training program)

your company

A list of your company’s locations “Office directory”

A list of your company’s holidays for Not applicable

2008

A retirement benefit offered by your “Superannuation”

company

A mention of your company in the press Not applicable

in the last month

Pictured: Search box available from the top right of every page on the
intranet. Users can search the intranet, staff directory, or the Internet (via
Google) by simply changing the tab at the top of the search box.

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Pictured: Sample search results page. “Best bets” (pages that best match the
search query) are highlighted in yellow.

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Pictured: Search results for search term “PROfarm.”

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Pictured: Search results for search term “office directory.”

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Pictured: Search results for search term “superannuation.”

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Pictured: Keywords are entered into the CMS to improve search results.
Search terms are also monitored in the search logs; popular terms are added
to relevant content items in an effort to further improve search results.

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY ACTIVITIES

Redesign goals
The primary redesign goals were to:
• Address fundamental issues with the navigation
• Provide more consistent page layouts
• Provide a flexible IA that will grow with the site
• Improve search
• Improve access to content

Constraints
A Small Team
“The biggest challenge was probably a lack of resources,” says Needham. “With only
two members in the intranet team we were often stretched for time. Somehow we
managed to develop the new intranet, which involved reviewing the existing intranet
with the Intranet Reference Group, developing the new IA, developing wireframes
and prototypes, building new templates, conducting user testing, migrating content,
all while maintaining the existing intranet. It meant we had to focus on the most
visible and used content first.”
CMS Hurdles
The complexity of the CMS also presented a considerable challenge for the team.
“We had trained a handful of people from outside the Communications Branch to use
it, but it proved too difficult for people who weren’t using it often,” she says, adding
that this “had a huge impact on the speed of the content migration.”
Making a Case for Task-Based Navigation
Moving from an inward facing organizational-based navigation to a user-focused
task-based navigation also proved to be a hurdle for the team in working with
content owners.
“We consulted heavily with content owners following the navigation review,” says
Needham. “Convincing them that organizing in a user-oriented way, rather than by
who owns it, has been a significant challenge.’

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Usability Activities
The design team looked at as many intranets as they could find for ideas and
inspiration before embarking on the redesign. “In developing the design of the site,
and deciding on how to implement some of the major functions, we looked to other
intranets for ideas,” says Needham. “Whenever we can, we like to see the intranets
of other organizations, and talk to other people who manage intranets about what
they are doing, and how they have solved particular business problems. The Nielsen
Norman Intranet Design Annuals are also a major source of inspiration.”
But they also looked inward to review what was and wasn’t working on the current
site.
The second intranet (v2) was built very quickly and without user input. The team
was focused on integrating assets from the four department sites into one difficult
CMS.

Pictured: Ideas were borrowed from the intranets of the former agencies for
the second intranet (v2).
After about a year, Needham says it became increasingly obvious that people were
having trouble finding content. “In particular,” she says, “the global navigation
labels—Communities, Industry, and Resources—seemed to cause confusion for
users. Whilst Communities, for example, was well understood by the staff of one of
the former agencies, it didn’t resonate with staff that had come from the other
agencies.”

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Pictured: Communities was well understood by staff from one former agency,
but it didn’t resonate with staff from the other agencies.
The team was also struggling to find a home for all the content that had been
inherited from the four legacy intranets. Although there was much content that was
of value to users, as Needham says, “It was just too hard to find.” The navigation
was the main cause of the confusion.

Engaging Users from across the Organization

The design team reached out to the general user population to research what was
wrong with the current site and to find solutions that it could incorporate into the
redesign. “We started by conducting a content audit, to get a better idea of the
range of content we would be dealing with,” she says, “Then, in February 2006, we
enlisted the help of 30 volunteers from around the department to help us review the
navigation and identify other major issues.”
“We made a conscious effort to ensure that the members of the group had a wide
range of job roles, were from different branches of the department, were from as
many different locations and office sizes as possible,” she says, adding that they
“included representatives from all four of the former agencies.”

Collaboration Tools Bridge the Geographic Divide

By being so inclusive in terms of group diversity, the team introduced one of the
main constraints of the project. “Time, distance, and money were huge barriers to
physically bringing all 30 members of the group together. You might also be
interested to know that the intranet is managed from the department’s head office in
Orange, a regional centre of about 35,000 people, more than 250km from Sydney.”
Intranet Reference Group members were from all over the state, so the design team
needed to bridge the geographic separation and keep the group involved.
“We needed a way to not only communicate with them, but for them to be able to
communicate with each other, says Needham, “We considered a listserve or an
online forum, but thought a blog might be better, especially when we wanted to
include screen grabs and downloads.”
“The first thing we did was set up a virtual focus group using a blog,” she says. “We
asked the members of the group to take a look at the intranet and tell us what
worked well, what they would change, what causes them the most confusion, and
what they felt was in the wrong place, and to post their responses on the blog. The
discussion really took off, and provided us with a good sense of the major problems
with the intranet.”

Virtual Card Sorting

An Excel spreadsheet served as an ad hoc card sorting exercise. They put 100
representative content items from the intranet (as well as the legacy intranets) into
individual cells on the spreadsheet and sent it out to the group. The users were

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asked to take the columns into a new worksheet and regroup them in a way that
made sense to them. They were also asked to name the groups.
Participants were allowed to put the items in more than one group or to make sub-
groups as needed. There were but two simple rules: there are no right or wrong
answers, and ignore the current groupings on the site.
When the users were through, the team analyzed the sheets to determine patterns
and trends and then returned the results to the blog and opened it up to feedback
from the group. “Again, the discussion on the blog provided a lot of insights, and
gave us a great starting place to start to explore options for the navigation,” says
Needham.

Pictured: The team used Excel spreadsheets to conduct card sorts with a
virtual focus group of 30 staff members.

Iterative Design Using Wireframes

The next task for the user group was to review a wireframe of the proposed
navigational model. They were encouraged to give feedback (via the blog) and to

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suggest alternative models (but to also provide a clear rationale if they did so). Their
only direction this time? Avoid the organizational chart as a basis for their model.
“Over the course of two weeks, we did about six design iterations until it felt like the
group had reached a consensus,” says Needham.

Pictured: A wireframe of a proposed navigational model.

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Pictured: An early “site map” illustrating the placement of content within the
proposed navigational model.

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Pictured: The Intranet Reference Group participated in a blog-based

discussion over several weeks. The design team gave the group members
tasks (as shown here) and then asked them to post feedback on the blog.

Test with a Friend (or Two)

When the intranet team wanted to conduct user testing on an HTML prototype, they
solved the distance problem by having each member of the user panel test the
prototype with a co-worker. The team gave participants the following guidelines for
conducting the tests:
• Don’t allow other people to watch the test
• Try not to prompt the tester
• Encourage the user to talk out loud

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• Avoid sharing your own opinions with the user

The testers were also given a script, which included these tasks:
• Find a staff member’s phone number
• Find an office fax number
• Book a vehicle
• Find dates for a project management course
• Find a salary scale for a Clerk/Clerical Officer
• Request a library book
• Apply for a corporate credit card
• Find information belonging to their branch or unit
• Find information about a particular office, such as parking or meeting
rooms
• Get help with their computer

Pictured: An HTML prototype was developed for testing.

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Pictured: One of the Intranet Reference Group tasks was to test an HTML
prototype of the proposed new navigation with another staff member. Group
members were given instructions on how to conduct the test, and provided
with a script that included a range of user tasks.
The user group members reported their findings on the blog. The designers gained
insights, “but nothing that sent us back to the drawing board,” says Needham.
The design team made changes based on the test results and sent the user group
back into the field. This iterative approach resulted in far fewer issues reported in the
second test. The user group and the design team agreed that they should proceed to
implement the ideas in the final prototype.

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Putting the Research into Action

Based on the findings from the various tests, the design team had a clear direction
for revamping the site. The redesigned site was launched in July 2007 and took
about 12 months from user testing to launch.
Needham says the team made some “deliberate choices” when designing the new
site:
Fixed width. “In version 3, we replaced a fluid design with a fixed-width design to
give greater control over the pages, and to limit line length, which was a bit of a
usability issue in version 2. We have two widths that are designed to support 800 x
600 and 1024 x 768 screen resolutions; the page changes automatically, depending
on the browser width, through CSS and Javascript.”
White space. “We made a conscious effort to include plenty of white space when
designing the page templates, to ensure that the focus is on the content.”
Limit “flyout” navigation. “In version 2, we used flyout navigation on both the
global navigation and the local, left-hand navigation. User feedback and observation
suggested that the flyouts worked well on the global navigation, but presented a
usability problem for the local, left-hand navigation. In version 3, we designed the
left-hand navigation to expand, rather than flyout, which has given us the added
advantage of having the navigation options visible and more contextual.”
Standards. “We have a number of standards that our publishers need to adhere to,
to ensure a consistent user experience and to maximize the overall usability of the
site. These include standards for images, forms and interactivity, accessibility, and
coding.”

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Ten Best Intranets: NSW Department of Primary Industries

Pictured: The local (left hand) navigation now expands to one level, rather
than using “fly out” menus.

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Ten Best Intranets: NSW Department of Primary Industries

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Ten Best Intranets: NSW Department of Primary Industries

Pictured: Sample content standards and guidelines for intranet content

publishers. The intranet includes comprehensive documentation for publishers
including standards, checklists, and a CMS manual, as well as information on
becoming an intranet publisher.
Multiple access points for content. “We wanted to ensure that information could
be found quickly, and that we supported the variety of ways that users look for
content,” says Needham. “To this end, we have navigation that supports people
looking for types of content (e.g. forms or policies), information on topic (e.g. travel
or leave), regardless of who in the organization owns the content. A leave application
form, for example, is available under Forms, Leave, as well as being able to be found
by the branch that owns the form. The A-Z index, search ‘best bets,’ and Quick Links
also provide quick and easy access to popular content.”

Pictured: The A-Z index of key content

In version 2, the homepage had news and announcements, a list of vacancies, and
some quick links. The designers were constantly being placed under pressure to put
links on the homepage by areas of the organization that wanted to promote their
services or simply advertise their existence.
“The number of requests to have links on the homepage has really decreased since
the redesign,” says Needham. “We included a summary of the navigation of the
major sections of the site, which not only serves the purpose of providing an
information scent, but also has appeased a lot of the content owners who wanted

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Ten Best Intranets: NSW Department of Primary Industries

their content to feature on the homepage. It now has a good mix of news and
announcements, navigation, and quick links. In addition to a feature story and
headlines, we have ‘spotlights,’ which are used to feature new tools or content, or
promote other projects and initiatives going on in the department.”
She has also taken steps to ensure that the site’s navigation and homepage are
protected by policy, so that it’s difficult for people to exert their influence to make
changes to the site that are not user-centered.

TIMELINE
July 2004:
ƒ New department formed
ƒ Interim intranet (v1) concept approved
ƒ Interim intranet (v1) launched
September 2004
ƒ New CMS implemented
January 2005
ƒ New intranet (v2) launched
February 2006
ƒ Intranet Reference Group formed
February 2006—April 2006
Intranet (v2) reviewed, including:
ƒ Analysis of usage statistics and search logs
ƒ Content audit
ƒ Card sorting
ƒ Usability testing (using scenarios and task analysis) of proposed navigation
and IA
ƒ Development of wireframes
ƒ User testing of prototypes

RESULTS
For Needham, the redesign’s most noticeable result is the reduction in user
complaints to the helpdesk. “Anecdotally, we have taken this to mean that staff are
finding information easier to find, and the changes to the homepage have satisfied
the needs of more areas of the department for a ‘presence’ on the site,” she says.
“Feedback after the redesign has been overwhelmingly positive. A number of staff
have commented that they find the site much easier to navigate, and content much
easier to find.”
It’s probably too soon to tell whether the redesign has had a dramatic affect on
usage statistics. Needham says she regrets that the team didn’t collect more
benchmarking metrics, so they could measure the impact of the changes going
forward.
The new navigation is “much more user-centered” as a result of the user research,
she says. “Improved supplementary navigation, including the site map and A-Z
index, provide users with multiple ways to access content quickly.”

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Ten Best Intranets: NSW Department of Primary Industries

Examples of the user feedback received:

“Congratulations on the new intranet. I love the new forms and policies links,
and it’s so much easier to find what I’m after.”
“The new intranet looks fantastic. It’s bright and welcoming and easy to get
around.”

LESSONS LEARNED
Lessons learned from Kate Needham and Penny Wheeler:
Focus on key content. “Identify, and concentrate your efforts on, the most
valuable (most used and visible) content first. Doing so will build trust in the
intranet, and the redesign team, and provide the momentum and enthusiasm
you need to continue to improve the site.”
Improve continuously. “A redesign never finishes. There is always
something that can be done to improve an intranet.”
Look to other intranets. “Look for opportunities to interact with other
intranet managers and to see other intranets, as they are an endless source
of ideas and inspiration.”
Involve users and test with them often. “Involve users as early and often
as possible in the design of the site, and ensure that you consult users from
as many different areas of the organization as possible. Test your design
decisions as often as you can, with as many users as you can.”
Communicate with content owners. “Be ready to defend your decisions.
We had quite a few content owners who found it difficult to cope with the
move to task- and topic-based navigation, rather than the organizational
structure style of navigation they were used to. Keep content owners
informed of major decisions that might affect their content.”
Communicate with sponsors and users. “Manage the expectations of the
project sponsors and users. Prepare the users for major changes the site
before they happen.”
Collect metrics. “Remember to collect some metrics before a redesign, so
you can measure the impact of the changes.”
For user research, think beyond the box. “The Intranet Reference Group
and virtual focus groups conducted via the blog were far more successful than
we could have imagined. Think outside the square when it comes to user
research, especially if time or money is limited.”
Manage your time wisely. “Make sure you allow enough time for the
redesign process. Break the redesign into phases—don’t try to do everything
at once.”
Interrogate technology options. “Make sure that the technology used to
create the site supports your vision.”

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 Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Using the intranet: Design team:

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was established The in-house core team did most of the work on the
by the California Institute of Technology in the site. Moore Boeck, Inc., a Los-Angeles-based Web
1930s. America's first satellite, Explorer 1, which design company specializing in Flash interactive and
launched in 1958, was created at JPL. In the websites, developed the overall look and feel.
decades that followed, they sent the first robotic In-house: Brent McWatters, Task Manager; Frank
craft to the moon and out across the solar O’Donnell, Communications Office Manager; Boris
system, reconnoitering all of the planets. In total, Oks, Lead Developer; Larry Bost, Brian Pendergrass,
JPL has 20 spacecraft and nine instruments Diana Herrera, Luis Tong, Sauwan Leung, Jeremy
conducting active missions. All of these are part Arca, Ryan Sohn, Megan Mickelson, Rebecca Nash,
of NASA's program of exploration of Earth and Susan Braunheim-Kalogerakos, and Mark Whalen,
space, with plans to send robots and humans to Developers & Content; Gerardo Orozco, Graphic
explore the moon, Mars, and beyond. Designer
Headquarters: Pasadena, California Moore Boeck: Justin Moore, Creative Director;
Andrea Boeck, Designer
Number of employees the intranet supports:
5,000
Company locations: The US, with spacecraft
tracking stations around the world
Locations where people use the intranet: The
US
Annual sales: Not applicable

SUMMARY
The goal for JPL’s intranet team was to build a site that was more functional, more
easily edited, and better-looking. The primary goal was to enhance the user
experience on the site by helping users find the information they need. On the way
to that goal, the technical side of the intranet team joined forces with the Office of
Communications and Education (OCE). By partnering with a team well versed in
communicating, the team could better tackle the problem of keeping content current.
The team also made a technical move to using SharePoint, which simplified content
update methods and let content editors make changes more easily.
A side effect of working with the OCE was an added focus on the site’s visual
presentation. The site, which had been previously designed by engineers, looked like
it had been designed by engineers. The team brought in an outside design team to
build a better-looking intranet, based on the knowledge that a clean design can
greatly enhance a site’s usability.
By joining forces, the Office of the Chief Information Officer, the OCE, and the
outside design firm of Moore Boeck were able to tackle the challenges the previous
site presented and make great steps forward in creating a better intranet.
At JPL, content creation is distributed; the site’s only editorial workflow is focused on
the homepage. Additions to the homepage require approval from one of a few
reviewers, each of whom can approve or reject content and route approved content
to the appropriate site areas.
All news stories require approval. Stories can originate from anyone at JPL or directly
from the OCE. The OCE team then edits the stories and routes them to JPL Downlink,
JPL in the News, Upcoming Events, or Announcements Web areas of the homepage.

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 The homepage’s featured news area has three spots for key stories, which the page
automatically cycles through. Users can also move among stories using numbered
links or an arrow at the top of the section. News items are accompanied by a large
image, a brief and descriptive headline, a publication date, and a descriptive
summary. Users can click on the headline to view the full story.
The rest of the homepage combines personalized content, customizable content, and
company information. Mentions of JPL in the media are shown on the homepage,
giving employees access to information about the organization’s work and how the
press is reporting on that work. Headlines are listed together with the date of
publication and the source, and users can click on the headline to see the full story.
Announcements on the other side of the page provide basic information and updates
about upcoming events, ranging from retirement account counseling to expos to
hiking club outings. This section includes a link to How to publish a lab-wide
announcement, which lets users know that they can contribute content to this site
area. The Upcoming Events section includes more detail about specific events and
also allows users to click through for more information.
The More Resources section includes a practical link to the site’s classified
advertisement section, and also highlights additional news stories that focus on
individuals and projects. This Week provides a summary of occurrences or events for
the week. This includes a variety of content, ranging from utility shutdowns and
document releases to absences and appointments. Universe is published monthly
and highlights individuals and projects within the organization. These areas allow the
site to include information about more personal aspects of the organization, rather
than covering the organization as a whole.
Several areas of the page are focused on navigation. A Quick Links section highlights
direct access to popular or important site areas. A Safety section gives users quick
access to emergency and occupational safety information.
Several areas offering personalized and customizable content round out the page.
The My Info section includes a personalized view of the employees’ training status,
which is updated every 48 hours. Users can also create a customized list of
Bookmarks in this page area. Users can easily add links to the list or edit the list via
links at the bottom of the My Info section. Currently, users can edit only the list of
bookmarks. The list of mandatory trainings displayed isn’t user customizable but
does vary based on the employee role; supervisors, for example, are required to
attend additional trainings and on-site contractors attend fewer trainings.
Additional content includes local weather information and live traffic updates for
highways in the local area. Users tend not to click on this content, as the information
they need—current weather and current traffic—is visible without further action.
Global navigation appears across to the top of the page, with the user’s current
location in the site highlighted. The global navigation area also includes a search
box.

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 Pictured: The JPL homepage combines company news with personalized and
customizable content. (image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

One of the most unique aspects of the site is the Quick Find tool built into the site
search. The site search suffers from problems common to many intranet site
searches: it doesn’t always pull the best documents or information to match users’
queries. The team is continually adjusting the backend to make the tool work more
successfully. As an enhancement to the search, the team uses Quick Find, which

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 allows quick access to selected content. This functionality requires custom coding,
but the coding is what makes the tool effective.
For instance, the search engine doesn’t handle certain types of requests well, such as
queries about people, buildings, or acronyms. As a result, the team has created
hardwired results for such searches, and those results appear in the Quick Find
window.
Users simply use the site search, and if any Quick Find results are available, they
appear in a box beneath the search field. Alternately, users can press Enter on the
keyboard to submit the search to the full search engine.
This gives users quick access to commonly requested information. Because the
results are hardwired, they are limited: not all queries will return Quick Find results.
However, the Quick Find function responds much more quickly than the standard
search, returning any hits in a matter of milliseconds. Users don’t even have to type
in a full query to see results. For instance, someone looking for Brent McWatters’
phone number can simply type “br mcw” and see the relevant profile information.
When People (employee directory) results are displayed, users don’t have to click
into the full profile to get pertinent contact details. Contact information is shown in
the results, including a profile picture, name, title, mobile number, and phone
number.

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 Pictured: The Quick Find tool returns hardwired results for certain pieces of
information, such as employees listed in the People directory. Results appear as
users type their queries. (image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The Quick Find functionality works for information about people as well as other
types of content. The tool searches information in both its Yellow and Red Pages.
JPL’s many service organizations are listed in the Yellow Pages; its Protective

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 Services—including its own fire department and emergency services—are listed in
the Red Pages.
Quick Find also returns matching acronyms, location information, project
information, and JPL Rules, which is a document repository of all the official rules at
JPL. It covers the full gamut from tuition reimbursement policies to flight project
practices.
Additionally, Quick Find returns matches to popular site content.
Lists of popular links appear throughout the site, with the full list of such links
numbering in the thousands. The team has coded Quick Find results for each of
those popular links, making it quick and easy to use the search to find the most
popular content on the site. This is an elegant solution to inadequate site search and
confusing navigation. The best aspect is that users don’t have to have any
awareness of how it works or why it works, nor do they have to go to a separate
area of the site to use it. They simply conduct a standard search, and any Quick Find
options are automatically presented to them. Users always have the option to submit
the search query to the full site search as well.
An automated algorithm reviews Quick Find searches to see which items are most
often selected for particular searches, and makes those items appear in larger text.
For instance, a search for “parking” (see below) returns four results in Popular Links,
but the larger font size indicates that JPL Parking Policy is the preferred link of most
users who search that term. The second most popular link is Laboratory Parking &
Traffic; Caltech Parking and JPL Parking are also available, but less popular. This
approach presents users with all possible matches, but tries to help them select the
right one based each link’s popularity.
The team collects feedback about the searches conducted, seeing which return
results and which fail. There’s also a link to Help Us Improve at the bottom of the
Quick Find window where users can submit feedback.

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 Pictured: The Quick Find tool uses text size to indicate which of a set of
matches is the most commonly selected result. (image courtesy NASA/JPL-
Caltech)

Another creative feature on the site is the use of maps, created through Google
Maps, to convey information about the corporate campus as a whole as well as about
specific campus buildings and resources.

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 When users mouse over a building on the map, for example, information displays
about the building, including its number, name, and a picture of it. The map provides
details about the location’s facilities, such as bus stops, coffee stands, ATMs, and
whether the site is an emergency services facility. Beyond that, the map provides
links to building floor plans and information about public conference rooms and
points of interest.
The team is working on additional maps that will show such information as real-time
locations of buses on the campus bus route and information about power
consumption at buildings across the campus.

Pictured: Campus maps don’t just show building locations, but include
information about bus stops, facilities at each location, and even available
conference rooms in each building. (image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The team decided it was important to provide mobile access to the site, so it started
by designing a mobile site accessible on the iPhone, with plans to expand support to
BlackBerry devices as well. As team members started building a mobile site,
however, they realized that rather than making miniature webpages for a small
mobile screen, they could design a better experience by building specifically for the
platform. So, information about JPL available to employees on the iPhone is built as
an app for the phone, rather than as a mobile website.
The team tried to focus on providing the most useful information for mobile users,
such as person lookup, daily news, maps, menus, bus schedules, and conference
room information. It’s important to consider what information is of most importance
to mobile users versus users who are sitting at a computer to access information.

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 Many mobile users are probably on the move, looking for a quick answer or piece of
information. Providing access to booking a meeting room or seeing when the next
campus shuttle will arrive at the building can help people accomplish tasks while
away from their desks. Other mobile users might be using their phones to kill time
while waiting for something—whether a meeting, a shuttle, or for congested traffic to
get moving—so they might be most interested in browsing up-to-date information,
such as daily news and announcements.

Pictured: An iPhone application lets users access intranet content on the go,
providing access to a subset of site content. (image courtesy NASA/JPL-
Caltech)

The team continues to come up with new ways to display information in a meaningful
way and to help users get to the information they need quickly and efficiently.
Creative solutions to known problems, novel methods of displaying information, a
new focus on presenting up-to-date and changing information, and a much-improved
visual design all work together to help the JPL site provide an improved user
experience to employees.

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 Pictured: This page from the site’s Employee Center is focused on the needs of
the employee and on quickly getting them to content that meets those needs.
(image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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 BACKGROUND
The JPL intranet began many years ago as a single webpage containing links to
useful pages on the intranet. In time, it grew to multiple pages of useful links and
then was developed into a formal portal application running on Sun’s portal software.
It languished for several years on this platform before being ported to the SharePoint
platform.
Over the years, company leaders realized that users came to the portal because they
wanted information or access to tools and services, and not to “enjoy the portal.” In
an effort to provide them access to everything they might be looking for, the portal
became more and more cluttered as time went on. “We found ourselves
simultaneously being told we needed to add more links or content and that the site
was too cluttered,” says Brent McWatters, Task Manager. “When it became clear we
couldn’t keep adding links on our front page, for example, using search seemed the
ideal solution.”
While search did assist users in cutting through the clutter, its value was limited—
mostly because the search functionality itself was not finely tuned enough to provide
a better way for users to locate information. “The out-of-the-box search solutions
worked okay, but were frequently not narrowing in on what the user was really
looking for,” says McWatters. “There were ways to tweak the search results, and that
helped a bit, but it was labor intensive and difficult to maintain. There also was a
whole class of information queries where normal search was too cumbersome.”
The portal lived in a functional, yet kludgy state until the most recent redesign
bumped it up a notch aesthetically. “Until recently, our intranet portal was
wonderfully functional but alas looked a bit like it was designed by engineers, which
it was,” says McWatters. “As part of partnering with the OCE, we were encouraged to
bring in an outside design firm to consult on the look and feel. Our intranet portal
looks better and the users have let us know they appreciate the difference.”

Future Plans
Now that the team has developed all the key navigation, Quick Find, search, and
look and feel elements, it plans to expand the feature set. It’s also looking to other
areas within JPL where the site can add value. “We are looking at supporting
projects, line organizations, work groups, interest groups, and other OCIO [Office of
the Chief Information Officer] service areas,” says McWatters.

INTRANET TEAM AND SITE OWNERSHIP

The JPL intranet team membership varies from two or three to almost a dozen during
a major revision. No one person is ever 100 percent dedicated to the intranet portal,
and most are on the task less than one eighth of the time.
Although the Office of the Chief Information Officer owns the intranet, some of the
portal’s content is maintained by other organizations and the site links to and pulls
data from websites and repositories hosted by many other organizations throughout
JPL.
Users expect portal content to be current, so the challenge for the intranet team is
how to get the many JPL organizations to keep it fresh. “Over the years, we have
repeatedly experienced other organizations wanting a ‘place’ on the portal, but after
a short time losing enthusiasm for keeping their content current,” says McWatters.
He and his team have done two things to improve this. “By moving to SharePoint, it

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 is now far easier for them to keep their content current and we have partnered with
the Office of Communications & Education, a group that is truly committed to
keeping their content current,” he says.

INTRANET TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES

Role Responsibilities
Office of the Chief • Develop and maintain the intranet portal
Information Officer • Integrate with other OCIO services, including
(OCIO) Intranet Portal the directory, business systems, training,
Team calendaring, email, and multiple repositories
Collaboration Hosting • Maintain the infrastructure below the intranet
Platform portal (SharePoint and Databases)
Content Owners • Ensure that their section is up-to-date and
consistent
• Delegate some updates or changes to other
members of their team/department

TIMELINE
The JPL intranet has been in a state of continuous evolution, with incremental
rollouts since it began. One major exception was switching between hosting
platforms from the Sun portal platform to SharePoint. This transition took more than
a year to complete.

GOALS AND CONSTRAINTS

Although the redesign focused on creating a better experience for the site’s end
users, one of the other key goals was to enable content providers to more easily add
and edit their own content. “Another goal was to standardize the look and feel
throughout our intranet so a user transitioning from our intranet portal to more
specific service sites, for example, would find a consistent feel and functionality,”
says McWatters.
“We have met the goal of making it easier for content providers to add and edit their
content, but the movement of other service sites to the same platform has been
slower than expected,” he says.
Another goal was to better integrate the portal functionality with JPL’s internal
communications team. This partnership has resulted in a far better-looking intranet,
with fresh and engaging news content being maintained by a group that is truly
dedicated to that task.

Constraints
If time is the universal constraint, budget is a close second at nearly every
organization. Although tight budgets make site enhancements difficult, often the real
challenge is just getting enough money to keep abreast of the inevitable ongoing
changes needed to just keep the site current.
“Budget is always an issue,” says McWatters. “There is always a hope by
management that an intranet once set up will be able to just keep running with
almost no resources.”

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 But when something is as heavily used as an intranet portal, there are always
demands for improvement. “The intranet portal is not an island, so as things change
around it, updates are always required,” he says.

USERS
JPL has an extremely diverse workforce that includes all the usual roles found at any
large organization. In addition, the site serves a workforce that includes world-
renowned scientists and engineers. The key activities at JPL are highly technical, but
the ordinary activities of any company with 5,000 employees must also be fully
supported by the organization’s intranet.

USER TASKS
One of the most common uses for the intranet portal is to find: people, buildings,
conference rooms, phone numbers, documents, maps, information, services, and
tools to support people both as employees in general and in their work-related roles,
including scientist, engineer, and so on. The other common site use is to discover
what’s happening at JPL.

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 Pictured: The conference room feature lets users check room availability, view
each facility’s features, and locate other conference rooms in nearby buildings.
(image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

DESIGN PROCESS
The JPL intranet’s design has been evolutionary, and that evolution has been fed
along the way by user feedback and testing. The JPL team used the following
methods to ensure that user-centered design would drive the design process:
• Solicit feedback from users
• Conduct usability testing

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 • Evaluate the intranet using an in-house usability working group
• Analyze usage metrics, such as page, link, Quick Find, and search
statistics
• Have a third-party designer provide feedback
• Have team members attend usability conferences
• Benchmark intranet projects at other companies
“User feedback has been critical,” says McWatters. “When we are rolling out a new
version, we first roll it out to a reduced number of users (such as a pool of several
hundred) to get feedback.
Every page on the portal has a Contact Us link and the feedback is extremely helpful
in improving the portal. “No matter how much design and internal testing we do,
putting the system in front of users—even for a few weeks—provides a bounty of
great information,” he says.
Once a version of the portal has been out for a while, McWatters says that longtime
users typically adapt to it and no longer notice suboptimal features. “By seeking out
feedback—especially from new hires, for example—we get great feedback, not only
because they provide fresh eyes but because they have come from different
environments (other companies or schools) and intuitively compare the portal with
what they liked and didn’t like elsewhere.”
Developing the navigation structure was a long and complicated process. The team
discovered that established hierarchies for projects often mirrored the business
perspective, which was a completely unintuitive hierarchy for most users.
“Our project hierarchy is constantly in flux, and often the official structure is more
related to business realities, such as Mars Office, Earth Office, and Solar System
Office versus a lay person’s perspective: planets, asteroids and comets, space
technology, sun, universe, etc.,” says McWatters. “We haven’t found a way to
automate the maintenance of these project structures, but we have been able to
automate the maintenance of the Line Org structures (we use a Matrix Organization
structure at JPL).”

ACCESS
The JPL intranet homepage is the default homepage for every computer provided to
JPL employees. Users can access the intranet from outside the firewall via a VPN
application or a browser-based VPN.

TECHNOLOGY
The JPL intranet portal runs on SharePoint and an additional server supports extra
features such as Quick Find and the interactive maps. In keeping with SharePoint’s
farm terminology, the tech team develops on a development farm, tests on a test
farm, and deploys to the production farm. They also use source control repositories.
All user-generated trouble tickets are tracked in a Remedy system.
The site’s Quick Find capability utilizes AJAX technology.

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 MOBILE
Mobile access is a popular feature of the JPL intranet. It’s currently supported on the
iPhone with the team hoping to make some progress on supporting BlackBerry in the
near future. “We have found the iPhone easier to develop for and we have found it
provides a richer user experience,” says McWatters. “Currently, the mobile
applications are only available to a subset of the Lab, but the user feedback has been
extremely positive.”
Supporting mobile devices entailed some trail and error for the tech team. “We
initially tried a webpage-based approach with pages optimized for the smaller
screens,” says McWatters. “This would allow writing once and using on different
devices. We found the usability was poor and switched to using common middleware
to feed the information to applications that are native to the mobile devices.”
“Computers within our intranet interact with our intranet portal servers with
negligible delays,” he says. “However, with mobile devices the connection delays,
lower data rates, and VPN issues forced us to develop a hybrid architecture where
the most commonly used functions and information are stored on the devices and
the less often used and more sensitive information is stored on the servers.”
Altering their approach greatly improved the user experience design for mobile
access.

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 Pictured: Mobile Person Lookup on the iPhone makes it easy for users to find
and contact fellow employees. They can also locate nearby conference rooms.
(image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

280 [email protected] Jet Propulsion Laboratory

 Pictured: The intranet’s Interactive Map feature is also available on the iPhone.
(image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

CONTENT MANAGEMENT
Content management on the JPL intranet is handled through SharePoint. Permissions
govern who can update the content and a versioning system is in use.
The only part of the site with a real editorial workflow is the homepage
Announcements section. Anyone at JPL can submit homepage Announcements; the
following workflow governs that content:
• The user submits content
• Multiple reviewers are notified via email

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 • Any of the reviewers can look at the submission, and approve, edit, or
reject it
• The editor can route the content to be displayed on different parts of the
intranet portal

The Challenge of Metadata

It’s always difficult to achieve the balance between wanting to have content with lots
of great metadata and not wanting to overburden users. If a company is going to
require the use of metadata for content creators, then the intranet team must
establish effective rules for gathering that metadata. Having the wrong metadata can
be worse than not having metadata at all. Establishing the rules and maintaining this
information can be a burden if not handled correctly. And, if it’s not handled at all, it
can be a different—but just as burdensome—problem for both the team and the
users.
The JPL team is just beginning to recognize and deal with the challenges of
metadata. “We are in the process of defining rules regarding which metadata must
be submitted with document uploads,” says McWatters. “Another factor we are
looking at is if we have a lot of metadata then just maintaining the metadata
becomes a task in itself. For example, as we have reorganizations, projects change
names, people move, etc. This can all render metadata obsolete.”

SEARCH AND QUICK FIND

Search
As mentioned earlier, the JPL intranet relies heavily on both search and the Quick
Find feature to aid users in getting directly to the content they seek. Finding the
technology to support search is a process, and as many teams find out, it’s an
ongoing process.
“For evaluating different search solutions we have a “bake-off” (taste test),” says
McWatters. “First, we analyze our search logs to come up with a list of 20 common
queries. We enlist about 20 users and have them submit these common queries to
the different search products and have them rate the results for each query.”
They ask the users to rate the results based on how close to the top they feel the
ideal result was for them. “At the end, we have them play with additional queries of
their choosing and again rate the results,” he says. “There are differences in extra
features between the offerings—such as the ability to refine a search—and we ask
them to rate how valuable they found those features.”
This type of continual improvement is one of the best methods to refine search.
What JPL and other teams have learned (sometimes the hard way) is that users want
effective search and making search effective is a process that must be supported
over time, not a one-off project.

282 [email protected] Jet Propulsion Laboratory

 Pictured: A single user query can be sent to multiple search engines and
repositories with the results aggregated in one place, as shown here. (image
courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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 Quick Find
The JPL team considers Quick Find one of the site’s most useful features. While
employing site search helped users cut through the clutter initially, there was still a
whole class of information queries where normal search was just too cumbersome.
For example, when looking up people, buildings, or conference rooms, or searching
the organization’s Yellow Pages directory or acronym repository, a search engine was
not a good solution. So, for these very common queries, the intranet team developed
the Quick Find capability. “Results are returned often within 100 milliseconds,” says
McWatters. “The instant results are returned when looking up people, popular links,
buildings and locations, our official regulations repository, projects, line
organizations, interest groups, internal Yellow Pages, and acronyms.”
Using full words are not necessary for Quick Find to work. For example, to look up
“Brent McWatters” a user could type “br mcw” or “br 172” (his organization) or “br
600” (his building) or “4-2513” (his extension). “For lousy spellers, being able to
input partial names combined with instant feedback is very useful,” says McWatters.
The important thing about the site having both search and Quick Find is that it’s not
a case of one method being better than another, but rather that offering multiple
tools can sometimes be the best solution to meet diverse user needs on a single site.
And, at JPL, Quick Find not only augments the shortcomings of search, it lends a
serendipitous component to finding company information that might interest the
seeker.
“For a new employee, they appreciate the multitude of links and can discover things
that would have otherwise been forever hidden (there’s a yoga class at lunch!),”
says McWatters. “Search is very powerful and because it’s mostly automated, it can
be very cost effective, but Quick Find is the most heavily used feature by far. But it
requires custom coding and keeping our core set of links current.”
Over time, the JPL team has developed a list of several thousand “popular” links that
direct users to the information or services they’re looking for. These are nicely
organized across the intranet’s many webpages and let the team remove the clutter
from the front page.
These popular links are among the site’s most complex content to maintain. Not only
can users browse them, but the links are also indexed, so every popular intranet link
can be found instantly via Quick Find. For example, to find JPL’s fiscal calendar, users
need only type “fisc.” Since implementing the Quick Find feature, the number of
intranet pages browsed has dropped significantly as users increasingly choose Quick
Find because of its speed.
“We have automated the analysis of which Quick Find results are selected most
often, and we display these more prominently (bigger),” says McWatters. “This
enables later users to hone in on a desired result more quickly. We can also detect
which Quick Find queries didn’t result in matches and improve our offering.
“We have developed unique monitoring of direct link clicks and Quick Find accesses
that provides detailed metrics on which of these links are being used, which aren’t,
and, in Quick Find, what is being looked for but not found,” says McWatters. “This is
extremely powerful in keeping the intranet content relevant. We also have behind-
the-scenes link validating that is ensuring the content and services we are pointing
to are still there.”

284 [email protected] Jet Propulsion Laboratory

 FEATURES
Users typically don’t say much about intranet features unless they particularly like or
dislike them. “We believe our Quick Find, interactive maps, and providing access to
the intranet portal functionality on mobile devices are leading edge,” says
McWatters, adding that, “we continue to receive extremely positive feedback for all
three of these features.”
The JPL intranet’s most popular features include:
• Interactive maps. The site’s interactive maps are very popular with
users and the team has received lots of extremely positive feedback on
this feature. The engine behind the maps is Google Maps, with the JPL
buildings overlaid. The maps highlight campus locations including
cafeterias, the credit union, the fire department, and ATMs.
For each JPL building shown, users can see the floor plans and find an
available conference room in that building. The team is currently working on a
prototype version that has the ability to display power consumption on a per-
building basis. “We have a deal with our local utility where we get better rates
if we are able to reduce consumption when the utility is having trouble
meeting demand,” says McWatters.
The team is just starting to experiment with overlaying real-time information
regarding the position of buses that run throughout the Lab campus area.

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 Pictured: An example of the interactive map features. The map is easy to pan
and zoom and bus routes and points of interest can be overlaid. (image
courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

286 [email protected] Jet Propulsion Laboratory

 Pictured: Current view of the bus routes. Soon, the interactive maps will also
show the actual locations of the buses. (image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

• Alerts. The JPL intranet pages include an alert system that can pop up an
alert without requiring users to refresh the page. Physical and computer
security personnel can initiate these messages in emergency situations,
without requiring the intranet team’s intervention.
• Weather and traffic. The intranet homepage displays current weather
and traffic. There are links to get more detailed weather and traffic
information, but because the information displayed on the front page is
current, users rarely need to click for more.
• News feeds. The site offers dozens of JPL-related external news feeds
(RSS) focusing on NASA, business, science, and technology.

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 Pictured: News from a variety of external news sources is aggregated on the
site using RSS. (image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

288 [email protected] Jet Propulsion Laboratory

 • Retirement tracking. Two different companies handle the employee
retirement programs and users can see the performance of both, updated
daily with current year-to-date and five-year results on the intranet.
• Data visualization. The site features a graph visualization capability for
the JPL’s Green Initiative. The graph shows power usage over different
time intervals and overlays outside temperature or the previous year’s
values for comparison purposes. Plans are underway to make it possible
to visualize power consumption on a per-building basis.

Pictured: The intranet’s graphing capabilities. This example shows power usage
compared with the previous year. (image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

ROI
The familiar refrain of “we don’t measure ROI in hard numbers,” applies to the JPL
team, too. Sometimes a useful site is just a useful site—and that’s enough.
“We have not been able to justify the ROI in hard numbers,” says McWatters. “We
tried the usual if X people do these things Y times per day and it used to take Z
amount of time and now it is ZZ% faster, we are therefore saving $XX, but we
haven’t found this argument to be particularly convincing to upper management.”

LESSONS LEARNED
McWatters shares some of the many lessons the JPL team has learned in developing
the redesigned portal:

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 • Different search techniques each have their place. “Browsing,
searching, and using Quick Find are all ways for users to get what they
want. They each have advantages and disadvantages, but each has its
place.”
• Users have a job to do. Give them tools to do that job. “The users
came to the intranet portal not to visit it but to find, learn, get
information, or access a tool or service. Ensuring the user is efficiently
getting value from your site is more important than somehow trying to
convince them they should want to go to your site.”
• Write for the Web. “Users will read exceptionally little of what is on your
pages, and if things aren’t intuitively obvious they won’t be understood or
used. Make the first few words of each line contain all the key
information.”
• Cross-browser testing is critical. “Constant testing of your intranet on
a variety of browsers is essential.”
• The intranet is an ongoing program, not a one-off project.
“Automate what you can, but manual maintenance will never cease.
Change—both within your intranet and with technologies outside your
company—will necessitate your intranet portal constantly innovate to stay
relevant and valuable.”
• A personal touch can go a long way toward getting users on board.
“Sometimes, personal demos are simply the best way to show users what
is available from their intranet. Demonstrating at our annual IT expo or
doing very brief demos in the cafeteria or at team meetings has worked
well.”

290 [email protected] Jet Propulsion Laboratory

 Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities (SCTA)

Using the intranet: Saudi Commission for Design team:

Tourism & Antiquities (SCTA) is a governmental Design team members are drawn from the following
agency in Saudi Arabia that specializes in and is departments: Design and Identity, IT, Human
responsible for supporting and controlling the Resources, and Media.
country’s tourism places and activities. In
addition, SCTA is responsible for antiquities that Members:
represent Saudi Arabia’s history. Project Team: Eng. Anas Alsolai, Project Manger;
Dr. Habbas Alharbi, Director of Media Production
Headquarters: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Department; Hamad Alkhaled, HR Operations
Manger; Hossam Almujallai, Design Unit Head; Ali
Number of employees the intranet supports: Alabdulwahed, Intranet Content Manger; Nuha Al-
4,000 Saeed, Application Specialist; Waqas Chaudhry,
Locations where people use the intranet: SCTA Solution Architect; Aamir Shahzad, Business
operates 13 branches across official Saudi Arabia Architect; Mead Albraheem, Application Specialist;
provinces. and Mohammed Almazrooa, Application Specialist

Project Board: Abdullah S. Aljehani, Vice President

of Tourism; Dr. Abdulaziz M. Al-Sheikh, Vice President
of Support; Majed Alshedi, Media and Public Relations
Director; and Massar Almassar, IT Department
Manger

SUMMARY
With diverse, thorough content and unusual and fanciful features, the intranet for the
Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA) far exceeds its goal to involve,
include, and attract all employees.
The homepage gives an overview of the intranet’s content and varied information,
including news, tools, weather around the country, and event photographs to help
draw users in. Specifically, the center column offers various types of news, including
the President’s Word section at the top, which includes a summary of and link to the
SCTA president’s letter to the organization. Below this are the top news items,
followed by Articles posted by employees. This combination of news from the
president, internal news, and news and announcements written by employees
themselves makes the homepage inclusive of and appealing to all.
Users can access eServices—the various tools they need—via the set of icons that
appear toward the bottom of the center column.
More amusingly, in the upper left, the photo library section shows one of the latest
photos that an employee posted. These pictures are related to antiquities and tourist
attractions. Employees can click through and see more photos. The Media Library, in
the lower right, links to videos. Also in the lower right, the Comics section links to
comics written by employees. All of these sections add up to some entertaining
intranet moments. Another rewarding topic relates to spirituality: The Prayer Time
area in the middle of the left rail shows the times for praying each day.
Given that the intranet is written in Arabic and most text is read from right to left, it
makes sense that the main navigation menu appears on the right side of the page.
The logo appears in the upper right, rather than left. Also, section headings, tab
labels, and text blocks are flush right (when not centered).

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 Pictured: The homepage offers a variety of news and application links, as well
as more personal items such as prayer schedules, comics, photos, and other
media. (Note: the English explanations on the right and bubble notes within the
image do not actually appear on the intranet.)

The intranet’s eServices area offers a very extensive set of tools and applications
that help employees do their work. People with various jobs and in different
departments alike can find the tools they need here. And, as new tools are created,
they are also added to this list. This consolidation of items facilitates sharing
applications and tools between teams, and makes it easy for employees to find the

292 [email protected] Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities (SCTA)

 items in the IA. No need to search or find which menu a tool might be classified
under; they’re all here. Similarly, all documents and procedures are categorized and
archived in the Records Center.

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 Pictured: The eServices section houses the tools and applications people need
to do their jobs.

294 [email protected] Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities (SCTA)

 Pictured: The Records Center categorizes all document and procedures.

To learn about what is happening with colleagues from around the organization,
employees can click through from the homepage to the social news section, where
they can post their own news items and related images, and view, comment on, and
rate other items. Content might relate to work, such as success stories and

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 employee promotions; or it might be personal, such as marriages or education
achievements. Mixing the business and personal helps the employees relate to each
other and support each other on different levels, generally bringing them closer.

296 [email protected] Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities (SCTA)

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 297
 Pictured: The social news area lets employees post business and personal news,
and comment on and rate all posts.

To post new material, users click a link on the homepage. This opens a form that lets
users title their item, write a description, and attach a file. Once the intranet content
administrators approve it, the content will be posted.

Pictured: Users can fill in a simple form to post content on the intranet.

Comics have become very popular in recent years, and SCTA employees are trying
their hand at not just reading them, but creating them. The organization considers
this sharing part of team building and fun, and encourages sharing and commenting

298 [email protected] Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities (SCTA)

 on comics. Users can submit a comic to the intranet content administrators, who
ensure that the content is appropriate for the organization. Users enjoy this comics
feature and visit this intranet area when they crave an amusing break.

Pictured: Employees can post comics and funny stories, and comment on these
on the intranet.

The Media Library houses sets of media that employees post (after the media is
approved by the content administrators). Employees can use the folder on the right
to view different categories; they can also post comments about each item, adding
and sharing knowledge and thoughts.

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 Pictured: Users can post items to and comment on items in the Media Library.

Employees use the employee directory to find and learn about their colleagues. They
can also update their own profiles easily; once the HR department approves the
change and updates the main HR database, the information is posted on the
intranet. This helps the organization keep its systems up-to-date and ensure that the
HR and intranet databases match up.
In the profiles, the standard information about the employee appears on the first
tab, while other information is stored in subsequent tabs to keep clutter at bay.

300 [email protected] Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities (SCTA)

 Pictured: Users can edit their profiles in the Employee Directory.

An editable form with the user’s information pre-populated makes it easy to edit
personal and job information. Users can also add a photo or avatar to their personal
profiles.

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 Pictured: Employees can edit personal and job information.

The main page for a sector within the organization displays information important to
that group, such as: a welcome from the president, events, projects, document
library, eServices, media library, important links, and various other elements
available on the homepage. In this case, however, the elements are targeted toward
the particular sector.
Department pages also offer similar types of content, but targeted to each particular
department.

302 [email protected] Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities (SCTA)

 Pictured: A sector’s main page targets information to employees within that
sector.

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 Pictured: The main page for a department targets information for people within
that department.

The SCTA intranet designers succeeded in striking that very delicate balance
between making the intranet a pure productivity tool and making it whimsical and
interesting. It’s beyond difficult to do this while maintaining a consistent personality
throughout the design, but they certainly achieved it here.

BACKGROUND
The SCTA intranet came about when the organization decided to replace its weekly
employee newsletter, which focused on news and social events. In the early days of
the organization, the newsletter was sent out to all employees. It was designed and
created using adobe Photoshop and was sent to employees as a pdf file, with all
information on a single page. Although it contained all the weekly news and social
events, some news took longer to publish; in those cases, the newsletter was
published every two weeks. This publication method wasn’t timely, and yet it was
time-consuming to prepare. With this as the main channel for communication, the
idea of intranet started to percolate. Replacing the newsletter with an online portal
meant the organization could encourage employee engagement by giving them the
tools to contribute content updates themselves. And, with an intranet in place, what
took weeks to gather, design, and publish could now be published in seconds.

304 [email protected] Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities (SCTA)

 The development and design requirements gathering were a group effort, agreed
upon by team members from different departments across the organization including
IT, Media, and Design and Identity. The project went smoothly and deadlines were
met, except for the final delivery date. Because SCTA decided to launch the portal to
coincide with a big conference event that the organization would be attending, the
biggest challenge for all of the team members was to hit that mark. This challenge
was met by focusing their efforts so that they could launch the portal in front of
thousands of people attending the event.

INTRANET TEAM

Pictured: The SCTA intranet team (from left to right): Hossam Almujallai, Anas
Alsolai, Majed Alshedi, Abdullah Aljehani, Massar Almassar, Ali Abdulwahed,
Mohammed Almazrooa, and Waqas Chaudhry.

GOVERNANCE

Ownership
The intranet is managed by different departments within the organization, but mainly
by the Media department. The Information Technology department is responsible for
monitoring and maintenance and for supporting all technical and design issues. The
Human Resource department manages all employee operations on the site. All
departments manage their own related content and sections based on their job roles
and responsibilities.

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 INTRANET TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES
Role Responsibilities
All Departments and
 Update their sites
Sectors
 Manage their site’s content and sections
All Employees
 Send articles and materials they want
published to site admin
Media Department
 Maintain all published content on the site
 Control and filter employee submissions for
articles, news, comics, video, photos, and other
intranet sections that let employees post
comments and feedback
 Provide content for SCTA general news section
 Manage the Voting section
Information Technology
 Offer daily monitoring and maintenance
Department
 Provide technical and functional support
 Administer all intranet site collections
Human Resource
 Review employee’s information update requests
Department
 Manage employee directory
 Manage all other employee operations, such as
time off and business travel
Management Processes
 Manage electronics forms and procedures
 Update and manage the processes and
procedures library
Design and Identity
 Maintain intranet design and content sections

USERS
The SCTA intranet is used by all of the organization’s employees, meaning everyone
can access content and post articles and replies. One of the team’s main goals for
the intranet was to allow all employees to engage at all levels as much as possible.
So, the team made most of the content open for all, with very few levels of
permissions.
Some parts of intranet are used only by specific employees because those areas are
tied to their job responsibilities. For example, all employees can change their job
profiles and their information on the intranet, but only one or two employees can
access all employee changes and approve those changes to actually update the
employee profiles.

306 [email protected] Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities (SCTA)

 Pictured: The Departments main page shows an overview and sample statistics
for all department sites.

URL AND ACCESS

ACCESS INFORMATION
Item Status
URL
 On the SCTA internal network, users access the
intranet via http://intranet
Default Status
 The intranet is the default homepage when
users open a web browser on their office
computers
Remote Access
 Users can access the intranet remotely (outside
the network) using www.tawasol.gov.sa and
must enter their network username and
password to log in

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY WORK

Design Approach
SCTA partnered with several companies and organizations so it could study their
intranet designs and functional implementation. The SCTA team conducted site visits

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 to learn from their experiences first hand and view their work and ideas in context.
The goal was to ensure that the team could achieve a high level of quality with the
SCTA intranet.
Although the team wanted to achieve a beautiful design, they were more focused on
how to use beauty to create an effective design.
The main design goal was to provide a proper and colorful design that would help
users identify and differentiate the intranet sections, while still following established
branding standards. However, that was easier said than done. The difficulty came in
implementing the design without breaking the organizational brand identity. The
brand identity is defined only in terms of simple guidelines regarding font size, font
type, proper headers and footers, and so on.
The team searched far and wide to learn from and apply global design best practices,
while still keeping the site aligned with the established brand identity and making it
useful for information finding. The efforts were successful—due mostly to the team’s
expertise and the valuable information team members gained through site visits to
other companies and organizations.
The other factor that played heavily in the team’s success was a reliance on user
testing. The team felt that testing the design with users was required to ensure the
maximum usability level for the intranet. Team members describe the results they
achieved as “perfect” for informing the design.

TIMELINE

INTRANET TIMELINE
Milestone Date Milestone Description
September 25, 2010
 Begin intranet business requirements analysis
October 17, 2010
 Develop interface design requirements
November 20, 2010
 Begin portal development
March 26, 2011
 Complete interface design and portal
development
 Begin usability testing
June 20, 2011
 Launch

CONTENT AND CONTENT CONTRIBUTORS

Site content is developed and created by all employees within their respective
specialties and interests. This open publishing approach was in fact one of SCTA’s
main goals for the intranet. Every employee in the organization has the right to be
engaged with the intranet and post materials and content as they wish.
Training was key to making this goal a reality. It’s one thing to open up the tools,
but this type of decentralized publishing is often more effective when employees are
given training and guidelines on how to use the system and how to best make use of
the access they have. When the intranet launched, SCTA conducted training sessions
to make sure all employees knew how to both use the intranet and post feedback

308 [email protected] Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities (SCTA)

 and articles. In addition to functional training, SCTA also trained employees in ethics,
behavior, and copyright-related subjects to help them avoid illegal action. The
training covered things such as how to property attribute articles posted from
outside sources. This might sound like common sense, but when the site first
launched, the team saw many articles posted without source information.
The team also conducted specialized training for employees with administrative
access. For example, it trained some specialized HR employees in how to manage
the employee directory and approve changes made by other employees. At SCTA,
content publication basically occurs in three steps: employees submit content
through the CMS forms; an admin reviews all content that needs approval; and, once
content is approved, it is made public on the site. When content is rejected (for any
reason), it is sent back to the author along with the reasons for the rejection and
suggestions on how to improve it for future publication.
In addition to the various trainings, the organization provides a user manual, which
details how to use all necessary functions. This manual is available through the
intranet.

TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY
Category Technology Used
Web Server Hardware and
 IIS 7.0 and Windows Server 2008 R2
O/S
 HP Blades

 SQL Server 2008 R2

Bug Tracking/Quality
 SharePoint Trace Logs and the Unified
Assurance
Logging Service (ULS)

Design Tools
 Adobe Photoshop

 SharePoint Designer
 Microsoft Expression
Site Building Tools
 SharePoint Platform
 Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, C#

Content Management Tools

 SharePoint’s default content management
system

Search
 Microsoft FAST Search 2010

SEARCH
To ensure the best possible search results on the intranet, SCTA used a high-
performance search engine called SEEK. Using this engine, the team hopes users will

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 easily find any information they want, across the whole intranet, including all
sections and content.
Suggested results are available based on search text and will return results across a
variety of formats, including .pdf files, photos, page URLs, and text results. In
addition, the search engine will temporarily store files so that search can help users
find what they want based on previous search results.
The team reports that intranet users are very proud and happy to see features that
will make finding information easy and fast across all content, even if they’re
searching for old articles.

Pictured: The SEEK search engine in action. Users can search and find
information or articles across the intranet.

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 RESULTS AND ROI
SCTA was able to achieve all of its major intranet goals, including automating all
processes and procedures that were previously done manually. Another major
success was creating an intranet that helped employees feel like members of one big
family, with the ability to share their news and information and read other people’s
comments.
The organization hit the mark on all of these initiatives. Numbers and statistics show
that the intranet has achieved a high number of comments, articles, and content that
employees are sharing. Through the intranet, executives and upper management are
fully engaged in supporting their employees. They now have the opportunity to
engage further by reviewing their employees’ news and achievements. The team
hopes that this will help them develop specific ideas based on this information and
knowledge sharing.
As of August 1, 2012, the organization has logged the following statistics on intranet
usage thus far:

SITE USAGE
Overall Stats
Total number of visits
287,349 visits

Total number of daily unique visitors

500 users

Total number of search queries

4,400 queries

Daily Averages
Average number of daily unique visitors
60 users

Average number of page views per day

9,700 visits

Pictured: A list of top pages/sections, based number of visits.

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 LESSONS LEARNED
A few lessons shared from the project:
 Communication is key. “Good communication stops mistakes from
becoming failures. Mistakes happen, but recovery is always possible.”
 Put the customer first. “Know your customer and know the objectives of
the project at hand. If any significant changes need to be made, do so, but
with customer involvement.”
 There is no “I” in team. “The success of a project is largely dependent on
the skills and strengths of the people involved. Therefore, a project needs to
have a dedicated, talented set of individuals, working towards a common
goal.”
 Lead, don’t follow. “Be proactive in your approach. Reactivity is just not
good enough.”

312 [email protected] Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities (SCTA)

 WorkSafeBC

Using the intranet: WorkSafeBC (the Workers’ Design team:

Compensation Board of British Columbia, In-house (current): Lauralee Kuzik, Manager,
Canada) is an independent statutory agency Corporate Internet Services (CIS); Sharleen
serving 2.1 million workers and more than Gairdner, Web Publisher; Trevor Seguin, Web
210,000 employers throughout the province of Publisher; Anne Cuthbert, Web Editor/Writer; Laine
British Columbia. WorkSafeBC’s vision is to keep Dalby, Web Editor/Writer; Glenda Troup, Typesetter;
workers and workplaces safe and secure from and Chris Datcu, SharePoint Developer (contractor)
injury, disease, and death.
In-house (former): Terence Little, Director,
Headquarters: Richmond, British Columbia, Corporate Communications (and former CIS
manager); Joanna Gould, Web Editor/Writer; and
Canada
David Lesjak, Editorial Assistant
Number of employees the intranet supports:
3,000
Locations where people use the intranet:
Operates across the entire province of British
Columbia, Canada

SUMMARY
With just three months to improve the site and move to SharePoint 2010, the
WorkSafeBC intranet team had its hands full. The WorkSafe Network (WSN) supports
3,000 staff throughout British Columbia. The organization works to support workers
throughout the province and keep worksites safe.
Armed with surveys telling them what employees wanted in an intranet—as well as
plans and ideas of their own—team members set out to give employees access to
information and a way to communicate with one another.
One of the site’s big wins was organizing content by topic or task, rather than by
organizational structure. This has made it much easier for employees to find the
information they need.
The site consists primarily of two main parts: corporate content and team sites.
Corporate content is the information of value to all employees, aimed at a broad
audience. Team sites can be used for groups, teams, or projects to help members
communicate and collaborate. They can be used for a finite amount of time, such as
during work on a project, or can be ongoing, such as for a team.
The homepage features news stories in a carousel at the top center of the page. The
carousel design does a nice job of letting employees see the headlines of all items,
rather than just giving them a next and previous control to move through content.
Employees are also invited to submit a story idea with a prominent link at the
bottom of the news headlines list. The team manages content centrally, which lets
team members gather and aggregate news and information from around the
organization.
Further news stories are highlighted below the carousel, and each headline is
accompanied by the date it was published as well as the number of comments
associated with the story. The site already has more than 5,000 comments on its
2,000 news stories, showing an active employee community.
Tabs give users quick access to other current information, including events, offers,
kudos (employee recognition), and blogs. A calendar of events, weather information
(important for employees traveling to work sites), and links to popular site areas

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 round out the left side of the page, while the right column features key operating
statistics and performance information.

Pictured: The homepage collects all the latest information from across the site,
featuring news, blogs, events, and performance metrics.

The site is no longer organized by department, but now departments and teams have
their own pages—in the Our Organization area of the site navigation—to

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 communicate with employees. Each department offers information for its own
members as well as for employees of other departments. So, for example, Finance
offers drop-downs with questions about specific financial issues and articles from the
Chief Financial Officer about performance. As another example, one IT department
highlights a team photo, which lets employees put a face to a name and voice that
they might know well from calling the helpline, but have never seen. That IT
department also offers features about technology issues.
At a higher level, the IT Division’s departmental landing page gives employees a
quick overview of each IT department’s work. Employees can also see a bulleted list
of the department’s primary functions, view an org chart, see a list of department
leaders (directors and managers), and get contact information from that page.
Further, employees can view the profile (My Site) for each department leader and
see a list of team sites associated with that department.
This page helps employees find the right department when searching for information,
but also acts as a nice overview for new or existing employees to better understand
the division’s structure. This new structure has been rolled out for the IT and Finance
Division sections and will be the standard for other Division sections in the coming
months.

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 Pictured: The IT Division department landing page includes helpful overviews
and quick access to contact information.

The site’s strength lies in the many ways it provides opportunities to connect
employees to one another. Employees can give recognition to colleagues for work

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 well done via the site’s Kudos tool, This not only shares information about colleagues
who went above and beyond their jobs, but also fosters relationships and
communication as employees learn more about what others at the organization do.
Employees can also share photos of themselves pictured with the organization’s flag
in the Flags Around the World section. To encourage employees to participate in
these sharing opportunities, the company offers participants the chance to win
prizes, such as free movie passes. This popular site area allows employees to see
each other’s travels and learn more about one another as well. The screen below, for
example, shows an employee competing in a handcycling championship.

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 Pictured: The site’s social areas give users opportunities to discuss topics
outside of work and to learn more about one another.

Webcasts help keep employees who might be working in remote areas of British
Columbia informed and connected. Providing presentations as webcasts encourages
employees to watch and learn from events. Brief summaries explain what the video

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 is about, so employees can gather information before watching (or even instead of
watching). The videos themselves are brief, which helps busy workers fit them into
their workdays. The link to each video includes its length.

Pictured: Webcasts help communicate messages, particularly to remote staff.

The site offers content beyond the normal forms and policies. For instance, the
Health and Wellness area is a popular addition featuring information on staying
healthy—exercise, diet, ergonomics, and stress management. Users can also view
recorded Lunch and Learn sessions and information about Return to Work and
Employee and Family Assistance. Information includes both internal and external
events, such as the Vancouver Sun Run, a local road race.

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 Health and Wellness also lets users track their in-house Wellness Challenge progress,
including physical activity and commitment to a healthy lifestyle. The organization
sees this as a benefit on multiple levels—encouraging employees to be healthy and
to communicate about it encourages a healthier workforce but also helps foster
relationships among colleagues. The Wellness Rewards Program provides employees
access to support, encouragement, resources, and tools to help them improve,
enhance, and/or maintain a healthy living plan. Healthy living challenges include
healthy eating, physical fitness, and resiliency skills building. Tracking progress is
simple. Users can enter their points and see progress toward their goals. The start
and end date is listed for each challenge, as well as the last day employees can enter
their points.

Pictured: The Wellness Tracker helps employees manage their progress in the
in-house wellness challenge, encouraging employees to stay fit and healthy.

Little details like a Lost? icon help the site constantly improve. If users can’t find
what they are looking for, think content is in the wrong place or has the wrong
name, or need information updated or deleted, they can click the icon to open a
comment window. In this way, feedback is integrated into the design. The team also
takes such opportunities to do some recruiting: commenters are asked if they want
to take part in future user studies. This not only recruits users, but also informs

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 employees that the team takes feedback seriously and would like to hear even more
from them.
A few simple questions appear before an open comment field, prompting users to
share what they were looking for, where they expected to find it, what search term
caused trouble, or what changes they suggest.

Pictured: The Lost? feature encourages feedback when employees have trouble
finding information on the site, and also acts as a method for recruiting users
for future usability research.

WorkSafeBC’s team made the most of its three-month improvement project,

resulting in a site that gives users quick access to content and helps them
communicate.

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 BACKGROUND
The last major redesign of WorkSafeBC’s intranet, WorkSafe Network (WSN), was
done in 2011 to upgrade its software from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010. This
allowed the organization to create a more fluid interface for its users and to add
more social media features to the site.
The goals of WSN are twofold: to provide a central location for staff to quickly and
efficiently access information and resources, and to facilitate communication.
“Redesigning the site to incorporate more social media features and a more fluid
interface has helped WSN do a better job of fulfilling its goals,” says Lauralee Kuzik,
Manager, Corporate Internet Services (CIS).
CIS consulted with other business areas to understand user needs and business
goals; it then let this input guide the site’s communication goals and help the team
set the priorities for the WSN redesign.

Challenges
Achieving the project goals and making the necessary changes weren’t always easy.
The team overcame several challenges during the WSN redesign, including:
 Timeline: The first challenge was an extremely tight, non-negotiable
deadline to create the new design, bring it online, and make sure it
worked. That deadline was three months. “By comparison,” says
SharePoint Developer Chris Datcu, “a project of this size at most other
organizations would take six months.”
 Limited resources: The limited timeline was further complicated by
resource constraints. “CIS didn’t have a separate team to assign the
project to,” says Kuzik. “We had to implement the upgrade ourselves,
on top of our existing workload.”
Every new content request the team received had to be formatted for
both the old system, which was still operating, and the new system, so
the content would be available when the new version came online. “We
also had to go back and mine two years’ worth of old content,” says
Trevor Seguin, Web Publisher, Corporate Internet Services, “all of
which had to be uploaded into the new WSN environment. This wasn’t
just cutting and pasting, either. We had to copy a thousand pages,
along with thousands of documents and document libraries, then
reformat the content and recreate all of the links. Some content could
be moved in batches, but there were a lot of pages that had to be
handled individually.”
 Technology challenges: In addition to the daunting challenges of a
limited timeline and resource constraints, the team ran into some
technology issues as well. “There were also some issues with the
upgrade that didn’t become apparent to us until late in the project
because our intranet environment is unique,” says Kuzik. “CIS had to
work closely with Microsoft to resolve these problems.”
Ultimately, with the help of WorkSafeBC’s IT department and several
other supporting departments—and after putting in many long days—
the team succeeded in launching the new version of WSN on time.

322 [email protected] WorkSafeBC

 Pictured: The WSN Blogs page lets employees follow regular columns written by
their coworkers on a variety of topics, ranging from how to be environmentally
friendly, to understanding changes in copyright legislation, to the latest tech
trends and money-saving gadgets for the home.

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 Pictured: The Finance page provides drop-down menus that let employees ask
the Finance department staff for help with specific issues. The search menu can
also help staff find documents. The page also features articles from the Chief
Financial Officer discussing how WorkSafeBC’s financial performance affects
how employees do their jobs and what plans will need to be made to ensure the
organization’s continued stability.

324 [email protected] WorkSafeBC

 Pictured: The Employee Groups page, shown here, is an example of top-level
navigation. The tabs at the top of the screen appear on every page of WSN, and
each offers drop-down menus with further options. Each intranet page also has
a column of links on the left side offering quick, easy access to more
information.

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 INTRANET TEAM

Pictured: The WorkSafeBC intranet team (back row, left to right): Trevor
Seguin and Laine Dalby; (middle row, left to right): Chris Datcu, Lauralee
Kuzik, Sharleen Gairdner, David Lesjak, and Glenda Troup; (front row, left to
right): Joanna Gould and Terence Little.

GOVERNANCE

Ownership
The CIS team is part of the Marketing and Communications department, which lets
the team centralize all publishing and thus make changes quickly and easily, with a
focus on quality control. It also helps prevent content duplication.
“Our team’s ownership of WSN helps to prevent duplication of content and ensure
content adheres to our editorial style guide, brand, and is validated by our subject
matter experts,” says Kuzik.
Site and content responsibilities are shared across several groups: The CIS team
manages additions and updates to corporate content; the Business Technology
Support Services team (BTSS team) manages the creation of team sites; and team
site administrators manage team site content.

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 INTRANET TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES
Role Responsibilities
Corporate Internet
 Publish content supplied by content owners
Services (CIS) team
 Maintain WSN functionality
 Implement intranet design changes
Manager, CIS
 Ensure the information presented on
WorkSafeBC’s internal and external websites is
current, valid, accessible, and has integrity
 Develop and implement strategic and
operational plans for the creation and delivery
of web-based material that help to extend and
enhance the organization’s reach to its
stakeholders
Director of
 Develop corporate communication policies,
Communications
programs, and initiatives that are aligned to
ensure overall continuity of the organization’s
brand consistency and image
Vice-President of
 Serve as executive sponsor
Marketing and
Communications
Content Owners
 Create content and ensure its accuracy
 Submit content to CIS for publishing
 Provide new information to CIS through
publishing requests as content changes

USERS
WSN supports approximately 3,000 full-time and temporary staff and contractors,
spread across the province of British Columbia, Canada. WorkSafeBC staff carry out
a variety of activities, such as helping workers file injury claims, conducting safety
inspections at worksites (ranging from urban restaurants to isolated logging camps),
and developing new tools and programs to support employers in their efforts to keep
their employees safe.

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 Pictured: The location of WorkSafeBC’s regional offices across British Columbia.

328 [email protected] WorkSafeBC

 Pictured: One of WSN’s most popular sections is the Cafeteria Menu. Following
a homepage link takes users to pages listing the daily breakfast and lunch
specials for the entire week, as well as the hours of food service.

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 Pictured: The Buy & Sell page is another WSN area with strong staff
participation. As the name implies, in this site area, staff members can list and
sell personal items. Employees sell all kinds of stuff, from furniture to video
games to NHL tickets.

330 [email protected] WorkSafeBC

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 331
 Pictured: The IT Division page is a good example of how the intranet’s
department information can serve employees outside that department. Here,
the staff photo is front and center, putting a real face on coworkers that many
employees typically deal with only briefly over the phone. The page has links to
contact information, as well as features about technology issues.

URL AND ACCESS

ACCESS INFORMATION
Item Status
URL
 http://wsn/Pages/Default.aspx
Default Status
 WSN is set as each user’s homepage, but it is
not bookmarked
Remote Access
 Some staff can access WSN remotely (including
a select group of managers, some IT staff, and
others) using the organization’s VPN protocol
Shared Workstations
 During some in-house training sessions,
workers will occasionally access WSN from shared
workstations in training rooms at the head office
and in regional offices. The head office’s
“Technology Hotspot” area is a walk-in support
center with shared terminals where staff can
access WSN and view some of the latest
technology products used at WorkSafeBC.

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY WORK

Design Approach
The first step in realizing the new design was to ask site users where they thought
improvements were needed.
“When we came to the conclusion that we would need to enhance the intranet, our
first step was to conduct a survey of WorkSafeBC staff to find out what they thought
WSN needed,” says Kuzik. “Nearly a third of our workforce—800 people—responded
to the survey, providing us with a number of suggestions. They requested everything
from blogs to a wiki, to the ability to comment on news stories. Over the years, staff
had also sent us feedback on their own. This gave us another list of suggestions,
challenges, and relevant issues to take into consideration.”
The CIS team created its own list of ideas for WSN enhancements as well. “These
came up during our regular team meetings, where we would discuss issues such as
how to fix web browser compatibility problems, or what kind of system we would
need to put in place to vet comments submitted to our news stories,” she says.
Some decisions about the site’s needs were made during the redesign’s early stages.
The team asked for input from staff and the management team about the proposed
architecture for WSN, and enlisted people from other departments to help with
usability testing.

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 The user testing involved creating a WSN prototype and asking test participants to
explore and try to accomplish assigned tasks. “Their activity within the prototype
was monitored to give us a feel for how people would navigate through, and work
with, the system,” says Seguin. “And we asked the testers a number of follow-up
questions about their experience with it, to get their impressions. The results of their
feedback and performance had some influence on WSN’s design.”
The technology platform itself dictated certain changes. “We also encountered the
inevitable domino effect,” says Datcu, “where the changes to our SharePoint content
management system required that we make changes to other systems that integrate
with it, such as the workflow software.”

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 TIMELINE

PROJECT TIMELINE
Milestone Date Milestone Description
February 1999
 Launched BoardNET, WorkSafeBC’s first
corporate intranet. BoardNET was an HTML-
based site designed for collaboration and
communication with support for WinNT 4.0 and
IE 3.0.
November 2004
 BoardNet transitioned to The WorkSafe
Network (WSN), a redesigned site that was
implemented on SharePoint Portal Server
2003. The main reasons for the upgrade were:
o Improved content management
o Consistent organization
o Better look and feel
o Improved search function
o Improved integration to better reflect
WorkSafeBC’s new organizational
structure
o Ability to organize business processes
by tasks
o A simpler publishing process
 The site’s new functionality included:
o Employee self-service
o Job postings
o Forms
o Office maps
o Calendar of events
o Cafeteria menu
o A “get answers” tool
o User alerts
January 2005–September
 By this point, approximately 300 team sites
2009
had been created to share:
o Documents
o Procedures
o Tutorials
o Departmental material

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 o Projects
o Notes
o Calendars
o Etc.

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 December 2009
 WSN was redesigned again—from scratch—to
use SharePoint 2007. The new version of the
site had updated functionality, and a
completely different look and feel. At this point,
WSN consisted of more than 1,000 content
pages and thousands of documents. Key
features included:
o Brand new skin
o Improved navigation
o A format that was easier to use
o Better and faster search capabilities
o Best bets
o New features that better engaged users
and informed them about a variety of
topics
o Improved metadata tagging
o A comprehensive set of page layouts for
all publishing needs
o Corporate performance graphs
o New web parts to add dynamic content
o Rollup news stories
o Featured news
o A calendar of events
June 2011
 The organization redesigned WSN and migrated
it to SharePoint 2010, modifying and
optimizing all Web parts and the general code
base accordingly. The new site includes:
o A new enterprise homepage
o Improved IA
o Support for social media
o Blogs
o Wikis
o Different methods of engaging users,
including feedback forms and comments
o Personal sites (My Site pages)
o Employee recognition (Kudos section)
o Business intelligence reports
o Extended content rollups

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 o Content archiving
o New skin
o Search improvements
o Photo galleries
o Integration with tracking software
o Other new features
August 2011
 CIS made some further upgrades to WSN,
including:
o Launching the Office ribbon
o Adapting the overall layout
o Making miscellaneous improvements for
content authors
o Adding embedded webcasts
September 2011–present
 The CIS team continues to engage in ongoing
development and enhancements. Recent
addition include:
o Corporate operating statistics dashboard
o Wellness tracking program
o Report Center
o New portals for major WorkSafeBC
departments
Meanwhile, personal and corporate blogging
has matured and grows new content
constantly. WSN currently has more than 4,000
pages (not including documents), more than
2,000 news stories, and in excess of 5,000
comments on news stories.

CONTENT AND CONTENT CONTRIBUTORS

Corporate content is administered and published by CIS, which works with SMEs to
create and maintain the overall WSN. CIS regularly reviews WSN content with the
SMEs in order to keep WSN up-to-date and relevant to staff. CIS writers, editors,
and publishers assist with developing and implementing optimal web communication
strategies for WSN while CIS ensures content conforms to WorkSafeBC standards
and editorial style guides.
“Our process for adding new content follows a path that gives us quality control at
each stage,” says Seguin. He explains how this works:

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 1. The SMEs use a web form on WSN (the news or story ideas link at the
bottom of each intranet page) to request the addition of new content
or changes to existing material. The form allows SMEs to attach
documents that need to be added to the site, and to specify when they
would like the content published.
2. The web form is received by the CIS system and sent to one of our
team members for triage.
3. Based on the nature of the request, the form is sent to one of our
editors, or another appropriate specialist, such as a graphic artist or
video producer.
4. Our editors work with the new content to ensure it conforms to
WorkSafeBC standards and editorial guidelines. We provide the SMEs
with guidance on:
o Content
o Style (language usage, spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc.)
o Size
o Format
o Graphics
o Meta tags
o Best bets (a way to optimize searches by marking items that
are most relevant to a certain keyword)
5. The content is sent back to the SME for approval.
6. We then integrate any extra graphics, and audio, visual, or text
elements.
7. The new WSN page is created.
8. CIS tests the new page’s functionality (ensuring links work correctly
and so on).
9. The SME gives final approval, and we make the page available to the
rest of the staff to view/use.

338 [email protected] WorkSafeBC

 Pictured: The editing tools used by the CIS team to post and make changes to
news story pages on WSN. The simple design lets team members efficiently edit
and upload large numbers of stories during the team’s weekly news posting,
giving them more time to address other projects.

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 TECHNOLOGY
The technology has changed in many areas over the years, which has had an impact
on the site.
“We upgraded Visual Studio from the 2005 version to 2008, and then to 2010,” says
Datcu. “Newer versions of the software follow a modern approach to SharePoint
development and take advantage of new SharePoint project templates, add-ons, and
code-generation tools. As a result, the solution packages have changed, and the
build and deployment process has evolved.”
SharePoint 2003 was replaced by the 2007 version, and later by 2010. Although
SharePoint upgrades might be more or less straightforward and involve standard
steps, the team’s improvements were ambitious:
 Each major upgrade included an interface redesign, IA changes, and
many functional enhancements.
 The release of each new version of WSN had to be very well
coordinated to maintain zero downtime.
 Each release also had to manage two parallel production environments
during a one-month transition, when the new code and the existing
content had to be deployed to a brand new infrastructure. For each
upgrade, the team had to migrate the major site (WSN), as well as
hundreds of team sites.
“So, each upgrade was a little more work than might be expected during a normal
upgrade, but this extra effort has been well worth it,” says Datcu. “We know each of
these upgrades benefitted WSN because CIS received a huge amount of positive
feedback from users after every change. Staff have told us they enjoy the simple,
self-explanatory interface, and we can watch as new features quickly become very
popular. With the SharePoint upgrades, WSN has had a very good adoption rate, has
constantly engaged users, and has generated valuable feedback for CIS.”
In addition to the major upgrades, the team is also constantly engaged in browser
upgrades, optimizing the code to offer good cross-browser support (to run equally
well on Internet Explorer and Firefox, for example). “In fact,” he says, “CIS tends to
prepare code in advance to anticipate the next browser release, to minimize the
impact of the changeover. Some of our browser customizations had to be updated
when we migrated WSN to SharePoint 2010.”

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 TECHNOLOGY
Category Technology Used
Web Server Hardware and
Hardware:
O/S
 A cluster of load-balanced WFEs (front-end
servers)
 Application servers
 SQL servers
O/S:
 Windows 2008 Server R2
Bug Tracking/Quality
 TestTrack and Team Foundation Server
Assurance
Design Tools
 Photoshop CS3–CS6

Site Building Tools

 Visual Studio 2008/2010
 SharePoint Designer 2010
 Dreamweaver CS3–CS6
Content Management Tools
 SharePoint 2010
Search
 SharePoint Search

SEARCH
The team chose to use SharePoint 2010’s out-of-the-box search functionality as a
simple and easy solution to its search needs. SharePoint’s search lets users search
by scope (WSN, team sites, people, or all internal and external websites) or to define
advanced search criteria and search by word, exact phrase, language, type of
document, and properties.

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 Pictured: A typical search results page on WSN. In this example, a staff
member has typed “road safety” in the search field, and WSN has generated
several pages worth of listings containing that term. From here, the staff
member would click on the most relevant item and proceed to its WSN page or
document.

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 Pictured: A search results screen showing WSN’s Forms and CMS Library page,
where staff members can access a variety of forms they might need to fill out
while doing their jobs. They have the option of scrolling down through the
entire list, entering a search term, or selecting a letter of the alphabet to find
forms with names beginning with that letter.

RESULTS AND ROI

WSN’s biggest success is the degree to which staff uses it. This amounts to an
average of 821,778 visits per month.
Looking back to the site’s earliest days, when the company was still running the
BoardNET, it’s clear that intranet usage at that time was limited. Staff used the site
only for a few, very specialized purposes. “It was a single use, niche tool,” says
Seguin. “Now, however, it’s a whole different story. Lots of people across the entire
organization access WSN frequently, with individuals using it for a lot of different
purposes. Now, our intranet is more like a community.”
Despite the clear increase in usage trends, it’s hard to measure money savings or
definitive ROI; that’s okay, says the team, because even without a strict ROI, WSN is
definitely making a big difference.
“When we talk about ROI and an intranet, in some respects it’s hard to quantify how
much money has been saved by using it,” says Datcu. “However, because WSN’s

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 tools are used by many staff members to make their work faster and easier, it’s
pretty clear that WorkSafeBC is saving money. The fact that it’s also used by
everyone across the organization for communication means we’re all on the same
page, which helps create focus and build morale, both of which have value.”

Pictured: One of the organization’s performance indicator graphs from the WSN
homepage, where users can find several graphs that track different
performance areas.

344 [email protected] WorkSafeBC

 Pictured: Another example of how WSN lets all staff members track
WorkSafeBC’s performance.

LESSONS LEARNED
Chris Datcu, the organization’s SharePoint consultant, shares some of the lessons
the team learned during the project. “Over the years, our experiences redesigning
WSN have reinforced a number of lessons that are helpful to keep in mind:” These
lessons include:
 Gather feedback early. “Follow a design workflow where you get
early feedback and approval from the clients/SMEs, so you know what
features are needed and what the priorities are.”
 Put usability first. “Always evaluate the usability of the intranet
during the design phase. Get typical users from the organization to
test different functions to make sure all parts are self-explanatory,
easy to use, and easy to find.”
 Plan your migration in detail. “Do a proper analysis of your old and
new intranet platforms so you don’t run into integration problems
when migrating from one platform to another.”

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  Choose technology carefully. “When choosing one technology over
another, consider how that technology might create compatibility and
upgrade issues for your intranet and its individual components now
and in the future.”
 Be prepared for what’s next. “Always do more than what’s
expected of you. You may be tasked to create something that works
for a particular piece of software—Internet Explorer 7, for example—
but if you know an upgraded version will be released, like Internet
Explorer 8, you need to build and test your system with that update in
mind so that your intranet will still work when the technology
changes.”
 Be ready to always adapt and learn. “Nothing’s perfect, so you
have to find the best compromise.”
 Technology should be simple and effective. “Start your project by
identifying the technology that meets your business requirements and
budget, and then take a serious approach to design. Always look for
the simplest and most effective solutions.”
And, while many lessons are learned during intranet projects, perhaps some of the
most important ones are learned by what doesn’t go quite as planned or what wasn’t
planned for in the first place. Hindsight is, as they say, 20/20. Here’s what Datcu
sees in this project’s rearview mirror and what the team might have done differently:
 Design around the content. “We would have determined beforehand
how to marry the design process with the need to redesign the user
interface with the actual content. You have to go back and change all
the old content when you’re redesigning your intranet. You can’t just
build new content.”
 Automate the content migration. “We also would have created an
automated migration process so content could have been built in a
staging environment before it got moved to production. No one should
work directly in production because a staging environment is a safer
area to work, allows for better control of the publishing process, and
gives you better control over upgrades.”
 Design for multiple browsers. “If we had to go back and do it
again, we would have also designed WSN with multiple browsers in
mind. Currently, the intranet does not support all browsers, and,
consequently, we can’t support mobile devices. Better browser support
would offer better support for all mobile devices. When you’re building
your intranet, test it in your desktop’s browser, but be sure to test it
on smartphones, tablets, or other mobile devices you might use as
well.”

346 [email protected] WorkSafeBC

 International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Using the intranet: The International Monetary Design team: The IMF intranet was designed by
Fund (IMF) is an organization of 188 member consulting firm Threespot in close collaboration with
countries working to foster global monetary the IMF project team, comprising members from the
cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate Technology and General Services (TGS) Department
international trade, promote high employment and the Communications Department’s Internal
and sustainable economic growth, and reduce Communications team.
poverty around the world.
In-house members: Archana Kumar, former
Headquarters: Washington, D.C. Internal Communications Chief; Camilla Andersen,
current Internal Communications Chief; Deb Reilly,
Number of employees the intranet supports: Chief of Information and Knowledge Management
Approximately 5,000 Division; Hari Maddineni, Chief of SharePoint Intranet
Company locations: IMF has offices in more Section; Begoña Nuñez Allue, Communications
Officer; Hélène Faurès, IT Project Manager; Sonia
than 100 countries.
Dwyer, Enterprise Information Architect; Rajitha
Locations where people use the intranet: US Devineni, Business Analyst; Graham Dwyer, Senior
headquarters, as well as offices and travelling Communications Officer; Aissata Sidibe,
staff in 188 member countries. Communications Assistant; Padraic Hughes, Chief of
Media Services Section; Scott Merker, Designer; Vera
Rhoads, User Experience Specialist; Shishir Bhandari,
Technical Lead; Joshua Sampson, Solutions Architect;
Vijay Challa, SharePoint Architect

Threespot: Jamie Colucci, Account Director; Anna

Rappoport, Project Manager; Hallie Wilfert, User
Experience Lead; James Early, Creative Director; Paul
Zolandz, Art Director; Phil Gosier, Partner/Director of
Design

SUMMARY
Even well-designed intranets stay that way only when there is a plan in place for use
and growth. That’s what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) discovered as its
intranet grew and expanded over time. The organization found itself in need of a
makeover to incorporate new technologies, update a now-dated design, and
generally clean up the clutter that can creep onto any intranet site.
A lesson learned from the previous project was that the need for intranet governance
is critical to an intranet’s success. Sites cannot maintain themselves. Growth can
quickly get out of hand. That’s why a key part of the IMF’s redesign was to create an
intranet governance structure to plan for and maintain future growth.
Previously, there was no central ownership of the site or overall strategy for
maintenance. Responsibility was shared, with the Communications Department
(COM) taking care of the homepage and news, IT controlling the technology, and
departments and other groups managing their own sites.
The team created the Intranet Council, consisting of nine members from different
departments representing all the departments at the IMF. The Council’s work started
when the redesign was finished: its job is to sustain the gains made in the redesign
by developing and enforcing guidelines and standards, and managing the growth of
the site.
The team worked with Threespot (a digital agency) to do initial user research, create
wireframes and designs, write functional specifications, and create the governance
framework. The project used a variety of user research methods to make sure the

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 team was headed in the right direction. Team members started with a large-scale
survey and moved to contextual inquiries, focus groups, and analysis of search logs
and web statistics.
The intranet homepage focuses on news in the center carousel. The clean interface
highlights six items, with each item’s headline listed at the bottom of the carousel.
This gives users a quick way to access content of interest and an easy way to scan
content without having to navigate through the carousel or wait for an animation to
occur. The first four items highlight internal news stories. The fifth spot is reserved
for a promotional item, while the sixth features the Morning Press application, which
provides links to the top external news stories about IMF.
The highlighted panel features a relevant image, headline, and summary with a link
to read more. The number of comments and the average rating is displayed, along
with the number of people who commented on the article, and the rating they gave it
out of 5 stars.
Below the carousel, the newly designed Notices area—which was previously a box
with a bunch of links—prominently highlights important announcements to staff. The
topic and date are listed, with icons that indicate the type of notice: Security, IT,
Human Resources, Management, HQ and Facilities, or General. The site also includes
the ability to post emergency notices in a prominent space at the top of the
homepage; this is a feature the team hopes not to need, but which is reassuring to
have.
Events and cafeteria menus are listed under Today at the IMF. Early research
showed employees valued quick access to cafeteria menus, so they’re still featured
on the homepage.
The right side of the page includes a way to quickly access Departments and Offices,
a list of personalized links, and links to Human Resources information. My Links are
selected for users to target major staff groups—such as economist, assistant, or non-
US employee—based on extensive user research. Users can customize these links.
The Communications Toolkit, a set of items to aid in communicating externally, is
also available, as is a box dedicated to news and messages from Management.
The Where can I find? information directory comes from an old information locator
widget that was on the prior site. This was developed to act as a navigation map to
direct employees to the best starting points for 30 subcategories of information,
which are grouped into six broader categories. This newer version of the tool has
been well received by employees, and particularly by new staff, as it helps direct
users to the best resources for key information, such as economic and financial data,
topic primers, finalized country reports, and guidelines for working with member
countries. The tool provides a description of each resource and a quick link directly to
that resource (that is, to the intranet page or application).

348 [email protected] International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 The intranet homepage focuses on current information: latest news stories,
announcements and updates, and events happening at the IMF that day. The
page also features tools to move users to information quickly: My Links, My HR,
and the Information Directory.

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 Clear navigation helps employees access content quickly. Megamenus reveal the site
structure and categories of content within major areas. The user’s current location in
the site is clearly indicated with a blue underline.

Categories are clear and distinct. The user’s current location, Services &
Resources, is indicated by a thick blue underline.

The About Us and Collaboration landing pages include a Yammer feed. Yammer is
integrated throughout the site as a way to actively engage employees in
conversation. Integrating social content in the main site, rather than requiring users
to go to a separate tool to communicate with one another, is a great way to
encourage participation. The Yammer feeds show current conversations as a way to
keep people connected to one another.
There are 208 Yammer groups at IMF, with Yammer web parts that allow both
reading and posting integrated into team sites. When new team sites are created,
the intranet team encourages the team to create a Yammer group and include a feed
on the site. Feeds can be created based on groups, company, an individual, or even
a keyword.
Although some employees started using Yammer, its use is not yet widespread
within the organization. The intranet team is currently planning to do a campaign
around the use of Yammer and other social tools and features to further increase
engagement, communication, and collaboration.

350 [email protected] International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 The site integrates Yammer feeds in key areas. Employees can read or post
content via the feed.

The site contains a lot of video content, but the previous design lacked a central
location for it, which caused many user complaints. The site’s videos now have a

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 central location, with featured videos that are regularly updated. Videos are
embedded in pages throughout the site (such as within news articles or on
departmental pages), and are all centrally catalogued in this section.
Individual departments can request video content from IMF’s Multimedia team, which
coordinates with COM to approve, modify, or request video proposals. The upload
process is centralized and maintained by COM and the IMF’s IT department,
Technology and General Services (TGS).
Users can view the featured video or browse videos. Videos are listed
chronologically, with the most recent content first. Users can also sort the videos by
popularity or browse through video categories, such as Institutional Learning, Human
Resources, and Interviews. Each video includes the title, date, a still from the video
showing some content, and the video’s length. The video will play where the featured
video is located, at the top of the page. The page also lists the number of views for
each video, helping users know what their colleagues are watching.

352 [email protected] International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 The News & Video section of the site includes a video library, where users can
search or browse to find content of interest.

Departments have their own sites and content, but the sites are integrated into the
main intranet’s structure. Each department has its own header, but follows a similar

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 structure. The first link across the top navigation is to the main intranet Home,
followed by a link to that department’s homepage, such as MCD Home. Each site
includes an About section and then has its own navigational categories, which were
created with the help of the enterprise IA team, using card-sorting exercises as a
starting point for the navigation structure.
Within department pages and across the entire intranet, the intranet search defaults
to All Sources, the broadest possible scope; this helps users who might be looking
for content that could appear in any intranet area. Users can also narrow their scope
to the current site via a This Site link above the open search box. Filler text in the
search field directs users to change the scope of their search if necessary. Users can
also narrow their results on the search results page as needed using content area
filters—such as HR, services, and news—as well as department, country, date range,
and file type.

Department pages have their own header, but follow the intranet’s general
structure. Each departmental site has a persistent link to the main intranet
homepage, Intranet Home, on the left side of the top site navigation.

The team realized that, in creating the new site, change leadership was essential and
it worked closely with stakeholders and departments to keep them informed and
involved. One big change was for content owners, who were used to having a
dedicated space on the previously crowded homepage. Communicating a new plan

354 [email protected] International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 for them was essential. At the same time, the team realized that the revamp would
mean a significant change in staff members’ daily routine, accessing the intranet, so
they paid special attention to developing a comprehensive communications plan. For
the overall organization, the team posted news stories about objectives and timing,
gave several presentations about the new design prior to launch, offered a sneak-
peek of the new designs both online and during an information symposium, and had
a broad pre-launch campaign in the two weeks leading up to the launch. The
campaign included a news article with screenshots of the new pages, a short video
highlighting the main changes, an online preview tour of the new site, and posters
and desk-to-desk flyers announcing the launch.

An example of the desk flyers used to announce the launch.

The site has been a success. Engagement, measured by participation in commenting

and rating, has more than doubled. The team will do a follow-up survey to further
evaluate the site’s success six months after launch; this will give employees time to
adapt to using the new site. Creating an organized and streamlined site, with an
Intranet Council to keep it in check, is helping ensure that the intranet remains a
powerful tool for employee communication.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 355

 BACKGROUND
It had been a while since the IMF intranet had been truly updated. The previous
intranet redesign happened seven years ago. At that time, a lot of effort and
resources were spent sorting out the IA, applying consistent navigation, and
updating the design.
Following that redesign, the intranet continued to evolve to meet the organization’s
demands. Various IT innovations were added to keep up with content growth and to
integrate new technologies and trends, including new web collaboration and
knowledge-sharing applications (Knowledge Exchange and eReview); a new search
engine that provided more flexibility for search filters and targeted content (FAST); a
new Calendar of Events; the social network Yammer; and a homepage News Rotator.
Despite those incremental improvements, the site really needed a refresh to bring it
up to current standards and to address the cluttered homepage that had resulted
from years of minor modifications and additions. In other words, it was time for a
change.
In December 2011, the IMF gathered the necessary resources and a very capable
team to kick off the project.

Goals
The project’s overarching goals were threefold:
• Deliver a user-focused design to meet the business needs of IMF staff
• Make the intranet not only a useful tool for staff, but also an engaging
place where people would come to get information and share views
• Bring the intranet in line with current intranet best practices and
technologies
Specifically, the organization wanted to achieve several tactical improvements with
the new intranet:
• A less cluttered and more organized homepage
• Easy access to resources that employees need for their daily work
(based on their own preferences)
• A sound IA and clear visual hierarchy
• Uniform branding across the intranet so users would have a consistent
browsing experience
• Modern intranet features to provide personalization, increase staff
participation, and improve information findability
• A governance structure to ensure that the intranet will continue to
grow and be maintained in a controlled and sustainable way with
future growth in mind

Challenges
Every project has its challenges, and the IMF’s intranet redesign is no different. The
organization struggled with basic project challenges related to timeline and
technology, but also experienced some organizational challenges as they had to
convince content owners and stakeholders that some content house cleaning would

356 [email protected] International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 be beneficial for the new site. In the following, IMF team members explain these two
types of challenges.
Change management challenges:
• “Change leadership was a very important aspect of this project.
Content owners were really attached to having their dedicated space
on the homepage. We had to convince them to share the prime real
estate, and offered effective solutions.” (Helene Faurès, IT Project
Manager)
• “During the design phase, some decisions to make content changes
that would benefit the organization as a whole were met with
resistance from business stakeholders who were attached to the
content they authored, even if it was not being used or needed to be
re-positioned. We worked through this with face-to-face meetings,
showing hard numbers and end user feedback, until we got the
necessary buy-in.” (Sonia Dwyer, Enterprise Information Architect)
Technology challenges:
• “The implementation phase of the project took longer than anticipated.
This was in part due to the fact that some features of the designs,
which we were told could be implemented in our SharePoint
environment, ended up being difficult or impossible to develop.”
(Faurès)

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 This is the IMF intranet homepage before the redesign. The initially sleek
homepage had become cluttered due to competing demands from various
content owners, and the IA had become less relevant due to the introduction of
new and unanticipated content.

358 [email protected] International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 In an effort to encourage knowledge sharing and discovery, the Collaboration
page provides easy access to all cross-departmental collaboration sites and
links to each department’s collection of workspaces and blogs on the IMF
intranet. Several different social media technologies have been or are being
integrated in the intranet, including content ratings and social bookmarks
(using tagging). Blogs and SharePoint team collaboration sites are heavily used.
The Collaboration page also showcases the integration with Yammer (the IMF
social network).

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 The newly redesigned Calendar of Events displays what is happening at the
IMF.

360 [email protected] International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 INTRANET REDESIGN PROJECT TEAM

The intranet team (left to right): Camilla Andersen, Graham Dwyer, Begoña
Nuñez Allue, Hari Maddineni, Aissata Sidibe, Hélène Faurès, Jamie Colucci
(Threespot), Rajitha Devineni, Joshua Sampson, Deb Reilly, Shishir Bhandari,
Phil Gosier (Threespot), Vijay Challa, Scott Merker, Hallie Wilfert (Threespot),
and Archana Kumar. Missing from photo: Sonia Dwyer, Padraic Hughes, Vera
Rhoads, Anna Rappoport (Threespot), James Early (Threespot), and Paul
Zolandz (Threespot).

GOVERNANCE

Ownership
Prior to the redesign, the IMF intranet had no clear owner. Various stakeholders
owned (or controlled) different parts of the site, with COM at the forefront controlling
the main areas of the homepage as well as the news and notices pages, and the IT
department controlling all the technology, software, and applications software, as
well as the IA and search engine and interface.
“Other departments or groups requested to have their content posted in various
spaces on an as-needed (often as-demanded!) basis,” says Begoña Nuñez Allue,
Communications Officer, “which is why the homepage had grown in a rather chaotic
way.”
In addition, each individual department managed its own websites within the
intranet. “This decentralized approach lacked cohesiveness and communication
among the parties,” she says. “In particular, it lacked a group or a body that would

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 be in charge of the vision and overall strategy of the intranet, which is why defining
a governance structure was a key objective of this project. We felt there was no
point in going through a redesign if it would all be going down the drain once it was
handed back to its multiple owners!”
One of the main organizational objectives of the intranet redesign was to implement
a governance structure to maintain the gains of the redesign and to drive sensible,
cohesive growth. This has entailed the establishment of an Intranet Council,
responsible or issuing intranet standards and for providing strategic direction for the
site overall. The council is made up of nine members, each representing different
groups or departments.

The Intranet Council was formed to coincide with the launch of the new intranet, so it
did not influence the project. “But we hope it [The Council] will help us keep our new
intranet tidy and up-to-date and ensure that it continues to meet the evolving needs
of our users,” says Faurès.

INTRANET TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES

Role Responsibilities
Two Intranet Executive
• Provide insight into organizational priorities,
Sponsors
offer continued senior-level support, and
represent the intranet to other senior
executives
Intranet Council
• Define and communicate standards and
strategic directions for the intranet
Intranet Manager
• Chair the Intranet Council, ensure compliance
with Intranet governance, and act as liaison
between the Council and Executive Sponsors
SharePoint Technical Team
• Manage SharePoint integration, development,
and support
Applications Owners
• Direct the design, development, and
maintenance of web-based intranet applications
Departmental Webmasters
• Design, maintain, and update departmental
sites
Content Owners
• Post, update, and retire intranet content

USERS
All IMF staff members use the intranet, and it is set as the default homepage on all
IMF computer browsers (although staff members can change this). The intranet is
the key communication vehicle for conveying important information to all staff.
Some common uses of the intranet include:
• Read IMF-related news and notices, and learn about events

362 [email protected] International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 • Use tools and applications needed to do their work
• Submit requests for various services (facilities, multimedia, events)
• Search and apply for job openings
• View personal information
• Perform almost all HR-related tasks
• Search for information
Certain intranet areas are reserved for specific groups, including closed collaboration
sites and some sections of the departmental websites, which are controlled by
individual departments and often contain both a public area accessible to all staff and
a restricted area accessible to the department only.

URL AND ACCESS

ACCESS INFORMATION
Item Status
URL
• http://www-
intranet.imf.org/Pages/IntranetHome.aspx
Default Status
• The intranet is set as the default homepage on
all staff members’ computers, but they can change
the default.
Remote Access
• Many IMF staff members work and access the
intranet remotely on a regular basis. Remote
access is provided through Windows Terminal
Server (Citrix) from any computer or through SSL-
VPN from IMF computers.
• The organization is currently working to give
iPad users access to mobile-friendly intranet pages
and applications.

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY WORK

Design Approach
There were certain aspects of the intranet design that the team knew had to be
addressed—urgently—such as updating the look and feel, and decluttering the
homepage. However, in order to gain in-depth knowledge of what other areas had to
be targeted and what the project goals should be, the team did a lot of research in
the project’s early stages.
An early survey, conducted by IMF’s partner, Threespot, was aimed at finding out
the staff’s preferences for the intranet: what they liked about it and what they didn’t,
what they would like to have on the new site, and so on.
The survey received what Nuñez calls “an incredible response,” with more than 36%
staff participation. “It allowed us to collect a vast amount of data from employees

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 related to their use and preferences. It gave us lots of raw data that could be
dissected into pieces and analyzed in charts and spreadsheets, but it also gave us a
lot of personal opinions and anecdotal evidence, which was helpful to understand
how the staff truly felt about the intranet,” she says.
The Threespot team also conducted contextual inquiries during which they went to
people’s offices to see how people actually used the intranet in their daily work. They
conducted focus groups with staff from across the IMF, and interviewed key
stakeholders and staff in positions at all levels. Lastly, they reviewed the search logs,
web statistics, and other available data.
Overall, the new intranet design was developed following a user-centered approach
and employing a variety of research methods, including:
• An IMF -wide survey in early 2012 that gathered responses from 1,230
participants
• Search log analysis of the top 100 search terms
• Site usage analysis of the top 100 most-visited pages on the intranet
• Sentiment analysis from comments derived from previous years’
surveys conducted by TGS and COM
• Interviews with 20 business stakeholders and intranet users, during
which each stakeholder answered eight questions
• An intranet news article issued August 12, 2012
• Usability testing with 10 intranet users
• Presentation of a new design to webmasters
• More than 100 meetings held with cross-functional teams, including
the core project team and representatives from different functions,
such as the COM team, SharePoint Intranet team, Enterprise
Information Architecture team, Graphic Services, and the Web
Infrastructure Team
During the planning phases, the project team spent a significant amount of time
analyzing the user needs; once the design phase was underway, the project team
went back to the users to present the new designs to stakeholders and all IMF staff
at a well-attended meeting open to the entire organization.
“Ultimately,” says Nuñez, “the research was extremely valuable in guiding both the
overall direction of the project and the many individual parts of it.”
“On the old homepage, content owners decided what content should be displayed
and competed for the real estate,” she says. “The intranet redesign delivered a
streamlined, uncluttered homepage by drastically shifting the focus toward content
that users need to do their daily work (relying on search and usage statistics), and
encourages sharing of prime real estate among content owners.”

364 [email protected] International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 TIMELINE
The overall project timeline was 18 months, from kick-off to launch.

INTRANET TIMELINE
Milestone Date Milestone Description
1996
• First IMF intranet
December 2011
• Redesign project kick-off
January 2012
• User needs analysis complete
April 2012
• Wireframes complete
July 2012
• Usability testing
July 2012
• Outreach: presentation of designs to all IMF
staff, intranet news article, presentation of
designs to stakeholders
August 2012
• Designs final
November 2012
• Functional specifications complete
December 2012
• Technical specifications complete
January 2013
• Start of development activities, including:
o Develop/implement new designs for 11
pages provided by Threespot.
o Apply new branding and styles to the
rest of the 200+ pages in the homepage
site collection.
o SharePoint 2010 upgrade of the
homepage site collection (remediation
activities of components that were
broken after the visual upgrade).
April 2013
• Start of quality assurance (QA) testing
May 2013
• New intranet ready for user acceptance testing
June 2013
• Launch of new design

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 CONTENT AND CONTENT CONTRIBUTORS
The IMF intranet uses SharePoint’s native CMS features. SharePoint was chosen not
specifically for its CMS capabilities but for its full range of functionalities, including
content management, search, collaboration, and social media functionalities.
The IMF intranet has a distributed content model governed by a newly formed IMF
Intranet Council. The enterprise IA team guides the IA, search, and content
standards. Individual departments develop and post their own content. The COM
team is in charge of producing and coordinating the flow of the daily news on the
homepage, and reviews and approves other top-level content on the intranet. The
COM team has 10 members and receives content contributions from staff across
more than 20 IMF departments and offices. The newly instituted Intranet Council will
be working on a more comprehensive content strategy in the near future, with the
goal of standardizing publishing workflows for centralized sites across the
organization.
All intranet contributors receive extensive training and support, which includes
ongoing internal in-person training courses. Extensive training and support materials
and videos are available on the intranet, and the design team has published
guidelines, tips, and best practices for authoring and sharing on the intranet. These
are published on the Working with SharePoint site, the Finding Fund-wide
Information site, and the Enterprise Search help site. These guidelines will be
consolidated soon into a set of holistic governance documents, again through the
organization’s new Intranet Council. The guidelines will be made available to staff on
the intranet.
Finally, a very active group of departmental webmasters—the SharePoint Users
group—has been an excellent channel to exchange ideas, tips, and best practices.

TECHNOLOGY
On the technology front, the organization recently upgraded from SharePoint 2007 to
2010. SharePoint 2010 came with new social features such as tagging, which the
organization will rollout and promote in the near future.

366 [email protected] International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 TECHNOLOGY
Category Technology Used
Web Server Hardware and
• Windows Server 2008 R2; infrastructure is
O/S
virtual (4 WFE, 2 App on Content Farm, 2
App and 2 WFE is Services Farm, 4 FAST
Servers)
Bug Tracking/Quality
• Excel (Quality Center is the official
Assurance
requirements and bug tracking tool)
Design Tools
• Visual Studio 2010; Adobe design suite

Site Building Tools

• SharePoint 2010
Content Management Tools
• SharePoint 2010, eDocs DM for document
management
Search
• FAST for SharePoint 2010
Other Functions
• Mobile application development, Yammer
for social collaboration, TagXchange (SOA
tool for ratting, tagging, and commenting)

MOBILE
IMF staff members can access an anonymous (no authentication necessary) mobile-
friendly intranet site from their Blackberry devices. The mobile site includes intranet
news, notices, events, a Communication Toolkit, people search, and resources for
working remotely. In addition, three departments currently have a mobile-friendly
version of their departmental page.
The Blackberry-only approach was not intended to be the mobile endgame. “When
we started working on the intranet redesign, our intent was to implement a
responsive design using HTML5 and CSS3,” says Faurès. “However, we had to give
up due to incompatibilities between Internet Explorer 9 and SharePoint 2010.
Therefore, the team is currently at work on a custom intranet site for iPad users,
with a target launch date of spring 2014.”
At that time, the team will most likely retire the Blackberry site.
This iPad-friendly version of the intranet will provide more available content as new
iPad-friendly intranet sites and applications are launched. The first iPad-friendly
application to go live will be eReview, a workflow application used to review and clear
documents.
The jump from Blackberry to tablet devices makes sense as interest and usage of
tablet devices has increased among the organization’s business clients. The IMF
made the decision to support iPad devices a few years ago, and it now supports
approximately 1,700 (IMF-provided) iPads and 500 personal iPads, and expects to
add 1,000 more in coming months. With so many staff on-the-go and increasing
demand, a decision was made recently to give every professional staff member an
iPad, doubling the number of iPads in use across the organization. There is also

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 momentum toward iPhone adoption, and discussions are underway to allow IMF staff
a choice between an iPhone and a Blackberry.

SEARCH
The IMF chose FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 for its intranet because it is rated as
a top-tier search engine and is designed for the SharePoint platform. The decision to
use FAST was made after reviewing other highly rated enterprise search engines.
“We know that no enterprise search engine is a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ tool,” says Sonia
Dwyer, Enterprise Information Architect. “They all need to be configured to match
the content being searched in the organization.”
To address these required configurations, Dwyer explains the customizations the IMF
team has made to FAST:
• Search scopes: Enterprise search guides users to different content
sources through the following defined scopes, which are presented as
filters above the search box on all intranet pages:
o All Sources searches across all content sources below
o Intranet searches on intranet content
o IMF.org searches on IMF public site
o People searches on SharePoint My Sites
o KE Documents searches on Knowledge Exchange Documents (a
collection of selected country reports, research papers and IMF
publications)
• Content sources and prioritization: “Content sources are treated
and weighed equally by the search engine,” says Dwyer, adding that
the search engine does not prioritize content sources differently. Role-
based, or “user-context,” search is planned for the next year.
• Crawl rules: “We have in total about 42 different rules for content
inclusion and exclusion to make searches more accurate and exclude
‘noise’ from SharePoint items,” Dwyer says. “Crawl rules are updated
as needed.”
• Custom metadata/managed properties: “We have in total about
62 configured SharePoint managed properties for all content sources
to improve search results and content retrieval,” Dwyer says.
“Managed properties are also used for Advanced Search to ensure that
users are searching IMF metadata fields for very specific searches.
Every time a new content source is added, we need to map the
crawled properties to managed properties.”
• Relevance tuning: “FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint
provides flexibility for tuning relevance in several ways,” she says.
“Relevance is not absolute and perceived relevance differs greatly
among users. As part of the longer term intranet renewal, we are in
the process of centralizing and elevating key information on the
intranet in parallel with efforts to ‘upskill’ staff on content management
best practices.”

368 [email protected] International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 An example search results page shows recent enhancements as part of the
intranet redesign, including filters, best bets, and search tips.

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 IMF My Sites provide information on expertise/skills and interests as well as
great opportunities for social networking connecting people to people. My Sites
are a personal website that gives each staff member his or her own central
location to store, manage, and share work-related information. My Sites are
fully searchable to exploit the tool’s powerful networking potential.

RESULTS AND ROI

Sometimes the easiest way to gauge a redesign’s success is to listen to the
feedback. The IMF team received some glowing reviews from its users after the
initial launch. Here are a few examples:
“Thank you for the much simplified layout. Easy on the eyes and the mind.”
“I really like the fact that I can now personalize the quick links on the homepage.
I didn’t use them before as they were buried at the bottom of the page and
cluttered with links that were irrelevant to me. This is a great improvement!”
“I like the new format. It is sleek and modern looking and has a lot more
information available through the menus. Well done!”
“To be fair,” says Nuñez, “We also received complaints from people who couldn’t find
certain links and features in the beginning, but we actually expected that. We knew
it would take people some time to get their bearings in the new intranet. We even
went ahead and made some minor tweaks to some links to address some recurring
complaints received in the first few days.”
Users are not only happy with the new design; they’re using the site more often and
engaging with its features. New story readership has increased (as measured by
unique visitors and page visits) since the launch, but—more importantly—actual
engagement has increased significantly. “By engagement, we mean the amount of

370 [email protected] International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 staff participation in the comments and ratings features on our stories,” says Nuñez.
“Our stories used to receive barely a handful of comments (on average, although it
varied by topic). Since the launch, participation in our stories has more than
doubled. We think this is partially a result of the improved presentation of news
stories in the new, dynamic News Rotator, as well as the prominent display of the
comments feature in the News Rotator and the News and Video page.”
Engagement with and use of search has also increased with the new design.

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 The newly created News and Video page highlights all the improvements made
to the news delivered at the IMF. It features a much-improved interface to
showcase videos, with better organization in more detailed and intuitive
categories to facilitate users finding the right information at the right time.

372 [email protected] International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 The updated Notices page is accessible from the Notices webpart on the
homepage. The old pages were simply a list of notices sorted chronologically.
On the page’s new version, the team added a filter to sort notices by category
and displayed a visual category icon next to each notice, similar to the Notices
webpart on the homepage. The new page is clean and clearly readable, and it
offers a visual cue (icons) to indicate the notice type (Security, IT, HR,
Management, HQ & Facilities, or General).

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 LESSONS LEARNED
The IMF team shares some lessons learned:
• The designers must understand the constraints of the
technology. “Make sure that whoever designs your new intranet has
deep knowledge and expertise of the platform on which the new
intranet will be implemented (SharePoint, in our case). There were a
few details and features in our designs that could not be technically
implemented, and we had to do some adjustments. Ideally, this should
not happen.” (Faurès)
• Transition users with care. “Plan for change management, not just
communication, to inform users about the new design. Old habits die
hard, and when people are used to finding things a certain way (even
if the methods are old-fashioned or clunky), abrupt changes are never
accepted easily. Beyond informing users of the new design and
providing a cursory view of what would be new, I think we could have
taken a more in-depth approach at mapping out how to use the new
features and anticipating questions or concerns. We wouldn’t redesign
the building without providing a map before people arrived on the first
day; we should treat our virtual space the same way.” (Dwyer)
• Give the team time to do what they need to do. “One lesson I
learned from this exercise was to always allow more time than you
anticipate at each step in the process. Don’t try to cut corners by
‘tightening’ the time dedicated to any activity. We were so eager to
complete this project that we often gave ourselves pretty harsh
deadlines. A number of people involved in this project had other
projects or jobs to deal with, and there were times when meeting
those deadlines was a big challenge. The work always got done in the
end and it was all worth it, but there were moments of tension and a
lot of extra hours!” (Nuñez)
• Communicate early and often—with stakeholders. “Make sure
that stakeholders are consulted often and thoroughly. This project
touched so many different groups and aspects of the intranet that it
was hard to keep everyone on board and aware of all the changes that
were proposed, designed, tested, and finally implemented. After the
launch—despite all our best efforts to communicate with everyone
prior to this date—there were still a few people who were surprised at
some of the changes to their areas. As a result, some small tweaks
had to be made later in the game, even after the new intranet had
been launched.” (Nuñez)

374 [email protected] International Monetary Fund (IMF)

 • Communicate early and often—with users. “My advice would be to
invest in a strong communications campaign to keep users of the
intranet informed. Nothing goes down worse with staff than changes to
their daily routine (the intranet being a big part of it) catching them by
surprise. In that respect, we feel our project was quite successful.
Along the way, we kept staff in the loop by posting news stories about
the objectives and timing of the revamp, doing presentations of the
new design months before it was launched, sharing the look of the
future intranet online and at an information symposium, and launching
a big pre-launch campaign two weeks prior to going live (including a
news story, posters and desk-to-desk flyers, a video highlighting the
main changes and features, and an preview tool that allowed people to
explore the new intranet prior to using it). There was virtually no way
you could work at the Fund and not know that the intranet was going
to be upgraded!” (Nuñez)
• Court stakeholders with care. “Management’s support is crucial.
IMF senior staff, including the CIO and deputy director of COM, were
strong advocates for the program and actively participated in the
communication campaign.” (Faurès)
• Test with users. “Make sure to do usability testing to validate your
assumptions. In our case, users were confused with the search control
and the new Where can I find? tool. We changed the labeling
accordingly. We also got feedback that some content that we removed
from the homepage was actually very important, and we had to put it
back.” (Faurès)
“Despite all the analysis, testing, and pre-launch communication you
will do, be ready to answer questions such as: ‘Where did my content
go?’ We got a lot of them, and had to quickly prepare a Q&A to
address all those questions after the launch.” (Faurès)
• Stand behind your work. “Be prepared to stand by the new design,
realizing that any change is difficult for people to accept. Avoid the
temptation to drift back to the old design or way of doing things just
because some people make a fuss about having to re-adapt. Be armed
with valid reasons for each change when put under pressure by
‘squeaky wheels.’” (Dwyer)
• Establish ongoing governance. “No matter how good your new
intranet is on day one, you will immediately be under a lot of pressure
from various content owners to modify the design and user experience
in order to accommodate their needs. In that context, the gains from
an intranet redesign can vanish very quickly, which is why the IMF felt
that it was very important to establish a governance structure. The
Intranet Council must vet any change to the main pages of the
intranet. In addition, departmental webmasters are required to follow
the intranet standards to ensure a unified look-and-feel, a consistent
user experience across the intranet, and optimal information
findability.” (Faurès)

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 Saudi Food & Drug Authority

Using the intranet: Management and team members: Falah AL-Mutairi,

The Saudi Food & Drug Authority (SFDA) was Executive Assistant President of IT (project sponsor);
established under the Council of Ministers as an Faisal Alturaif, Executive Director of E-Service;
independent corporate body that reports to the Bander Al-Johani, Portals Manager; Abdulaziz
president of the Council of Ministers. The AlFakhrei, Head of Smart Systems; Mohammed
objective of the Authority is to ensure the safety AlMutairi, Intranet Project Manager; Fahad Alquait,
of food and drugs available for both man and Web Developer & Web Designer; Fahad Alanezi, Web
animal, and to ensure the safety of biological and Developer; Abdulaziz Alsughyyer, Systems Specialist
chemical substance, and electronic products.
Implementation partner: Sure International
Headquarters: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Technology
Number of employees the intranet supports:
2,000

Company locations: Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam

and other 30 office branches across Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia.

SUMMARY
Understanding the true work that employees do and giving them the freedom and tools to
do it is the backbone of the Saudi Food & Drug Authority’s intranet. The designers of
“Bawabaty” ( ‫ ) ﺑﻮاﺑﺘﻲ‬which means “my portal” in Arabic, made the intranet highly
customizable. The team considered the needs of the 2,000 people in 32 different branches
that the intranet supports. These users — including administrators, content authors who
have permissions to write only, content authors who can write as well as approve content,
and end users — have varied requests and desires. Thus, designers made 70% of the
homepage customizable via widgets. In this area, employees may move, add, or remove
widgets as they desire.
Moving widgets is simple by clicking the move (cross) icon in the upper left corner of the
widget, then just dragging and dropping it to the position in which they want it to appear.
The icon looks like the oft-used move symbol, which makes it easy to decipher. As a widget
is dragged, a transparent version of it is displayed to make the action obvious. Once
dropped, the widget falls into its new position, and the widget that held the position
automatically moves out of the way and down to the next slot on the page.
Common barriers to customizing pages on intranets include:
• Discovering it’s not possible to customize
• Not finding the method to customize
• A complex UI that’s hard to use and gives little feedback when trying
But none of these issues are present on Bawabaty. On the contrary, this interface makes it
easy for employees to test and investigate layout options for the homepage that best suit
their needs.

376 [email protected] Saudi Food & Drug Authority

 Image 1. SFDA Intranet: Homepage. The Saudi Food & Drug Authority’s intranet
makes it simple to move sections (called “widgets”) around on the homepage. A widget
is moved by doing a click-hold-drag action on the move icon (the blue plus sign), found
in the left of a widget title bar. 53_SFDA_01_movingWidgets_live.png

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 Image 2. SFDA Intranet: Widget Move Feedback Display. When dragging a
widget on the SFDA intranet, the user sees a transparent version of the widget. This is
great feedback and makes the user feel in control.
54_SFDA_02_movingWidgets_live.png

378 [email protected] Saudi Food & Drug Authority

 Image 3. SFDA Intranet: New Widget Positioning. After the widget is dropped, it
snaps into position, and the widget that was in the space before automatically moves
down a spot. 55_SFDA_03_movingWidgets_live.png

To remove a widget, users click the X icon in the upper left of the widget. Employees are
asked to confirm widget removal, which is a nice safety feature to help prevent errors.

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 Image 4. SFDA Intranet: Confirm Widget Removal. As a safety net, users are
asked to confirm their action when removing a widget.
56_SFDA_04_removingWidgets_live.png

People may add widgets easily via the yellow icon in the far upper left corner of the
homepage. Clicking it opens categories of widgets the users may select from.

380 [email protected] Saudi Food & Drug Authority

 Image 5. SFDA Intranet: Adding Widgets to Homepage. Employees may add
widgets on the homepage of the SFDA intranet by using the icon in the far upper left.
57_SFDA_05_AddingWidgets_live.png

Besides the “non-fixed widgets” that employees may choose to use, designers created “fixed
widgets” as well. These comprise the most important content that everyone needs, like
news, announcements, and all internal services. The page is arranged in sections with
borders and backgrounds so users may easily scan for the information they are looking for.

Image 6. SFDA Intranet: Fixed Widgets. The sections (widgets) in the top part of
the homepage are not moveable, evident by their lack of the move icon.
58_SFDA_06_home_live.png

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 Widgets provide a range of functionality that is helpful in doing day-to-day work, such as
the e-library, the English-Arabic (bidirectional) language translator, and date conversion.
The e-library widgets provide quick access to shared folders and a document library for all
departments and groups. Access to the e-library is controlled by the permissions given for
each group, and each shared folder has an administrative user from the appropriate
department or group.

Image 7. SFDA Intranet: e-library Widgets. The e-library on the SFDA intranet
houses shared folders and a document library. 59_SFDA_07_eLibrary_live.png

Widgets that are less work related are also available, such as Special Offers. Employees may
sort the offers using filters on the right.

382 [email protected] Saudi Food & Drug Authority

 Image 8. SFDA Intranet: Special Offers Widget. Employees may sort offers in the
Special Offers widget by using filters on the right. 60_SFDA_08_filters_live.png

Other non-work related tools on Bawabaty are weather and prayer time. These appear as
shortcuts in the upper left of pages, in the topmost blue bar. In this same area, users may
also change their location to display information related to that location.
Designers made it easy to get started when browsing using the menus by offering only three
top-level navigation choices: Home, My Services, and e-Library. These appear in the right-
most part of the blue horizontal bar second from top of page. The site’s search is in the far
left of the same blue bar.

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 Image 9. SFDA Intranet: Global Navigation. Top-level navigation on the SFDA
intranet is limited to three choices. Search is also readily available and users may
change locations. 61_SFDA_09_home_live_CROPPED.png

Bawabaty keeps employees updated in a number of ways. For example, users may see news
items in the news list, and filter those items.

384 [email protected] Saudi Food & Drug Authority

 Image 10. SFDA Intranet: News. Intranet users may see and filter the news items
in the news list. 62_SFDA_10_newsList_live.png

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 The Notifications Center, located under the employee’s name above the search box, consists
of three icons — emails, calendar, and notebook — that correspond with various tasks and
messages for that user. It is integrated with other internal systems, like Microsoft Exchange
Server, so employees can be informed about any pending emails, meetings, and tasks that
are due. The icons appear with red badges showing the numbers of items pending, and
when a given icon is clicked, it displays a drop-down list of the latest five items,
respectively.

Image 11. SFDA Intranet: Notifications Center Emails. Hovering over the first
icon, the envelope, in the Notification Center displays a list of the most recent unread
emails, including the sender and subject. 63_SFDA_11_NotificationCenter_live.png

386 [email protected] Saudi Food & Drug Authority

 Image 12. SFDA Intranet: Notifications Center Calendar. Hovering over the
second icon, the calendar, in the Notification Center displays a list of upcoming
meetings including the subject and time. 64_SFDA_12_NotificationCenter_live.png

Image 13. SFDA Intranet: Notifications Center Notebook. Hovering over the
third icon, the notebook, in the Notification Center displays a list of tasks to do.
65_SFDA_13_NotificationCenter_live.png

The Photo Gallery is a visual way to stay abreast of happenings at the organization.

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 Image 14. SFDA Intranet: Photo Gallery. Photos of events posted on the SFDA
intranet help people stay abreast of happenings at the organization.
66_SFDA_14_PhotoGallery_live.png

Employees may also learn about one another through their profile pages, which collate and
display the latest information from various systems (e.g., Human Resources). Employees
may search for each other via the Employee Directory widget by various criteria, such as
first name, last name, phone number, or email address — and they can do so in either
Arabic or English.

388 [email protected] Saudi Food & Drug Authority

 Image 15. SFDA Intranet: Employee Directory Widget. The Employee Directory
widget on the SFDA intranet helps people find one another.
67_SFDA_15_employeeDirectory_live.png

Image 16. SFDA Intranet: Employee Profile. The Employee Profile page on the
SFDA intranet combines the most current information from various sources.
68_SFDA_16_employeeDirectory_live.png

To locate other information, users may search Bawabaty via the search field in the far left of
the global navigation bar. The results page displays a clear title for each result, a short

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 description, a URL, and icons to designate document types. Users can preview a document
in the list of results by hovering over it — no click interaction is needed. This helps users
feel in control and avoid errors by not clicking open unwanted documents.
On the left of the search results page are filters that employees can use to display results by
document type. They may also use the date slider to choose a date range to exclude results.

Image 17. SFDA Intranet: Search Results. Search results on the SFDA intranet
display a title, description, link and icons. Filters on the left allow users to refine the
results. 69_SFDA_17_Search_live.png

390 [email protected] Saudi Food & Drug Authority

 Image 18. SFDA Intranet: Search Results Preview. Hovering over a result on the
SFDA intranet’s search results displays a preview of the document.
70_SFDA_18_Search_live.png

Flexibility and function are uniquely combined in this intranet. Employees may work the way
they choose to, while being highly supported by this solid design.

BACKGROUND
When SFDA was established ten years ago, it created an intranet that helped employees
complete their daily tasks. This early intranet included a document center, news, and a few
services. At that time the intranet was serving approximately 200 employees and its
offerings were sufficient.
Recently, however, the SFDA expanded its number of branches and services, and the
employee count has grown significantly. The organization now has more than 2,000
employees distributed across 30 branch locations across many cities in the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia. As a result of this expansion, the intranet had become crowded with many
links, documents, and services, none of which were organized. It had become difficult for
employees to access the information they needed and the search function was not returning
useful results.
Top management decided it was time to improve the intranet, to keep it in pace with the
organization’s expansion.

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 In the beginning, the design team held many brainstorming sessions to identify the primary
goals for the new intranet. The team also sent a survey to all employees to solicit their
feedback about the current intranet and what improvements they needed to help them
complete daily tasks more easily.
The team also conducted a gap analysis on the current intranet to find the week points and
analyze the existing content. Once all this information was synthesized, three main goals for
the project and the new intranet were identified:
• Assist employees in performing their daily tasks easily.
• Provide community tools to enhance communication between employees
• Simplify access to corporate information
With the help of top management, the design team achieved these goals, despite a difficult
development process and a lot of challenges with content development and integration with
legacy systems.

Image 19. SFDA Intranet: Old Homepage. The old SFDA intranet homepage as it
looked before the redesign. 71_SFDA_19_oldIntranetHomePage_old.png

392 [email protected] Saudi Food & Drug Authority

 Image 20. SFDA Intranet: New Homepage. With the redesigned intranet all
widgets and content are accessible from the intranet homepage via one click.
72_SFDA_20_Home_live.png

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 Image 21. SFDA Intranet: My Services Megamenu. The My Services megamenu
on the SFDA intranet provides quick access to all the information in the My Services
content area. 73_SFDA_21_myservices_live.png

394 [email protected] Saudi Food & Drug Authority

 Image 22. SFDA Intranet: My Services Homepage. The My Services homepage
provides access to all services links, forms, guidelines, and documents that are
published for employee reference, all in one area of the site and categorized according
functional area. 74_SFDA_22_myservices_live.png

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 INTRANET TEAM

SFDA project team members and management (top row, left to right): Falah AL-
Mutairi, Faisal Alturaif, Bander Al-Johani, (bottom row, left to right) Mohammed
AlMutairi, Abdulaziz Al-Fakhri, Fahad Alquait, Fahad Alanezi, and Abdulaziz Alsughyyer.

396 [email protected] Saudi Food & Drug Authority

 GOVERNANCE

INTRANET TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES

Role Responsibilities
Intranet Section Team • Manage the redesign project
• Manage the design and development activities,
and infrastructure
• Coordinate communication between other
intranet teams within SFDA, including:
o Public Relations department
o Content owners from various
departments
• Train and support content owners
Public Relations • Serve as intranet portal owner
Department
• Manage intranet content
• Coordinate with other departments regarding
their content
Content Owners • Each is responsible for updating and
maintaining the consistency of their assigned
section
• Delegate some part of the updates or changes
to other team members or departments, as
necessary

Figure 1. SFDA Intranet Team Responsibilities

USERS
The intranet is integrated with Active Directory. Since every employee exists in Active
Directory, every user can access Bawabaty according to his group and department
permissions. Each group and department has private content, which is kept from those
outside the group. The publishing team can target content for specific groups.

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 URL AND ACCESS

ACCESS INFORMATION
Item Status
URL • http://bawabaty
• The same URL is used for both desktop and
mobile devices since the intranet uses a
responsive design.
Default Status • Users choose whether or not to bookmark the
site. It is not required as a user’s homepage.
Remote Access • Users can access Bawabaty remotely via VPN.

Figure 2. SFDA URL and Access Information

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY WORK

Design Approach
When the SFDA management team decided to create a real intranet portal to replace the old
intranet, they assigned a project team and gave them their full support. They also defined
the project goals as follows:
• Help employees do their work and improve productivity
• Help employees find content quickly and easily and improve usability
• Ensure information is accurate and up-to-date
• Provide efficient access to content and tools
• Create a consistent user experience
• Create a consistent look and feel
• Align intranet content with business workflows
• Facilitate collaboration across groups and departments
• Empower content providers to manage their own information
• Follow intranet standards
• Create better categorization
• Promote best practices across the site(s)
• Eliminate wasted clicks
• Create tools that are easier to learn and use
• Enhance knowledge sharing

The key to achieving this comprehensive list of goals was to do a lot of research and find
ways to gather feedback from users. To that end, the following activities were conducted:

398 [email protected] Saudi Food & Drug Authority

 • Surveys: The team designed a questionnaire to query employees about their
needs, experiences, and expectations for the new intranet, as well as their
opinion of old site. The survey was sent to all employees and helped the team
discover three main things:
o There was great demand for an updated employee directory.
o Employees had a strong desire for social features as well as social news.
o Having an e-library and a documents library is considered essential on an
intranet nowadays.
• User experience best practice study: Through books, reports, and other
resources, the team studied up on contemporary user experience trends and best
practice.
• Brainstorming: In the early stage of the project, the team held weekly
brainstorming sessions with internal teams to generate new ideas and discuss
intranet features. Those features were prioritized and then discussed in more
detail. Sessions were also conducted during the design phase to assess the
implementation of prioritized features.
• Gap analysis: The team performed a gap analysis to:
o Analyze the current state of the intranet, including features, content, and
tools used
o Determine (from brainstorming sessions) a set of desired outcomes
o Identify gaps that need filled or resolved to get the maximum value into
the new intranet
• Standards and guidelines development: Through a redesign of the
architecture, the team created and documented (as a content manual) a new
information hierarchy and content map to help content authors in writing, styling,
and classifying the new content.
Management was closely involved in every activity, providing feedback and support to the
design team.

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 TIMELINE

PROJECT MILESTONES
Milestone Date Milestone Description
January 2007 • Launch of first SFDA intranet
August 2013 • Create vision document and requirements
analysis, conduct usability studies to inform
design of new intranet
October 2013 • Project begins
December 2013 • Design phase
February 2014 • Implementation
March 2014 • Deployment
May 2014 • Develop content
June 2014 • Launch and go live for new intranet

Figure 3. SFDA Project Milestones

CONTENT AND CONTENT CONTRIBUTORS

The site uses the CMS functionality in SharePoint 2013 for content management. They chose
this solution because the organization uses many Microsoft technologies and they have
many experienced SharePoint developers working in-house.
Content owners (approximately ten) from different departments across the organization
provide content, which is then reviewed by the department that owns the intranet: Public
Relations.
Initial training for content authors consisted of a three-day training program and content
contributors were given a handout containing content best practice guidelines. The design
team conducted an additional three-hour training session after launch to field questions
from authors and discuss additional best practices. As well, content authors are regularly
provided with video tutorials and other tips.

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© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 401
 Image 23. SFDA Intranet: Publishing and Approval Tool. The publishing workflow
starts when authors add or edit content using the editing tool provided by SharePoint.
Authors then send the content to the Public Relations department for approval, which
can approve and publish the content, edit the content first then publish it, or reject it
and provide feedback and comments for the author to follow up with.
75_SFDA_23_Editing_live.png

TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY
Category Technology Used
Web Server Hardware and OS • Five servers (see hardware architecture
diagram below)
• Windows Server 2012 Standard
Bug Tracking and Quality • Team Foundation Server (TFS) quality
Assurance assurance
Design Tools • Photoshop
• Dreamweaver
Site Building Tools • Visual Studio 2012
• SQL Server 2012
• SharePoint Designer 2012
Content Management Tools • SharePoint 2013
Search • SharePoint 2013 Search (embedded FAST
Search)

Figure 4. SFDA Intranet Technology

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 NLB

SFDA-INTRAWFE1 SFDA-INTRAWFE2

1st SQL 2012 Server 2nd SQL 2012 Server

Active Failover Passive

SFDA-INTRADB1 SFDA-INTRADB1

SFDA-INTRAOWA1

1 TB SAN
Image 24. SFDA Intranet: Server Architecture. This diagram shows the hardware
architecture design of the SFDA intranet. The site relies on two servers for the web
front and indexing services. A SharePoint farm (with NLB) configuration was
implemented to provide highly available services. Microsoft SQL 2012 servers are
connected to SAN storage and used to host the database. Windows Server 2012
Standard edition (clustering) technology is configured for SQL that provides the
services with redundancy and continuity in case of failure.
76_SFDA_24_hardware_architecture_diagram.png

MOBILE
The SFDA team chose to employ a responsive design to lower their development efforts and
administration overhead, and to provide a unified user experience regardless of how users
access the site.
The fixed widgets are the only widgets available on mobile devices, since they comprise the
most important part of the intranet, and employees don’t need non-fixed widgets when out
of the office. All other site features (besides non-fixed widgets) are available.
Users can access Bawabaty from their mobile devices, only through VPN.

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 Image 25. SFDA Intranet: Homepage Phone View. Homepage of the SFDA
intranet as seen on a mobile phone. 77_SFDA_25_mobile_live.png

SEARCH
One of the reasons the team chose SharePoint 2013 as the intranet platform is because of
the powerful search engine it provided. “We adapted this out-of-the-box search engine and
it has provided the intranet with rich search features such as content categorization and
filtering, indexing, a friendly relationship with Microsoft Office web apps, support for Arabic
language content, as well as great search results, that can be displayed based on content
permissions,” says project manager Mohammed AlMutairi.

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 Image 26. SFDA Intranet: Employee Directory Search Results. This image shows
an example of results after searching the Employee Directory. The directory is a
standalone feature, with its own database, and integrated with other systems to
provide up-to-date information. 78_SFDA_26_employeeDirectory_live.png

RESULTS AND ROI

SFDA does not measure the intranet’s success in hard numbers. Instead, it gauges user
sentiment to help determine whether or not the site has been successful. Survey results
reveal that users are happy with the new intranet, but perhaps a more important measure
than satisfaction is a rise in usage. Employees are visiting the site and using it, while the old
intranet was left mostly ignored.
A couple of features have been particularly well received:

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 405

 • The new Employee Directory has received a lot of appreciation. The old
directory was not updated and was not providing relevant results so users
appreciate the availability of accurate and up-to-date information about their
colleagues.
• Widgets have given users the ability to customize their homepage with
information tailored to their needs.

LESSONS LEARNED
The SFDA team shares a few lessons learned:
• Share the vision and goals with team and stakeholders.
• Communicate with stakeholders early.
• Get support from senior management for content development and integration
purposes.
• Invest in user experience design. A successful design leads to intranet
success.
• Make sure the site serves user needs. Employees will be interested in visiting
the intranet frequently if information is helpful and tools aid productivity.

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The Swedish Parliament
OVERVIEW

COMPANY TEAM
The Swedish Parliament Design team: The core in-house team consisted of
three people, with a further 10–12 project members
Headquarters: Stockholm, Sweden who changed over time depending on the project
Company locations: Stockholm, Sweden phase and the work being done. The internal team
worked mainly with the digital agency Creuna and
Locations where the intranet is used: Mainly in together they formed a big project team. The
Stockholm, Sweden, but also when members communications agency Futurniture had a smaller
travel or are in their hometowns. role in the project.
Annual sales: N/A Project sponsor: Karin Hedman, Head Of
Information Department and Intranet System Owner

In-house core team: Jessica Stringer Bodin, Main

THE INTRANET Project Manager; Birgitta Elgemyr, Web Editor; Paul
Lernmark, Technical Project Manager (Consultant)
Users: Approximately 1,500 users at the
Swedish Parliament, with three main target In-house team: Mikael Stridh, Graphic Designer;
groups: members of parliament, party Ingeborg Granlund, Project Communication; Anna
secretariats of the parties represented in Elding, Content Team Leader; Åse Karlsen, Web
parliament, and the parliament administration. Editor; Katarina Willstedt, Web Editor; Lars
Gustavson, Communication Strategist
Mobile approach: Responsive web design
Creuna digital agency: Janna Palmgren, Project
Technology platform: EPiServer 7 CMS, Apache
Manager; Katja Engelhart, UX Lead; Angelina
Solr, SharePoint 2013
Fredriksson, Senior Interaction Designer; Sofia
Chiang, Interaction Designer; Peter Jansson, Art
Director; Pär Fröberg, Systems Architect and Lead
Developer; Alexandra Krabb, Back-End Developer;
Gustav Syrén, Back-End Developer; Karl Alnebratt,
Front-End Developer; Charlotte Holmen, Front-End
Developer; Caroline Hellquist Byrenius, Test Manager
Futurniture communications agency: Katarina
Hjertonsson, Communication Strategist; Anna
Elfström Brandt, Copywriter

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INTRANET TEAM

Intranet team members shown here (back row): Janna Palmgren and Anna Elding;
(middle row): Angelina Fredriksson, Karin Hedman, Paul Lernmark, Katja
Engelhart, Ingeborg Granlund, and Lars Gustavson; (front row): Birgitta Elgemyr,
Jessica Stringer Bodin, Katarina Willstedt, and Åse Karlsen.

HIGHLIGHTS ABOUT THIS WINNER

The Swedish Parliament intranet team set out to entirely refresh and reimagine an intranet
that was previously news and information-based, and had no overarching direction in terms
of content. A combination of technical developments, changes in the IT environment, and
changes in users’ needs and demands drove the team to redesign the intranet as a practical
tool, promoting effective access to information.
Working closely with its main agency, Creuna, in designing and developing the site, the
team made a promise to its users: “The intranet will make your work easier.” The site,
called Intranätet, supports 1,500 users in the Swedish Parliament, including members of
parliament (MPs), party secretariats, and parliament administration. The team set out to
create not just a great intranet, but also a great website.

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 • User Research: The team made an effort to involve all user types in the
development effort. This is particularly impressive considering that the
audience includes MPs. User experience design and user research weren’t an
afterthought, but a major component of and driving force behind the redesign
effort.
Conducting in-depth interviews was essential to understanding the site’s
content and functionality. The team took the time to understand the
organization and its vocabulary, routines, concepts, and traditions as well as
possible before even crafting interview guides. This prep work led to a set of
efficient interview guides that let the team skip over background information
during the interviews and thus focus exclusively on how work gets done at the
organization.
• Continual Stakeholder/User Involvement: User involvement didn’t end
with interviews. Team members presented concepts to groups for feedback
and buy-in, which helped them gain support for the intranet across the
organization. They also did user testing, launched a beta version four months
prior to the main launch, and wrote about the site’s development in weekly
blog updates. The one public demonstration they held drew 60–70 people.
Launch activities included giving away a polishing cloth and asking users to
complete a quiz using the new site.
• Content Reorganization: Team members eliminated and consolidated
information from the previous site and worked quickly to identify key content.
They reviewed metrics from the previous year to identify which information
was most used, least used, and not used at all. The careful content review
helped the team identify the most important content areas, as well as fully
understand the breadth and depth of the available content.
A staged rollout also helped reduce content; as the rollout progressed, the
team realized that users did not miss some of the information that was slated
for later release, which allowed them to make further content reductions.
Content wasn’t simply migrated from the old site; it was rewritten, edited,
and formatted to adhere to the new concept, site structure, and templates.
• Responsive Design Details: Mobile access to information was important for
the organization’s users — especially for the MPs, who are often on the go.
The site is designed for a usable experience regardless of device. Team
members did more than just make content elements fit into different screen
sizes, however. They thought about the details of the experience and how to
make it work regardless of whether users access the site from a large or small
screen.
One of the challenges of responsive design is to make back-end systems and
complex functions work well within a responsive framework. The team
struggled to translate some older systems, such as Lotus Notes applications,
to mobile. Ultimately, project time constraints forced them to prioritize what
could and could not be translated as part of the main project.
The team also addressed content as part of the move to responsive design.
They decided to create fewer pages with more information to help mobile
users with potentially slow download speeds. In-page navigational options
also help mobile users access content on longer pages.

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BACKGROUND
The Swedish Parliament’s existing intranet had grown wild, “like a garden without a
gardener,” says project manager Jessica Stringer Bodin. It was primarily information- and
news-based. The web editors focused mainly on news items on the homepage while local
editors within the organization maintained the remaining content. Usability and accessibility
had become neglected, and the information structure was “thorny and impenetrable,” she
says.
It had also become an intranet in which local editors’ interests determined the scope of the
content. As a result, it was difficult for users to find information and use intranet services.
Finally, because the old intranet launched in 2007, web technology and web use had
experienced enormous developments. For example, back in 2007, there was no explicit
need for the intranet to scale for use on mobile devices or tablets. So, some of the core
reasons for launching an intranet redesign included technical developments, changes in the
parliament administration’s IT environment, and the needs and demands of users.

Goals
The goal of the redesign was to create a usable and accessible intranet that would transform
the existing information-heavy site into an intranet that could serve as a practical tool for its
users, as well as:
• Be an effective tool for both users and content contributors
• Promote cooperation and a sense of belonging

Challenges
The design team was fortunate to have an adequate budget and timeline for the project
(one year), but it faced many challenges working with the content for the new site. “We
started working on the content too late,” says Stringer Bodin, “or rather, this work didn’t get
going fast enough even though we started early.”
The redesign required wholesale changes to the content. Everything had to be rewritten and
edited to fit the new design and accommodate the requirements of the new templates in the
CMS. Stringer Bodin explains some of the other challenges the team faced, such as how to:
• Emphasize relevance. “Create an intranet in which all the target groups
perceived it as relevant to just them.”
• Change the content to match the new concept. “It takes time to learn to
think in new ways!”
• Get all the target groups involved. “It was particularly important to
involved the MPs, so that the project could monitor whether we were headed
in the right direction and test proposed solutions.”
• Gain support and acceptance internally. “We were doing something that
was very modern and different compared with the previous version of the
intranet, but also compared with other systems and digital services.”
• Support mobile devices. “It turned out that the project came about just at
the right time and there was a secure solution for mobile devises at the time
of the launch.”

410 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

 • Find technology solutions that work within the parameters of the
existing IT infrastructure. “Source systems and old technical solutions that
were beyond our control turned out to be one of the greatest challenges. Our
organization has some old IT solutions, which means that the intranet still has
some solutions in iframes and as HTML snippets. There are currently no
alternatives here. However, the Riksdag does have an open data website
(data.riksdagen.se) which gives us opportunities to provide new and useful
services.”

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Image 1. Swedish Parliament Intranet: Homepage on the Old Intranet. Below
the name Helgonät is the main navigation in two rows and the search box. The
homepage consists of: Aktuellt (internal news and news from Sweden’s national wire
service, TT-news), En vecka på (one week at), calendars, and banners on the right.
The banners didn’t change often, and were more like a second navigation.
146_Swedish-parliament_01_start-page-old_version1.png

412 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

DESIGN REVIEW

Homepage

Image 2.
Swedish Parliament Intranet: The New
Homepage. 147_Swedish-
parliament_02_home_live.png

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 413

Homepage Highlights
The homepage was designed for efficiency, with MPs in mind. The page features calendars
and committees, along with internal news at the top of the page and easy access to news
from the TT news agency (Sweden’s national wire service).
1. In-page navigation: The top of the page includes in-page navigation, helping
users move quickly to the content of interest on the page. This facilitates direct
access to content, rather than requiring users to scroll to locate content. This also
acts as a table of contents, showing users the information available on the page.
2. Picture of the Week: The top right corner of the page includes a picture of the
week; users can click an icon to flip the picture over and reveal a caption and
further information. The picture always shows something happening in or around
the parliament — ranging from an official visit from another country to a picture
from the carpentry shop.
3. Organizational news: The news (Aktuellt) is role-based, aimed at the user’s
target group. Items are dated and images accompany the stories only when they
add to the content. Only about half of news items include an accompanying
image. This helps users scan through content quickly. Images support stories,
rather than appearing simply because a template calls for their use.
4. Calendar: The site’s daily calendar (Kalendrar i dag) is particularly important to
MPs, who need to know what is happening each day. The calendar is divided into
three main parts: chamber, committees, and other activities. A fourth section
shows items that are new to the calendar or items that have registration
deadlines on that day.
5. Updates and Alerts: Ongoing and planned work (Pågående och planerade
arbeten) contains items that might affect daily work, such as a closed elevator or
an IT system that is down. Any urgent items can be displayed at the top of the
page as well, if needed.
6. Memoranda and Messages: Memoranda and protocols (Minnesanteckningar
och protokoll) show the latest information from the Riksdag Board, Council for
Members’ Affairs, and meetings of the heads of the party secretariats, while the
following section (Talmannen och riksdagsdirektören) includes messages from the
speaker and secretary general of the Riksdag.
7. Local and World News: News headlines from the TT news agency (TT-
nyheterna) are listed at the bottom of the page, to keep users aware of the latest
news headlines. Although most intranets do not include such information on the
site, in a governmental setting, it is important that users know the current news.
8. Lunch Menu: A lunch menu rounds out the page, showing users the day’s
selections and allowing them to navigate ahead to other days of the week. Items
on the menu are marked as M (sustainable environment meal), B (healthy), G
(contains gluten), or L (contains lactose).
9. Look and Feel: The site’s visual design was inspired by the Parliament itself —
an attractive environment with shelves of books hardbound in muted colors;
beautiful paintings; and natural materials such as stone and wood. The black and
blue areas show information and functionality. The red is used to focus on alerts,
and earthy tones are used for news, menus, and quotes.

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Role-Based Personalization

Image 3. Swedish Parliament Intranet: Role-Based Personalization.

148_Swedish-parliament_03_change-role_live.png

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Role-Based Personalization Highlights
1. Role-Based Information: The entire intranet uses role-based personalization to
give the right information to the right users. This is particularly critical given that
some users are MPs, who need quick and reliable access to the information
required to make important decisions.
The change to role-based personalization helped the team cut content as it
moved to the new design. If an audience could not be identified for a piece of
content, it was removed. The change also influenced how content is written for
the site. Previously, a single article had to address a topic from all users’ points of
view; now, a single message can be aimed at a single audience.
2. Change Role: Users can navigate to the Byt Roll link in the main site navigation
to change their view of content. This is essential for employees doing
administrative and support tasks, particularly those in support of MPs, who must
see what MPs see in order to be of help.
3. Simple selection: Changing the view of the intranet is simple. Rather than going
through a complex site structure to get to the feature, the Byt Roll link in the
main navigation takes users directly to a page showing them the available
viewing options. From there, a simple click changes their view.

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“I Want To...” (Jag vill…) Section

Image 4. Swedish Parliament Intranet: “I Want To...” Section. 149_Swedish-

parliament_04_i-want-to-start-page_live.png

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“I Want To...” (Jag vill…) Section Highlights
1. Task-Focused: The site structure is task-focused, but so is much of the site
content. “I want to...” (Jag vill…) is one of the site’s main sections and is focused
on helping users do their jobs and access tools around the organization. The
section gives users quick access to practical services and help for administrative
tasks. The entire section is based on needs, rather than organizational structure.
Topic-Based: The activities are organized by topic. The page design is intended
to show users the range of activities they can easily access and accomplish
through this site area. Images represent the type of activity shown; for example,
an image of an actual Riksdag security guard represents security information,
while an image of the Parliament building represents tasks related to the
office/work environment. The people icon shows that the link goes to a role-
based page where the content is intended for a specific role. The links located
underneath certain topics are quick links to services or IT systems. The purpose
of these links is to provide users with access to popular links as quickly as
possible. The link underneath Datorer och IT, for example, is a link to one of the
intranet’s killer services where users can obtain a password for guests to use to
access the WIFI.

418 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

“I Want To...” (Jag vill…) Page

Image 5. Swedish Parliament Intranet: “I Want To...” Feature. 150_Swedish-

parliament_05_task-page-I-want-to-live.png

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“I Want To...” (Jag vill…) Page Highlights
1. Central Resource: Each page includes only one subject, with a clear call to
action at the top of the page and a consistent structure. The team decided early
in the development process to link to external systems rather than integrate
them. The intranet is the tool that helps users access tools and provides support
information for systems.
2. Call to Action: Each task-focused page includes a call to action at the top of the
page. The goal here is to help users who are completing recurring tasks and do
not want or need to read everything on the page. This also helps prioritize the
call to action in the responsive design’s mobile view.
3. Contact Information: All task pages include contact information at the bottom
of the page.
4. Feedback: Every page of the site, whether content- or task-focused, includes a
“Did this help you?” (Hjälpte informationen dig?) link, along with the date the
content was last updated and the name and email address of the content owner.

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Content Page: Plain Swedish

Image 6.
Swedish Parliament Intranet:
Content Page (Plain Swedish Information).
151_Swedish-parliament_06_plain-swedish-
page_live.png

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Content Page: Plain Swedish Highlights
1. Plain Language: Part of the content approach was to ensure that information
was written in “plain Swedish.” This was an initiative prior to the redesign — and
a governmental focus as well — with the goal being to make information easier to
read and understand.
2. Table of Contents: Longer content pages include a table of contents to the right
on larger screens and at the top of mobile pages. This shows users the available
page content and gives quick access to content of interest, which is particularly
important on long mobile pages.
3. Accordions of Content: To accommodate users on smaller screens in particular,
in-page navigation — such as expanding and collapsing accordions — helps limit
the space content consumes on the page. On this page, the accordions contain
eight tips for using plain language: think about the reader, explain what needs to
be explained, write actively, don’t forget the little words, keep related content
together, write what’s most important first, vary sentence lengths, and draw the
readers into the text.
4. Limiting Content to One Page: Each topic on the site is contained within a
single page to help users find all the information they need in one place. In this
case, the page contains tips, a way to test text, information about a plain
language course, and contact information to learn more.

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Chamber Calendar

Image 1.
Swedish Parliament
Intranet: Chamber
Calendar. 152_Swedish-
parliament_07_chamber-
calendar_live.png

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Chamber Calendar Highlights
1. Filtered View: The calendar’s default view starts with the current day at the top.
Following that, the calendar shows every day that has a calendar item (the
screen above, for example, shows a full year ahead).
Users can click on filters at the top of the page to see specific types of calendar
items, such as:
o Frågestund: Question-and-answer session
o Interpellationssvar: Answers to interpellations
o Motionstid utgår: Private members’ motions period expires
o Plenifritt: No plenary meetings
o Sammanträdesplan: Planned plenary meetings
o Voteringar: Votes
o Ärendeplan: Schedule of parliamentary business
The calendar pulls data from several sources and consolidates it in one central
location.
2. Date Picker: Users can select a particular date via the calendar at the side of the
page.
3. Expand for Details: Users can select any item to view more detail. The three
items shown in red are expanded to show the full calendar entry information.
Where appropriate, calendar items link to associated committee reports and
documents.

424 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

People Directory

Image 1.
Swedish Parliament Intranet:
People Directory.
153_Swedish_parliament_08_people-
directory_live.png

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People Directory Highlights
1. Search: As on many intranets, the people directory is one of the most
popular areas of the site. This section, called “Who does what” (Vem Gör Vad)
makes it possible to quickly find others at the organization. Employees can
use the main site search to find colleagues or can navigate directly to the
people directory from the main site navigation. Users can enter a name,
party, area of the organization, title, or phone number to search.
2. Filters: Filters appear on the right side of the page; selected filters appear
above the search results. This helps users narrow results to find the desired
person.
3. Results: Employee results include a photograph, the person’s name and job
title, and basic contact information, including email address, phone number,
and room number.
4. Organizational Chart: The quick search (Snabbsök) allows users to quickly
search the organization, which gives them an overview of how the Riksdag is
organized.
5. New Colleagues: An area for “new people in the administration” (Personnytt
Riksdagsförvaltningen) gives information on people who have recently started
work there.
6. Telephone Directory: The Telefonkatalogen, or telephone directory, is a PDF
file of all phone numbers that users can print out; the intranet team describes
it as an “old-fashioned remnant.”

426 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

Search

Image 2.
Swedish Parliament Intranet:
Global Search. 154_Swedish-
parliament_09_global-
search_live.png

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 427

Search Highlights
1. Search Box: The search box appears at the top of every page of the site, and in
every view, including the mobile view. The search is built using Solr. The index is
automatically updated when editors change or add content, and it consolidates
information from several systems. A web editor is in charge of search relevance,
adjusting keywords and making tweaks based on analytics, statistics, and user
feedback.
2. Results: Most results are shown with a linked headline and a brief summary.
3. Documents: Documents are shown as a link directly to the file.
4. News and Calendar: If items will lead to a news story or to the calendar, the
results indicate this with the label Aktuellt or Kalender, respectively.
5. People: To connect people more quickly, the third result is always a list of three
contacts within the organization related to the search query. The result shows the
three people, along with a link to view more if needed. Users can also conduct a
people search through the “Who does what” (Vem Gör Vad) tool.

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Mobile View

Image 3.
Swedish Parliament Intranet:
Mobile View of the Homepage.
155_Swedish-
parliament_10_mobile-
home_live.png

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Mobile View Highlights
1. Responsive Design: The site uses responsive design to serve content regardless of screen
size. Almost all of the site content is available on mobile, except for a few older systems
(mostly Lotus Notes applications). Although these items are still slated to be translated
into a responsive experience, time constraints required that the team make choices based
on priority.
2. Navigation and Search: On larger screens, such as tablets and desktops, the
global navigation appears on the left side of the page. This maximizes the space
available for content; all designs use the full page width to display content. In the
mobile version, the navigation is tucked behind a three-line hamburger menu to
save space, while still providing easy access to site navigation.
Search is prioritized in the mobile design, as it is a quick way for mobile users to
access information. The team included autocomplete in the search box in part to
help mobile users, who are more likely to make typographical errors.
3. Touch Targets: The entire site was designed with touchscreen users in mind, so
all items have large touch targets to aid navigation.
4. Brief Content and Attention to Detail: Team members cooperated closely to
design a site that would work across all screen sizes. They focused on content
volume and brevity, download times, and improved search. They also paid
attention to small details, like text appearing on the images in larger designs and
below the images in smaller designs. They also advised content creators to avoid
graphics and illustrations that would not be legible at smaller sizes. Even the
details of how instructional text was written was addressed, such as avoiding
phrases like “the image on the right” or “the menu on the left” since layouts shift
as screens shrink.

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Image 1. Swedish Parliament Intranet: Employee Page. Members of Parliament
have the same presentation on the employee page, but with more content about
committee assignments and so on. 156_Swedish-parliament_11_employee-
page_live.png

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Image 2. Swedish Parliament Intranet: Blog Page. The Parliament intranet has
blogs that let users comment on posts. 157_Swedish-parliament_12_blog_live.png

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DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY WORK

Evaluating Organizational Needs

When the design team began its work on the new intranet, it already had a trove of prior
research from which to draw insights. A preliminary study (conducted in 2011) delivered a
comprehensive analysis of intranet needs; it also analyzed the site’s target groups and
delivered a first draft of a new intranet concept and simple wireframes of new design ideas.
Further, an earlier 2010 study had evaluated the old intranet, highlighting usability and
accessibility shortcomings. This evaluation also identified the needs of staff in the Riksdag
Administration; the 2011 needs analysis thus focused on the other primary target groups,
including MPs, party secretariats, management, and other key people.

A visualization of the target groups and their needs for the Swedish Parliament
intranet.

When the redesign project kicked off, the first thing the in-house project team did was to
inventory all the pages and functionality available on the existing (old) intranet. For each
function and page, team members analyzed the metrics from the previous year (2012). This
analysis showed which functions were most used, which were trending and which were not
used at all. This information let the team prioritize the most important functionality and gain
a holistic view of the content.

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These initial research efforts resulted in three important policy documents that helped
inform the project’s creative work: a content and functionality specification with an
associated metrics analysis, a needs analysis, and a concept description.
The team also conducted a zero benchmark measurement of the intranet during the
project’s planning and start-up phase, using the think-aloud method to test how easy it was
for users to accomplish common tasks. This helped the team identify problem areas in the
old intranet, so they could improve them in the new one.

Prioritizing Needs
Prioritizing the initial tasks wasn’t difficult. With all the research material they had in hand,
team members knew a lot about the top tasks they wanted to focus on, and which were less
important and could be given lower (if any) priority in the new design. They also wanted to
liaise with content owners to ensure that the new intranet would have the right content and
functionality to meet user needs.
One critical need emerged early on: users wanted intranet access on their mobile devices
and from locations outside the Riksdag, rather than only on their computers at work. This
need was especially important for MPs, who are often on the move.

Comprehensive Surveys
The Swedish Parliament partnered with Creuna, a full-service digital agency, for the
redesign effort. When the Swedish Parliament Administration kicked-off the project, it asked
Creuna to conduct a survey to evaluate the organizational needs that the new intranet
would have to meet. Team members explain how the survey was carried out:
• In-depth interviews: “We conducted in-depth interviews with
representatives of the different target groups. We realized quite quickly that it
would be a relatively extensive study as the operations are complex and the
conditions of the target groups completely different. The Swedish Parliament
(like many other organizations in the Swedish public sector) has a good
understanding of the need to meet the needs of users in various digital
channels, and it was important to carry out thorough groundwork. The in-
house team also understood the importance of achieving broad support within
the organization, and this was something an extensive interview study could
also contribute to.” (Katja Engelhart, UX Lead)
• Extensive preparations: “Before Creuna could even start writing the
interview guides, they were given training about the work of the Swedish
Parliament, including plenty of background reading and a number of
preparatory discussions with key persons in different parts of the
organization. It was important that we understood the operations and
processes in order to be able to ask the right questions.” (Birgitta Elgemyr,
Web Editor)
“The Swedish Parliament uses a number of technical terms and concepts;
there are many traditions and routines. The training we were offered made us
better prepared to lead the interviews and gave us a good basic
understanding of part of the task ahead of explaining and clarifying on the
intranet. If this was complicated for us, it would naturally also be difficult for
new employees and MPs.” (Engelhart)

434 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

 • Adapted interviews: “A factor that distinguished this survey of needs was
that we prepared seven to eight completely different interview guides, all
adapted to the target groups and sometimes even to specific roles. We
designed the interviews on the basis of each group’s work procedures and
tasks in order to ensure that we didn’t miss anything important. It took a long
time to prepare the various guides with the in-house team, but once this was
done, the interviews flowed very well. We felt that the interviewees
appreciated the fact that we put ourselves in their shoes, and they didn’t need
to waste valuable time explaining things to us during the interviews.”
(Engelhart)
• Interviews with a focus on flows and needs: “During the interviews we
talked very little about the actual intranet (the old one and the future one)
and the specific needs connected with this. Instead, our questions focused on
working methods and information and communication flows within the
parliament and the administration, and what needs there were regarding
information, support, and communication. This was in order not to get stuck
in old patterns (which is easily done when using something that already exists
as a basis) and to really understand and identify where the challenges lay.”
(Engelhart)
• Adapted results: “The results of all the interviews were collected and
analyzed. We hadn’t decided in advance exactly how we’d document the
results. Instead, we wanted to be able to decide this on the basis of what
emerged. We saw that personas would either be too generic or too specific to
be of help in this case. Instead, we identified general needs, plus a number of
common tasks and flows which we would then be able to focus on in our
coming work, and which we could later follow up in order to see how much
more efficiently they could be implemented on the new intranet.” (Engelhart)
• Ambition of measuring exactly in time and money: “With these ‘common
tasks’ as a basis, we looked for ways of being able to measure the exact time
savings (and thus the value) of simplifying and making available these
important tasks. On account of limited opportunities in our analysis tools, we
decided to carry out this measurement manually in the user tests. A zero
benchmark measurement was carried out on the old intranet, where we
measured how long each “common task” took (even if several tasks couldn’t
be carried out at all).” (Engelhart)
This kind of in-depth survey process can yield a lot of information — maybe even too much
— for a team to really interpret and act upon; however, in the case, the whole project team
found the survey data to be a critical piece of the redesign process.
“When we had the preliminary study ahead of us and were in the middle of the interview
period, it sometimes felt as though we had very many interviews and a little too much
information to process,” says Engelhart. “But when we look back after the implementation of
the project, we all agree that it was incredibly well-invested time.”
The knowledge gained from the needs survey has followed the team all the way through the
project. The volume of interviews gave team members a deeper picture than they would
have obtained by sticking to a more traditional volume of, say, five to seven interviews per
target group.

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“We felt that the individual interviews worked best,” says Engelhart. “In the group
interviews with two to three participants, there was a risk that some participants didn’t get
the same chance to speak. And, even when we thought that people had similar situations, it
sometimes turned out in the interview that this wasn’t the case.”

An illustration of the top-level information structure of the intranet (translated into

English) developed early at the start of the project and based on the intranet strategy.
It shows the overall information structure and other important intranet parts and
functions.

436 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

Generating Design Ideas Through Workshops
The team held a series of workshops to generate design ideas and visualize how the new
intranet and its various sections would look and feel, as well as how the intranet would
work. The design workshops were held with key people in the Swedish Parliament and
consisted of inspiration exercises. These sessions provided an environment in which the
design team and the participants could jointly determine the new intranet’s user
experience.
The workshops included discussions about how editors would interact with the new intranet
and the idea of having unique design patterns for different sections. The participants
discussed (and designed) ideas for how role-based personalization would work and how to
make it more efficient. The workshop sessions also helped the team produce checklists to
support design, development, and content during the implementation phase. These
checklists consisted of a set of guiding principles for team members to keep in mind as the
project progressed from concept to fully realized intranet.
The intranet’s design is based on the Swedish Parliament’s graphic design style. Designers
took inspiration from the parliament’s physical environs, with bookshelves full of hardbound
books in muted colors; beautiful paintings; and solid natural materials, such as wood and
stone.

Examples of the design elements used for information and basic functionality on the
intranet.

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Examples of red-toned design elements used to draw focus or alert users of important
information.

438 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

 Examples of design elements related to fast-moving, pleasant content such as news
and menus. These elements use an earthy range of colors.

Direct User Involvement

The design team employed several research methods that involved users directly in the
design process, including:
• Reference groups: Two groups of user representatives, called reference
groups, provide feedback and buy-in on an ongoing basis, and were first
deployed during the design and development phase. During these initial
reference group sessions, the groups were also asked to react to sketches and
design proposals. The team found this approach most effective. “It worked
better for the reference groups to react to something concrete — like sketches
— rather than discuss needs in a general way,” says Angelina Fredriksson,
Senior Interaction Designer. “but we learned a lot about needs and priorities
and were able to take with us their thoughts to our coming work.”

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 • Participatory design: Although the reference groups provided good ideas, the
ideas lacked detail about specific functionality. To refine the general thoughts
into concrete solutions, the design team invited specific individuals to join team
members in creating certain functions side-by-side.
• User tests: User tests were carried out in two rounds: ahead of the launch,
and a few months after launch, when the content was in place and users had
begun to acclimate to the new set-up.
The first test focused on usability and navigation. The content wasn’t in place,
and the search engine hadn’t yet been tuned. The second test gave the team
an understanding of how the content and structure worked. The results gleaned
from these sessions were documented in a table format, which let team
members easily compare answers from different test subjects. Important
functions were also tested at some of the reference group meetings.

440 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

Image 3. Swedish Parliament Intranet: Early Sketch of the Homepage Design.
This shows a first draft of a possible homepage. It was created to help visualize user
needs. 158_Swedish-parliament_13_early-sketch-prestudy.png

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 Image 4.
Swedish Parliament Intranet:
Homepage Wireframe. This shows an
early wireframe of the homepage created
shortly after the project started. Some of
the functionality has been detailed and the
project tool is referred to with a file
number, while other parts are just in the
early idea stage. 159_Swedish-
parliament_14_early-wireframe.png

442 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

Developing an IA Structure
The project’s primary goal was to create a task-focused intranet, so the structure and
navigation had to support that goal. With that in mind, the team conducted card-sorting
exercises within the project group and with members of the editorial team, resulting in a
new basic structure in which (almost) all the important elements had a specific place. This
wasn’t an easy task, but it proved to be worthwhile.
“We took the 100 most common tasks and the most visited pages on the old intranet and
sorted them,” says Katja Engelhart, UX lead, Creuna. “This was a challenge in an
organization like the Swedish Parliament, where there were enormous amounts of content.
In connection with this, a large culling process was also carried out; the content volume
needed to be drastically reduced.”
“We wanted a shallow and broad information structure and tried to keep it no deeper than
three levels. After card sorting, we made a detailed information structure with all content
and functionality,” says Stringer Bodin. “Without the detailed structure, it would have been
almost impossible for the web editors to change and rewrite the content.”
A good example of the shallow information structure is the “I want to...” (Jag vill…) section,
which surfaces important content on a sub-homepage.
Other design decisions were made that affected wayfinding, including:
• Menus: The main menu is to the left on bigger screens and has a powerful
visual expression so that users perceive it as a toolbar. (On small screens,
such as smartphones, the main navigation is a hamburger menu).
• Personalization: Personalized functions have been given their own
expression and can be reached via the main menu and the homepage. The
underlying idea is that the entire intranet is personalized; there isn’t a
separate “My Page” or anything like that.
• Role-based solution: The role-based solution is important both for making
intranet content more relevant to each individual and for reducing the amount
of information that washes over users. The content shown by default is based
on the user’s role, but users can find any content (for their role or anyone
else’s) through the search function. Users can also choose to temporarily
change roles and see the intranet through someone else’s eyes. This is
important in the Swedish Parliament, where many people in support roles
need to see the information directed at MPs.

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 Image 5. Swedish Parliament Intranet:
Top-Level Navigation Menu. 160_Swedish-parliament_15_top-
level-navigation_live.png

Adoption and Buy-in

The design team tried to create and maintain an atmosphere of transparency throughout the
project, demonstrating the new intranet to users — even at early stages — and showing
how it was developing all the way through to the beta release. Users were able to see and
test everything as it was developed.
“We wanted the transition from the old to the new to be as smooth as possible,” says
Stringer Bodin, “especially as we knew that there were many people who liked the old
intranet and they had learned where to find what they needed.”
The team also had a communications officer dedicated to the project who prepared a
communications plan that the team followed throughout.
Stringer Bodin describes the team’s various outreach efforts:
• The project’s Steering Group: “The Steering Group was instrumental in
obtaining broad support during the entire project. They helped by ensuring
that we obtained broad support for our work with the new intranet at the right
level in the organization at all the different stages of the project. They always
encouraged us to do a little more in our efforts to gain support for the project
and pointed out how important it was for us to present and fully explain each
stage prior to implementation.”

444 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

 • The Management Group: “When seeking support in the organization, we
always started with the Management Group. They always got to see and ask
questions about the new intranet before other groups. This worked very well as
they, in turn, could propose what other contexts and forums we should make
presentations in.”
• Beta version: “We released a public beta version of the intranet approximately
four months before the launch. The first version was very limited but gave an
indication as to what it would look like. We then developed the beta version
until it had full functionality and, in the end, it was launched as the new
intranet. Everyone in the Swedish Parliament was able to test the beta version
and give feedback.”
• Development blog: “The beta version contained a development blog where
we could write about what we were doing in the project and where we
described the various services and content that was published along the way.
We wanted the development process to be as transparent as possible, and we
tried to publish one blog entry a week from the time the beta version went
public. Certain entries received many comments, and others none. It depended
on what we wrote about. Many people, for example, found the font size
extremely large, and this is true if you compare it with the old intranet. We no
longer hear that comment any more as everyone has gotten used to it. It was
important that we could argue in favor of the choices we had made when we
introduced new services and design in the beta version and the development
blog.”
• Public demos: “We invited all interested parties to the project’s sprint demos,
and there were often around 25 people who came to listen and put questions.”
• Launch activities: “On the day of the launch, we stood at the main entrances
to the parliament and welcomed everyone to the new intranet with a polishing
cloth and a quiz which could be solved by using the new site. When they
switched on their computers, the new intranet appeared, and mobile devices
had a new icon with which to start the intranet.”

Strategies for Responsive Design

Adapting the site for a responsive framework created a unique set of challenges for the
Swedish Parliament team, specifically around the way they organized and thought about the
content.
“Responsive design has affected how we think about the content on a page,” says Stringer
Bodin. “We have pages that we call ‘task pages,’ and they are organized so that calls-to-
action are always at the top of the page. These may include recurring tasks, where the user
doesn’t want to read everything on the page, but just wants to get to what needs to be
done.” An example of this is the popular “report a visit” service; it appears at the top of the
page — which is especially important on mobile devices — so users don’t have to do a lot of
scrolling.
The Swedish Parliament team has some good advice for other design teams trying to create
a responsive site: allocate time to address content needs early on in the project — before
you make drafts of the structure and interaction design. “Decide what’s important to
include,” says Stringer Bodin. “Also, cull and minimize so that you only include what is really
needed on the new site/intranet.”

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Another thing that she says is important to think about is how to keep content on a
particular subject together so users don’t have to search in several different places to get an
overall picture. To that end, it’s preferable to have slightly longer — but fewer — pages, and
an interaction design that supports this approach.
“As I see it,” she says, “the information structure and navigation also play an important role
in responsive design. The idea is that navigation should work just as well on smaller
screens. The user wants to see what options are available quickly. This is especially true
within the main categories.”
A role-based solution also limits the number of options users see upfront.
A responsive approach requires design team members to think differently about how they
approach the design process. Fredriksson shares some of the things they found most helpful
in their process:
• Design for all screens at the same time: “We worked in such a way that
we designed for all screens, at the same time, as we had a clear objective of
simplifying, highlighting what is important and culling content.”
• Work as a team: “When we design for screens of different sizes, it is
particularly important to work in close cooperation with the AD, ID, and front-
end developer. Our basis is the content and what is most important when we
design functions and templates. We focus more on designing the elements
around which pages and functions are developed than designing a specific
page for a specific screen size pixel perfectly. Much of the detail work is done
together, in front of a screen, where we test sizes, animations, layout, and
functionality so that they suit all screen sizes (and touch, of course).”
• Include everything: “We have worked according to the principle that
nothing should be scaled down on smaller screens; any content that is
sufficiently important to be included on a large screen is sufficiently important
to be included on a small screen, too.”

446 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

Design Considerations
Responsive design places new demands on several aspects of a website’s design. Following
are a few of the factors the Swedish Parliament team specifically considered in its
responsive approach:
• Navigation: Downloading a new page on a telephone often takes a while.
The team addressed that constraint in various ways, including:
◦ Scaling down the volume of content considerably, with a focus on keeping
what many people often need
◦ Providing shorter text, with the answer to the most sought after information
first and a call to action at the top of the page
◦ Designing fewer pages, but with more content on each page (and the ability to
add a table of contents, in the form of anchor links, to the page’s subheadings
to give users an overview)
◦ Creating a shallow structure
• Search: Many users prefer to search rather than navigate on small screens.
Faced with a menu, which is hidden behind a click, and the time it takes to
download pages, users often feel that it is quicker and easier to search than
to navigate. The search function is, in other words, an especially important
support for the navigation when working with responsive design; this is
particularly true on an intranet, where the information cannot be reached via
internet search engines.
• Layout and visual design: Designing for different screen sizes also involves
designing for touch. This means that clickable areas must be ample, with
sufficient distance between different clickable areas. Both factors impact
visual design.
• Images: To ensure that the user experience isn’t choppy when images are
slow to download, the designers chose to work with fixed image sizes so they
could predict how much room each image required and place all elements on
the page accurately.
Also, working with text in images is never good — especially from an
accessibility perspective — but it is extra troublesome when working with
different screen sizes, as making text legible on small screens is difficult.
Designers thus used various solutions to accommodate this constraint. For
example, on larger screens, text is placed on the images, and on smaller
screens, it is placed under the images. These choices improve readability.
• Editorial challenges: Responsive design involves many new challenges for
editors, too. Following is a list of some of these challenges and how the
designers addressed them:

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 o Detailed graphics on small screens: Detailed illustrations or
graphics such as diagrams can be easy to see on a large screen, but
difficult to decipher when the image shrinks on a small screen. One
way the team addresses this is to make editors aware of the issue.
Team members encourage editors to always think about how a page
will be shown on smaller screens and to check the result when editing.
Right now, this is an editorial task. However, the team is discussing
the option of making it possible to enlarge images, so users on smaller
screens can pinch/zoom to change image sizes.
o Fewer, longer pages per subject: This is a new way of thinking for
the editors — that is, to make one long page for a single subject rather
than many short pages found by navigating in a much deeper
information structure. They also had to think more carefully about H2
headings, which automatically turn into a table of contents on a
standard page.
o Page layout changes depending on screen size: For example,
avoid referring to “the image on the right” or “the menu to the left”
when writing text.

448 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

 Image 6.
Swedish Parliament Intranet: Sketch of
Responsive Design for New Homepage.
This sketch shows an early draft of a
possible homepage, created to help
visualize the concept and overall
navigation/interaction principles for a
responsive intranet. An interaction designer
created this sketch during the project’s
initial design phase. 161_Swedish-
parliament_16_early-draft-by-pencil.png

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 WORKING WITH OUTSIDE AGENCIES
Agency Project Role
Creuna Creuna is the agency that the Swedish Parliament
A Nordic full-service digital uses for intranet design and development. It is also
agency responsible for ongoing intranet maintenance. During
the project, the agency performed many tasks,
including:
• Prepared the needs analysis in the
preliminary study
• Created impact objectives, KPI framework,
and zero benchmark evaluation
• Provided strategy, planning, and project
management for the intranet development
project
• Provided usability and accessibility expertise
for intranet design
• Designed the concept, IA, interaction design,
and graphic design
• Conducted user tests and card sorting
• Developed the systems architecture
• Managed front-end and back-end
development
• Integrated intranet with other systems
• Managed tests and testing
• Served as scrum master during
implementation
• Developed training, guidance, and guidelines
for content and the CMS
Futurniture
• Reviewed and summarized the essence
Communications agency of the concept: Creuna formulated the
concept, but explaining it resulted in quite an
extensive document. Futurniture helped
formulate the concept on one page, which
included: target groups, vision, mission, offer,
position, tonality, words of value, and a
summary of them all as a promise to the
user.
The concept summary is a key document in
all activities when working with the intranet,
as it helps the team stay on the right track.

450 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

GOVERNANCE
The intranet is owned by the Information Department, which is part of the Swedish
Parliament Administration’s Communications Division. The Head of the Information
Department is the systems owner of the intranet. She is also the sponsor of intranet
development projects and is head of the project steering groups. The Head of the
Information Department’s Internal Communication Section is responsible for systems
maintenance.
This ownership arrangement makes it possible to focus on what is most important — the
content and the needs of users. The web editors’ contacts with operations and the
organization are a precondition for maintaining a high level of quality, but also for capturing
future needs and wishes.
The Information Department’s competence regarding web and digital development,
usability, accessibility, content, and design has been positive for the intranet’s development
and is one of the key success factors in developing the new intranet. All development occurs
at the Information Department’s request.
The Administration’s IT Division is responsible for the intranet’s technical environments and
everyday operations.

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 INTRANET TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES
Role Responsibilities
Project Manager • Strategy, planning, and concept
• Intranet development projects
• Usability and accessibility
• KPI and impact objective follow-ups
• Intranet web editors’ coach/mentor
Web Editors • Centralized publishing, updates, and content
development (including news)
• Quality assurance
• Intranet network; contact with content
owners and intranet contacts
• Content owner training and support
• Technical support and maintenance activities
• Manuals and quick reference guides
• Analysis of metrics and search maintenance
• Responsible for pages and subjects
Content Owners • Accuracy of their content
Intranet Contacts • Appointed by the content owner to represent
the owner in regular intranet work
• Content development/improvement (with web
editors)

452 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

URL AND ACCESS

ACCESS INFORMATION
Item Status
URL
• http://intranatet.riksdagen.se/
Default Status
• Users with older operating systems have the
intranet as the homepage in their browsers,
and the intranet automatically starts when the
computer is switched on. The organization
would prefer the intranet to be the default
homepage for all users, but most people have
Windows 8, in which the intranet is not the
homepage and auto start is not possible.
Windows 8 users have an intranet shortcut in
the taskbar.
Remote Access
• Users can access the intranet remotely via VPN
on all devices that Riksdag provides (but not
BYOD). Most users’ work equipment includes a
laptop and an iPhone; some also have an iPad.
Users that are often on the go (such as MPs)
use the site remotely, as do officials working
from home or in other places.
Note: There has been a noticeable increase in
traffic to the intranet from mobile devices since
the redesign launched. In the first month,
mobile traffic increased 4%; as of this writing,
the increase is now almost 15%.

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TIMELINE

PROJECT MILESTONES
Milestone Date Milestone Description
1998
• First intranet implementation in Lotus Notes
2000–2007 Previous redesigns:
• 2000: Lotus Notes update: New homepage
• 2005: Lotus Notes update: New homepage;
users could choose between different
presentation options
• 2007 redesign: First web-based intranet, with
a greater user focus
2011–May 2012
• Preliminary study for new and redesigned
intranet
November 2012
• Start of new intranet project
March 2014
• Launch of the new redesigned intranet
Post-Launch Following its launch, the team continued its efforts to
improve the new intranet. Some improvements had
been given lower priority during the project, yet still
needed to be addressed. Other parts were shown to
need improvement during usability tests (conducted
after the launch). Among the post-launch activities
aimed at addressing these various needs included:
• May 2014: Post-launch usability tests
• June 2014: Homepage is redesigned with
improved calendar and intro blocks at top of
page
• November 2014: “I want to...” feature
redesigned

Overall redesign time frame: 17 months (not including preliminary study and
post-launch work)

454 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

CONTENT AND CONTENT CONTRIBUTORS

Contributors
Content can be generated from contributors across all parts of the Swedish Parliament. For
example, the MPs are mainly users, but the party secretariats sometimes provide input to
the calendar.
The intranet has two specific content contributor groups:
• Content owners: All managers at the Swedish Parliament Administration
who have content on the intranet are responsible for its accuracy and are
considered content owners.
• Appointed contacts: Contacts in the administration are appointed by
content owners to manage content. The contacts can initialize changes, as
they know what’s going on in their field of expertise and can answer questions
coming in from the organization. Approximately 35 appointed contacts exist in
the organization and report to the content owners.

Contribution
Content ideas are generated through many channels across the organization:
• Brainstorming: The intranet team encourages the contacts in the intranet
network to come up with ideas for improvements and news of interest to large
user groups or a specific organizational group.
• Intranet inbox: Anyone with access to the intranet can also email the
intranet inbox, which is monitored during office hours.
• Calendar: The calendar for internal groups and networks in the Swedish
Parliament is widely used and has many contributors. Anyone can send in
suggestions for new calendar items via an intranet form.
• Feedback links: Content ideas are also generated through the “Was this
information of help to you?” function. This often includes content that users
would like to see or suggestions for improvements to content.
• Intranet network: Seventeen of the appointed contacts and content owners
are representatives in the intranet network group. This group was formed to
help the team improve the intranet over time.

Training
Four web editors work on the intranet; one of them is responsible for training new contacts
and content owners. A contact person and content owner should understand the intranet’s
purpose and goals, its overarching concept, and what is required.
The team provides a 1–2 hour training session for content owners and contacts. Very few
content contacts are allowed to publish on the intranet; those who are get an additional 2–3
hours of CMS training as well. If there are new contacts that need to learn how to publish,
the team provides one-to-one training and teaches them exactly what they have to learn to
process their content. The number of appointed publishers is deliberately kept low to help
maintain high-quality content, consistency, and usability.

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The contacts contribute by emailing and talking to their web editor in the intranet editorial
group. To maintain content quality, the editorial group publishes almost everything on the
intranet. They have the knowledge about usability and accessibility, and also a much deeper
understanding of the intranet’s goals, concept, and structure.

Management & Quality Control

Quality and consistency is maintained through various means:
• Web editors: The web editors have total control of every page on the intranet. Each
page has one web editor in the intranet editorial group who is responsible for its
content. The web editors have at least one contact in the organization for each page
or subject. The contact and web editor work together on changes and improvements.
• Regular content reviews: To keep content up-to-date, the editorial team reviews
all pages once or twice a year. Some pages and content are updated continually, and
the responsible (or on duty) web editor is in charge of keeping that content up-to-
date. One web editor is always on duty to take calls, answer emails, and distribute
questions to the responsible web editor.
• Regular planning sessions: The team uses the scrum methodology to
develop/adjust content and plan all of its work — including news items — in the
content backlog and sprint planning. Because the team has a backlog for content
development and news, the editorial team works in four-week sprints. Each sprint
includes a planning session in which the team goes through the backlog and decides
what to work on in terms of content development. Because the news flow is a bit
faster, team members adapted scrum to handle the news flow alongside content
development.
• Annual planning process. The team conducts an annual planning process in which
it develops various content areas according to clearly defined objectives. The
objectives are broken down to provide a preliminary sprint planning for the entire
year.
• Informal brainstorming: The four web editors have plenty of discussions and give
each other feedback on each other’s work continuously. Because each web editor has
different strengths, they get better results by regularly bouncing ideas off each
other.
• Maintaining close ties with content contributors: The editors meet regularly
with the contacts and owners, and sometimes intensively when they’re working on a
new page or improvements to a specific area’s content. The contacts are considered
the organization’s ears; they help the editors listen in on what’s going on and identify
any problems on the intranet. Working close with the content contacts and owners
has been a big success factor, as they are often good at giving feedback.
The team holds regular joint meetings with the press and news functions to discuss
the state of play. It also meets regularly with communications strategists to compare
notes and obtain an overview, which helps team members set the right priorities for
content.

Content Guidelines
The team monitors developments related to usability and accessibility on an ongoing basis,
and follows the findings of the NN/g surveys, as well as those of GDS in England.

456 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

Sweden has a Swedish version of WCAG 2.0 called Guidelines for Web Development
(www.webbriktlinjer.se) for public sector websites. The team followed these official
guidelines in designing its new intranet. The first of 111 guidelines states that websites
should conform to WCAG 2.0 level AA. According to the guidelines’ principles, public sector
websites should be accessible, usable, confidence-inspiring, efficient, technically
independent, and accessible over time. “We have followed the guidelines as far as possible,
and our intranet conforms with level AA in the points relevant to the developed solution,”
says Stringer Bodin.
The Swedish Parliament team has also developed several quick guides of content guidelines,
including the Quick Guide for Editors, which provides tips on how to write for the intranet. It
also offers a corresponding manual for images, Images on the Intranet.
Excerpts from the Quick Guide for Editors:

Headings
Headings should be short and pithy; use introductions/extracts to clarify or go into greater
depth.
Guideline no. 105, Priority 1: Create headings with heading elements
• Headings should be real headings, not just captions. For example, it
doesn’t work to write “Seminar in the Riksdag” as a heading. Instead try to
write what the seminar is about: “Seminar on men’s violence against women.”
• A heading should be active. This means that there should be a subject that
is doing/thinking/planning something. Write “The Riksdag debates the budget
bill,” rather than “The budget bill is debated in the Riksdag.” Think about
writing headings in the present tense as a rule.
• Aim to write headings that are as short as possible when you write for
the intranet. The goal should be to write headings of no more than one line,
even on the latest news page.
• Think about the message in the heading, so that the heading and extract
text don’t have two different messages.
• Try, if possible, to highlight something interesting. Think about how to
get the user to want to read more. Include interesting details.

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Alt text
Guideline no. 11 Priority 1: Writing alternative alt text
Images with significant content must have an alt-text. The editor must assess whether the
content of the image is significant or not. On the intranet, we should primarily have images
with significant content.
• The alt text should be no longer than 90 characters or 12 words.
• The alt text should describe the image.
• The alt text should never include the name of the photographer.
• When an image contains text, the text in the image should be written in the
form of an alt text.
Examples of alt texts:
• Woman hoisting the Swedish flag outside the East Wing of the Swedish
Parliament building.
• Member of the Swedish Parliament, Name Nameson, welcomes the delegation
from XYZ in the Bank Hall.
• Full Chamber at the opening of the 2014 Riksdag session.
• Portrait of Secretary-General of the Riksdag Kathrin Flossing on Riksgatan.

Culling Content
From the very start of the project, the new site’s content and content quality was a priority.
The team had to decide what to keep, what to leave behind, and how to handle content they
decided was important enough to include on the new site. “We worked on the basis of the
concept and list of priorities that we drew up at an early stage of the project,” says Web
Editor Birgitta Elgemyr. This laser focus on content planning paid off: the new site provides
users with a better, more cohesive experience.
“We went from having a disjointed intranet to a coherent one,” she says. “Earlier it was
important to have shorter pages, but with the redesign we wanted to keep the content
within each subject together in a completely new way.”
Making quality content a focus of the new site design meant the team had to find effective
ways to uncover gems in the rough.
“When we met the content owners during the project, many of them hadn’t looked at the
content on the old intranet for a long time,” says Web Editor Katarina Willstedt. “When we
worked together on the content, we discovered that many things were no longer relevant
and didn’t fit the new concept or objectives for the new intranet.
“We also didn’t want it [the new site] to be a storage space for old material ‘that may be
useful some time’ or offer the same services as other channels,” she says.
So, if content didn’t really have a target group, the team simply got rid of it. There was no
longer room for text that merely filled empty space.
“We were forced to rethink and remove material that was no longer used,” says Willstedt.

Not everything was published before launch, as the team decided to port the low-priority
content later. That content proved to be that last box you find in the basement six months

458 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

after you move: no one missed it. Ultimately, the team decided not to publish it at all. The
shallow information structure also made it easier to highlight what was important.
The old content was not deleted, but it’s been kept only as a sort of archive. This turned out
to be an important decision. A couple of times since the new site launched, team members
had to publish older content that was not deemed relevant to migrate, but that was
requested by users.
One of the critical content challenges the team encountered regarded the CMS templates.
“It would have been easier to work with and revise the contents if the templates in CMS had
been ready earlier,” says Elgemyr. “It felt as though we were groping in the dark for a while
when the team didn’t know what it was going to look like, and we weren’t able to show
anything to the content owners either. It would have been good if we’d had a bit more time
to work with the contents properly in the templates during the project.”

TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY
Category Technology Used
Web Server Hardware and
• Windows servers
Operating System
Bug Tracking/Quality
• Redmine
Assurance
• nUnit för automatiserade tester
Design Tools
• Adobe Photoshop
• Axure
• Paper, Post-Its, white boards
Site Building Tools
• Visual Studio
• ReSharper
• Grunt
Content Management Tools
• EPiServer CMS 7
• SharePoint 2013 (calendar and user
profiles)
Search
• Apache Solr
Version Control
• Subversion
Build Server
• TeamCity
Front-End Framework
• Twitter bootstrap

At the beginning of the project, the team evaluated three different platforms: EPiServer
CMS, SharePoint 2013, and WordPress. During the evaluation, team members examined

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each product’s strengths and weaknesses and reviewed the products based on several
criteria:
• How well does the product fulfill the functions identified as important for the
intranet during the preliminary study and project-planning phase?
• How easy is it to adapt and further develop the solution?
• Does the product have intranet-specific functionality out-of-the-box?
• How well suited is the product to the Swedish Parliament’s infrastructure and
competence?
• How well does the product fulfill the intranet’s security requirements?

The team also reviewed specific functions that it had identified as important — such as text
and image management — and evaluated operational and licensing costs. Ultimately, the
team chose EPiServer CMS for content management and SharePoint for specific functions,
such as handling editorial calendars.

RESULTS AND ROI

Defining Success
The Swedish Parliament had many goals for the new intranet, but above all, the intranet
had to be effective in helping users carry out common tasks. Specifically, the new site had
to make it easy for users to:
• Find people
• Find the information they need
• Understand all information on the intranet
• Follow what’s happening at their workplace
With these goals in mind, the team conducted user tests before and after the launch and
also asked users about their overall experience with the intranet to gauge its success.

In the test conducted before the launch, the team uncovered a list of things
to improve on the intranet, including changes to the UI and editorial content
(especially micro content). The results for these items in the post-launch test
were much better. It was easy for users to find people by the work they
performed, and all test participants successfully finished the test tasks. The
team also tested the information structure with satisfying results. For
example, the name of the “I want to…” (Jag vill…) section was perceived as
an odd choice at first, but users also liked that it was different from other
section names and easily remembered.
The tests also showed that mobile use of the intranet is rising steadily. “We can also see
which functions are used the most, and that what we need to work further with and refine,”
says Stringer Bodin. Another interesting finding was that the top tasks on the new intranet
do not differ significantly from those on the old one. The big difference, of course, is that
these top tasks have been simplified so that they are easier for users to perform.

460 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

The team defined the KPI framework during the project and included two impact objectives:
• To be an effective tool for both users and content contributors
• To promote cooperation and a sense of belonging

This shows the KPI framework used by the organization. KPIs are described on the left;
indicators that can be measured are in the middle; and the right column shows the
measurement method. Everything that is measured relates to the impact objectives.
Swedish-parliament_36_KPI.png

Tracking Use and Usage

Metrics help the team identify trends over time, which in turn helps them prioritize ongoing
changes and development activities. Examples of metrics tracked monthly:
• Visits
• Mobile visits (including tablets)
• Number of active users: users who go on from the intranet’s homepage
• Feedback: number of feedback cases logged via the “Was this information of
help to you?” function
• Negative feedback: number of negative feedback cases via the “Was this
information of help to you?” function
• Searches: number of searches (the team follows up on the most common
search terms and phrases)
• External links: which websites or systems do users go to when they leave
the intranet?
• News: how many users read the news on the homepage

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 • User activity: how many people use various intranet functions, such as
search, sharing a page internally, downloading documents, and changing
roles.
• Page views for the top key functions and pages.

A few key metrics and their visualizations on an Excel sheet. Note: It appears that
everything is going sharply downward, but most people are on holiday in July, which
accounts for a natural dip in intranet usage and feedback.

LESSONS LEARNED
Members of the Swedish Parliament team and its design partners share lessons learned
from the project:

Process
• Educate external partners as thoroughly as possible. “We decided to
concentrate on carrying out an extensive pre-study in several steps and
consisting of several components, and to teach our partners about the
organization and the internal processes. We benefited greatly from having
done this during the rest of the project.” (Karin Hedman, Head of Information
Department/Intranet System Owner)
• If you hire consultants, keep them close to the process. “The Swedish
Parliament is an organization with complex operations, and participating in
the survey of needs would have helped me to gain a deeper understanding of
work procedures, conditions, etc. I was lucky enough to work with one of the
long-time web editors and that was critical for my understanding the
operations of the organization and the intranet. It is important to have
someone who knows how the organization works and can explain things when
you’re a consultant. It’s been positive that we have worked in such close
cooperation with the clients; we became a project team consisting of us from
Creuna, the core team from the Swedish Parliament Administration, and other
consultants.” (Fredriksson)

462 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

 • Show work in progress. “The public sprint demos worked surprisingly well!
The main purpose was to be transparent and invite those who showed interest
— besides those who were a part of the project organization. We thought
openness would make the buy-in easier, but we also wanted the organizations
expertise, and this was one way to invite them and listen to feedback.”
(Stringer Bodin)
“If anyone had told me before the project started that we were going to talk
about what we were doing during each sprint to 25–30 interested parties at
the Swedish Parliament, I wouldn’t have believed it would work, but it did! We
had to think things through properly before each sprint demo, and I think all
the interested parties benefited from them. However, we had pre-demos for
the core team before showing everyone what we’d done, as the closest team
needed a greater insight into developments.” (Engelhart)
• Err on the side of over-communicating. “Don’t underestimate the team’s
need for information about the work of other members of the team.
Sometimes it’s easy to believe that you can save time by not calling everyone
to certain meetings or activities, but this can instead lead to things having to
be corrected later as the right person wasn’t there when they should have
been.” (Stringer Bodin)
• Take a pulse check halfway through: “When half the project period had
passed, we carried out a halftime evaluation to see where we stood and what
we could improve in our work procedures. What we did was to sketch out the
backlog in order to be able to focus on the right things during the second half
of the project. It was very valuable for the team to see where we stood — a
common picture for the whole team!” (Palmgren)
• Aim for continuous user involvement: “Our continuous user involvement
through interviews, tests, and reference groups was a success factor.”
(Engelhart)
• Communicate. “The project has been carried out in the form of a
communication project with one of the main project managers employed at
the Swedish Parliament. This has been very important, both during the
project and after the launch. It has given us the opportunity to reinforce our
skills at the Information Department, while retaining experience and
competence in the organization. This explains why the work of our web
editors has developed so well, and the continued development of the Intranet
has run so smoothly.” (Hedman)

Content
• Cull content; it is a critical task. “It was good that the in-house team had
such a clear focus on culling the content and focusing on what was important.
This made the task easier for us as consultants.” (Fredriksson)

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 • Give the web editors a lot of support. “Editors found it difficult to start
working according to a new intranet concept. We needed to give them more
support. If we’d known that it would take such a long time to get them up to
speed, we would have planned our work with the content differently. Now, the
gap between the old intranet’s content and the new one is too great to grasp
and understand. I think we should have prepared much more sample text,
with descriptions of how to work with the content and visualize it in the new
design at the same time.” (Stringer Bodin)
• Test designs rather than ask opinions. “The reference groups (collecting
requirements at group meetings) didn’t work. We tested this but didn’t
receive any detailed wishes that could help us before we started our
development work. Testing proposals or elements that we’d already
developed worked a lot better, and we received more valuable feedback this
way.” (Fredriksson)
• Visualize and prioritize development of the most common templates.
“My advice to others is to get started with the content as early as possible and
to prioritize the development of templates that the editors use a lot. Try to
visualize what it’s going to look like, especially for the editors!” (Elgemyr)
• Consider the editors. “Think about how the editors’ interface and the editor
in CMS are to function. Help the editors to create a good structure in CMS for
the content. Help the editors to do things right. Think about the editors’
perspective from an early stage when developing the solutions.” (Fredriksson)

Teams
• Whenever possible, locate team members in one location. “If possible,
make sure that the team can work from a common location. Through most of
the project, we sat in two different locations in Stockholm. If we’d been sitting
together, it would have been easier and quicker for us to bounce questions off
each other.” (Lernmark)
• Don’t underestimate the power of a supportive team environment.
“The ability to create commitment and loyalty in the team is critical. We
succeeded with this! This meant that certain shortcomings could be overcome
as we worked as a team, and we wanted to make things work! We really
managed to create a high level of team spirit: ‘We’re going to bring this off!’
We made time for coffee breaks together, to talk and do things together, to
discuss. Our team had a linear organization, where everyone was included,
which is typically Swedish. We worked without prestige, with our objectives in
focus.” (Stringer Bodin and Palmgren)

464 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

 • Do the design work before the developers start coding. “There wasn’t
enough design ready (wireframes, design sketches, and prototypes) when the
developers were due to start developing. It got very stressful when the
developers wanted more to do, and we didn’t have enough to give them. It’s
a balancing act between detailing and designing enough for the developers
without doing too much. This balance wasn’t really achieved during the initial
sprints. We (the interaction designer and art director) would have needed a
head start of a few weeks, and in some areas, you need clear objectives
before you can start developing. The graphic expression also needs to be
agreed [on] before the front-end developers start developing. It gets difficult
when this has to be done in parallel.” (Fredriksson)
• Keep trying to make search better. “It’s always possible to do more work
with the search function! Numerous revisions and sprints are needed to create
a good search function. The users’ expectations are that search should be as
good as Google, so you can always do more when it comes to the search
function. But of course, it’s a question of priorities between everything that
needs to be done.” (Fredriksson and Palmgren)

An Iterative Approach
• Keep reassessing. “We tried to improve our work methods all the time. We
changed things on the basis of our experiences; some improvements emerged
during the retrospectives, but also in other ways. We worked according to
scrum and this was a success factor for the project. With scrum, we were able
to prioritize and reprioritize throughout the project. The more we learned and
developed, the easier it was for us to see what needed to be done and
developed. Some things that we thought were important during the planning
stage turned out not to be so important when we started to see and test the
whole concept. This gave us a flexibility throughout the project, and some
user stories remained in the backlog and were later rejected.” (Stringer
Bodin)
• Work as efficiently as possible. “Once the design concept was agreed
upon, we tried to work as efficient as possible in the design process. No
unnecessary time was spent on sketches and prototypes. We drew things on a
whiteboard and took photos of what we’d drawn. We rarely had formal design
or prototype deliveries, as is customary. Sometimes it was enough with a
specification of what needed to be developed in the user story, and then for
the art director and interaction designer to work closely with the developers
during the implementation instead. When we needed to test different
alternatives or to seek buy-in in the organization, we still made prototypes
and design sketches though.” (Engelhart)
• Practice nimble design/small iterations, which are more effective
than big design sweeps. “Start by developing a scaled-down version of a
new function. Test it on users, analyze data from statistics tools, and then
decide what the next step should be. This way, you avoid going too far and
devoting time to functions that aren’t used or don’t support the users.”
(Fröberg)

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Technology
• Leverage existing technology. “In most cases, you probably don’t want to
create an intranet from scratch. Some sort of content platform is a good idea
to start with. Modifying a content system extensively is often possible and
might even be easy to do, but make sure to consider the long-term costs of
ownership and maintenance of a standard platform that has been heavily
modified. My advice would be: select a platform that fulfills most of your
requirements and then find a supplier/team that is really comfortable with this
platform or find a great supplier/team and let them choose the platform. This
might mean that you have to adjust your requirements, or at least postpone
some of them.” (Lernmark)
• Don’t expect the intranet to solve everything. “It’s important to think
about the ecosystem of services that the users will be working in, and what
role the intranet plays in this ecosystem. The intranet can’t solve everything;
it’s important to be clear about what you want the intranet to do.”
(Fredriksson)

466 [email protected] The Swedish Parliament

Tourism New Zealand
OVERVIEW

COMPANY TEAM
Tourism New Zealand is the organization Project team (internal): Deborah Gray, Project
responsible for marketing New Zealand to the world Owner; Sue Parcell, Project Sponsor; Irina Winsley,
as a tourist destination. In a fiercely contested Project Lead; Brighid Kelly; Matt Moore; Alison
global tourism marketplace, Tourism New Zealand Dorrington; David Brem; Christine Adair
is responsible for ensuring New Zealand remains
attractive as a visitor destination internationally. Design team (external) Datacom: Katrina
Through the 100% Pure New Zealand campaign, MacDonald, Project Manager; Matt Swain,
the organization’s team of approximately 160 staff in SharePoint Practice Lead; Chris Zhang, SharePoint
15 offices takes New Zealand's story to consumers, Architect; Bryan Nimo, Brand and Digital Designer;
the travel trade, and the global media, while working Trudy Evans, Content Strategist; Keshwal Prakash,
with the industry in New Zealand to ensure they Test Analyst
deliver on the campaign’s promises. Tourism New
Zealand is funded by the New Zealand Government.
Headquarters: Auckland, New Zealand
Company locations: Tourism New Zealand has 15
offices across the globe, including in the US,
Europe, South America, Asia, Australia, and New
Zealand.
Locations where people use the intranet:
Employees at all Tourism New Zealand locations
use the intranet.
Annual revenue: N/A

THE INTRANET
Users: Approximately 180 people use the intranet.
The user population is very diverse in terms of age,
time at Tourism New Zealand, English proficiency,
locations, role types, and usage types.
Mobile approach: Responsive web design
Technology platform: Office 365 (SharePoint
online)

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INTRANET TEAM

Team members shown here (left to right, top row): Sue Parcell, Deb Gray, Brighid
Kelly, and Irina Winsley; (left to right, bottom row): Matt Moore, Dave Brem, Alison
Dorrington, and Christine Adair.

HIGHLIGHTS ABOUT THIS WINNER

Faced with an aging intranet designed to support only desktop usage, the Tourism New
Zealand (TNZ) intranet team set out to refresh the site and encourage collaboration and
communication, regardless of employee location or device.
TNZ is headquartered in Auckland and made up of 180 people of diverse backgrounds
working out of 15 offices across the globe. In just seven months, the team worked with
Datacom to create Kōhanga, a new responsive site — built on Office 365 and SharePoint
Online — to support users around the world.
• Responsive design. The new site uses responsive design to deliver content
to all employees, regardless of device. The same information is available
across all device types. The switch to responsive design also helped
streamline ongoing site maintenance; this was essential, as only one full-time
employee is allocated to manage and maintain the site.
• Rewritten content. Every piece of intranet content was catalogued and
prioritized, and new content needs were identified. Content was evaluated
based on age, relevance, quality, length, and usage, and decisions were made
to keep, delete, or merge the information. All content was rewritten in plain
language, which was particularly important for non-native English speakers.
The content lead worked closely with content managers to encourage the use
of shorter words and sentences and avoid acronyms and uncommon words.

468 [email protected] Tourism New Zealand

 • Building excitement. The team built excitement around the new site by
including employees from around the organization throughout the
development process; more than 25% of staff was ultimately involved. Team
members created launch activities to encourage use, distributed a one-page
introduction to the new site highlighting key features, and used regular staff
newsletters to build anticipation via a launch countdown. On launch day,
intranet champions and project team members throughout the organization
presented the new site to staff.
• Encouraging social participation. A key goal for the site was to encourage
storytelling in order to connect people. The team integrated Yammer
throughout the site to encourage employees to share and interact. The
prevalence of Yammer content showed employees the tool’s importance.
Executive team members were encouraged to share ideas and communicate
via Yammer as well to lead by example.
Early on, some employees were hesitant about Yammer, as they did not
understand its role on the site. People were overwhelmed, asking if they had
to read every little thing that came across their feeds. The intranet team
reassured them: of course not. Yammer is for “nice to know” information:
conversations, polls, questions, competitions, and sharing photos and videos.
Knowing that Yammer’s fast-paced nature does not lend itself to having every
item read, the team puts all “need to know” information in the homepage
news carousel.
The team found that making this distinction between “nice to know” and
“need to know” not only made people more confident in using the site, but it
also made them more comfortable using Yammer to communicate. People no
longer had to wonder if a piece of content was important enough to post — on
Yammer, anything was OK.
Yammer had a soft launch with the organization’s intranet champions a few
weeks before the full site went live. The new tool went viral, with all staff
members joining within a week. By the time the new intranet was live, rich
conversational content was available in all Yammer feeds.

BACKGROUND
The old TNZ intranet was rapidly becoming irrelevant for the organization’s users. It was
inaccessible on mobile devices and outside the TNZ network. Intranet pages were too
visually busy and hard to read, with too much text and scrolling. The result was that people
were struggling to find information, and content managers were struggling to keep the
content up-to-date. Some people did not even know there was an intranet.
The company needed a new intranet, but it also needed a new approach that would meet its
staff member’s mobile-first needs. The following business goals were outlined for the
project:
• Enable collaboration. Create a collaborative environment that supports the
organization’s mission, vision, and values and supports knowledge-sharing
across TNZ by connecting people across the organization, regardless of their
location or device.
• Create a hub. Make the new intranet a single, intuitive point of access to
TNZ tools, systems, and information.

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These goals are not exactly the low-hanging fruit of the intranet space, and the team knew
they would be difficult to achieve. “It takes many levels to win the game,” says Irina
Winsley, Information Manager. “We were starting this game from level one, developing a
new intranet on the Office 365/SharePoint online platform. We’ve been using SharePoint for
a number of years and therefore were familiar with the capabilities of this platform.
However, this project was our first experience with developing a system in the cloud on the
Office 365 platform.”
The old intranet was designed in 2001, with only one revamp in 2005–2006. Much had
changed since that redesign — TNZ’s culture and work practices included. The organization
now emphasizes staff storytelling, knowledge sharing, and collaboration, and none of this
was reflected in the old intranet. Not surprisingly, many of the organization’s offshore staff
claimed they were not using the old intranet at all.
Although TNZ has only 160 or so full-time staff members, they are spread across many
regions and time zones. The organization has 15 international offices, some of which are
very small, with only one or two staff members. With an intranet that was not focused on
mobile-enabled users, it was a challenge to connect and create business value for all the
staff in all regions and offices on a single platform. Lacking the right tool, people were
defaulting to the old standby of email and drowning under the weight of the Reply All ogre.
“With the redesign, we wanted our new intranet to provide a platform for Tourism New
Zealand people to bridge physical location barriers, participate, find information, and hone
their storytelling culture,” says Deborah Gray, General Manager Corporate Affairs.

Image 1. Tourism New Zealand Intranet Old Homepage.

TourismNZ_01_OldIntranetHomepage.png

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DESIGN REVIEW

Homepage

Image 2. Tourism New Zealand Intranet Homepage with Yammer Feed.

TourismNZ_02_IntranetHomepageWithYammerFeed_live.png

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Homepage Highlights
Visual design. The site has a clean, modern look, with plenty of white space balancing out
the site’s imagery and text. The site also uses colors consistently: pacific blue for banners
and headers, fresh green for calls to action, and gray for navigation menus.
1. Carousel. The news carousel highlights important information. Although a variety of
information is available via Yammer, the site’s most important “need to know”
information is conveyed in the carousel. Each item is summarized on the left side,
letting visitors scan headlines and immediately access items of interest. Each item
includes the date it was posted and the number of likes it has received. Corporate
Affairs posts all corporate news and media releases, but anyone can post a comment.
2. Yammer. Yammer is integrated throughout the site, including on the homepage.
Such a prominent placement reflects the tool’s importance in the new site. This
encourages people to communicate and share information. It also keeps content on
the homepage and throughout the site new and dynamic.
The tool’s heading prompts participation. The heading, Tell us your story, your
thoughts, your inspiration!, is followed by the user’s picture and a prompt to post
your comments. The homepage view is the All Company Yammer feed, which
includes all messages posted to groups the user belongs to, as well as posts to the
All Company group. People can easily post, comment, or browse.
3. Picture book. The #TNZwhanau picture book offers a continuous stream of pictures
of employees in action and acts as a quick visual snapshot of what’s happening
across TNZ. Any employee can post via desktop or mobile using a Yammer app. A
clear call to click here to add an image encourages people to post and share pictures.
The feature, which was conceived as a way to offer the “week in pictures,” has been
very popular. The site is also reusing some of the images in other ways, such as
accompanying news items. The team now has a huge repository of images of
employees at work, and is thus well positioned to avoid using generic stock
photography on the site.
4. Reminders, Opportunities, and Media. The homepage’s right side includes a
tabbed section to keep people informed about time-related information, such as
Reminders about office closings or planned outages, as well as Opportunities and
Media sections.
5. Research insights. The site’s Research insights section presents information related
to company-wide KPIs. One of these indicators is displayed on the homepage:
Holiday visitors from key countries. Posting performance information on the
homepage emphasizes the information’s importance while also keeping all employees
informed of status or changes.
6. World clock and tools. The navigation bar includes access to a world clock,
featuring the current time in offices around the globe and quick access to tools
people need for daily work. The tools include access to workspaces for internal and
external collaboration. Teams, projects, and communities of practice have
collaboration sites, and people can request one via a simple request process intended
to avoid duplication and ensure all sites have well-defined goals. Quarterly audits
ensure timely removal of redundant workspaces.

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 7. Footer. The page footer includes links to related external sites such as the
Consumer site and Corporate site, as well as links to the organization’s presence on
social media.

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Navigation

Image 3.Tourism New Zealand Intranet Megamenu.

TourismNZ_03_WhoWeAreSectionMegamenu_live.png

Navigation Highlights
1. Main categories. Site content is arranged under three main categories: What’s
happening, How do I, and Who we are. What’s happening includes news, events
calendar, media updates, presentations, and research; How do I includes
procedural instructions for completing work-related tasks; and Who we are
includes information about the organization.
2. Megamenu. The megamenu design gives people quick access to information.
The menus are arranged with bold categories followed by indented subcategories
to help people understand the hierarchical structure and find what they need.
The team made sure to use plain language for all labels, avoiding unexplained
abbreviations or meaningless jargon to make sections as clear as possible.
3. Local navigation. The side of the page displays the user’s current location. The
main section is highlighted with a gray background and bold text. Subsections
are listed beneath, matching the order of the subsections in the megamenu.

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Content Page

Image 4. Tourism New Zealand Intranet How Do I. This is an expanded view of

the How Do I feature. TourismNZ_04_HowDoIPageWithExpandedAccordion.png

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How do I Highlights
1. Accordions. Content pages use accordions where appropriate to categorize
information. These act as a page-level table of contents, allowing people to quickly
understand what’s available on a page and easily choose content of interest.
Accordions also translate well to a mobile experience, where a small amount of
content can quickly turn into a very long mobile page. In all cases — but especially
on mobile — using accordions reduces page length and speeds up information
access.
2. Breadcrumbs. The top of the page provides navigational breadcrumbs so
people can easily navigate to higher levels in the site structure. The links
start from the homepage and indicate the section and subsection the user is
visiting.
3. In-text links. Links within the body of the page lead visitors to relevant
information. For instance, information about claiming expenses related to
arranging travel link the user to the appropriate instructions.
4. Reminders. Timely reminders appear on the side of the page to keep people
up-to-date about relevant changes. Reminders are tagged such that they are
posted once, but display across any relevant pages. For instance, a reminder
tagged with “finance” appears on both the homepage and the Manage
Finance page.
5. Page owner. Page owner information appears at the bottom of each page.
This includes the page content owner’s picture and name so that employees
can contact him or her with questions or comments. The name is color-coded
to show the owner’s real-time availability: gray = offline, green = available,
yellow = away from desk, and red = busy/at a meeting. This functionality is
provided by Microsoft Lync (now Skype for Business). This area also shows
the date the information was last reviewed and the date the information is up
for review; this helps people see how current the information is.
6. Related information. Pages in the How do I section include links to related
resources, a section for questions and answers, and additional contact
information.

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Research Insights

Image 5. Tourism New Zealand Intranet Research Insights Page.

TourismNZ_05_ResearchInsightsPage_live.png

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Research Insights Highlights
1. Research insights. The Research insights page summarizes important performance
information for the organization. For example, all employees have shared KPIs
around big picture outcomes, and this information is shared on the Research
insights page in the What’s happening section.
2. Links to additional content. The page begins with a list of links to sources
of key tourism-related statistics. Each source includes brief descriptive text
to let users know what to expect behind each link.
3. Performance summaries. Each KPI is shown in tabular form, with a clear
heading. Some include a summary of the KPI goal, such as “Our goal in
FY16: Growth by 3 percent points outside peak travel periods (Sep–Nov,
Mar–May).” Each table includes the relevant data and a performance
indicator; improved performance is shown in green, with an arrow pointing
up, while performance dips are in red, with an arrow pointing down.

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 Mobile
Image 6. Tourism New Zealand Intranet Mobile
Homepage. TourismNZ_06_HomepageMobile.png

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Mobile Highlights
1. Mobile access. The previous intranet was designed only for desktop use. Having
mobile access is a new and essential feature for the travel-related organization. In
fact, some frequently traveling employees did not even realize TNZ had an intranet.
Now the site is available to all employees as they travel, attend conferences and
events, or simply work outside the office. All intranet information is available across
all devices.
2. Prioritization. Information is shuffled in mobile views so that the highest
priority information appears first on the page. The news carousel appears at
the top, followed by the picture book and Reminders. Research insights
appears at the bottom of the homepage. The Yammer feed is hidden when
the Kōhanga homepage is viewed on mobile devices, but people use Yammer
via Yammer apps installed on their mobile devices.
3. Navigation and search. The top of the page includes a hamburger menu
for navigation. The search box is open, with the prompt text to: find people,
places and things....

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Employee Profiles

Image 7. Tourism New Zealand Intranet User Profile.

TourismNZ_07_UserProfilePage_live.png

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Employee Profile Highlights
1. Contact information. Employee profiles provide an employee picture, title, and
essential contact information on the left side of the page. Employees can also add
an About section and information about their skills.
2. Organizational chart. An organizational chart appears below the employee
details, showing the organization’s reporting structure and the employee’s
place within it.
3. Blog. If an employee has a blog, it is available through the employee profile.
4. Documents and discovery. The rest of the page displays documents and
contacts. The top displays the user’s recent documents. Other viewers can
see only the documents they have access to. Connections are then listed to
provide one-click access to another employee’s information. The final section
includes links to documents that others are working on, again based on user
permissions. This information, part of Office 365’s Delve feature, makes the
standard employee profile more robust and enables additional knowledge
sharing and discovery.

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DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY WORK

Taking a Multi-Pronged Approach

The project team took a multi-pronged approach to starting the planning and design
activities for the new intranet. First, it conducted a series of interactive and collaborative
workshops to clarify the requirements. It then developed technical and functional
specifications, established the governance framework, developed the content strategy, and
created design mock-ups.
Refining the content, navigation, and IA required many online card-sorting and tree-testing
exercises, which included participants from different teams, offices, and regions. The team
used wireframes as functional prototypes for design, communication, and usability testing,
which helped everyone understand what the intranet needed to look like before the team
expended considerable time and effort on actual development. Wireframes also helped the
team consider various design options before committing resources to a specific design
direction.
The design team also used technology to help it deliver the new intranet in a shortened
timeframe. This technology included a responsive design approach and Datacom’s Social
Intranet Accelerator, which delivered mobile-friendly page layouts. Custom SharePoint web
parts included in the accelerator package provided the most-requested pieces of
functionality on a corporate intranet site, including a news carousel, megamenu, instant
search, accordion, and tabbed web parts.

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Image 8. Tourism New Zealand Intranet Search. Instant search with type-ahead
functionality helps people quickly find the results they need on the TNZ intranet. When
users search for a name, the top three people matches are displayed with a name,
image, job title, and contact details, along with a link to the full people search. When
users search for content, the top three content matches are displayed in instant
search, along with a link to the full content search.
TourismNZ_08_InstantSearch_live.png

484 [email protected] Tourism New Zealand

Image 9. Tourism New Zealand Intranet Wireframe. This wireframe shows one of
the many iterations the team designed to achieve the final design and functionality.
The team used wireframes such as this as functional prototypes for design,
communication, and usability testing. The wireframes also helped everyone involved in
the project understand what the intranet needed to look like before the team expended
considerable time and effort on actual development. Using wireframes, the team could
consider various design options before committing resources to a specific design
direction. TourismNZ_09_Wireframes.png

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Ensuring Effective IA
The team simplified the navigation structure and tested it thoroughly with employees, using
card-sort and tree-jack exercises to ensure they would not get lost or be confused on the
new intranet. Team members also gave people other tools to help them easily find their way
around at all times. These tools include using plain language for all labels, section, and page
names, and allowing access to all site pages from the megamenu. Breadcrumb navigation is
also provided on all pages.
Before the team built all these design tools to help people, it first spent considerable time
behind the scenes, cataloging and organizing site content. It then tested the results with
card-sorting tools. A group of intranet champions from different regions also helped the
team get input from the wide cross section of people involved in the navigation structure
testing.

Adoption and Buy-in

This TNZ team made many great decisions to ensure that the new intranet would be a
successful tool that people cared about — but getting buy-in right means getting the right
people involved in the project from the start. The TNZ team recruited nine people from
different teams and offices around the organization to participate in the redevelopment
project team. These key people included the General Manager for Corporate Affairs, the
General Manager of Finance and IT, and the General Manager of HR.
Thus, the team not only drew from a wide swath of company stakeholders to ensure
success, it also put the right people in front of the project, making sure HR,
Communications, Finance, and IT were driving the project agenda. Involving these key
stakeholders and including them in the decision-making process from day one helped ensure
a successful outcome. Further, participation was not just a top-down affair; more than 25%
of all TNZ staff were involved in the intranet redevelopment project as project team
members, intranet champions, or content managers. The champions in particular proved
pivotal from beginning to end.
“We had a fantastic team of intranet champions,” says Winsley. “This team was brought
together early on, well before any actual work was done, long before we had a supplier in
place. Initially, our champions gathered feedback from the entire organization on what the
new intranet needed to look like. Then they helped us with running the naming
competition.”
They also helped test the look and feel and page load speed in different offices, and were
heavily involved in intranet launch activities.
The core principle of the organization’s user adoption strategy was to involve all staff in
discovering how Kōhanga can support their everyday business needs, improve
communication, facilitate collaboration, and encourage continuous organizational
improvement. The team employed a number of tactics to achieve those goals, including the
following:
• Developed and circulated a one-page outline of the new intranet’s key
features
• Made presentations to the Executive Leadership Team

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 • Created Yammer groups for content managers, intranet champions, and
project team members
• Provided regular updates and a launch countdown in staff newsletters
• Enlisted intranet champions and project team members to present the new
intranet to all staff in all offices on launch day
• Provided training and support for all users
• Posted regular tips on how to use Yammer and the new intranet
• Created a series of brief video tutorials for users
• Conducted quick polls posted on Yammer
• Created fun challenges aimed at getting people excited about the site

WORKING WITH OUTSIDE AGENCIES

Agency Project Role
Datacom • Developed technical and functional
IT company that designs, builds, specifications
and runs IT systems and process
for businesses • Conducted navigation structure testing:
card-sorting and tree-testing exercises
• Provided visual design
• Developed governance framework
• Assisted with the content strategy
development
• Developed the new intranet on the Office
365/SharePoint online platform

GOVERNANCE
The Corporate Affairs team is the overall owner of the TNZ intranet. Because this team is
responsible for TNZ’s internal and external communications, it is very well equipped to be
the driving force behind the intranet. The team is comprised of a good mix of
communications skills and technical, business, usability, and IA knowledge — all of which
are essential for driving the intranet forward. However, the intranet is more than just a
communications platform. So, to ensure the intranet’s ongoing value as a key internal
business tool, the organization’s intranet governance group also includes representatives
from the HR, IT, and Digital teams.
Three Corporate Affairs team members also played key roles on the intranet development
project team: the business owner, the project lead, and the communications/user adoption
lead.

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 INTRANET TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES
Role Responsibilities
Intranet Sponsor • Ensure the intranet’s success
• Ensure that the intranet’s required
resources are secured, including resources
for go-live and ongoing value maintenance
Intranet Owner • Ensure the integrity of the intranet’s
information
• Lead the intranet strategy for the
organization
• Manage overall intranet operations
Intranet Redevelopment • Lead the intranet development project
Project Lead/Governance
Group Chair • Lead the Governance group
Intranet Development Project • Ensure the smooth and successful execution
Team of the intranet development project
Governance Group • Champion the benefits of the governance
principles
• Encourage adoption of agreed-on practices
• Assess, arbitrate, or escalate all on-going
technology and content management issues
• Recommend education and training to
support the intranet’s continued success
• Continuously review and improve the
governance framework
• Review the content owner list to ensure all
areas of the intranet are managed in line
with the Governance Framework
• Evaluate the intranet’s ongoing success
• Report performance, findings, and
recommendations to the Intranet Owner
The Intranet Manager • Lead/chair the Governance Group
(Irina Winsley, Information
Manager)
• Manage the intranet’s technical aspects
(including new site creation, term stores,
site navigation, and so on)
• Work with other areas of the Technology
team to resolve incidents and problems
• Provide technical information and guidance
to the Internal Communications & User

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 Adoption Lead and Site Owners
• Provide training to all content managers
and project site owners
• Create project sites
• Maintain project site templates
• Close project sites that are no longer
required
• Prepare monthly analytical reports
Internal Communications & • Manage homepage content
User Adoption Lead
• Ensure that CE content is regularly posted
and that CE posts responses to comments
• Work with the Intranet Manager, Content
Managers, and HR team to plan for and
support the user adoption process
• Produce and update the intranet style
guidelines (tone of voice, etc.) as required
• Produce training for content managers on
writing for the web and provide ongoing
coaching and support
Content managers • Create, review, and maintain content to
ensure it is relevant and timely, following
best practices for writing for an online
audience
Corporate Affairs team • Generate corporate (official) news and
targeted content displayed in the news and
media releases carousel on the intranet
homepage
• Generate the media wraps and issues
register displayed under the Media tab on
the homepage
Project Collaboration Sites • Ensure their sites support users within their
owners project team
• Ensure the sites meet both the minimum
content standards laid out in the
Governance Framework and any additional
site-specific requirements (such as specific
business requirements)

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URL AND ACCESS

ACCESS INFORMATION
Item Status
URL https://tourismnz.sharepoint.com/
Default Status The intranet is set as each user’s homepage.
People can’t change this setting.
Remote Access The intranet can be accessed remotely on any
device; the Corporate LAN is not required.

TIMELINE

PROJECT MILESTONES
Item Status
2001 • Developed the first company intranet on the
Shado platform
2005–2006 • Redesigned the intranet on the Shado
platform
July 2014 • Set up a project team for the intranet
redevelopment project
December 2014 • Supplier (Datacom) selected for the intranet
redevelopment project
January 2015 • Began working on developing the new
intranet on the SharePoint Online (Office
365) platform
July 2015 • Launched the new intranet on the
SharePoint Online (Office 365) platform

Overall redesign timeframe: 7 months (January–July 2015)

CONTENT AND CONTENT CONTRIBUTORS

Conducting a Content Redesign

For intranet content to be easily consumed by the largest number of people, you must
ensure that the content is great — that is, useful, well written, and easy to find. None of
that is achieved without effort and planning.
As part of the intranet redesign project, all of the new TNZ intranet’s content was rewritten
in plain language to make it easily accessible to all of the company’s users, particularly
those who speak English as their second language. This meant using shorter words and
sentences, and avoiding acronyms and uncommon words. The content team lead worked
closely with all of the content managers to make sure these guidelines were followed. Plain
language is particularly important for an organization such as TNZ, due to the global nature

490 [email protected] Tourism New Zealand

of its business. “It helps our people to move efficiently through a flow of information to
complete their intranet tasks,” says Gray.
The key to successful content management long term is to never leave well enough alone;
each year, TNZ conducts a comprehensive content audit to review and update all intranet
content. The intranet manager and content lead are in charge of these annual audits.

Culling Content
One of the critical pieces of creating great new content is to take a deep dive into the old
content before porting it over to the new site. The TNZ team conducted a full audit of the
existing intranet content (all pages and documents) and captured its findings in the “Master
Content Migration” document. All content was then reviewed and prioritized by the content
owners. Content evaluation criteria included content age, relevance, quality, length, and
usage; all of these factors were used to make decisions regarding which content to keep,
leave, or merge in each topic area.
The intranet team provided a template for content managers so that they could codify the
new content that would be required on the new intranet. That template contains fields for
key information (including meta data) and also includes brief editorial guidelines.

Good Content Requires a Big Effort

Many content managers were involved in producing the new intranet’s high-quality content.
The intranet team provided all content managers with training on writing best practices and
how to upload content. The team held content loading parties to facilitate the uploading
process. At these events, technical team leads were available to assist content managers as
they uploaded files.

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 CONTRIBUTION AND OVERSIGHT
An Inclusive Content Model
Contributors • All TNZ staff can post reminders on the
intranet homepage, participate in Yammer
groups, post messages on Yammer, and
post photos on the #TNZwhanau picture
book. No approvals or reviewers are needed
for this user-generated content. Self-help
video tutorials on using Yammer are
available to all employees.
• The Corporate Affairs team is responsible
for delivering corporate content (corporate
news and media releases), but all users can
post comments on the news items.
Maintaining Quality • Content managers are given a standard set
of templates and styles that ensure
consistency across the intranet. The
intranet manager and content lead are
available to provide training and ongoing
support to all content managers to ensure
their content is regularly updated, on
brand, user friendly, and written in plain
language.

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TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY
Category Technology Used
Web Server Hardware and • Office 365/SharePoint Online
Operating System
Bug Tracking/Quality • JIRA
Assurance
Design Tools • Adobe Creative Suite
• SharePoint designer, Visual Studio
Site Building Tools • SharePoint designer, PowerShell for
SharePoint
Content Management Tools • Office 365/SharePoint Online
Search • SharePoint Enterprise Search for Office 365
Other Functions • Yammer
• The API of Time and Date service is used to
provide real-time world clocks for all TNZ
offices

ROI

Determining Ways to Measure Success

The TNZ team outlined several clear, specific, and measurable metrics to help define the
tangible improvements the organization has realized from it efforts with the new intranet.
These measures are being regularly reviewed and refined, but currently include the
following:
• Staff feedback via an annual engagement survey, annual internal
communications survey, and anecdotal feedback
• Kōhanga statistics, including the number of unique visitors per day,
corporate news item views, and volume of user generated content and likes
• Yammer statistics, including the number of active users and the number of
posts, likes, and reads

Improvement Measured via Survey Results

The annual internal communication survey measures the intranet’s effectiveness as an
internal communication channel. The team gathered baseline data in February 2015, six
months before the new intranet launched. It then conducted a follow-up survey in February
2016 to track progress toward the intranet’s established improvement targets. The results
showed a good uptick in intranet usage, with 80% of respondents using the new intranet at
least every couple of days. The overall internal communications rating also improved, with
85% of respondents rating internal communications as excellent or very good overall.

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Following are some of the survey comments:
5. “The internal communications has improved a lot, and Kōhanga stores a lot
of useful information and is easy to navigate.”
6. “Kōhanga is fantastic!”
7. “One of the best intranets I’ve used.”
8. “I’ve never worked for an organization that keeps stuff so well informed.”

BEST PRACTICES
TNZ team members share some of the best practices they’ve learned through the redesign
process:
• Be strategic about change management. “Change management is a
crucial part of the intranet development project. A strategic approach to
change management is important for making sure all users are informed
about the project and are involved from the earliest stages whenever
possible.” (Deborah Gray)
• Governance is what keeps the new intranet running smoothly. “A good
governance framework is the key for ongoing intranet maintenance and future
growth. It enables the decision-making and planning processes for the
intranet, provides support for the intranet team, and assists with the smooth
running of the intranet.” (Sue Parcell)
• Get people involved and keep them involved. “Incorporate all staff
throughout the process to get a better understanding of your users and their
needs, as well as help all staff to be a part of the process, part of the
change.” (Brighid Kelly)
• Keep it simple. “Keep it simple. Simplicity and fun are key to user adoption.”
(Matt Moore)
• Use photos to your advantage. “Pictures are worth more than thousands of
words. Use them effectively.” (Irina Winsley)
• Plan for mobile first, but don’t stop there. “For internal users, think
mobile-first, but not mobile only. Today people use many different devices to
handle daily business processes. Start with mobile first by placing mobile
devices at the heart of the design and development strategy, and then grow
outward to a desktop-friendly version.” (David Brem)

494 [email protected] Tourism New Zealand

Anthem, Inc. (2019)
OVERVIEW

COMPANY TEAM
Anthem is working to transform health care with Leadership: Peter Lobred, Staff VP Enterprise
trusted and caring solutions. The company's health Communications; Ramesh Aki, Director II
plan companies deliver quality products and Technology; Mike Berry, VP HR Service and
services that give their members access to the care Solutions; Sanjeeva Kodimala, Director I
they need. With over 73 million people served by its Technology; Christian Jansen, Director Corporate
affiliated companies, including nearly 40 million Communications; Brendan McGarret, Manager II
within its family of health plans, Anthem is one of the Technology.
nation’s leading health benefits companies.
Design and development: Amanda Aszman, Corp.
Headquarters: Indianapolis, IN, US Comm. Specialist Sr.; Andre McMillan, Software
Architect; Anthony Francisco, Developer Advisor;
Company locations: All across the US
Arlen Vargas, UX/UI Designer Lead; Barbara
Locations where people use the intranet: Howrey, Systems Analyst Sr.; Brian King, Developer
Employees at all Anthem locations use the intranet. Advisor; Calvin Grier, Security Analyst Sr.; Cole
Smith, Systems Analyst; Daniel Smith, Scrum
Annual revenue: Approximately $90 billion USD in Master; Devi Shailender, UX Designer; Dinesh
2017 Bandari, Developer Sr.; Doug Glaze, Developer
Advisor; Emily Gosselin, Initiative Project Leader;
Harsha Kakumanu, Developer I; Jenn Minder, Staff
THE INTRANET VP, Communications; Joe Moro, Developer Advisor;
Users: All Anthem associates and the majority of Kamalakar Peta, Developer; Leslie Williams, QA
the company’s contractors use the company’s Lead; Mary Katherine Lane, Systems Analyst Sr.
intranet, Pulse, on a daily basis. Anthem’s intranet is Advisor; Prashant Baliyan, Content Developer; Raja
designed to provide users with an experience that Raja Chozhan Velayutham, Developer; Rajani Saini,
aids both in daily tasks and personal needs through Systems Analyst; Rajvi Jariwala, Developer Advisor;
its advanced SSO HR portal. The intranet is used Raviknth Kolagatla, Front-End Developer; Shiva
for both internal and external customer service Ram Krishna Pandla, QA Analyst; Sourav
needs and was designed as a one-stop-shop. Mohapatra, QA Analyst; Srikanth Narala, Front-End
Developer; Subhashree Mishra, QA Analyst; Suresh
Mobile approach: Responsive web design Loganathan, Developer Lead; Tim Schluttenhofer,
Scrum Master; Veera Vantipalli, Developer;
Technology platform: Oracle WebCenter Suite 12c
Vengadessane Sittanandam, Performance Analyst;
Vikas Reddy Yelguru, Developer; Whitney Kelso,
Administrative Assistant II.

496 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

INTRANET TEAM

Team members shown here (top row, left to right): Peter Lobred, Ramesh Aki, Mike
Berry, Sanjeeva Kodimala, Christian Jansen, Brendan McGarret; (second row, left to
right): Amanda Aszman, Andre McMillan, Anthony Francisco, Arlen Vargas, Barbara
Howrey, Brian King, Calvin Grier; (third row, left to right): Cole Smith, Daniel Smith,
Devi Shailender, Dinesh Bandari, Doug Glaze, Emily Gosselin, Harsha Kakumanu;
(fourth row, left to right): Jennifer Minder, Joe Moro, Kamalakar Peta, Leslie Williams,
Mary Katherine Lane, Prashant Baliyan, Raja Raja Chozhan Velayutham; (fifth row, left
to right): Rajani Saini, Rajvi Jariwala, Raviknth Kolagatla, Shiva Ram Krishna Pandla,
Sourav Mohapatra, Srikanth Narala, Subhashree Mishra; (bottom row, left to right):
Suresh Loganathan, Tim Schluttenhofer, Veera Vantipalli, Vengadessane Sittanandam,
Vikas Reddy Yelguru, Whitney Kelso.

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HIGHLIGHTS ABOUT THIS WINNER
The team behind Anthem’s Pulse intranet described its three goals for the intranet’s design
as: 1) connect, 2) inform, and 3) continually improve the UX. Without question, the team
achieved all three goals with flying colors. The intranet gives an inordinate yet manageable
amount of information about HR, the company, and individuals. In addition, its collaboration
features make it commonplace for individuals to work together. Finally, the UI iteration
history and the team’s future plans promise that the design will continue to evolve and
make the UX even better.
• HR: It’s not surprising that a health insurance company would have a good
HR section on its own intranet, but Anthem’s is still unexpectedly impressive.
Pulse’s comprehensive Human Resource section makes it possible for users to
discover and find valuable tools, benefits, and content that can improve their
work and personal lives. Personalized benefits information and self-service
options put employees in control and give them clear options to improve their
well being. Performance-improvement and other educational content
demonstrate that the organization is highly invested in its employees.
• Personalized and customizable: Applications, news, and a helpful
dashboard are among the areas tailored to each employee. This declutters the
intranet and pushes only the right content to the individual.
• Brand and logo: Not every intranet has a name, and many lack their own
logo. Pulse, however, has both. Together, they help make the intranet both
an easily recognized and referenced tool and a force in its own right.
• Comforting color palette: Light blue, royal blue, and grey make a pleasant
palette for pages, while punches of orange make buttons and other elements
visible. By subtly working in Anthem’s traditional healthy brand color palette
and adding a dash of flare, Pulse stands out without calling undue attention to
the design.
• Dashboard to apps, favorites, and more: The dashboard feature includes
icons that link to key apps—some of which are personalized to the user, such
as the corporate calendar—and to the user’s customized apps list and
favorites. This always-available dashboard appears near the site’s global
navigation.
• Communities: Communities let any employee create a space to
communicate information about a topic or project. Communities include an
overview, key resources, events, and blogs. Pulse communities are separated
into three categories: State Communities include associates located in a
specific state; Communities of Interest let any associate create a customized
community; and Business Communities directly relate to the Anthem
business.
• Robust people search: On any page, the People Finder lets users easily
search for colleges using either simple or elaborate queries, and then see
thorough results within moments.
• Rich employee profile: The employee profile houses a large amount of
information about each employee. This helps employees get to know one
another and work together. The profile area also lets users create and
manage their lists of important applications and bookmarks.

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 • Reporting issues: Pulse includes a section that lets employees know that it’s
okay—and even encouraged—to report issues they notice on anything related
to ethics, finance, fraud, or security. A tool consolidates possible issues and
links to descriptions to help identify issues and methods to report them. This
shows that Anthem wants employees to speak up, and that their voices
matter.

BACKGROUND
In 2016, Anthem embarked on a project to create a new, customized intranet that would
not only inform and educate users through communication technologies, but also aid in their
day-to-day tasks. As a company in the health care industry, it has numerous customers who
rely on accurate information on a minute-to-minute basis. Anthem therefore required a
best-in-class system that would empower its internal associates to serve customers with
great care, accuracy, and commitment. Prior to Pulse, Anthem used an intranet called
WorkNet, which had become outdated and cumbersome. Anthem needed a new solution
that would serve its current needs as well as provide a foundation for its needs for many
years to come.
As with any project, the new Anthem intranet came with its own set of obstacles, but none
that proved too difficult for the team to overcome. A dedicated and diversified team of
Anthem associates from several enterprise areas set out on a multifaceted mission to create
a best-in-class intranet experience for each and every user.
Starting small was the name of the game when the idea for the new intranet—Pulse—first
came to be. The Anthem team knew it had to aim high, but it also knew that taking on too
much would surely mean delays and unavoidable mishaps so it kept even the team size
intentionally small. This small but mighty group soon adopted the adage: No idea is a bad
idea.
Anthem has many different business areas with needs that deserve attention and
consideration, so the Pulse team was comprised of diverse individuals representing each of
the functional areas. One of the team’s first tasks was to brainstorm project objectives,
which it did through a series of sessions. Because the intranet had not been updated for
more than 10 years, identifying needed changes was rather easy. The question was: Which
changes were of the highest priority? And, as a follow-on: Which approach would be best to
implement those changes? The team clearly had enormous opportunity and potential for
success, but to achieve it, a strategic and methodical approach was needed. The team could
not rely solely on the input of its members—especially within such a large organization—so a
Pulse Ambassador Committee was formed made up of volunteer associates from across the
company to aid in specific tasks, including surveys, focus groups, and early adoption
testing. As the project progressed, the Ambassador Committee, along with the Pulse
Steering Committee, proved invaluable in validating appropriate solutions and processes.
The Anthem team used an Agile approach throughout the entire Pulse creation process, and
continues to use it today as the site evolves. Agile lets the team pivot quickly without being
too disruptive. During primary development, regular backlog grooming sessions and daily
Scrum calls helped keep the team on task, connected, and engaged. And, in an effort to
continue to listen to Pulse users post launch an internal suggestion box was set up.
Feedback received through this mailbox has helped the team identify what users like, don’t
like, and find most relevant. The team has also been able to keep a running list of
suggested features that may be added to the site as it evolves. The team has found that
being open to suggestions from the user base is extremely important and valuable.

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Pcitured: Anthem Previous Intranet Homepage. The homepage of WorkNet,
Anthem’s previous intranet.

500 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

DESIGN REVIEW

Homepage

Pictured: Anthem’s New Pulse Intranet Homepage. News, access to tools, and a
lovely color palette make the new Anthem intranet homepage supportive and pleasant.

Homepage, Highlights
The Anthem intranet homepage offers personalized news and a customizable apps list so
users can easily see what’s important and access what they need each day.
You can’t help but notice the intranet’s color palette—light blue, royal blue, grey, and
black—along with judiciously used punches of color (such as green for an elevated stock
price). The palette creates a calm vibe and supports the content without taking attention
away from it.
To ensure that everyone can find the intranet easily, all Anthem associates have Pulse set
as the homepage in their web browser, and a shortcut icon to Pulse is on their computer’s
desktop.

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1. Logo: The name of the intranet, Pulse, is embedded in the intranet’s logo, along with the
tagline: Your Anthem Network. This immediately tells users where they are and what the tool
is for.
2. Utility navigation: The far upper right houses a few tools, including stock price, Site
Tips, site search, an alerts icon, and the logged-in user’s photo. These are items
employees might need at any time and appear on each Pulse page. Also, search and
login appear in the upper right of pages, where users expect to see them.
3. Global navigation: A narrow global navigation structure puts forth just four top-level
navigation links: Collaborate, Human Resources, Our Company, and Tools & Resources.
Because the labels are distinct, it is easy for users to scan the links and make a
selection. Further, the blue text pops on the white background, making it easy to see.
Breadcrumbs in the upper left of pages help users see where in the IA they are.
4. Dashboard icons: Each user has a personalized, customizable dashboard with apps,
favorites, and more. Icons appear to the right of the global navigation menu; because
these icons lead to commonly used and highly important Pulse sections, they are always
available.
5. Carousel: The five most important articles rotate in the carousel at the top of the
homepage. The title, a short summary, and an image help engage employees.
6. News: A tabbed news section below the carousel separates the news into three
different categories: 1) Anthem News focuses on the enterprise, including HR, tools and
resources, and general company news. 2) My News is personalized news related to
user’s community, groups, and so on. 3) External News focuses on public media
mentions of Anthem. The labels for each news type are clear and their tabs are visible,
with the selected one changing from grey to blue. This is a highly successful interface
element. Including both the news carousel and a tabbed news section on the homepage
make the news highly visible. In fact, these UI elements increased Anthem’s internal
news engagement by 256%.
7. Applications: The homepage’s My Apps section appears below the carousal. Here,
without clicking or hovering, users can immediately see their list of apps. The small
icons in the upper left of the apps section let users show the apps as a list or as large
icons. The orange gear icon lets them edit their apps list. Finally, the View All Apps link
leads to a list of all applications available to them. This area makes it a breeze for
employees to find and access their common tools.
8. Cafeteria menu: It is not surprising that the cafeteria menu is an important feature for
intranet users. After all, don’t most of us want to know where our next meal is coming
from, and what that meal will be? The Café Menu section lists the hours of operation
and a link to the menu for the café and catering. A happy belly helps make a happy
employee.
9. Promoted content and polls: Sections for current initiatives and polls appear in the
same row below the news. Users look here to see interesting and sometimes fun
elements, and to see their colleagues’ answers to the current poll.
10.Weather: Health-conscious health-insurance employees can get a glimpse of the
weather outside just by looking at the Pulse homepage. Anyone who wants to go out for
a dose of vitamin D or an adrenalin-pumping bicycle ride can see the weather outside in
the weather section. The background image illustrates current conditions, such as
showing clouds or a sun.

502 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

11.Fat footer: The footer at the bottom of the page is delineated by a blue line and a
background grey that is slighter darker than that of the homepage. The text for the
three columns headings is darker than the rest of the links, making it easy for
employees to scan the main topics. The footer includes company information, methods
for reporting concerns, help contacts for the intranet and its collaboration tool, and a
link to share feedback. The footer appears on every page since these are important
links, but not ones that people need to see in the global navigation or above the fold.

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Home, Mobile

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Mobile Homepage. When viewed on mobile devices,

homepage sections and the entire page layout changes orientation from horizontal to
vertical.

504 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Home, Mobile Highlights
Research revealed that few people would access the intranet from shared workstations and
mobile devices, so the team took a desktop-first approach to designing Pulse, while also
making it responsive. In doing this, the team focused on designing for Anthem-issued
mobile devices and conducted research to identify the tasks employees would use most on
mobile. Two of the top features that users mentioned were the people finder and
organization charts.
1. Logo: The logo and tagline appears in the same place on mobile as it does on desktop.
2. Utility navigation: The stock price, alerts icon, and user’s login image appear in the
same area on mobile as they do on desktop (the upper right). The help feature is
collapsed into a small blue button. The search field drops down a row and spans the
screen’s width, making it easier for users to tap, type, and see the query.
3. Global navigation and dashboard icons: The global navigation collapses into a
hamburger menu on mobile, and the dashboard icon appears on the same row.
4. Column drop and vertical layout: The rest of the items on the homepage are
prioritized vertically, utilizing the “column drop” responsive layout method on mobile.
The carousel and some other sections change their orientation to a vertical layout on
mobile to accommodate the smaller screen size. The footer links also change to a
vertical layout.
5. Accordion: The news tabs that appear on desktop change to an accordion menu that
users can expand and collapse to reveal the different news categories.

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Dashboard Icons Wizard

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Dashboard Icons Wizard. Clicking on the site tips
wizard icon on most Pulse pages gives users helpful tutorial content, which is
particularly useful for an expanding company that regularly adds new associates.

506 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Dashboard Icons Wizard, Highlights
To ensure that employees understand the dashboard icons, the site tips
wizard icon on most Pulse pages offers a helpful tutorial of content.
1. Title: The title and the short description below it indicates that the icons are related to the
user’s dashboard.
2. Icon: Each icon in the dashboard (icon toolbar) is repeated in the lightbox list, making it easy
for users to match the icon to its description.
3. Section name: The name of each dashboard section appears next.
4. Description: A short description of each dashboard section follows its respective name, letting
users know more specifically what they can do in their dashboard.

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Dashboard, Events

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Events Dashboard. Each users’ events are listed in
their dashboard calendar.

508 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Dashboard Events, Highlights
Clicking the dashboard calendar icon opens a list of four Upcoming Events. All calendar
entries are personalized to the user and most entries are created by a department, such as
HR.
1. View all events: To see all of their events, users can click the View All button.
2. Date and time: Each event has a large calendar icon on the left, denoting the date. The date
is again listed, along with the event time, below the title.
3. Title: The event’s name appears in large blue letters.
4. Description: A short description lets employees know what the event is about.
5. More information: Users can click the Read More link to find additional details about the
event.
6. Event-related materials: If the event has materials for attendees, users can access them via
the Event Resources link.
7. Add to calendar: If users are interested in an event, they can add it to their Outlook calendar
(the preferred personal calendar tool at Anthem). Clicking Send to Outlook creates an event
entry in Outlook.

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Dashboard, People Finder

Pictured: Anthem Intranet People Finder Dashboard. The People Finder is a killer
app that allows users to search for colleagues.

510 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Dashboard People Finder, Highlights
Anthem employs more than 70,000 people, and they all have opportunities to be a resource
for their colleagues—assuming their colleagues can find them. The People Finder makes this
possible.
1. Tips: Users looking for help don’t have to look far. The Search Tips button appears in
the upper right of the People Finder.
2. Search fields: Users can search for colleagues by first name, last name, or both. This
is a flexible option for people who don’t know a coworker’s full name. Users can also do
a special character search by typing * at the beginning or end of a name if they are not
sure of exact spelling.
3. Advanced: Users can search by criteria beyond the person’s name when they access
the Advanced Search features. Putting these less-common ways to search under a link
makes the default search simple and approachable. Further, the label, Advanced
Search, is easily understood, so people seeking more flexibility and power can easily
find it.
4. More resources: Anthem has various resources—including org charts and locations—
related to people. Links to a few of these appear at the bottom of the People Finder.

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Dashboard, People Results

Pictured: Anthem Intranet People Search. This shows a search for people results
in a scrollable list of rich results.

Dashboard People Results, Highlights

512 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 With just a few keystrokes and without having to leave the page, users can find the
coworkers they are looking for. The immediacy of the search results’ detailed information
helps employees to proceed speedily.
1. Photo: The employee’s photo appears first, giving the search results a human angle.
2. Name and title: The employee’s name appears is blue text, which both makes it visible and
indicates that it’s a clickable link (which leads to the employee’s profile page). Just below the
name is the employee’s job title, which clues colleagues in on the person’s role at Anthem.
3. Phone: The employee’s phone number appears next, making it easy for people to call each
other right from the search results.
4. Location: The employee’s office location appears below the photo, including for those who
work from home.

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Dashboard, Advanced People Search

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Advanced People Search. Employees can search by

detailed criteria using the Advanced People Finder function.

514 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Dashboard Advanced People Search, Highlights
Employees can search for one another using a variety of fields and filters.
1. Fields: Users can search using any of the numerous fields related to pertinent employee
information, including manager, city, and education.
2. Filters: Users can select from the suggested filters on the left to refine the results. To start
fresh with filters, users simply click the orange Clear All button above the list of filters.

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Dashboard, Favorites

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Favorites Dashboard. Users can add bookmarks to any
pages or search results pages on the site.

516 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Dashboard Favorites, Highlights
Users can manage their favorites by clicking the orange star that appears on almost every
page. They can quickly access the list of bookmarks via the favorites icon (a white star) in
the dashboard. There is power to having the user’s favorites accessible from any computer
rather than tied to browser bookmarks.
1. Links to pages: The My Pages title at the top is informative and reminds the user of the type
of favorites that appear. The links are in blue text, indicating that they are clickable.
2. Links to saved searches: The My Search section offers links to pages of search results that
the user has saved. If users have not created any search query bookmarks, the status
message No Favorites appears instead.
3. Manage: Users can add, remove, or reorder their favorites by clicking either of the orange star
icons in the menu.

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Dashboard, Applications

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Applications Dashboard. The dashboard’s application

icon opens a list of the logged-in user’s applications.

518 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Dashboard Applications, Highlights
Users can create a list of preferred applications that appears both in a section on the
homepage and in a menu of links and icons that opens when users click the apps dashboard
icon (a computer).
1. Applications: The name and a related icon for each application appear in the apps
menu, giving users quick access to apps.
2. Viewing options: The View All My Apps button opens a page of all apps that the user
is interested in; users can also add and remove apps on this page. The intranet
supports approximately 130 applications. The most-used applications—including the HR
dashboard, user profiles, and People Finder—are integrated into Pulse. Other
applications are linked third-party apps that are still supported with the intranet’s
single-sign on.

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Global Navigation

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Global Navigation. The megamenu makes it easy for
users to scan all the options in each top-level category.

520 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Global Navigation, Highlights
The megamenu uses subtle visual indicators to convey the hierarchy of choices.
1. Current selection: The currently selected top-level global navigation link looks selected
because of the thick teal line above it and the subtle grey bars flanking the text label. The
nonselected items have none of these traits, which clearly distinguishes the selected one.
2. Link to section page: When team members evaluated Pulse’s content and IA (to inform the
global navigation design), they determined that a section page for each intranet area would be
helpful. The Our Company Home link repeats the intranet section’s name, Our Company,
signaling that the page describes that section. Another signal of that link’s importance is its
size and color: it is the same color as the text in the top-level global navigation menu, with
just a slightly smaller font.
3. Subheadings: Subheadings make megamenus easy to deal with, as users can scan them to
find the right section before they read the links. The label over each column of links describes
the links in that column. The subheading’s position and different text color (teal) and bolding
indicates the subhead’s place in the hierarchy, just below the section page link and above the
page links.
4. Links: The blue links are legible and obviously clickable.
5. Hover on links: When users hover the cursor over a link, a subtle grey background appears.

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Global Navigation, Mobile

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Mobile Global Navigation. The global navigation

appears in a mobile-friendly way on phones.

522 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Global Navigation, Mobile Highlights
Megamenus typically don’t display in a usable way on mobile phones, so the Pulse designers
opted for an accordion menu.
1. Collapsed menu: The menus that are not selected appear collapsed; they have a consistent
look, including bold white text, a dark blue background, and a carat icon pointing down
(signaling that, if clicked, it will expand the menu).
2. Expanded menu: The selected menu is expanded. The top-level label has a darker blue
background than the deselected menus. The carat points up (signaling that, if clicked, it will
collapse the menu). The menu items are stacked vertically and have subheadings for easy
scanning.

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Search

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Search. A slightly tweaked out-of-box solution powers

the Pulse site search.

524 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Search, Highlights
The SERP includes the user’s query, the search results, and options for filtering the results.
1. Query: Repeating the query helps users search again if needed.
2. Fields: Users can search again from either of two search fields on the SERP.
3. Filters: Clicking links in the set of filters on the left refines the results.
4. Results: The results include a large amount of pertinent information to help users decide if
they have the results they need and which results might be most helpful. Each result includes:
an icon showing its medium, the title, the URL, and a short selection of content from the page
or file.

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Employee Profile

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Employee Profile. Employee profile documents on

Pulse include basic contact information and much more.

526 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Employee Profile Highlights
A huge amount of information—some from HR systems and some that the users provide—is
housed in the employee profile documents.
1. Key information: A grey section on the left includes the employee’s photo, name, job,
contact information, cost center, and manger. In many cases, the information in the grey box
is all a user needs to move forward.
2. Tabbed sections: The eight tabs across the top lead to employee-related content, including
the person’s communities, tasks, and apps.
3. Edit: Users are encouraged to write various profile sections, and they can edit these sections
at any time by clicking the red edit links.

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Employee Profile, Mobile

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Mobile Employee Profile. When using a mobile device,
employees can access all the information in employee profile documents.

528 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Employee Profile, Mobile Highlights
The same thorough information that appears in the employee profile document on desktop
also appears on mobile, but is formatted for mobile consumption.
1. Navigation links: The tabs are present, but their look is simplified to . On mobile they appear
more like horizontal navigation links.
2. Key information: The designers omitted the gray background here to increase both page load
times and the contrast between the text and background (making the text easier to read).
3. Narrow column: The text column width is greatly reduced, making text easier to read.

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Employee Profile, My Apps

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Employee Profile My Apps. Users manage their

applications list in the My Apps section of their profile document.

530 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Employee Profile My Apps, Highlights
The Pulse team’s single sign-on lets the intranet offer users seamless access to many apps;
they can organize the ones they use most in the My Apps section of their profile page.
1. Views: Icons offer a way to view the set of applications as either a list or as icons.
2. Delete: Users can delete any application by clicking the x icon on the app icon. To prevent
accidental deleting, a confirmation asks if they meant to delete the application.
3. Find applications: To find applications, users can select from drop-down lists to see
applications related to topics, or search in the open search field.
4. Add: When users locate an application they want in their set, they simply click the blue Add
link. This adds the application to the set on the left.

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 Employee Profile My Apps, Mobile

Pictured: Anthem Intranet My Apps Mobile. Users can

view their apps list on mobile.

532 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Employee Profile My Apps, Mobile Highlights
Although users cannot yet edit apps on mobile, they can access their list of apps.
1. Views: Users can view their applications set in a list or as icons.
2. Application icons: Each icon has a text label, making it easy to identify, and the icons are a
large enough to make them easy to tab.

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Employee Profile Communities, Mobile

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Employee Profile Communities, Mobile View.

Communities can help employees collaborate and engage with one another.

534 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Employee Profile Communities, Mobile Highlights
Communities offer employees a way to collaborate online, about any project, topic, or
initiative they want. Community owners work to keep the content current and relevant,
which can be a challenge.
1. Search: If users know the topic or the name of a community, they can search for it using the
special communities search feature.
2. Filter: A drop-down of filters lets users refine the list of communities using certain keywords.
3. Sort: Users can sort the list.
4. Information: Each community card displays the name of the community, its category (such
as Company-wide or Professional Development), and a one-sentence description. An image
adds a touch of flair and sometimes more information as well.
5. Join or leave: A blue link in each community’s card urges users to either join or leave the
community. If they are not yet a member, the link label is: Join Community; if they are
already a member, the link label is: Leave Community. These links make it easy for users to
keep their list of communities current.

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Employee Profile Organization Chart

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Employee Profile Organization Chart. Organization

charts are a key feature on Pulse.

536 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Employee Profile Organization Chart, Highlights
Larger organizations such as Anthem, which has more than 70,000 employees and
contractors, often benefit from having a usable org chart feature on the intranet. Pulse’s org
chart functionality gives employees the lay of the land of the organization and its structure.
1. Views: The icons in the upper right of the org chart let users see All people who work at
Anthem, only Associates (people who work for Anthem), and Contractors. A View icon lets
users see the org chart as a list or in the more traditional hierarchical format complete with
photos, names, and job titles. People who are more visual and want to see a small set of
employees benefit from this level, while users who want to see more at once can benefit from
the list view.
2. Export: Users can export the org chart so they can store or print it. This can help in many
situations, including when planning projects, working with a new team, or looking at a reorg.
Some people like to print their own section of the org chart in a team-building exercise.
3. Up and down levels: Clicking the blue up arrow icon at the top of the visible section of the
org chart displays the chart’s next highest level, while the down arrow at the bottom of the
chart displays the next level down.
4. Employee cards: Users can click on any employee to see his or her profile document.

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Employee Profile Organization Chart, List View

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Employee Profile Organization Chart, List View. The
org chart can be displayed as a list on Pulse.

538 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Employee Profile Organization Chart, List View, Highlights
The list view organizes the org chart into a table; while it shows more information about
each employee, photos are omitted.
1. Views: The Chart List icon enables users to see the org chart in the more traditional
hierarchical format.
2. Employee rows: Users can click on an employee name to see his or her profile document.
Much of the pertinent information, however, is already displayed in the org chart table.

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 Employee Profile Organization Chart, Mobile

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Mobile Org Chart. It’s easy to use

the org chart features on mobile, too.

540 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Employee Profile Organization Chart, Mobile Highlights
The representation of the org chart features on mobile is similar to that on desktop, but
everything is shrunk to fit the small screen and the export feature is omitted.
1. View icons: The icons on mobile are like those on desktop, but their position shifts left so that
they appear in the top center. The icons are large enough to see and tap on mobile.
2. Employee cards: Due to space constraints, the org chart cards display a little less information
about each employee on mobile, but users can click on an employee card to see the profile.

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 Human Resources

Pictured: Anthem Intranet

Human Resources. Employees
can have all of their HR needs
fulfilled on Pulse’s vigorous HR
section.

542 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Human Resources, Highlights
Pulse’s HR section provides a highly comprehensive set of information, tools, and self-serve
tasks. Most importantly, it consolidates HR resources in one place—a place that is one of the
most visited on the intranet.
Announcements (such as a special deadline for timesheets) and webinars on topics related
to employee welfare (such as unconscious bias) increase employee awareness of the many
services and options available to them. HR features also help employees take control of
their benefits and use them to their best advantage, which contributes to keeping
employees happy. The HR section’s design makes accessing HR information easy, which
takes stress off the HR department employees.
1. Promoted content and news: At the top of the HR homepage, four large sections showcase
promoted HR initiatives and news. Information featured here includes topics such as how to
tend to one’s mental health using online tools and how to eliminate stress. This section
demonstrates that the organization cares and wants to cultivate employees and help keep
them healthy. Employees who want to read more HR-related news can click the More News link
at the bottom of this section.
2. Benefits and pay: The My Total Rewards section in the right rail is no area to be ignored. It
includes links to the user’s personal pay and benefits information. To remind users about all of
their benefits and the benefits’ value, this information is consolidated and accessible via the
See Full Benefits Summary and the See the Value of My Total Rewards links at the bottom of
this section. Manage Links, at the very end, allows users to customize the set of links that
appear in My Total Rewards.
3. HR dashboard: Much of the HR page real estate is reserved for the grey Self Service section
below the HR news. Each section houses links and icons related to important HR activities and
tools—offering pretty much anything an employee might need from HR. Among the topics are
personal information, timesheets, family status change, training, performance management,
job search, time-off request, and management-related tools. Each section has a subtitle
indicating what it’s about, which makes the page easy to scan. The consistent visual layout—
spacing and a grey line between each row, and five or four icons per row—make the page easy
for users to scan and use.
4. Time off: In addition to its inclusion in the dashboard, paid time-off information appears in the
right rail. The PTO section helps users manage their time off, helping them plan so that they
can recharge both their brain and body. It displays how much paid time off employees have
accumulated, how much they earn every two weeks, and the caps placed on the amount they
can earn per year. The Request Time Off and PTO Balance links help users take action related
to time off.
5. Job listings: The Latest Job Postings section shows Anthem’s five most recent jobs openings
and a link to See all. Employees are often the best recruiters for jobs, so this is a smart section
to show in the HR area. Also, good employees who want a new challenge can throw their hats
in the ring.

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Tools

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Tools. Tools & Resources for Anthem’s wide variety of
job roles are consolidated in one section of the Pulse intranet.

544 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Tools, Highlights
HR isn’t the only department that provides resources for Anthem employees. IT, purchasing,
security, facilities, PR, and legal are a few of the groups that often work with or counsel
Anthem’s many employees. Pulse’s Tools & Resources section helps increase employee
awareness about what they need to do. It also consolidates many of the tools that
employees with diverse jobs need—from brand standard guides for communications
professionals to medical policies for nurse case managers—so there is no need for users to
hunt around to complete common tasks.
1. Breadcrumb: The breadcrumb at the top displays where users are in the IA and also acts as
the page title. This, combined with the selected global navigation menu (which has a thin blue
bar above it to distinguish it from unselected menus), acts as an anchor to tell users where
they are in the UI.
2. Promoted content: Two news items or internet initiative promotions appear at the top of the
Tools & Resources page. The More Tools & Resources News link below leads to additional news
items.
3. Popular tools: Links to the most popular tools are consolidated in the Top Tools section in the
right rail.
4. Policies: The most important Anthem policies, which all employees should be aware of, are
listed in the Our Policies section.
5. Issues: Employees are encouraged to report issues that need attention—from ethics to fraud
to finance. Links to some areas to report potential issues appear in the Report an Issue or
Contact section in the right rail. This section lets employees know that it’s okay for them to
report something they feel is not right. Having links on Pulse takes away the stigma of
reporting an issue, legitimizes the process, and provides further information about how to
identify issues and what to do.
6. Tabbed section: The familiar blue in-page tab UI, seen on several Pulse pages, presents
various tool and resource categories. The links—Information Technology, Human Resources,
Purchasing & Expenses, Facilities & Security, Brand/Comms/PR, and Legal/Ethics &
Compliance—cover the gamut of topics for which employees need tools and resources.
7. Links: Each tabbed section offers a comprehensive set of links related to the main topic. While
lists may be long, hunting in a list is far faster and easier than hunting across a large
organization.

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Community Search

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Community Search. Users can search for any topic to
see if a related community exists.

546 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Community Search, Highlights
The community search feature makes it possible for people to find communities they need
or are interested in. It’s also a helpful safeguard against duplicate communities, as potential
new community owners can search to ensure there is not already a community like the one
they plan to create.
1. Page name: Users can find the community search feature in the intranet’s Collaborate section.
The Communities page name helps remind users that they are searching specifically for
communities and nothing else.
2. Filter and sort: The filter and sort features in the upper right come in handy when the search
returns many community results related to the user’s query.
3. Result: Each result displays the community name, the option to join the community right from
the SERP, information about the community, and the category it falls under. This information
can help users determine whether a community is right for them.

Community, Resources

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Pictured: Anthem Intranet Community Resources. Communities each have a
section in which owners can post resources for members.

548 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Community Resources, Highlights
Pulse lets employees set up communities for projects and initiatives. Each community has a
section where owners can post resources so that members can easily locate them. These
resource sections are popular; in fact, many of the 22,000 pieces of content on Pulse are
these key resources.
1. Navigation: The navigation menu in each community includes the main page (usually the
community name), a Blog, Key Resources, and Events.
2. Manage resources: On the Key Resources page, community managers can add, remove, and
categorize the resources in folders. Managers can access these features via the orange Manage
Key Resources link at the top of the page.
3. Folders: Resources appear in folders, which can be expanded (to show the list of items in
them) or collapsed (to hide them).

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Manage Community Resources

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Community Resources. Simple commands in the

lightbox allow community owners to manage key resources on the Anthem intranet.

550 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Manage Community Resources, Highlights
Community owners can edit folders in a simple UI.
1. Tabs: Familiar blue tabs offer to Add Folder or Edit Folder.
2. Instructions: A sentence communicates how to add folders and position them as desired.
3. Folder display: All the current folders show in a list, making it easy for users to see the types
of resources already created.
4. Field: The New Folder Name label makes it easy for users to know what to type.
5. Create: The orange Create button is visible and obvious.

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Comment

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Comment Function. Employees can like and comment
on news.

552 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Comment, Highlights
Communities are not the only collaboration option. Employees can like and comment on
news items via a simple commenting UI.
1. Comments and likes: The current number of comments and likes is indicated just below the
article.
2. Field: A comment field below the article invites employees to engage with the content.
3. Comments: Seeing other people and their comments can be interesting for employees to
read. Comments also inspire people to join in and comment themselves.

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Company Page

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Company Page. The company page houses key
information about the organization.

Company Page, Highlights

One might assume that employees should just know about the organization at which they
work, but many don’t know as much as they could or should. Intranets are a great way for

554 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 employees to learn more and be reminded about how their organization works and how well
it is doing. Anthem is forthcoming in providing company information to employees. The
Pulse One Anthem page offers myriad information about the company that employees can
easily peruse.
1. Promoted content and initiatives: The top of the One Anthem page promotes a business
initiate—such as a speaker series with experts in various business topics.
2. Company performance and health: Executives share information about how the company is
doing in terms of Performance and Organizational Health. This type of information helps
employees set their priorities and better understand business decisions that are being made.
Sharing this type of information with employees helps them feel informed, respected, and
valued.
3. Tabbed section: The familiar blue in-page tabs in the One Anthem Key Resources section
show links to sections for Associates (employees) or Managers and lists cool initiatives and
need-to-know processes. The e-Cards feature allows employees to send each other thank you
and congratulatory cards.
4. Ideas: The IdeaHub card offers links to a program that inspires employees to suggest new
ideas. This is a great way to let employees stretch their creativity, and for managers to find out
about poor processes and possible solutions.
5. More Anthem information: The next two cards on the page share links to company websites
and more information about the company, including its history and locations.
6. Executives: The Meet the Executive Team section at the bottom of the page displays the
president and CEO’s name and photo, as well as a link to her bio. Orange arrows let employees
scroll through to other executives, while the Organizational Charts button leads to the full org
charts. This area is a great way for employees to get acquainted with the people who captain
the ship that is Anthem.

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Help and Promoting Intranet Features

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Help. The

Get to Know Pulse series offers tips and
tricks for optimal Anthem intranet use.

556 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 Help and Promoting Intranet Features, Highlights
Sometimes the best way to make users aware that features exist is to tell them. The Get to
Know Pulse series does just that. These articles give tips and help related to the Anthem
intranet’s many features.
1. Archive: All the articles about Pulse are consolidated in the intranet’s Get to Know Pulse Series
Archive section.
2. Instruction: One simple sentence encapsulates why these articles are helpful and what the
user should do.
3. Titles: The titles in each large card indicate the feature that the module describes.

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DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY WORK
Let UX Lead the Charge
Iterative wireframe sessions and feedback from several focus groups conducted at the start
of the redesign project informed decisions about Pulse’s feature roadmap. The wireframe
design brought together key stakeholders from the site’s different areas and helped speed
up specification gathering. This process worked well, reducing weeks’ worth of business
analysis into an average of two sessions, in which the team identified and approved features
that would meet the needs of each area. To maximize session productivity, the team’s UX
lead took loosely documented requirements and designed wireframes to represent the
interface structure of each feature using Balsamiq Mockups. This approach helped
stakeholders provide feedback during each iterative review and revise session. These
mockups ultimately morphed into polished schematics that were applied to the site design.
Almost every element of Pulse went through this process; this let the design be driven by
those who specialize in UX rather than by committee, and resulted in a clean look and easy-
to-use features.
The biggest insight that emerged from the research activities was that the design must be
intuitive for people to use. Industry best practice research showed this as a common thread
among successful intranets. The team also worked hard to ensure that the site was not
over-engineered. It took the most important tasks, prioritized them, and then prioritized
them again throughout the design process. This is a practice that the team still uses today,
as the site continues to be refined.

Getting Buy-In
Change management was a focus throughout the Pulse creation process. To ensure the
project would be a success, the Pulse team formed a Change Management Workstream
early on that met regularly. Key milestones and touch points were identified up front, and
these helped guide the project and keep it on track. Because people had been using the old
platform for so long, the team knew there might be adoption—or even acceptance—issues.
To combat this, the team kept the site intuitive and simple, and also developed a series of
communications that were delivered to users pre- and post-launch.
Because associates were eager to experience Pulse and the team didn’t want to operate in a
complete vacuum, it offered a series of interactive Pulse Sneak Peeks leading up to launch.
Associates were able to experience Pulse in a virtual setting with limited functionality over
the course of three in-depth interactive sessions. After launch, the team ran an eight-week
Get to Know Pulse series that focused on different Pulse areas and offered helpful tips along
the way.
The team also called on the Pulse Ambassadors to help out on launch day. These employees
served as Pulse experts who could help answer associates’ questions. And, of course, the
ambassadors were given early access to Pulse to help prepare them for their duties.
The team also created a comprehensive Site Wizard to help associates through the adoption
process. Because Pulse has so many potential users, the team wanted to try to avoid having
too many people contact the help desk or email the Pulse inbox with their questions, as
those channels would likely become overwhelmed. The Site Wizard proved to be a helpful
tool and is still active today.

558 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 WORKING WITH OUTSIDE AGENCIES
Agency Project Role
Buck Consulting • Landing page design and HR benefits access
An HR benefits consulting firm
FishBowl Solutions • Oracle WebCenter customization and unique
IT development and personalization that aligned with the overall
implementation team vision for Pulse
Pulse Point Group • Change management
Change management consulting
firm
• User surveying
• IT project management

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Pictured: Anthem Intranet Homepage Wireframe. This homepage wireframe,
created using Balsamiq, was part of the team’s design workflow. Wireframes such as
this helped the team discover the best solutions faster.

560 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Profile Page Wireframe. This is the Balsamiq
wireframe created to help design the user profile page organization tab.

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GOVERNANCE

562 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 INTRANET TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES
Role Responsibilities
Development Team A small cross-functional team of developers,
testers, and other specialists working
collaboratively to deliver a vertical slice of
functionality.
Product Owner (PO) The content authority for the Team Backlog and
the only team member empowered to accept
Stories as done. Also:
• Defines Stories and prioritizes the backlog
Scrum Master • Helps the team remove impediments,
facilitates team events, and fosters an
environment for high-performing teams
System Team A special Agile team that provides assistance in
building and using the Agile development
environment, including continuous integration, test
automation, and continuous deployment. This
team:
• Assists with the integration of assets from
Agile teams
• Performs end-to-end solution testing as
needed
• Assists with deployment and release
System Architect/Engineer An individual or small cross-discipline team that
truly applies systems thinking and also:
• Defines the system’s overall architecture
• Helps define nonfunctional requirements
• Determines the major elements and
subsystems
• Helps define the interfaces and
collaborations among them
Release Train Engineer (RTE) Servant leader and chief Scrum Master for the
train. In this role, the RTE:
• Facilitates optimizing the flow of value
through the program using various
mechanisms, such as the Program Kanban,
Inspect & Adapt workshop, and PI Planning

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 Lean User Experience Team • Embraces a mindset, a culture, and a
process of Lean-Agile methods
• Implements functionality in minimum viable
increments and determines success by
measuring results against an outcome
hypothesis

URL AND ACCESS

ACCESS INFORMATION
Item Status
URL https://pulse.antheminc.com
Default Status By default, all Anthem associates have Pulse set as
their homepage and cannot change this setting. A
shortcut to Pulse is placed on each associate’s
desktop.
Remote Access Associates can access Pulse from anywhere using
two-step verification for security (log-in credentials
and a one-time passcode sent via a preferred
method, such as to a phone). Some Pulse content
is not viewable outside of the Anthem network to
ensure proper site security. However, applications
such as HR transactions and expense reporting are
externally available through Pulse.
Shared Workstations Some corporate offices provide shared computer
facilities to be used during breaks. Although not
widely used, Pulse is accessible via these
workstations.

564 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

TIMELINE

PROJECT MILESTONES
Milestone Date Milestone Description
November 2005 • Launch of WorkNet
September 2014 • Collaboration (commenting and liking)
added to WorkNet’s news articles;
homepage refresh
May 2016—April 2017 • Redesign of Pulse (v.1): branding overhaul,
IA, new features
April 2017 • Launch of new design
April 2018 • Redesign of main header, footer, and
primary navigation, including reducing
header height by half, consolidated profile
photo section, and introduction of sticky
navigation
• Mobile responsiveness and accessibility
improvements to main page template
July 2018 • Enhanced photo upload tool, including
cropping and resizing, and an upgraded UX
• Configurable widgets
September 2018 • Launch of Pulse (v.2)
Overall redesign timeframe: 1 year

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CONTENT AND CONTENT CONTRIBUTORS

566 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

 CONTENT DEVELOPMENT AND OVERSIGHT
Contributors Pulse currently has 364 contributors. The
Corporate Communication team member who
oversees each business area selects contributors
for the Our Company, HR, and Tools & Resources
sections. Few, if any, Pulse contributors work full-
time on the intranet; people contribute to their
intranet areas on top of their standard job
requirements. Also, any employee interested in
having a community can request one and
contribute to its content.
Encouraging Contribution Each area or community can have one or more
people contribute content. Contributors are
motivated from the top. Each section on Pulse has
accountability for its own content within the
intranet’s distributed contribution model. Almost all
intranet areas are also engaged with and
encouraged by the site’s partnership with
Corporate Communications.
Training Anyone who wants to be a contributor must attend
training. The training lasts two hours and is held
through a conference call and Skype for Business
screen share. The Pulse Trainer shows attendees
how to contribute various types of content, and the
intranet’s Pulse Training Community section
provides a library of PDFs for all contributor tasks.
Once people have completed the training, they are
granted contributor access to Pulse.
Maintaining Quality The Pulse Admin audits content on a regular basis.
If content is outdated or poorly displayed, the
admin contacts the contributor and works with that
person to improve the area.

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 Culling Content
When the team moved from the more than 10-
year-old WorkNet to the new Pulse, it essentially
started from scratch. Outside of core business
documents, which are meticulously maintained and
heavily regulated, only minimal content was
migrated. The vast majority of content was
recreated in the new system. The team engaged
with contributors in the site’s major areas, and
Corporate Communications partners rewrote and
updated much of the content. The switch also
reduced the number of contributors significantly.
The old content was all archived per a document-
retention policy and could be retrieved if needed
for audit.
This start-from-scratch approach was somewhat
dictated by the fact that the legacy system was so
old that the team did not have an automated
system for identifying and updating old content.
Recreating the content was a lot of work, but it
was worth it for quality purposes—and ultimately
satisfying to start with a clean slate.

568 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Site Feedback Form. Users can report feedback
directly through the site. A button for this feedback form can be found on nearly every
page.

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 Pictured: Anthem Intranet Resource
Toolkit. The Pulse Resource Toolkit lists
resources and guidelines to assist Pulse
community owners, Pulse content
contributors, and the broader Anthem
community of associates to effectively
connect across offices and improve the
way business is done.

570 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY
Category Technology Used
Web Server Hardware and • Web Tier: IBM HTTP Server
Operating System
• App Tier: Oracle WebLogic Server 12c
• Operating System: Redhat Enterprise Linux
Server release 6.8 (Santiago)
• Hardware: AMD 64
• Database: Oracle 12c RAC Enterprise DB
Bug Tracking/Quality • Bug Tracking & QA: JIRA Atlassian
Assurance
• Monitoring: Splunk, CA APM, Wily
• Documentation: Confluence Atlassian
Design Tools • Architecture Design: Microsoft Visio 2013
• UX Design: Adobe Photoshop, Balsamiq,
InVision
Site Building Tools • Eclipse, Oracle JDeveloper 12c, Web Storm,
Microsoft VS Code, Atom IDE
Content Management Tools • Oracle WebCenter Content 12c
Search • Google Search Appliance (GSA)
Other Functions • App Tier Caching: Oracle Coherence
Caching 12c
• Web Tire Caching: Apache Module Caching

Technology Migration
The Anthem team’s technology migration progressed as follows:
• Migrated legacy application from unsupported technology (Oracle Content
Server 10g) to the next-generation intranet platform (Oracle Content Server
12c) by launching automated content migration and enhancement.
• Upgraded and migrated legacy application from Windows platform to Linux for
better security and performance.
• Introduced architecture transformation foundational framework to replace the
third-party licensed products with more reusable components in an Agile
System Development Life Cycle (SDLC).
• Replaced Google Search Appliance (GSA) with Elastic Search as an enterprise
search solution as GSA was scheduled to reach the end of its life support at the
end of 2018.
MOBILE

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When designing Pulse, the team took a design approach that emphasized the optimization of
the desktop experience first, and then mobile. The majority of users access the site via their
desktop daily; while the team knew that mobile would be nice to have, it was important to
have a solid desktop version first. The team entertained the idea of a mobile app for a few
months, but stepped away from that idea. Instead, it set out to make the desktop version
best-in-class and marry it with a responsive web design. While focusing on the responsive
design, the team also sought to identify which aspects of the site would be utilized most in
the context of a responsive mobile experience. It ultimately determined these aspects to be
the people finder and org charts.

Target Platforms and Devices

The Anthem design team wanted Pulse to work across all devices and be specifically
optimized for company-issued devices. It therefore adopted the following mobile screen
sizes as the target platforms: iPad Pro and iPhone 8 and later.
The team also conducted testing on Android for those associates accessing the intranet
through personal devices.

ROI
Aside from the obvious benefit of Pulse providing Anthem with a much-needed intranet lift,
significant ROI was also realized shortly after launch. From an IT perspective, the new
intranet allowed for the decommissioning of 20 stressed servers and reduced significant cost
and complexity of Oracle operational support, including reduced infrastructure risk and
outdated OS and DB web applications.
The launch of Pulse also allowed for single sign-on capability and previously unavailable
external access to more than 130 specific Anthem apps, which users can now manage and
access simply and securely. Pulse also proved to be an immediate win in terms of associate
engagement, which rose by more than 250% for Pulse content. Also, the Pulse team was
able to expire more than 120,000 pieces of outdated WorkNet content.
Overall, the team has been extremely happy with the performance and new abilities that
Pulse provides.

572 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

Pictured: Anthem Intranet Worknet vs. Pulse. This infographic illustrates some of
the key differences between Anthem’s previous intranet, WorkNet, and its current
Pulse platform.

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 Pictured: Anthem Intranet First Year Stats. This graphic shows the 2017 year-end
key metrics for the new Pulse intranet.

LESSONS LEARNED
The Anthem team learned many lessons during the Pulse project, and it shares two key
lessons here:
• Launch slow, but fail quickly. “If you have the time, use it. Launch slow, but
fail quickly. Don’t feel rushed to move on to the next thing. Respect your
timeline, but also demand perfection, if not close to it. If something isn’t right,
fix it. Always act with your end users in mind and don’t be clouded by your own
curse of knowledge. Just because you know how something works and realize
what value it adds doesn’t mean the end user will. Additionally, make sure that
your team is made up of diverse individuals who really care about the product
and realize the impact it can have. Give everyone a voice. From end users to
project testers to those on your development and design teams, everyone has
great value to add. Simply allow them to add that value with their voice,
perspective, and opinion.”
• Pay close attention to change management efforts. “Change management
is especially important if an organization has a lot of diverse users. Ease your
audience and users into the adoption and do not just drop the new system on
them. The Pulse team found that seeing is believing, so don’t be afraid to give
glimpses into the current state and vision for the final product. Lastly, once
live, don’t leave users on their own. Continue to support them and make sure
that they feel a sense of ownership and ask them for their input. Make sure
they know you value their input, but the team can’t do everything.”

574 [email protected] Anthem, Inc. (2019)

Dynacare (2020)
OVERVIEW

COMPANY TEAM
Dynacare is one of Canada’s largest, most The core project team: directly involved in
established health solutions companies. It serves the planning, design, and launch of ConneXe
healthcare solutions to more than 10 million comprised five team members: Mario
Canadians, offering services that include essential Fantozzi, Business Owner/Project Lead;
medical testing, insurance solutions, corporate Tricia Gill, Project Manager; Sandra
wellness programs, advanced genetic testing, and Bhikram, Business System Analyst; Mara
digital health solutions. MacKay, Project Coordinator; John Neves,
SharePoint Specialist.
Headquarters: Brampton, Ontario, Canada
Some of these team members also took on
Company locations: 200+ laboratories, health additional roles during the project phase as
service centers, transport depots, and corporate follows.
offices
Design: Mario Fantozzi
Locations where people use the intranet: Canada
Leadership: Naseem Somani, CEO; Mario
Annual revenue: N/A Fantozzi, IT; Tricia Gill, IT; Sandra Bhikram,
IT; Arun Thomas, IT; Donna Pascal, HR;
Scott Hickey, Corporate Communications;
THE INTRANET Andrea Price, Corporate Communications;
Ingrid Huss, HR; Ana Andreasian, IT; Peter
Users: The intranet’s 3,000 users range from Parsan, IT
clinicians and laboratory technicians to couriers,
frontline staff, and those in operational and Development: Mario Fantozzi, IT; John
departmental roles such as HR, customer service, Neves, IT; Sandra Bhikram, IT
maintenance, finance, and quality assurance. Users
Support: Mario Fantozzi, IT; John Neves,
share core demands for items such as policy
IT; Melanie Wells, Branding; Lissette
documents, company news and insights, and HR
Edward Copperi, Branding; Andrea Price,
and finance information; however, there are also
Corporate Communications–Content;
distinct intranet use cases relevant to only some
Andrew Munday, Corporate
user types or departments. For example, specialist
Communications–Content
staff uses the intranet on desktop devices to locate
subject matter experts to collaborate on healthcare
challenges, while couriers rely on mobile access to
coordinate operations with their team and stay
aligned with company objectives.

Mobile approach: Responsive web design and

native mobile app

Technology platform: Unily Digital Experience

Cloud

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INTRANET TEAM

Dynacare team members shown here (top row, left to right): Arun Thomas, Mario
Fantozzi, Andrea Price, and Andrew Munday; (second row, left to right) Scott Hickey,
Donna Pascal, Ingrid Hess, and Sandra Bhikram. Unily team members shown here
(left to right) Emma Horder, Jason Liang, and Paul Seda.

576 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

HIGHLIGHTS ABOUT THIS WINNER
Collaboration is at the heart of Dynacare’s approach to healthcare, and its ability to
share expertise internally underpins its success as a leading provider in Canada.
Dynacare team members value and leverage each other’s ideas, expertise, and
experience to provide the best healthcare possible. The company’s intranet, ConneXe, is
a seamless destination that connects employees from anywhere, anytime, and on any
device—to drive higher levels of collaboration, simplify access to information, and
ultimately improve each day for employees.
Interesting features include:
• Quick edit menu: The quick edit menu is available only to ConneXe
administrators, and provides the option to edit content on any intranet page
directly from the front end, instead of through the CMS. This helps users make
simple edits faster and easier.
• Surfaced employee wellness and recognition: ConneXe promotes the health
and wellness of the whole person, not just the part employed at Dynacare. With
multiple areas dedicated to helping employees be inspired at work, grow their
careers, stay healthy, and thrive in life—as well as appreciate one another—the
Dynacare intranet demonstrates what it means to really care for employees.
• Gamified profile: Because finding information about colleagues in the healthcare
setting is so critical to collaboration, ConneXe motivates users to keep their
profile data complete and tidy through a gamified profile completion experience.
• French and English: Users can easily switch between languages through the
profile settings menu, which can be accessed from any page using the global
navigation. The site is fully responsive in both Canadian French and Canadian
English.
• Who Does What: Keeping track of what other departments do, especially in a
healthcare organization, can be challenging. But ConneXe makes this simple with
its Who Does What page. The page clarifies each department’s organizational role
and shares important information about both the department’s senior leadership
team and conversations going on within the department, as well as offering links
to tools, applications, and documents related to the department’s specific
business area.

BACKGROUND
In 2015, Gamma-Dynacare formally changed its name to Dynacare, repositioning itself as a
health solutions company. This new identity spoke to the company’s intention to expand its
scope within the changing Canadian healthcare landscape.
The company required an aggressive digital transformation strategy to support its ambitious
growth plans, part of which involved implementing a new, more powerful intranet platform
that could support collaboration, communication, and cultural goals.

Goals
The intranet that resulted from this initiative, ConneXe, was built around four pillars:
• Share knowledge: Provide employees with easy access to organizational
updates, policies, forms, and more.

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 • Provide access to experts: Give employees tools that let them search for
and find colleagues who have expertise in different areas, including different
scientific disciplines, IT, and HR.
• Be a gateway to all systems: Allow employees to access all the apps and
tools they use to do their best work in one place, using single sign-on.
• Improve collaboration and productivity: Enable employees to
communicate and collaborate more easily with colleagues, both within
departments and across the organization.

Challenges
Key project challenges included the following.
• Full multilingual support: When the team discovered that not all of the
widgets included in the chosen intranet platform had multilingual capabilities,
it had to find another way to provide a true multilingual UX for both the
English- and French-speaking employee communities.
• Office 365: The company had an existing investment in Office 365 that had
to be leveraged in the new intranet.
• Seamless UI regardless of user roles: The design team had to figure out
how to provide a seamless experience for both union and non-union
employees, specifically on the Benefits page (which is different for each
group). And, along with that, the team had to find a way to ensure proper
access for both groups through Active Directory groups functionality.

Digital Workplace
The Dynacare vision was to have ConneXe be at the center of the digital workplace—a
digital destination where employees can start their day and find the tools they need to do
excel at their job. At the core of this vision was the desire to create an intranet that would
connect all employees, regardless of device, and thus increase collaboration, ease
information access, and improve every employee’s quality of life.
ConneXe was designed to be that digital toolbox, and it comprises many key features.
• Messaging: integrated Outlook Online email
• Productivity: integrated Office 365 Online productivity suite of applications
• Document management: SharePoint
• Collaboration: functional team sites and integrated WebEx
• Communication: a CMS, corporate news publishing capabilities, blogs, etc.
• Business applications: personalized user dashboard for company apps and
Office 365 apps
• Crowdsourcing: integrated Dynacare SoapBox (an employee ideation
platform) and Achievers (a rewards and recognition platform)
• Connectivity: integrated employee directory and rich user profiles, including
a skills repository

578 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

 • Mobility: a cloud-based, fully responsive solution accessible on any device,
anywhere, any time

Pictured: Dynacare Legacy Intranet Homepage. This shows the Dynacare intranet
as it looked prior to the most recent redesign.

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DESIGN REVIEW

Homepage

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet Homepage. The current ConneXe homepage is

focused on maintaining open communication between Dynacare and its valued
employees.

580 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

Homepage Highlights
The homepage’s card-based design and well-organized layout, coupled with a
refreshing green, blue, and white brand color palette, encourages people to engage
with the latest company news and events as well as workplace wellness content.
The goal is to align employees to Dynacare culture and let them know that they
are each a critical aspect of it.
1. Secondary navigation: The secondary navigation sits right above the global
navigation and contains several essential features. Search lives alongside a
notifications hub, where users can access personalized notifications about new
content, intranet social activity, and company announcements. The menu also
lets users manage settings for their notifications, which not only display on the
desktop version, but also as push notifications on ConneXe’s mobile app. On
click, an apps and tools icon displays a menu of personalized applications and
useful business tools to give employees everything they need to do their best
work from one launching point. The personalization icon allows users to select
from topics and themes that are most relevant to their jobs. Once topics are
selected, related content appears in their feeds across the intranet. The icon
with three circles allows users to follow any colleague, social channel, site, or
page on the intranet. After following, employees receive helpful notifications
about associated activity and updates. This feature helps employees fine-tune
their updates to stay better connected. Finally, the quick edit menu icon allows
content managers to create and edit content directly from the front end, without
ever having to navigate to the CMS.
2. Global navigation: ConneXe’s global navigation is labeled clearly and concisely
and persists across all pages. This helps users navigate freely, without ever
losing their place. It also lets them quickly and reliably return to core content
and functionality, including the homepage, workspaces, a unified document
center, the people directory, a hub for social conversations, an archive of stories,
and employee essentials.
3. Profile access: A user’s name, title, and professional headshot appear on the
homepage and provide direct access to the full employee profile.
4. News: A smart-feed aggregates various content types into an eye-catching hero
component, which effectively delivers the latest and greatest news to Dynacare
employees. Titles stand out starkly against images and colored backgrounds,
while publishing timeframes and succinct descriptions provide added clarity.
5. Feeds: Directly under the main hero space integrated content feeds deliver
announcements, events, and leadership insights. This prominent placement
above the fold ensures that these key messages are not lost amid other stories
and homepage content. A bright green button invites employees to explore all of
the content related to each priority area.
6. Culture and wellness: A clean page break offers a switch in perspective, from
corporate communications to culture and wellness-focused content. This area
includes a searchable wellness newsletter, a peer-recognition section, a look at a
day-in-the life of an employee, social feeds, and video.
7. I want to: This simple and intuitive module grants instant access to user-centric
tasks to help employees carry out their most important work.

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 8. Photo gallery: A feed with photos from across the organization highlight
happenings and happy times at Dynacare.
9. Footer: Rounding out each page, the footer gives users access to followed sites
and essential links, as well as the company’s social media feed.

582 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

Apps and Tools

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet Apps and Tools. ConneXe’s customizable Apps and
Tools menu ensures that critical business tools are no more than a click away.

Apps and Tools Highlights

Apps and tools are accessible from the secondary navigation. This menu gives
employees access all of their critical business systems and applications, in a single
click, from any intranet page.
1. Tool types: Employees can use the tool-type tabs to navigate between
their customized view of tools, Office 365 apps and tools, and company-
specific apps and tools.
2. Save and manage: Changes made in this menu can be saved, which helps
users avoid lost progress and wasted time when customizing their apps and
tools.
3. Tool cards: Each application or digital workplace tool is contained in a
colorful card with a visually appealing and corresponding icon. In addition to
seeing the name of the tool and a helpful description, employees can also
delete tools from this view or move tools around for enhanced productivity.

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Workspaces

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet Workspaces. ConneXe’s Workspaces menu provides

direct access to information about the organization and departments, and allows
employees to follow specific sites within the intranet.

584 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

Workspaces Highlights
The first label in ConneXe’s global navigation, Discover, opens a drop-down menu
containing three clearly defined link collections, or Workspaces.
1. Scoped search: Employees can search inside specific workspaces to get
more narrow, tailored results, specific to these areas of the business.
2. Customized columns: The first column, About Us, houses corporate-level
content and outlines Dynacare’s senior leadership team, departmental
teams, corporate giving initiatives, and operational areas. The second
column, Our Departments, comprises team sites that link to each of the core
business teams. The third column, Followed Sites, connects users to
important sites, which they can select to follow.

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 Search

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet Search. The ConneXe search functionality is highly

responsive and presents results in a well-organized, four-column grid.

Search Highlights
Because it is both predictive and highly responsive, ConneXe’s search experience
returns results right as the user begins typing. ConneXe’s global search provides
quick access to all content across the intranet, with results broken down into four
handy categories that make it easy for users to find what they need.
1. Search results: Search functionality is integrated with Dynacare’s SharePoint Online
environment, which allows users to search for content on the intranet and SharePoint from a
single search box. Results for intranet content, site-specific content, office-related results, and
people all display in a set of easy-to-scan results.

586 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

Conversations

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet Conversations. Social conversations on ConneXe help

to bring the platform to life and give each employee a voice.

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Conversations Highlights
Enterprise social features contribute to employee well-being at Dynacare as they offer
a constructive outlet for employees to provide feedback, interact with one another,
and collaborate. Sharing, reacting, and commenting on internal communications
brings all employees into the discussion, reinforces a positive and open culture,
and encourages all employees to engage in the corporate narrative. Social and
conversational features are also enabled on department and team sites on
ConneXe, for quick and informal message sharing, answering questions, and
providing another way to effectively find and share knowledge.
1. All conversations: Employees can view all of the conversations happening
across the organization, or they can choose to see only those happening in
their department, or on their team. The ability to search within each channel
helps employees easily refer back to previously posted content and
conversations they found to be particularly interesting and valuable.
2. Post area: Including the user’s profile photo near the post-creation area
helps reinforce that they are the person posting. Employees can write a
post, upload an image, or paste a link in this section to spark conversation.
3. Top members: People who post often or those who frequently participate
in conversations are featured in this space, along with their headshots,
titles, and links to their employee profiles.
4. Posts: Posting a link to an article includes an appealing image, the title of
the piece, and a short snippet, whereas posting photos showcases each
image shared for employees to then discuss. Employees can also mention
each other in posts by using @mentions to strike up even more commenting
and engagement.
5. Comments and reactions: Users can comment on each post, @mention
each other in comments, and even include an image in their comments. For
users who prefer not to comment but still want to participate in the
conversation, easy-to-click reactions, including a smiley face, star, and
heart are available as a more passive means of engagement.

588 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

News

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet News. Users can skim, scan, and engage with
Dynacare news easily with ConneXe’s reader-friendly article templates.

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News Highlights
Stories and news articles on ConneXe live in simple templates that are clean and easy
to read. Commenting is supported at the bottom of each article to encourage
conversation and collaboration. Users can also share articles with their
departments, teams, or colleagues through @mentions.
1. Back and current story: The white arrow against the green background
reinforces which story the user is currently viewing. With an easy-to-access
back button, Dynacare employees can quickly get back to see all available
news stories.
2. Right rail: Intelligent algorithms find and present related content in the
right rail, alongside author profiles and content tags.
3. Image space: Large enough to reinforce the key messages of the story,
but not so large that they overtake the page, images effectively draw
employees’ attention and use a mobile-friendly aspect ratio for device
responsiveness. Image captions also help summarize and reiterate the
story’s key points.
4. Content formatting: The use of white space makes the content more
balanced and impactful, while green highlighted text links draw users’
attention to keywords and phrases. Bolded subheads help to break the
content up into focused paragraphs.
5. Conversation: Users can comment and reply to one another on each news
article, paste related links in the comments, and even upload an image with
their comments. Employees can also see who has already commented on
the story and add quick reactions.

590 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

People Directory

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet People Directory. It’s easy to find Dynacare

colleagues using the people directory, which allows employees to filter by key skill
sets.

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People Directory Highlights
The ConneXe people directory is an essential part of the intranet, as it aggregates the
profiles of every Dynacare employee and allows any user in the business to search
using free text or filtering by employee profile data. Filtering by skill set is
important because many Dynacare employees work in specific science-related
roles, so finding specialists and experts is essential. The directory helps employees
find out where people work, locate the right colleagues to answer complex
questions, and unlock critical knowledge across the business.
1. Directory search: For narrower people results, users can search from
within the directory.
2. Filters and sort: Employees can also filter and sort the people results in
the directory by title, name, email address, skills, etc.
3. People cards: In the directory, each person’s headshot is offset by the
Dynacare brand-friendly green; the card also includes the person’s name,
title, email address, telephone number, department, and office location.

592 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

Profile

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet Employee Profile. A clean layout coupled with

gamified completion goals makes finding employee information in ConneXe profiles fast
and fun.

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Profile Highlights
Employee profiles give each ConneXe user an identity on the intranet. In addition to
showcasing core employee information such as department, job title, and
location—which is all synced from a centralized employee data collection—profiles
also allow all employees to write about themselves and what they are currently
working on at Dynacare. Users can tag their profile with key skills, which are
essential for the directory and the ability to discover experts based on skill sets.
Profile completion goals encourage users to maintain their profile data through
gamification, as users get a percentage rating based on profile completeness.
Users can also get quick access to their internal network of connected colleagues
from their profile.
1. Personal information: Each employee profile contains a space for a
professional-looking headshot, the user’s email address, contact
information, department, office location, and links to personal social media
channels.
2. Recognize peers: For colleagues ready to recognize their peers, this is
possible from the employee’s profile. Clicking the Recognize Now button
opens the Achievers employee recognition app.
3. About me: Employees can write a short paragraph about themselves in
their profile as well as share information about projects they are working on.
Tagging skills in their profile makes it possible for other users to find them
as they can filter and sort based on these attributes in the broader people-
directory view.
4. Completion and connections: Users can see exactly what they need to fill
out to achieve a completed profile. They can also see their workplace
connections and search within this group of individuals for easy access and
communication.

594 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

Who Does What

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet Who Does What. The Who Does What business
overview page is dedicated to giving users a simple overview of the core Dynacare
business functions.

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Who Does What Highlights
The Who Does What page helps employees understand the Dynacare business
structure and offers details about the work of cross-functional departments. This
purposefully named page also provides one-click access to each department’s site
within the intranet. The template used for this page is consistent with other
corporate level-pages to provide more intuitive user journeys, as users know
exactly what to expect from page to page. This makes navigation and discovery
easier.
1. Intro area: The top area introduces users to the page by clearly stating the
page’s purpose and offering a bit of body copy to further substantiate why it
exists.
2. Department cards: Each department card contains an image that reflects
the department’s function, the name of the department, and a link to read
more about it.

596 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

Team Site Page

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet Team Site Page. Each team site landing page outlines
what the team does, introduces leadership team members, and provides links to
critical department tools and documents.

Team Site Page Highlights

Linked from the Who Does What page, the team site landing pages are purposefully
simple and provide an aggregated-yet-open view of departmental activity.

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 1. Overview and leadership: Each page includes an overview of the
department along with contact information. Senior leadership team
members are featured in an easy-to-search micro-directory.
2. Useful links: Relevant, department-related documents and links fill the
right rail, giving users quick access to curated materials, as well as
important systems and websites. Colorful iconography reinforces the
different link types.
3. Social feed: A social feed in the center contains the latest stories, rich
media, and images uploaded by employees, which keeps the page fresh and
provides a real-time pulse for the department.

598 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

Photo Gallery

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet Photo Gallery. ConneXe’s photo gallery showcases

Dynacare’s most important resource—its people—and how they help to deliver the
company’s success.

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Photo Gallery Highlights
Dynacare created a dedicated Photo Gallery page that not only showcases images of
projects and teams, but also breathes life into the intranet, serving as a showcase
of all the great people and personalities that make up the company. Photos are
categorized; when clicked, they open in a lightbox to enhance the detail.
2. Photo gallery: Each photo gallery contains a clear title, a preview of the images
contained in the gallery, and a numerical indicator of how many photos live in each
gallery.

600 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

Employee Essentials

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet Employee Essentials. The Employee Essentials page

provides everything employees need, from onboarding to workplace wellness tips and
career progression planning.

Employee Essentials Highlights

The employee essentials page is a highly personalized area of ConneXe and is built
around the Dynacare core employee experience pillars: Inspire, Grow, and Thrive.

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 The page leverages design elements consistent with other intranet areas and is
designed to show individual users exactly which specific tasks they need to
accomplish to enjoy the best working experience possible. Links and page content
are personalized and dynamically adjust depending on the user’s role.
1. Core value: The Dynacare core values are clearly defined in this space, and
employees can also find relevant content that ladders up to each value
statement.
2. Related content: Each card-based design includes a light green stroke,
related image, the content or application title, and a short description, all of
which help reinforce what the content is about and where the links will take
users.

Mobile

602 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet Mobile View. On mobile, employees can expect and
enjoy the same thorough content that appears on the desktop.

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Mobile Highlights
Roughly two-thirds of ConneXe’s users are based in laboratories and on the road, so it
is imperative that the platform deliver a superior mobile experience. It does this
through native apps and responsive design, which let nonwired employees enjoy
the same quality experience on their mobile phones and tablets as they would on a
desktop. ConneXe delivers true workforce unification and connectivity from any
device, anywhere.
1. Mobile navigation: ConneXe’s mobile navigation includes the familiar
hamburger menu, a logo in the center that links users back to the
homepage, and the ability to search directly from the header.
2. Single-column layout: A single-column mobile layout and simplified view
of content cards makes the mobile homepage easy to scan and scroll.
3. Mobile apps and tools: As with the desktop version, the mobile apps and
tools menu provides a logical icon, purpose-driven app or tool name, and a
short description of the app or tool to help users feel confident about
selecting the correct option for their task. Users can also search in the
mobile version of the apps and tools menu, making for quick and easy tool
access on the go.

604 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY WORK

A Research-Based Approach
The team’s design approach was multipronged and included several detailed research steps,
but the first step was to make the case for change. The team used a variety of analytical
tools to accomplish that goal, including Net Promoter Score, employee feedback surveys,
and Google Analytics to complement anecdotal feedback it was hearing from employees.
This data helped the team assess the current state and gain insights into the areas that
required improvement.
Team members also defined four strategic pillars to help them determine which employee
portal capabilities were critical to enhance ConneXe. These pillars later evolved into a list of
five capabilities critical to achieving the team’s vision for the new intranet:
• Communication
• Social networking
• Productivity
• Access to knowledge
• Effective collaboration
All of these early assessment and vision-building activities provided a solid foundation for
the project, but the through line for the project’s success emerged through one key activity:
including users in the design process. The team engaged a cross-functional team of
employees from all levels, geographies, and lines of business to participate in bimonthly
design-thinking workshops. The internal team collaborated with KPMG, a national lead
partner for Microsoft services, to help lead and facilitate these stakeholder workshops
alongside the Dynacare business owner/project lead. These workshops helped the team
finalize the vision and intranet strategy, and contributed to a better understanding of
employees’ goals and priorities.
Other design and assessment research activities included:
• Defect log review: By reviewing current state support-defect logs on the
existing ConneXe platform, team members were able to gain a good
understanding of its pain points and ensure that they designed a new
experience that addressed the service gaps. This analysis revealed that the
existing system lacked a sophisticated, intuitive, and user-friendly CMS; it
also lacked the flexibility to build web parts. Other findings revealed the costly
impact of custom development and the high cost of support maintenance.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS was implemented and measured on a
quarterly basis. This data included crowd-sourced comments from employees
noting ConneXe areas they wanted to see improved. The primary takeaway
from this analysis was that employees wanted to see team sites developed for
each of their functions to promote collaboration, teamwork, and knowledge
sharing.

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 • Survey: An enterprise-wide corporate communications intranet survey
provided meaningful insights and direction on what was working well and
which areas required improvement. This analysis revealed the need to include
more business application links in the new design and also highlighted the
need to help personalize the UX through customized dashboards, etc.
• Expert reviews: Independent consultants who were also part of the Steering
Committee conducted expert reviews that provided meaningful insights on
best practice design. The team applied these insights when it built the high-
level wireframes and the final high-resolution designs.
• Market intelligence: The team leveraged market intelligence through the
Clearbox study, SharePoint Intranet In A Box (2018 Edition). This study
provided many examples and screenshots, and highlighted key intranet
features and capabilities. It also helped the Dynacare team refine its vendor
shortlist and build selection criteria.
• Prioritization: During the ConneXe stakeholder workshops, the team
completed an analysis exercise in which it rated each proposed feature idea
based on a set of criteria: business need, impact to the business from a
change perspective, and the potential reach of the change. Also, CGI and the
ITSS team completed an analysis to score each feature idea based on
ConneXe suitability, ease of implementation, and resources required to
implement the feature. This added a layer of context to help further refine the
feature set.
• Personas: The design team developed employee personas that represented
key roles within the organization. These provided insights into the following
questions:
o Where and how do they work?
o How much time do they spend in the office?
o Who do they work with?
o What do they need?
o What do they want from ConneXe?
• Iterative design through wireframes and workshop reviews: To
achieve a design grounded in UX, the team developed high-level wireframes
for each of the key enhancement pages and iterated these wireframes in
stages. Once the wireframes were designed, they were then prioritized and
tied back to the intranet strategy through stakeholder workshops. The project
lead then developed these raw ideas into high-resolution design comps in
collaboration with a third party—Rahim Karsan, a partner and Chief Marketing
Officer at Blueprint Internet Marketing. Finally, these designs were further
refined to bring them into brand design compliance.

Adoption/Buy-In
The Dynacare team did not experience any significant challenges with user adoption or buy-
in to the new site. Team members attribute that outcome to several factors.

606 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

 • User familiarity: “Users were already familiar with our existing portal, and
this familiarity helped to entice users to use our new portal.”
• Change management: “We created a team of ConneXe Ambassadors to act
as our ‘cheerleaders,’ and they helped to encourage user adoption. We also
included a change impact assessment as part of our training program so that
employees knew what changed and what stayed the same with our new
intranet.”
• Training: “We created various methods of learning opportunities to help train
users on the new portal, including: in-person training, eLearn modules, end-
user manuals, FAQs, posters, video teasers, Quick Start Guides, Office 365
Online Apps, and collaboration training.”
• Teaser videos: “We created a series of teaser videos which we released one
at a time in the weeks leading up to the launch. Each video featured Dynacare
employees and focused on one of the four pillars of ConneXe in a fun and
informal way. These videos were very successful in creating buzz.”

WORKING WITH OUTSIDE AGENCIES

Agency Project Role
Unily • Product and infrastructure management,
(Intranet solutions company) product implementation, design and IA
consultancy, ongoing customer success
management, and full technical support
KPMG • Intranet strategy development, governance,
(Accounting organization) and design
• Steering committee member
CGI • Technology guidance; developed the
(IT consulting company) company’s previous intranet (a SharePoint
2010 on-premise-hosted solution)
• Steering committee member
Blueprint Internet • High-resolution wireframe designs and
Marketing branding for images selected for the portal
(Internet marketing solutions
company)
Slater Hill • Broad Office 365 support; triaged support
(IT consulting company) tickets to Unily (application), Microsoft
(infrastructure), or Slater Hill (Office 365)
Leaf Learning 365 • Office 365 Online delivery and employee
(Corporate training company) collaboration training

GOVERNANCE

Ownership
Corporate Communications, HR, and IT jointly own ConneXe. This joint ownership
arrangement blends and supports the building of an exceptional employee experience and
corporate messaging objectives—all of which are enabled through the use of the best tools
and technology.

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Governance Structure
The intranet team created a three-tier governance structure:
• ConneXe steering committee: This committee comprised internal and
external subject matter experts. Internally, that included representatives from
IT, Corporate Communications, and HR leadership. External members were
drawn from CGI, Dynacare’s IT consulting partner, and KPMG, the national
lead partner for Microsoft services. The purpose of this team was to provide
directional guidance and support for the ConneXe evolution project.
• ConneXe stakeholder committee: This cross-functional team of
approximately 20 employees was drawn from different levels, locations, and
lines of business. Its purpose was to represent the customer voice and help
the team solidify its vision and strategy, and also to ideate on and prioritize
enhancements.
• ConneXe Ambassadors: The purpose of the ConneXe Ambassadors was to
help the intranet team further strengthen the vision and strategy, and
enhance ideation of the new platform. The ambassadors also served as portal
cheerleaders, helping to influence employees and encourage ConneXe use at
launch. The 20 ambassadors were drawn from a cross section of business
functions and offered a “hands on the ground” training approach to help their
colleagues transition to the new digital workplace. They also participated in
the intranet team’s bimonthly workshops.

608 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

 INTRANET TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES
Role Responsibilities
Business Owner/Project • Planning
Lead
• Determining project requirements
• Development
• Testing
• Deployment
• Closing
Project Manager • Planning
• Determining project requirements
• Development
• Testing
• Deployment
• Closing
Business System Analyst • Planning
• Determining project requirements
• Development
• Testing
• Deployment
• Closing
Project Coordinator • Engage with stakeholders to determine
what content needed to migrate to new site
• Ensure project team members were
completing tasks on time
• Cull out-of-date content
• Select appropriate imagery for different
pages
• Publish content on the new site
SharePoint Specialist • Add content submitted by designated Team
Site owner, Content Owner, or ConneXe
Business Owner to SharePoint

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URL AND ACCESS

ACCESS INFORMATION
Item Status
URL www.connexe.dynacare.ca

Default Status The intranet is set as users’ homepage by default

when they launch their Google Chrome browser.
Users cannot change the setting.

Remote Access Fully supported cloud-based solution

Shared Workstations Many employees who do not have a personal
workstation for their daily tasks (e.g.
phlebotomists, couriers, etc.) use a shared
workstation to access information and work apps,
and to communicate with other employees across
the organization.

610 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

TIMELINE

PROJECT MILESTONES
Milestone Date Milestone Description
December 15, 2015 • First company intranet launched: A custom-
developed SharePoint 2010 on-premise site
with third-party hosting
January–December 2016 • Resolved break of and fixes for current
SharePoint intranet
• Developed intranet strategy and
governance model
April–August 2017 • Launched quick-win enhancements to the
existing SharePoint intranet, including:
weather widget, Twitter feed, Must Read
web part, Soapbox Ideation widget
integration, and I Would Like To quick links
• Conducted ConneXe stakeholder workshops
to finalize the vision, strategy, employee
voice, ideation, and prioritization activities
September–December 2017 • Designed the ConneXe UX through
wireframes
January–March 2018 • Explored the market through the ConneXe
RFP process
April–May 2018 • Held vendor demos with five companies
June 2018 • Received Unily proof of concept
July 2018 • Selected final platform and approved
business case
August 2018 • Held project kick-off and lab workshops
January 2019 • Achieved launch-ready intranet and
completed user acceptance testing
February 2019 • Trained end users, held marketing and
communications launches, and released
teaser videos
February 28, 2019 • Go-live launch date
Overall project time frame: 6 months

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CONTENT AND CONTENT CONTRIBUTORS

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT AND OVERSIGHT

Contributors The six content contributors are currently drawn
from the Corporate Communications Department
(3) and the HR Department (3).

Contribution The site administrator reaches out to employees in

different departments and locations within the
organization to discover news, interesting stories,
and upcoming events, so that the Corporate
Communications team can shape this content for
publication.

Training Unily conducted CMS training and content

contributor training for all content contributors and
administrators prior to launch. This included in-
person training and guides.

Maintaining Quality The site administrator maintains an editorial

calendar to ensure content is not duplicated and
works to develop a mix of monthly themed articles
and standalone content while developing ideas for
new and engaging articles.
Prior to publication, the Corporate Communications
team reviews and approves all content to ensure
accuracy and adherence to intranet guidelines.
Content is then reviewed monthly to ensure
consistency and quality. The site administrator also
responds to all employee inquiries and comments
on the Conversations channel.

612 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

 Pictured: Dynacare Intranet CMS. The Dynacare CMS is simple and highly
organized to ensure that the intranet is maintained over time with a best-practice IA
and strong governance. Sections down the left side break out core functions, such as
the Media section for images and other rich media, and the Broadcast section where
users set their notification rules. The core content tree stores information hierarchically
for easy navigation and permission management, and each piece of content presents
at-a-glance analytics to track adoption and performance.

Culling Content
In order to move good content from the old platform to the new one, the team reviewed
previous intranet content and selected items to transfer or cull based on relevance. Old

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news content was archived and omitted from the new platform, while evergreen content
(such as company policy documents and executive biographies) was carried over. The new
intranet was populated with news content dating back to three months prior to launch to
ensure a sense of continuity when the new intranet launched. Other evergreen content,
including executive team biographies and departmental overviews, was revised and
refreshed to add energy to the content being carried over.
Some of the culled features, such as a widget displaying each of Canada’s time zones, were
more popular than originally thought; the team is now reviewing the reintroduction of this
feature. The team learned a valuable lesson from this omission and suggests that other
intranet teams consider including targeted survey questions to help identify which specific
features employees want to see carried over to a new intranet platform.

614 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet Leadership Page. This simple content page is aimed
at bringing users closer to their leadership team. Users can click through to learn more
about their leaders or follow their profile so they can be notified when the leaders
posts new content.

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TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY
Category Technology Used
Web Server Hardware and • Windows Azure
Operating System
• Office 365 Platform
• SharePoint Online
• OneDrive
Bug Tracking/Quality • Service Now
Assurance
Design Tools • Unily tools

Site Building Tools • Unily CMS

Content Management Tools • Unily CMS
Search • Unily search functions

Replacing Obsolete Technology

The previous version of ConneXe launched on December 15, 2015. It was a custom-
developed solution, based on SharePoint 2013 on-premise, and was a third-party hosted
solution from CGI.
The previous version of the intranet was received positively by the organization, but it had a
significant number of underlying technical challenges that required costly development and
financial resources to resolve. This made the platform unstable. The platform’s architecture
required the organization to have two sites developed—an English site and a French version
of it—which resulted in the duplication of publishing efforts, prevented unified conversation
and social commenting capability, and required intensive coding efforts to build workflows
and variations to support content publishing.
This was also not an evergreen product with updated product releases. Instead, any
required enhancements had to be defined by Dynacare and custom developed and tested.
As a result, the platform was not flexible or scalable. This system was also lacking in three
critical areas.
• Not cloud-based: Because the system was not cloud-based, users had to be
on the Dynacare network to access the portal.
• Not mobile responsive: The system was not responsive. Because optimized
versions for both the mobile and desktop experiences did not exist, mobile
usage was less than 2%.
• Costly: The system was very costly to maintain, in terms of monthly
operating costs, enhancement development, and support.
The company needed a better, modern, cloud-based solution that would provide an
excellent UX and reduce maintenance costs going forward.

616 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

Technology Evaluation
When evaluating possible platforms for the new intranet, the Dynacare team used the
following criteria.
• ConneXe suitability: How well would the platform align with what the
company wanted to achieve with the intranet?
• Ease of implementation
• Required resources: Which employee resources were required to plan and
build out a new site, as well as keep it updated moving forward?
• News publishing capabilities
• User experience
• Social and knowledge management features
• Search
• Analytics
• Employee self-service capabilities
• Integration
• Wildcard features: Did it offer features such as the ability to create a
newsletter by selecting articles and photos from the homepage carousel to
auto-populate a newsletter template and email it to employees?

Market Exploration and Platform Vendor Selection

The original idea was to build a custom intranet solution, so team members developed a
detailed business requirements document and launched an RFP process so that they could
solicit development quotes from three vendors. What they learned through this process was
that the effort to build a custom solution using responsive web design would be cost
prohibitive, so instead they turned their sights toward the intranet-as-a-service marketplace
and focused on Agile options in that space.
By studying market intelligence, they winnowed the possible worldwide intranet-as-a-
service vendors down to five top choices. To chose a winner, they conducted a thorough
evaluation process, including:
• Vendor demos: The team collaborated with each of the five vendors and
organized vendor demonstrations for the ConneXe Steering Committee. Each
vendor was evaluated on the following criteria: news publishing, UX, social
and knowledge management, search, analytics, employee services,
integration, and a wildcard criteria.
• Proof of concept: Once the team short-listed the top two vendors, it
developed proof-of-concept designs with each of them to showcase a working
concept of their platform within the Dynacare environment.
• Final selection: Mario Fantozzi, the project’s business owner and project
lead, built the business case and internal rate-of-return cash flow model as
part of the team’s preferred-choice recommendation to the company’s CEO
and CFO for final funding approval.

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MOBILE
ConneXe supports mobile use via responsive design and native apps. It was important that
users be able to access the entire intranet from anywhere and on any device since many
employees work in the field and are on the road without desktop access. Mobile access gives
frontline staff such as couriers and customer-facing employees access to complete intranet
functionality, as the mobile design is optimized for all mobile and tablet devices to ensure
that every employee has equal access to the intranet, regardless of device.

SEARCH
Elastic search is integrated into the Unily intranet product, but it also passes queries along
to integrated data sources, such as SharePoint, to retrieve results.
Filtering is enabled across various search experiences, and all filters are responsive to the
content being searched, such as filtering by department in the people directory or filtering
by file type in the document center. In many cases, the complexity of filters is dynamic to
the content being searched. So, for example, the department filters are supplied by all the
potential departments and are listed against user profiles in the identity management
provider. Other filters, such as article tags, are built manually and have simple options to
increase usability and reduce complexity.

ROI
Dynacare requires that each business case put forward for approval stand on its own merit
by generating a positive rate of return. The intranet team was thus required to demonstrate
this in building a business case for this project. Since launch, keeping track of how the new
intranet is performing is an ongoing exercise in tracking both hard and soft metrics; both
forks continue to show that the new platform is moving in a successful direction.
Page views are tracked monthly to measure employee engagement. Since launch, average
monthly page views have increased by 17% over those of the previous intranet. This means
that more users are viewing content beyond the homepage.
Story views are also measured to determine the degree to which employees are engaged
with the organizational updates and insights that are being published. One dramatic
example of an increase in this type of engagement is with news stories. In 2018, four news
stories were viewed more than 400 times. The number of stories has already doubled in just
the first four months since the new intranet launched.

618 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

Pictured: Dynacare Intranet Stories Archive. The stories archive aggregates all
stories, whether they are presented in news, videos, or events. This archive represents
the pulse of the business and keeps employees connected to the Dynacare shared
vision for success. Users can filter stories by keyword search or by selecting different
topics and tags.

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LESSONS LEARNED AND BEST PRACTICES

Choose a Platform Provider with Care

The Dynacare team made the decision to purchase an intranet platform as a service rather
than build one. This type of approach requires careful consideration as no out-of-the box
solution fully meets the needs of a large, complex organization. As a result, there is always
a learning curve when evaluating possible approaches. Here’s what the Dynacare team
learned through that evaluation process:
• 80% of organizational needs are common. “This means that many
organizations would be well served by deploying an intranet-as-a-service
platform (IAAS) in their organization. Custom-developed solutions are costly
to maintain, costly to build future enhancements, and require a longer time to
implement. IAAS platforms can be launched in as short a time as six months.”
• Evaluate multilingual capabilities very carefully when choosing a
platform. “If your organization has multilingual business requirements (i.e.
your portal needs to be in English and French), you should carefully review
the offerings from each intranet-as-a-service vendor to ensure all of their
widgets and native headers are multilingual capable.”
• The Statement of Work (SOW) should define vendor and customer
responsibilities in great detail. “Ensure the accountabilities of both the
vendor and the customer are clearly defined in the SOW, so that you know
exactly what you are getting in the plan, design, and launch phases of your
intranet deployment.”
• Customization capabilities matter if branding matters. “If branding is
important to your organization, there are limitations as to how far you can
customize your branding with these IAAS vendors (usually just font type, size,
and color). Make sure to engage your marketing or branding team early on in
the discovery phase of your deployment to ensure that all of your branding
needs will be met by the platform.”
• A local vendor means more face-to-face contact. “If on-premise
consulting is important to your organization, make sure to select a local
vendor. Otherwise, you will be incurring excessive travel costs for on-site
support. The alternative is to do everything remotely if the vendor is not
located nearby.”
• Dig into the details. “For Canadian companies, make sure to specify that
the dictionary to be used for your portal should be Canadian English and
Canadian French. Many vendors will default to US English or UK English, and
Parisian French.”

620 [email protected] Dynacare (2020)

 • Use a funnel approach to choose the vendor. “If choosing an IAAS
provider to deploy your intranet, make sure to run an RFP process and review
at least five different vendors. Each of them has its advantages and
disadvantages in terms of product features, pricing, and support. Then, before
making your final selection, make sure to get at least three client testimonials
to validate the promises and features that the vendors have promised in their
offerings. And request Customer Service Management (CSM) and Digital
Workplace Consultant profiles and background experience credentials from
each.”

Best Practices
The Dynacare team’s list of best practices might seem simple on its face, but this list
represents a critical, detailed approach to developing a great, usable intranet platform that
will serve all employees:
• Assess the current state: understand your organization’s digital workplace
maturity level, how employees work to help identify the gaps, and the
appropriate tools employees need to do their best work.
• Establish a digital workplace vision.
• Create a capabilities-based digital workplace strategy.
• Align organizational objectives to strategy.
• Engage stakeholders from across the business to better understand the tools
that people need to get their work done.
• Select the right digital toolbox based on your business drivers and strategic
priorities: messaging, productivity, collaboration, communication, business
applications, crowdsourcing, connectivity, and mobility.
• Determine which tools will be part of the intranet, and which tools will be
outside of the intranet and part of the larger digital workplace environment.
• Design appropriate governance, operational policies, and management
systems to support the success of the intranet post-launch.
• Build change management practices into the project plan to ensure that users
embrace this new way of working and that they are ready for the change that
is coming.
• Develop marketing and communications plans to help create excitement
about the launch.
• Provide sufficient training to all users; include both front-end and back-end
user training.
• Measure success and adoption through reporting metrics.

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Norwegian Government Security and Service
Organization (Departementenes sikkerhets- og
serviceorganisasjon [DSS]) (2020)
OVERVIEW

COMPANY TEAM
The Norwegian Government Security and Service The platform was designed and implemented—and
Organization (Departementenes sikkerhets- og is continuously maintained and enhanced by—a
serviceorganisasjonm, or DSS) provides shared flexible group of internal and external resources.
services to the central government in Norway,
including the Prime Minister’s Office, 15 ministries In-house team: The internal team handled project
and embassies, and consulates, as part of the management, concept design, UX, IA, tech
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). supervision, dialogue with intranet editors, user
research, search, and visual design. Team
The main purpose of DSS is to provide synergy for members: Hilde Kari Sundet (project lead), Petter
the ministries with cost-effective and reliable Thorsrud, Torbjørn Vagstein, Stig Nappen,
shared services, which include cleaning, security, Shanmugathas Asaipplillai, Mette Haga Nielsen,
switchboard, and postal services, as well as Kristine Brodahl, Rune Løvnæseth, David Rooke.
running computer systems and handling
government publications. External resources: External resources were used
for interaction design, UX, visual design, EPiServer
The Department of Digital Services web section CMS, and SharePoint search implementation. These
provides web services to the ministries, mainly included consultants from: Creuna, EpiNova, and
providing support for the external website PuzzlePart: Ingrid Håland, Stig Kulvedrøsten, Vidar
www.regjeringen.no (government.no), the Olsen, Martin Falck-Ytter, Carl Lundblad, Bjørn
norway.no portal for MFA, and a number of smaller Tennøe.
sites, along with the intranet platform.
Ministry representatives: In addition to the
Headquarters: Oslo, Norway project/team members, the involvement of the
ministries’ intranet editors has been (and still is)
Company locations: DSS (750 employees) and crucial to the platform’s development,
most ministry employees (5,200) are based in
maintenance, user support, and further
Oslo. Roughly 1,800 employees are located in
development.
about 85 other countries worldwide (in 110
embassies and consulates).

Locations where people use the intranet:

Employees at all locations use the intranet.

Annual revenue: N/A

THE INTRANET
Users: Approximately 7,500 Depweb/common
platform users, of whom 6,700 also have access to
a ministry-specific intranet.

Mobile approach: Responsive web design,

secure/encrypted access
Technology platform: EPiserver CMS 11 (intranet);
SharePoint 2013 (search and collaboration)

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

622 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
INTRANET TEAM

Core team members shown here (back row, left to right): Torbjørn Vagstein, Stig
Nappen, Mette Haga Nielsen, Rune Løvnæseth, Shanmugathas Asaipplillai; (front row,
left to right): Kristine Brodahl, David Rooke, Hilde Kari Sundet, Petter Thorsrud.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 623

Key external resources shown here (left grid, top row, left to right): Ingrid
Håland, Vidar Olsen; (second row, left to right): Martin Falck-Ytter, Carl Lundblad;
(bottom row, left to right): Stig Kulvedrøsten, Bjørn Tennøe.
Ministry intranet editors shown here (right grid, top row, left to right): Silje
Lindebrekke, Gunn-Åse Kyrvestad, Ajfer Husejin, Guttorm Aanes; (second row, left to
right): Finn Mølmen, Eline Bjerke, Rune Akselsen, Ellen Brit Sekkelsten; (third row, left
to right): Marta Haga, Tor Martin Bærum, Anita Sletten, Øyvind Sæther; (bottom row,
left to right): Åshild Sæther, Liv Nodeland, Hilde Marie Høberg, Nina Ludvigsen.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

624 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
HIGHLIGHTS ABOUT THIS WINNER
The Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization (DSS) intranet designers
were resourceful in the way they peppered personalization features throughout the design of
this intranet platform. Rather than personalize in basic, traditional ways, their decisions
were driven by thorough user research and obvious deep thinking. This, combined with a
common design platform and search experience, and countless smart touches, created an
inspiring design.
• Common design system: A design system unifies 7,500 users, 15
ministries, and the Norwegian Office of the Prime Minister on one intranet
platform. Thoroughly usability tested, the platform reuses visual design,
interaction design, and technical components. Design guidelines support all
intranet efforts. This consistent design creates unity, steadiness of use, and
time savings for users and intranet teams.
• Menu to the digital workplace: A waffle menu in the upper right gives
employees access to applications beyond the intranets that make up the DSS
digital workplace.
• Common linked content: Articles produced on Depweb (the main common
intranet) can be shared and added on ministry intranets. Those intranets can
also add ministry-related content above or below the shared content. If the
source articles change, the linked pages on the ministry intranets
automatically update, without affecting the customized ministry-specific
content. This is an innovative way to share content and allow for
customization, while also ensuring information accuracy.
• Links to important pages and tools: Sections for tools and bookmarks—
some offered by default, and others customized by users—help employees
find the tools and information they need.
• Consistent search experience: A common global search crawls the many
intranets, an extranet, and SharePoint resources. Thus, no matter which
intranet the user searches from, the search will return results regardless of
which source the content is hosted on. SERPS offer filtering capabilities and
source tabs to expedite the search, focusing it in on the best results.
• User-targeted search: Search is targeted to the logged-in user, and cuts
through the junk. For example, suggested search results are based on the
query’s relevance to the logged-in user. Similarly, when an employee
searches for people, the closer in organizational proximity each result is to the
user, the higher that result will appear.
• Clickable search metadata: The team also went an extra few miles to
create clickable metadata on SERPs. If the results aren’t what users need,
they may see a related item—such as a department link—and can click on
that right on the SERP. Instant related query anyone? Similarly, document
previews allow employees to get a better sense of the result, and they can
follow or share the document without ever leaving the SERP.
• System status: The homepage displays information about and the status of
key DSS systems. This prevents a lot of wasted time and effort trying to
determine if a system is having an issue and then attempting to report it.

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 • Notify author: A simple form lets users notify an article’s author of any
issues with it. Further, social commenting and liking features provide an
outlet for employees to engage with one another about articles.
• Multi-language support: The platform provides support for multi-language
intranets, letting users easily switch languages with a simple toggle icon. The
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in particular has exploited this opportunity
because of its large proportion of English-speaking employees in embassies
and consulates.
• Forms with built-in workflow: The system eliminates busy work and
possible user error with niceties such as having form fields prepopulate with
user data. Further, built-in workflows automatically route information to the
right people at the right time. For example, when an employee signs up for a
training course, the system auto-generates and sends an email and a text
confirmation, as well as later reminders. The training instructors track the
people who have signed up and can manage communication with attendees.

BACKGROUND
The first common intranet platform for the ministries was launched in 2007, as a direct
result of a major upgrade to the Norwegian Government’s external website
(www.regjeringen.no/www.government.no), which united the many ministries under one
public platform.
Prior to this, there were 15+ unique ministry intranets with more than half a dozen different
technologies and platforms, each “owned” by the respective ministry’s ICT department.
However, because the ministries were experiencing increasing costs and upgrade issues,
they were open to seeking common solutions. This coincided with a need to reduce local ICT
staff and use DSS services to strengthen its position as the leading supplier of services to
the ministries. DSS is a public agency; although it is owned by one ministry, it offers
services to all ministries.
The experiences from the regjeringen.no project clearly indicated that offering a single
platform to all ministries offered many potential benefits, and it was natural to try to
leverage the external site’s technology solutions. DSS has therefore sought to standardize
both the technical platform and its use of suppliers for all web solutions and services offered
to the ministries. This helps DSS reuse solutions and optimize resources and competencies.
The intranet’s previous version had common functionality and design guidelines, but each
intranet was hosted as a separate instance, necessitating the need for separate servers and
licenses for the CMS and search engine, and in some cases, local hosting inside a specific
ministry’s firewall.
Since its origin in 2007, the intranet’s goal has always been twofold:
• Help employees find relevant information and tools to do their jobs efficiently
• Offer news, background information, and socially-oriented content to help
foster a common culture and a good working environment
The new platform is hosted as one instance, which results in savings on licensing, hosting,
development, and maintenance. It also allows for central editorial and tech support,
common guidelines and page templates, and the ability to share and localize common

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

626 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
content on local intranets. This greatly simplifies intranet editors’ work, as they can now
concentrate on creating content and satisfying users’ needs.
The most recent platform upgrade includes new visual and interaction design, new
navigation and search, and enhanced functionality. Extensive user research and user testing
indicates that user needs have been well taken care of with these many changes and
enhancements.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 627

 Pictured: Norwegian Government Previous Intranet Homepage. The old
platform was less coherent, as fewer elements were shared between various ministry
intranets.

Challenges
The team encountered many challenges in undertaking a project of this size and complexity,
including:
• Meeting everyone’s needs: Unifying the requirements and priorities of 15
different ministries into a single coherent platform was the project’s single
biggest challenge. Originally slated for release in late 2016, the project launch
was delayed for two main reasons:
o The platform architecture was redesigned to offer one centrally hosted
application, with content sharing and reuse of a common search. This led to
several challenges, including the need to solve access rights and
network/firewall challenges, as well as to agree on common content and
metadata models.
o During the development process, additional user needs were identified and
met, leading to scope creep, delays, and budget problems.
• Creating an all-encompassing search: Early in the process, the team
decided that rather than set up an intranet-specific search, it would create the
first iteration of an enterprise search covering all important sources, including
SharePoint resources and document management and archiving systems. The
first version of this search covers all content on the intranet and (common)
SharePoint platforms with rights management; it is designed to include
document management systems’ content and other sources at a later stage.
Aiming to create a system that would index and search SharePoint resources
meant that the teams responsible for SharePoint functionality, UX, and local
SharePoint hosting and maintenance had to be consulted and included in the
project. In the long run, this proved useful for all teams, but getting there
took time.
• Deciding what to do about specialized functionality: The previous
platform had a lot of specialized functionality that had been developed over
the years. The intranet project was originally intended to remove some
specialized functions, but the opposite actually happened. Almost all special
functions had to be reimplemented on the new technical platform, and new
functionality was also added, including prefilled forms (with personal and
organizational info) for ordering services, a new course portal, and a module
for producing HTML documentation from Microsoft Word files.

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628 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
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 • Creating a common platform: From the beginning, two different projects
were defined. One project was to renew Depweb (Ministry-web), the common
site for information concerning all ministries and DSS services to ministries.
This site was primarily produced and published by DSS. DepWeb was also the
platform to describe and offer DSS services to the ministries. The other
project was aimed at intranet solutions; it was not originally intended to cover
Depweb but, during the project, it was decided that a single common platform
would be an obvious and better solution. As a result, some early insight and
analysis work had to be coordinated and agreed upon, which was demanding
and very fruitful.
• Creating a gateway to information sources: Another challenge was to
decide where to store and how to present various information resources. In
early 2015, DSS introduced a set of collaboration tools based on SharePoint
2013, and a lot of “permanent” information and documentation (that did not
need dynamic editing) was published as PDFs or Word files in SharePoint
rooms or on the wiki platform. This caused problems for users who needed
that information, as it was difficult to find and metadata and title conventions
were not adequately developed. The intranet team initially had little contact
with the SharePoint team. As the project progressed, however, the teams
began cooperating and seeking common solutions. To reduce the issues with
finding information, a waffle menu was introduced to present shortcuts
between all available sources and design changes were made to the search
experience. These solutions have greatly reduced the problems, but people
can still get confused by the multitude of sources and applications.

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DESIGN REVIEW

Platform

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Platform. All ministry intranets and

common intranet/extranets have similar structures.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

630 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Platform, Highlights
The DSS intranet platform is not just one intranet; it is a framework for and network of
multiple intranets. This system comprises 15 sites. In addition to organization-specific
intranets for each of the 13 ministries, plus one for the Norwegian Government Security and
Service Organization (DSS), which provides services to the ministries, such as: security,
cleaning, ICT, and information services. Depweb acts as the overarching common
intranet/extranet for all ministries and includes topic-specific subsites that provide
information from one ministry to all ministries; examples include subsites such as one about
a common ICT project and one about the planning of new government buildings following
the terror attack on July 22, 2011.
Page templates, navigation models, and design guidelines ensure that most pages across
the intranets are similar in structure and appearance. This consistency helps employees who
visit the pages of multiple ministries find what they need and work productively. It also
helps content creators easily and confidently create pages using designs that have already
been tested and improved upon.
Each ministry may rearrange, add, or exclude elements on pages to best suit their users’
needs. Still, all intranet homepages have a similar structure.
1. Header area: The horizontal bar at the top of each intranet can take on
whichever color and background a ministry desires. This freedom allows for
some ministry-related branding, which makes individual intranets more
recognizable at a glance.
2. Intranet name: The intranet’s name—which can be either an acronym for the
ministry name or a branded intranet name—is the first item in the upper left of
the top horizontal bar. This name is large and clear, which is of the utmost
importance since each of the ministries has its own intranet, and each, in turn,
has its own name. These letters act as a signpost that tells employees which
intranet they are on; the name also acts as a link to that intranet’s homepage.
Having this feature available in the same place on each ministry’s intranet is
helpful to users.
3. Search: The intranet search always appears as a white field on the right.
4. Waffle menu: A button with the label Gå til (go to) and a waffle icon appears
on the right side of the top bar on each intranet. This menu makes it easy for
users to access the ministry intranets and additional relevant platforms, such as
shared workspaces in SharePoint. This small menu is one of the ways that the
intranet acts as a hub for the entire DSS digital workspace.
5. Content editing: For those users with editing rights, the Edit button appears in
the far upper right corner, giving them access to the CMS for creating and
editing content, based on user rights.
6. Logo and organization name: A second colored bar (usually black) toward the
top spans the width of the page. On the far left is a small lion logo, based on a
heraldic lion, which is followed by the ministry or department name and appears
in this spot on all ministry intranets.
7. Global navigation: Each intranet’s global navigation appears on the far right of
the second (usually black) bar that spans the width of the page. Most ministries
have almost identical information structures, including links to both internal and
externals services and sites, which is helpful.

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 8. Bookmarks: On the far left of the third bar that spans the width of the page is a
drop-down list of bookmarks. Mine snarveier (My shortcuts) includes both user-
added items and standard shortcuts set by the site administrator.

Homepage

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

632 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
 Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet iDSS Homepage. The iDSS homepage
offers news and a wall feed to help DSS employees stay informed.

Homepage, Highlights
The intranet homepage of DSS itself offers links to common tasks and user-created
bookmarks that expedite DSS employees’ work. The homepage keeps employees informed
with a selection of news, links to more news, and a wall feed where employees can post and
react to messages.
1. Intranet name: The intranet’s name is the first item in the upper left of the DSS
intranet homepage. Some ministries and DSS itself have intranet names that add an
“i” before ministry acronym (such as iDSS and iLMD for the Ministry of Agriculture),
while others chose catchier names, such as FINTRA for the Ministry of Finance and
Arena for the Ministry of Knowledge.
2. Search: The intranet search appears as a white field on the right. The juxtaposition
between the white field and blue background bar help make the field visible. This
search field is common across all intranets at DSS.
3. Waffle menu: A black button with the waffle icon and the label Gå til (Go to)
appears to the right of search. This menu makes it easy for users to access other
relevant platforms, such as shared SharePoint workspaces.
4. Edit button: For those users with editing rights, the Edit button appears in the far
upper right corner. Clicking it gives them access to the CMS for creating and editing
content based on their rights.
5. Logo and organization name: On the far left of the black bar that spans the width
of the page appears a small lion logo followed by the full name of the department.
6. Global navigation: The global navigation appears on the far right of the black bar.
7. Bookmarks: A drop-down list of bookmarks is on the far left of the white bar that
spans the width of the page. Mine snarveier (My shortcuts) includes both user-added
items and standard shortcuts set by the site administrator.
8. Top News: Two top news items appear at the top of the page in the I fokus (In
focus) section. Each has an associated photo, clear title, date, summary, and number
of comments and likes the story has garnered. Selected items, such as important
articles, and the news list offer links to the full news listing.
9. News list: To the right of the top two news items is a list of six other recent news
stores, each with simply a title, date, and number of comments and likes for each.
10.Feed: Below the news appears the Oppslagstavle (Bulletin board) feed, where
employees can post, like, and comment on messages. This offers a way for engaged
employees to correspond with—and potentially inspire—each other in a public way.
11.Common links: The center of the homepage houses the Enklere hverdag (everyday
tasks) section with links to some of the most commonly used tools and resource
pages on the intranet and on external websites.
12.System status: It’s important for employees to know when IT systems are having
issues. Driftsstatus og informasjon (system status and information) shows a green
link and checkmark when systems are all working as expected. A yellow or red line

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 633

 displays to indicate system issues, while a red button links to a page with more
information.
13.Contact: The DSS Brukerservice (DSS service desk) has contact information for
important services, including security and emergency services.
14.Calendar: The Kalender (Calendar) area in the right-side column includes important
events and a link to all calendars so that employees can stay abreast of the
upcoming happenings at various ministries. A nice feature here is the birthday
greetings that wish a happy day to employees having a birthday.
15.Emergency information: Below the calendar in the right rail is the Nødsituasjoner
(Emergencies) section, with information about emergencies and phone numbers to
call in the event of an emergency. Many intranets don’t house this sort of
information, but they should, as it could help employees in a difficult situation.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

634 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Mobile Homepage

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet iDSS Mobile Homepage. The intranet

platform is responsive, and all content available on desktop is also available on mobile.

Homepage, Mobile Highlights

Rather than eliminating content on mobile or creating different content for mobile, the team
created a responsive site. The main differences between the site when accessed on desktop

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 635

versus mobile relate to the size and organization of page elements and how the navigation
is presented. Given technology and resource limitations, it couldn’t create a fully responsive
search function, but the team plans to reconcile this in a near-future release.
Using the intranet on mobile has proven very useful in some situations, and usage is
steadily growing. Use on tablets is very high at some ministries, especially when employees
are using tablets in lieu of laptops in meetings and out-of-office situations. Intranet use on
phones has not yet reached high adoption rates.
1. Search: To save screen real estate on mobile, the search field is collapsed under
a magnifying glass icon. The label Søk (Search) makes the feature especially
easy for users to find.
2. Menu: As with search, the menu offers both an icon and a label—in this
case, a hamburger icon and the word Meny (Menu). The global navigation
and the waffle menu are collapsed under this icon.
3. Content flow: Two main news item appear first on mobile (as they do on
desktop) and include the same information, photos, and features. To use
space effectively, six other recent news items appear in the section
below, as opposed to being adjacent as on desktop. Generally, designers
employ the column drop responsive layout, where the information
streams down in one column (rather than two) on mobile.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

636 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Embassies Page (Example of Type-Ahead Portal Page)

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Embassies Page. A page pattern with

a list and type-ahead feature is used on multiple pages, including a page of embassies,
on the intranets at DSS.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 637

Embassies Page (Example of Type-Ahead Portal Page), Highlights
Employees need information about embassies to do their jobs. To expedite access to this
information, the intranet offers a page that lists the embassies and offers a search feature.
This is a perfect example of how one UI can cater to two user scenarios: users who want to
scan everything available, and users who want to search for an explicit item.
This UI works for tasks beyond just finding embassies; indeed, the team includes this page
pattern in the intranet design system. Such pages act as micro-portals, and all include type-
ahead search. Several other pages across DSS use the same basic page format with various
types of content.
1. Subtitles: Although the list of embassies is long, black bold subtitles of
geographic areas stand out among the blue underlined links. If the users know
their target embassy’s region, they can begin their hunt by easily scanning to
the subtitles.
2. Search: The type-ahead search feature makes it efficient for users to
find their target embassy. Once users have typed in a few characters, the
search function immediately displays embassies that match the query
and highlights in yellow the matching letters in the results. The search
field is visible at the top so users who know what they are looking for will
easily see the search option first rather than start by scanning a long list.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

638 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Tools (Example of Type-Ahead Portal Page)

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Tools. Users can scan the list of tools
or search for the one they want.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 639

Tools (Example of Type-Ahead Portal Page), Highlights
Another micro-portal example, this one for tools, appears on the MFA intranet. The page
consolidates a selection of important work-support tools. It’s searchable, and the search
offers suggestions as the user types.
1. Search: The search field caters to employees who know the name of the tool
they are interested in.
2. Sections: Large bold black subheadings make it easy for users to scan tool
categories, and then scan the set of links when they find the category they need.
3. Links: Links lead to various helpful items, including an external web site or
service, a user manual, key documents, or enterprise software systems.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

640 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Global Navigation Menu

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Global Navigation Menu. Card

sorting and other usability testing methods informed the site’s IA and global navigation
megamenu design.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 641

Global Navigation Menu, Highlights
The DSS intranet team conducted extensive user research, including card sorting and user
testing, to derive the site structure and hence the global navigation. The same megamenu
UI design is used for each ministry’s intranet, but the IA and global navigation links vary
due to different needs and ministry sizes, which range from approximately 100 employees
to more than 2,500. Ministries conducted their own usability tests and stakeholder
workshops to determine the best site and menu structures. Still, most of their global
navigation menu content is very similar to that of the DSS site (pictured).
1. Megamenu: The megamenu lets employees view several navigation links at
once, without having to drill down a hierarchy. This expedites their work as they
are more likely to see and rule out the least-likely links and click the best one for
the task at hand.
2. Selected menu: The selected global navigation link in the top-level
menu is designated with a pink oblong ellipse behind the white menu
name.
3. Subheadings: The blue bold text, which is larger than the link text,
indicates that these items are higher in the site structure than the
navigation links. The visual treatment makes them easy to scan to.
4. Close: Sometimes users mistake very wide megamenus for part of the
web page, and thus have trouble closing it. Here, an x icon in the upper
right helps users escape that situation.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

642 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Waffle Menu and Bookmarks

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Waffle Menu and Bookmarks. The

expanded waffle menu and favorites menu give instant access to important pages and
applications.

Waffle Menu and Bookmarks, Highlights

Quick access is a theme for this design. The waffle menu provides quick access to tools
beyond the intranet, while the bookmarks offer important links, including those chosen by
users themselves.
1. Other tools: When expanded, the waffle menu displays links to collaboration
and information tools such as Samarbeidsrom (shared workspaces on a
SharePoint platform), Mitt område (SharePoint My Page), Eksterne rom (cloud-
based collaboration with external participants), Depweb (the common extranet),
and Veiledninger (user manuals).
2. Bookmarks: When expanded, the Mine snarveier (My shortcuts) section
displays links to important areas, including links the user has personally
added to the list.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 643

Mobile Menu and Search

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Mobile Menu and Search. The menus
and search feature collapse under icons on mobile to save screen real estate.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

644 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Mobile Menu and Search, Highlights
The responsive intranet takes on common space-saving attributes when accessed on mobile.
To make the most of each medium, there are subtle differences between how the site
appears on phone versus tablet.
1. Search icon: When the site is accessed on a mobile device, the search field
collapses under a magnifying glass icon to save space.
2. Menu: When the site is accessed on a phone, the hamburger menu houses
the global navigation and waffle menu. On a tablet, the waffle menu keeps its
own icon rather than collapse under the hamburger menu. This is one of the
differences between viewing the site on a phone and a tablet. The navigation
links and waffle menu are collapsed by default on both device types.
3. Accordion: Expanding the global navigation accordion menu displays the
second-level menu links. These appear outdented with a grey background.
The selected level-one menu item turns red, while the others remain blue.
These visual changes help users recognize what they have selected.
4. Waffle: On phones, the waffle icon at the bottom of the global navigation
menu offers a clue that this is not like the other links in the menu. When
clicked, the waffle expands the menu, a lot like an accordion. On tablet, the
waffle menu appears in the upper right (as on desktop).

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 645

 Search

Pictured: Norwegian
Government Intranet
Search. Search
suggestions and results
are targeted based on
user affiliation and
rights.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

646 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Search, Highlights
The ministries create and rely on a great deal of information. A well-considered but not
overdesigned search feature helps employees locate the content they need. And, like
obliging elves on the back end, the search makes wise decisions to target the results to the
logged-in user, cutting away the junk. For example, when an employee searches for people,
the closer in organizational proximity each result is to the user, the higher that result will
appear. So, colleagues the employee is more likely to work with have higher relevance than
organizationally distant colleagues. Similarly, suggested search results that appear as the
user is typing are based not only on the letters typed, but also based on the query’s
relevance for the logged-in user. Further, the search can query all of the ministry sites and
return results no matter the source, but the SERP includes only sites the user has access
to—again, eliminating noise. Finally, intranet editors have the option to create best bets,
bubbling up the top result related to the query.
1. Suggestions: As users type, suggested search results appear below. These help
users get to relevant results directly without even visiting the SERP. Further, the
suggestions are based not only on letters in the alphabet, but also on which
content is most relevant to the logged-in user. This is the kind of distinct feature
that makes the DSS intranet platform one of the 10 best of the year.
2. Results types: The SERP displays results of people as well as content,
and similar results are grouped together.
3. Filters: Employees can filter results by content source using tabs (with
each tab offering more-detailed filtering options) or by clicking any of the
keywords in the facets list on the left.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 647

Search Best Bets

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Search Best Bets. Best bets are like a
search results insurance policy.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

648 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Search Best Bets, Highlights
The team is always working to improve intranet search. For example, as part of the editorial
process, the team analyzes search statistics for trending terms and creates synonym rings
so words with the same meanings return equally good results.
As a safeguard, the team added the capability to create editorial best bets, which lets team
members choose documents related to a query term and ensure that those documents
appear in the search results.
3. Best bets: The best bets search results appear at the top of the SERP; the word
Anbefalt (Recommended) appears to the right of the title with a star icon.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 649

Search Filters

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Search Filters. The search results are
organized in tabs, each named for a different content source.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

650 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Search Filter, Highlights
The most important content sources are represented in tabs at the top of the SERP.

1. Tabs: Tabs just below the search field include those for all results, employees,
intranet/extranet, collaboration rooms, user guidelines/knowledge base, the HR
portal, and the user’s SharePoint homepage. Less important content sources are
placed in a menu to the right of the tabs. The first tab on the SERP is for all
results, which includes results from all content sources.
2. Selected tab: The selected tab is obvious: the text is blue instead of
light grey, and the tab is underlined.
3. Facets: All tabs (except “all results”) have facets for that content source.
4. Clickable metadata: In addition to the clickable result title, the SERP
includes other clickable metadata that lets users start a new query. For
example, a search for a colleague by name will return a result for that
person. Within the result’s summary is a clickable link to the person’s
department, and users can quickly view the person’s department
colleagues by clicking the department name.
5. Sort: Results are initially sorted by relevance, but a drop-down menu
just below the tabs allows users to sort the results by date or
alphabetically.
6. Preview: For documents housed in the collaboration room, the search
provides a document preview. This appears on the right side of the SERP
when the mouse hovers over the result. Seeing the document can give
users an idea of what the document is about without having to open it.
From the preview, users can also follow or share the document.

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 News Article

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet News

Article. Obvious subheadings make it easy for employees
to scan articles and thus save time.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

652 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
News, Highlights
Articles keep employees across the various ministries involved and informed.
1. Title: The article’s title takes its rightful place at the top of the page.
2. Images: Large related photos make the article more engaging and informative.
3. Date: The publish date appears above the article’s copy, informing users of how
current the story is.
4. Byline: The authors, a link to email them, and their phone number appear in
the right rail at the top of the article. With this, employees can offer their
thoughts or engage directly with authors.
5. Subheadings: Subheadings are the single most important UI design element
when designing for scanning—and DSS nailed them. Subheadings appear within
the article and are larger, bolder, and darker than the article’s body text. This
makes it easy for the human eye to pick them out when scanning the page.
6. Social: At the end of the article, employees have the options to like and
comment. This, of course, makes it possible for employees to participate, but
also helps authors and management understand which topics are most
interesting to the staff.
7. Feedback: A feedback form at the bottom of the page lets readers inform the
team about any issues with the page. A question—Fant du det du lette etter?
(Did you find what you were looking for?)—appears before an open text field
where users can write their comments.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 653

News Article Translated

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet News Article Translated. With the

click of an icon, the article displays in a different language.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

654 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
News Article Translated, Highlights
Most of the employees who use the intranet platform are fluent in Norwegian. In a few
cases, however, information must also be provided in English.
1. Icon: A flag icon appears in the far upper right of the page if the article is
available in English.
2. Text label: The icons’ text label makes abundantly clear the current
state—here, Showing page in English—as well as the action users can
take: Vis siden på norsk (Show page on Norwegian).

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 655

 News Article with Common Content

Pictured: Norwegian Government

Intranet New Article with Common
Content. Depweb, the overarching intranet
for all ministries, publishes a range of
articles that the other intranets can reuse
and edit to provide ministry-specific
information. The screenshot shows one
such article from Depweb tailored to the
needs of the Ministry of Agriculture and
Food.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

656 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
News Article with Common Content, Highlights
Depweb, the overarching intranet/extranet for all ministries, publishes a range of articles
that the other intranets can reuse. Further, the ministries can supplement the article, adding
content above or below the article’s text to suit their employees’ specific needs. To ensure
that all ministries have the most accurate and updated content, the shared content is linked
to the main article on Depweb. Thus, if the main article is edited, the content shared on
other intranets will automatically be updated to reflect the changes. If that’s not brilliant
enough, the intranet is also smart enough to leave the ministry-specific information intact
after updates.
1. Ministry-specific content: The text just below the page title,
Bedriftshelsetjenesten (BHT), is ministry-specific and was added by the LMD
intranet editor.
2. Shared content: The Ministry of Agriculture and Food posted the
Depweb-produced article, adding information about the ministry’s own
contact person above the shared content.

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 Management Blog

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet

Management Blog. The director of DSS writes a
blog to help keep employees informed.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

658 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Management Blog, Highlights
The DSS Director uses the intranet platform to share ideas and invite
informal feedback. He shares experiences from “on the job training” during
his visits to different departments where he participated in daily tasks. He
also mentions current activities in the organization as a whole. This is a
delightful way to show employees that management cares enough to
communicate with them and wants to hear from them as well.
Most Norwegian government intranets are ministry-specific. In some
ministries, the secretary general—who holds the highest position that is not
politically appointed in a ministry—offers management blogs.
1. Informal: Using the DSS head’s first name as the blog name, Eriks blogg,
punctuates the informality of the medium.
2. Photo and contact: The blog author’s photo, name, title, and contact
information appears in the upper right. In a shrewd move, the designers
don’t take for granted that every employee knows who each high-level
manager is; it always helps to see a name, photo, and title.
3. Cards: Each blog entry is summarized in a card on the blog’s main page.
The card displays a related image, the blog title, the date it was
published, a summary, and how may likes it has acquired.

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 Organization Chart

Pictured: Norwegian Government

Intranet Organization Chart. Single-page
expandable organization maps for the entire
ministry make finding contacts within an
organization quick and easy.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

660 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Organization Chart, Highlights
Each ministry displays its entire organization on one page in an org chart. These are
automatically created with information sourced from back-end systems. The org charts
make it possible for employees to get a good sense of how a ministry is organized.
1. Political staff: The minister is presented at the top of the chart, along with a
photo. Names of political advisors (in this case, there are two) appear just below
the minister.
2. Administrative staff and departments: Departments and sections in
the ministry appear after the minister and advisors.
3. Ministry head: The name and photo of the secretary general (the
ministry’s highest nonpolitical position) appears next.
4. Departments and sections: A list of departments (and sections, when
applicable) appears next. Department names are in bold, while sections
are in smaller text and indented. A plus sign icon on the right expands
the department or section to show employees. Clicking a department or
section name leads to a page describing the unit and showing its
employees with photos.
5. Department or section staff: Clicking the plus sign on the right
expands the department or section to reveal employees. Clicking an
employee name leads to the employee’s page.

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 Organization Chart Section

Pictured: Norwegian
Government Intranet
Organization Chart Section. The
org chart enables users to home in
on a section of the ministry, right
down to particular employees. The
links on employee names lead to
their profile documents.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

662 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Organization Chart Section, Highlights
Extensive user research—user surveys and interviews, web analytics, and heuristic expert
analysis—revealed that employee search and information about organizational structure are
the ultimate top tasks at DSS. The intranet team thus created a robust org chart that links
to employee profiles.
1. Photo, name, title, and contact: When looking at a section of a ministry,
users can home in on employees to see more detail. This basic information is
provided by HR systems.
2. Background: In addition to basic name and job title, users can choose to
write and publish a summary of their background and fields of expertise.
If available, users can access that background by clicking the blue plus
sign icon that appears below the person.
3. Profile: Users can see their colleagues’ employee profiles by clicking the
Til full profil (to full profile) link (see the screenshot below).

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Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Employee Profile. Employee profile
pages provide detailed information on each employee. Each ministry can decide the
level of detail to provide; here, the MFA provides a detailed list of positions that an
employee has held within the ministry.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

664 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Employee Profile

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Employee Profile. An employee

profile page for a DSS employee shows detailed contact information including email
address, phone number, cell phone number, office location, and employee number.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 665

Employee Profile, Highlights
Employee profile pages provide information about each employee. Each ministry can decide
which information and how much detail the profiles will provide. Profile pages are populated
by information provided by HR systems, and some sections are populated by the employee.
1. Name and photo: The user’s photo appears at the top just below the name.
2. Contact: Since colleagues typically need contact information, it appears
front and center in the employee profile.
3. Profile/activity: The profile tab (see 4 below) describes the work
activities, background/education, and so on that are relevant for other
colleagues. Users can also see their social activity under the Aktivitet tab.
This section, private to the logged-in user, displays liked articles and
comments, and user-customizable feeds from social networks. This
makes it easy for users to monitor their own social activity.
4. Editable sections: Users can edit the detailed profile sections by clicking
the associated Rediger (edit) button.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

666 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Workspace Health (Form)

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Workspace Health (Form). Intranet

editors can create consistent forms for any tasks, such as this one, which is used to
request help for improving the employee’s physical workspace.

Workspace Health (Form), Highlights

Intranet editors can set up forms for just about any task. Some forms are integrated with
back-end systems, while others generate an email for further processing. Regardless, the

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experience users have with forms is consistent, which eliminates unnecessary UI-related
confusion.
DSS uses the intranet to expose employee benefits, such as helping to ensure that their
workspaces are ergonomically safe and comfortable. A form enables employees to ask for
help in adjusting their workplace.
1. Name: The name of the form appears in large letters at the top, confirming to
users that they are in the right place.
2. Date: The date when the form was last updated is listed below the title.
While this may not always be meaningful, if a form’s date is very recent,
the users may feel more confident about the form being up-to-date.
3. More information: The link below the date, Les mer om
arbeidsplassvurdering (read more about workplace assessment), offers
employees an opportunity to better understand what the benefit is all
about.
4. Prefilled content: Whenever possible, the system prepopulates fields
with the user’s information. This seems like a no brainer, but because of
complex back-end systems, many intranets don’t take this step (unlike
almost every public-facing e-commerce site). Good on you, DSS!
5. Contact: Phone numbers, email addresses, and other relevant contact
details appear in the right column.
6. Field labels and spacing: Field labels appear just above and left-
aligned with the associated field, making the text easy to scan and
associate with the correct field. On the same note, the right amount of
vertical space exists between the label and its field, and the field and the
label below it. This visual design attention means users won’t accidentally
associate the wrong label with a field.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

668 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Visitor Registration

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Visitor Registration. Employees can

easily preregister visitors thanks to a simple form.

Visitor Registration, Highlights

With security of the utmost importance at many offices, ministries take it to a higher level
than many places. At the very least, visitors must be registered before entering buildings.

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The intranets make this easy with a simple and very flexible form. Once processed, visitors
receive an email to confirm their visit. Also, visitor nametags are printed automatically at
reception. This is a seemingly simple workflow that limits the employee’s effort, expedites
the visitor’s registration, and ultimately makes the visit more pleasant.
1. Registering the visitor: Radio buttons let users choose whether they are
registering the visitor to visit themselves or someone else: Jeg registrerer pa
vegne an noen andre (I register on behalf of someone else). This helpful feature
lets assistants (or other colleagues) register guests.
2. Choose reception/building and date/time: Users must indicate
where and when the visitor will arrive.
3. Add visitors: In the Legg til besokende (add visitors) section toward the
bottom of the form, users enter the name of a visitor (or click a link to
add multiple visitors). It’s helpful to be able to register multiple people in
one form rather than having to create multiple forms; niceties such as
this make the DSS intranet pleasant to work with.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

670 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Training Courses

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Training Courses. Users can refine

their list of training courses by topic or date.

Training Courses, Highlights

To remain in tip-top work shape, employees are encouraged to participate in training
courses. The intranet suggests a list of courses to users based on their affiliation and role.

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 1. Filters: Users can refine their list of courses by selecting a keyword topic. This
makes it easy to find training about a particular skill or subject the employee
would like or needs to learn.
2. Date: Users can also refine the list of courses by month, which helps
employees who want training at a certain time to pinpoint an offering.
3. Reset: Users can start afresh with the link below the filters, Nullstill filtre
(reset filters).
4. Availability: The red, yellow, and green rectangles by each course listing
make it easy for users to quickly see if there is space left in the class.
Text labels, such as ledige plasser (free seats), make the color-coding
unmistakable and also help people who are colorblind.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

672 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Training Sign-Up

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Training Sign-Up. A form makes it

easy for employees to sign up for training.

Training Sign-Up, Highlights

A form makes it easy for employees to sign up for training courses. Content and logistical
details help employees make the best choices and get the most from the training. Once they

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have signed up, the system sends employees an email and SMS confirmation. Later, the
system will email and text them reminders about the course. On the other side of the form,
course instructors use built-in tools to track who has signed up, as well as manage
participant lists and communicate with attendees.
1. Course name and date: It’s always helpful to remind users of the name and
date of the course for which they are registering.
2. Logistics: Logistical information about the course—such as price, date,
start time, length, and location—appears at the top of the form. Although
users may have already found this information when searching for the
course, it helps to confirm all the details at the time of registration.
3. Prepopulated information: When possible, the system populates as
much information about users as possible, saving them time and avoiding
typing errors.
4. Billing note: A note under the form warns users that if they cancel less
than two days before the course, their department will still be billed for
the course fee. It’s helpful to know this information at sign-up.
5. Content-specific information: Information about the course appears in
the second half of the page. The Kursbeskrivelse (course description)
helps users decide if the training will be helpful for them, while the
Forkunnskaper (prerequisites) section helps users determine how to best
prepare for the training.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

674 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
System Status

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet System Status. A system status page

allows employees to learn whether or not their apps are functioning normally.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 675

System Status, Highlights
Employees can use system status information to determine whether their tools and
applications are working as planned or are having problems. This page prevents employees
from trying to use a tool that is currently not functioning. Most intranets have chosen to
display highlights from this page on their homepage.
1. Important notifications: The status of the most important systems is
indicated with an icon. A legend below describes what each icon means: a
checkmark means normal, an exclamation point means Ustabiltet
(Unstable), and an x means Utilgjengelig (Unavailable). Planned downtime (after
regular working hours) is also reported in this section.
2. Filter: Tabs let users view the list of system status updates Siste
oppdateringer (Latest updates) by Alle (All), Driftsmelding (System
notifications), and Informasjon (information). The checkbox Vis kun
interne meldinger (Show internal messages only) lets users filter the
notifications.
Urgent warnings: (Not shown in image) The intranet can also display alerts to inform
employees about urgent events and emergencies. This is displayed as a red stripe with
white text just below the main menu on all pages, with a message such as: “Security
exercise today outside building R5 at 17:00—employees are advised not to work late.”

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

676 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY WORK

Casting a Wide Net

Prior to kicking off the redesign project, the intranet team conducted high-level research by
visiting public sector agencies and private sector companies to study other intranets both in
Norway and abroad. The team also studied Nielsen Norman Group’s Intranet Design Annuals
to gain useful and interesting perspectives. Before development began on the new intranet
platform, the team used a variety of methods to thoroughly evaluated the old platforms
(Depweb and the intranet).

Involving Users at Every Stage

User surveys, user interviews, web analytics/statistics, and heuristic expert analysis were
among the primary research methods used to inform the new design direction. All such
research pointed to one important finding: employee search and organizational structure
were the top priorities to add value through the redesign. The team gave these areas high
priority when it began developing the new search, navigation, and specialized intranet
functionality.
Another highly requested function—which existed in simplified form on the previous
intranet—was a searchable A–Z list that included most services and key information. This
list served as a third navigational tool, as an alternative to regular search and menu
navigation.
Throughout the development process, representatives from the individual ministries
provided input on the new design. Editors met with the core DSS team members regularly
so they could keep them informed and let them provide feedback and influence decisions at
the earliest possible point at each step in the process.
The team gave editors and select users access to the platform, which allowed them to test
functionality and UI aspects as they were being developed. Frequent rounds of user testing
confirmed that the right design choices were being made along the way. They also helped
the team solve vexing design issues; by user testing different alternatives, the team could
use the results to establish consensus around issues that were initially difficult to solve.
Observing users proved to be most efficient aid in identifying the real problems. Seeing is
believing!
For example, in the first round of design for the new platform, the homepage was more
task-oriented, allowing room for just a few news articles. The ministries insisted on more
space for news, however, pointing to demands from users and management. Hence, the
homepage was redesigned to provide more space for news articles, with the option of
exposing two or five highlighted news items, in addition to a news list. Based on user
behavior on the old platform, the team also decided to rewrite a lot of the old content
(excluding news articles, which were transferred to the new platform verbatim), as the new
design demanded a new way of organizing the content.

Saving Time and Money by Leveraging Institutional Assets

One of the main tasks of the DSS web section is to provide services and support for
regjeringen.no (government.no), the external website for the central government and the
ministries, so the team wisely decided up front not to reinvent the wheel. Reusing elements
of the external site for the intranet platform was considered critical as it would save a lot of
time and money, offer a familiar UI for both users and editors, and help ensure compliance

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 677

with accessibility standards. Although many designers prefer designing something new and
fresh, this design team had a strong desire to reuse conventions and standards rather than
create something stunning, expensive, and potentially difficult to use.
So, in collaboration with the ministries, the design team decided to reuse design elements
and templates from regjeringen.no, saving on development cost and time.

Designing in Agile Cycles

The team’s development approach was to work lean and Agile. New versions were launched
every month during the development period and then continued through the launch of the
first intranets. These cycles were driven by insights gleaned from frequent usability testing
of new features, along with statistical analysis of user patterns as the sites were launched.

Giving the Right People Seats at the Table

The design process benefitted from the expertise of professionals both inside and outside
the organization.
The internal design team consisted of highly experienced professionals whose expertise
weighed heavily in conversations with editors and users. Further, Funka, a company
specializing in accessibility, reviewed the platform before and after launch to ensure quality
and universal accessibility.

Designing a New Information Architecture

The previous intranet platform’s IA had been based primarily on a common IA and main
menu structure that was used on nearly all ministry-specific sites. This approach was
functional, thoroughly tested with users, and was therefore a good starting point for the new
structure’s design.
The process of developing that new structure began with workshops with the ministries,
which led the team to make adjustments to the old IA. The proposed new IA was then
tested with a small user group using card-sorting tools. The workshops, card sorting, and
testing led to a design change that reduced the main menu from five to four elements; the
team also agreed to offer an A–Z list that would include content from all areas.
The final IA design thus combined design ideas from the individuals who had created the old
IA 10 years before, user feedback, and modifications made by new, highly skilled and
experienced team members.
The new design’s megamenus have been well received, as shown through data from usage
statistics and user tests. The waffle menu—a simple square filled with rows of dots in the
upper right, which ties together the intranet and collaboration platforms—has not been quite
as successful. Many users don’t even see the menu at all, and the functionality it contains
and its naming conventions do not seem intuitive to most users. It will need more work
going forward; this is perhaps okay, because the team considers the IA as a whole a work in
progress. It continues to adjust the IA based on results from ongoing user tests, usage
analysis, and other research. This commitment to refining and optimizing the IA over time
shows the importance the team places on its function, which is crucial given that the
organization’s users have a strong tendency to use menu navigation, list pages, and links
rather than search.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

678 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
Adoption and Buy-In
The intranet team makes an effort to build excitement each time it launches a new ministry
intranet, accompanying each rollout with quizzes, gifts, and launch celebrations that include
coffee and cake.
Prior to each launch, users are informed of what’s coming through meetings and intranet
articles. Some ministries hold naming contests to generate interest and underscore the
point that the new intranet is not simply the same old intranet in a new wrapper.
Once a ministry intranet is up and running, top managers use blog posts to convey news
exclusively through the intranet, rather than through email. This is a good way to force
users to regularly check the intranet homepage. New rules that restrict the use of mass
emails to convey information also help encourage intranet use. And each user’s desktop is
set up to launch the intranet homepage by default.
One lesson the team learned about how to handle launches involved when and how to shut
down the old sites. At first, the organization allowed users to access the old intranets for
several months after a new platform launched. This caused some problems, however. The
approach was originally intended to provide a safeguard in case a rush-to-launch stranded
any important information on the old platform, but users continued to use the old platform
much longer than intended. Having access to the old intranet reduced some of the positive
effects of a clean break from the old platform with its cluttered interface and outdated
content.

WORKING WITH OUTSIDE AGENCIES

Agency Project Role
Creuna • Research and discovery
• Analysis, conceptual design,
interaction, and visual design: Having
provided many of the same services during
development of regjeringen.no, Creuna’s
knowledge and familiarity with the
government platform greatly aided
development
Epinova • Back end (CMS, databases, migration)
• Front-end coding
Funka • Test and verify usability and accessibility
design, and suggest improvements
PuzzlePart • Implement Finn :D search based on
SharePoint search

GOVERNANCE
DSS provides a wide range of services to the various ministries. The common external
internet platform for the ministries (www.regjeringen.no) has been DSS’s responsibility
since 1995. In 2007, during the site’s major redesign and technical upgrade, the ministries
were deeply involved in design and implementation. This process led the ministries and DSS
to look more closely at the plethora of independent intranet platforms that the ministries

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 679

were using at the time. This led DSS to develop a common intranet platform in close
cooperation with the ministries, and a majority of them adopted that platform in 2008–
2009. Since then, the platform has been continuously upgraded and developed, with DSS
responsible for it and the overall design, while the ministries have done all content
publishing.
Coordinating efforts and standardizing the platform has cut costs dramatically and led to a
process of continuous development rather than undertaking large projects to create and
launch new platforms. The most recent upgrade, however, was larger and more complex
than the regular upgrade process because the technology, UX, and functionality all needed a
major overhaul. DSS took ownership of this process, while cooperating closely with ministry
intranet editors and other stakeholders. The new platform also includes subsites, with
content owned by specific ministries. These subsites are coordinated by DSS and offer
information to all ministry employees.
Balancing the needs and wishes of intranet users and owners—while still trying to meet
management demands and adhere to UX best practices—is a delicate task, but DSS has
somehow managed to win and keep the trust of the ministries, which generally accept and
advice and suggestions offered by DSS (and external consultants working for it). Financing,
however, is a never-ending challenge, as DSS has no budget to pay for the intranet
platform, but rather is dependent on the ministries to pay for their services and those of
necessary consultants.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

680 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
 INTRANET TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES
Role Responsibilities
DSS Intranet Team • Handle governance, user research,
usability, coaching, and intranet editor
support
• Oversee continued platform development
and refinement
• Manage content and features available to
be shared across intranets
Depweb Team • Responsible for common content and news,
and promote DSS services on Depweb, the
common extranet
Ministry Intranet Teams (12) Manage individual ministry intranets and provide
oversight for:
• IA structure: Adapt features provided by
the DSS intranet team to suit individual
ministry needs
• Content: Control content and features
available on the ministry level, and reuse
common content elements
• Access control: Manage access control for
content with restricted access and provide
access across ministries
• Content owner support: train and
support local content owners
Content Owners • Create and update content, and control
(locally in ministries) consistency across specific areas
Search Guru • Check search logs, monitor user response,
refine search, and suggest new features
Tech Team • Develop new functionality, fix bugs, and
ensure high uptime and good performance

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URL AND ACCESS

ACCESS INFORMATION
Item Status
URL intra.dep.no: This URL directs users to the
homepage of the ministry or organization where
they are employed.
Default Status The homepage is the start page in standard
browsers installed on the users’ desktop. Users
cannot change the homepage, but they can use
other nonstandard browsers that do not have this
homepage as the default.
Remote Access The sites may be accessed remotely via VPN.
Windows 10 clients use Direct Access for seamless
access. ADFS is used for authentication.
Mobile access to the intranet is handled by
MobileIron/Web@Work to ensure secure access to
internal systems. Intranet use on mobile is
relatively limited so far, but has proven to be very
useful in specific situations for some users.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

682 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
TIMELINE

PROJECT MILESTONES
Milestone Date Milestone Description
Late 1990s • First ministry intranets were hosted by
individual ministries and did not share a
common platform
July 2007 • First common intranet platform for the
ministries
2010 • Upgrade CMS and new version of EpiServer
January 2016 • Recent redesign project start date
February 2017 • Internal launch of the new platform (first
version) for intranet editors
• Content production on new platform starts
March 2017 • Launch of the Depweb extranet, the first
site on the new platform
May 2017 • Launch of DSS intranet, the first intranet
site including the Finn :D enterprise search
August 2017–March 2018 • Launch of Ministry intranets
2018 • Launch of new releases every month based
on usability testing and stakeholder needs
• Some core functions (organization maps,
search suggestions, etc.) have been
released since the first launch, based on
user demands and research

Overall redesign timeframe: 2 years

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CONTENT AND CONTENT CONTRIBUTORS

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT AND OVERSIGHT

Contributors An editor and a team of content owners handle the
content on each ministry intranet. The teams
generally comprise 7–10 members and meet
weekly. Being an editor may be a full or part-time
job, but for content owners, the intranet is always
only a part of their job description.
Training Regular courses are offered for contributors.
Updated user guides are available on the Depweb
extranet; these guides might be in the form of
online guides, downloadable PDFs, videos etc.
More in-depth guides for particular functions are
maintained as separate documents, usually as PDF
files.
Encouraging Participation Upper management encourages participation, and
getting users to contribute is not typically a
problem.
Maintaining Quality Content quality is assessed through user surveys.
Content owners also get feedback directly from
users through the site’s feedback tool.
During the design process, DSS arranged open
houses for all of the editors in the ministries. These
meet-ups were intended to help coach and train
the editors, and to encourage them to work
together and share good ideas. Open houses were
also used as an opportunity to discuss new
templates and share best practices.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

684 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
 Pictured: Norwegian Government
Intranet User Guide. User guides are
written in MS Word. The system converts
the files to XHTML and displays the guides
as expandable sections.

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Culling Content
The old platform contained thousands of articles that had long since ceased to be useful. In
many cases, the number of pages was simply a consequence of a platform having been in
continual use for a decade.
Because both the new and old intranet platforms were built on EPiServer CMS, migrating
content from one platform to the other was straightforward. This could easily have led
ministries to import pretty much everything, rather than take the opportunity to cull content
and start fresh with a leaner, more focused content base. Thankfully, that’s not what
happened. Most ministries reduced the amount of content substantially and avoided
excessive import from the old platform. In fact, one ministry cut more than 90% of its
content.
All ministries deleted a large amount of content or rewrote it in a more user-friendly format.
Because the new templates were designed with short, focused content in mind, some
rework before migration was essential, regardless of the content or its source.
The team took a methodical approach to deciding what to do with old content. It first got an
overview of the old platform, then categorized which content should be deleted, updated, or
reworked. Site statistics helped the team identify content with low use and provided
pointers to content that would require rework.

The Pros and Cons of Allowing Access to Old Content

As a safeguard, the team made the old intranet and old content available to users for at
least several months after launch. Having access to old content—and even being able to link
to it (though this was discouraged)—made it easier for editors; if they elected not to
migrate a page, they could always migrate it later if it proved valuable.
The drawback of allowing access to the old sites was that it bred complacency. Pages and
functions on the old intranet platform remained in use for far longer than intended.
On the flipside, however, intranets that reworked all of their content and focused on having
fewer, more-to-the-point pages were rewarded with consistently better feedback from
users.

Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization

686 [email protected] (Departementenes sikkerhets- og serviceorganisasjon [DSS])
(2019)
TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY
Category Technology Used
Web Server Hardware and • Operating system: Microsoft Windows
Operating System Server 2012 (64-bit)
• Virtual servers: VMware ESXi, 6.0.0,
8934903
• Servers: VMware HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9
Bug Tracking/Quality • Jira
Assurance
• Confluence
• SharePoint collaboration rooms
Design Tools • IA and wireframing: Axure RP Pro, Adobe
XD
• Photoshop
Site Building Tools • Visual Studio 2017 v15.7.4
• Octopus Deploy 3.4.13
• TeamCity 2018.1
• .NET 4.6.2
• node v4.6.1
• npm v2.15.9
Content Management Tools • EPiserver CMS v11
Search • SharePoint 2013
Other Functions • Matomo (statistics and search logs)

Technology Evaluation
The regjeringen.no project experiences pointed to the potential benefits of offering one
platform to all ministries, and it was natural to reuse that external site’s technology
solutions. DSS is now seeking to standardize the technical platform and suppliers for all web
solutions and services to enable reuse of solutions and to optimize resources and
competence.
In 2006, when a platform consisting of EPiServer CMS, FAST ESP search, and TM Core Topic
maps relational engine was chosen for the external site, the main criteria were:
• Platform and components should be technologically mature and offer the
necessary functionality with a good user (editor) interface
• Platform and components should come from suppliers of a certain size, with a
good probability of market survival and strong representation in Norway

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 • Platform and components should be offered and supported by professional
agencies with a reasonable market share and life expectancy, ensuring long-
term access to implementation services independent of a single supplier
At the time, EPiServer was (and still is) a very strong player in Norway’s CMS market; it had
a large user base and many highly professional agencies offered implementation services.
Although the team considered open source solutions, none were considered technologically
mature or sufficiently established in the market.
The team chose FAST because of its strong technology and good presence in Norway. To
implement Topic Maps, the team found TM Core to be the only realistic alternative; although
it carried a considerably higher risk than other components, the dependency on it was less
critical, so the risk was accepted.
The intranet went through several technology upgrades and visual/UX redesigns. However,
it was still based on the same technical platform when a project was started in 2016 to
revise the concept, design, UX, and technology for the whole platform. Meanwhile,
regjeringen.no had undergone a total redesign, and a new technical platform had been built.
It was an obvious choice to reuse as much of that new platform as possible, because both
regjeringen.no and the intranet platform are among the most important services offered to
the ministries. The platform chosen for version 4.0 of regjeringen.no launched in December
2014 after more than two years of work and included the following:
• EPiServer CMS as the main platform and publishing interface (upgraded to the
newest version)
• EPiFind (based on Elastic search) for search functions and search-based
content retrieval
• Relations for EPiServer, a third-party add-on to EPiServer was chosen as a
substitute for TM Core. Topic Maps had been abandoned, but extra
functionality to handle relations between pages and objects was needed. With
the help of developers, this EpiServer add-on was streamlined to fit the
organization’s needs.
When the intranet project began in 2016, there were three main options:
• Be thrifty and efficient: Use as much of the new regjeringen.no platform as
possible.
• Follow the pack: Switch to SharePoint.
• Be pragmatic: Use something old, something new, something borrowed, and
something blue.
The team chose the third alternative: pragmatism.
The team realized that, in an environment where SharePoint was already being used as a
collaboration tool and storage platform, it would be unwise to implement a search platform
that could not handle all of the relevant content. And, since SharePoint content is
notoriously difficult to index and search using anything other than SharePoint Search, the
team set up a pilot project to test SharePoint search. It integrated EpiServer content with
the SharePoint search solution using the Search Indexing Toolkit that Microsoft provides to
some of its partners. The toolkit defines a standard interface for delivering content to the
search solution, including access control to the indexed content. When needed, the same

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mechanisms can be used for future content sources, such as the document management
and archiving system.
Based on the pilot, the team concluded that SharePoint search had its quirks and
implementation difficulties (especially handling access rights for non-SP content), but it
would be the best choice for an enterprise search platform, and implementing search would
be the first step.
Keeping EPiServer as a CMS and publishing platform was a relatively easy choice. After
listening to experiences and lessons learned from other public-sector organizations, it
became clear that SharePoint could be transformed into a solution that would meet users’
needs. However, doing so would be costly, time-consuming, and risky, as custom solutions
built on the SharePoint platform are known to be difficult to upgrade. Further, many of the
intranet editors in the ministries are also responsible for external publishing on
regjeringen.no, so giving them a well-known tool—and a competent organization to support,
maintain, and further develop a stable platform—seemed like a good idea.
So, the EPiServer and IA could be seen as the “something old.” SharePoint search, the
concept, and the visual design were something new. And a lot of the functionality,
interaction design, and resources—both in-house personnel and external consultants from
the regjeringen.no team—were borrowed. And as for the blue? Team members joke that
Microsoft tends to use a lot of blue, especially in SharePoint components, so they were
covered.

MOBILE
The design team decided to use a fully responsive design, adapted from the regjeringen.no
project. All intranet content is available on mobile, but the element sequence and placement
may be changed. All employees who use Mobile Iron can use all intranet services. The
search experience is not quite ideal; limitations in SP 2013 make it too costly to build a
responsive search. However, this will be remedied as part of a SharePoint upgrade.
Users have not expressed a strong need for mobile access, and most ministries have not
been very active in promoting it. That said, there is a growing use—especially on
tablets/pads, which some people are using as an alternative to portable PCs in meetings and
other out-of-office situations. Serving these users, and those using iPhones or Android
smartphones, is considered important, as the use and usefulness of these devices is steadily
increasing.

ROI

The Challenge of Measuring “Success”

In the initial phase of the redesign process (after changing the scope to provide a unified
solution), the team identified and documented potential benefits in a Benefits realization
plan. This document was intended to provide direction for governance and further
development, and it described potential benefits in terms of both hard numbers and softer
measures, such as higher user satisfaction.
There has been a strong desire at DSS to use metrics and hard data to assess the platform’s
success, as well as to find relevant tools to accomplish those measurements. However,
measuring intranet success entails great challenges. For example, all ministries have
defined the intranet as the default browser start page. This creates traffic that has little

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value, unless the users actually read content on the front page or begin navigating or
searching to provide a click stream.
Thus, so far, the user stats have not indicated any big increase in general use, but some
trends are clear, including a significant increase in:
• Visitors to the Depweb extranet
• Visitors to shared content and system status
• The number of sign-ups for courses
In addition to central measurements provided by the DSS team, the ministries generate
reports on the most-used pages. In these reports they point out the most popular news
items and use of tools, and other general information. This information can help the teams
create better content aimed at satisfying users’ needs.

Applying Metrics
Despite the challenge of measuring exactly what success means, the organization
recognizes that great strides have been made with the intranet redesign, with benefits that
include:
• Reduced costs
o Common platform: Hosting all of the intranets on a common
platform has greatly reduced costs; the savings on licensing alone
amounts to roughly $30,000 USD per year.
o Improved accessibility: The importance of providing the best
possible usability and accessibility has permeated the project from the
start. While providing good usability and accessibility is an obvious
target for any site (intranet or internet), accessible websites are now
mandated by law in Norway and site owners can be fined for
noncompliance. The project hired accessibility experts from Funka to
ensure high-quality accessibility. And, because the platform in under
constant development, Funka now conducts regular accessibility
checks and all new functionality is tested for accessibility. DSS sites
now have a strong reputation as examples of good accessibility, which
in turn makes the sites friendlier for all users.
• Time savings:
o Pooling resources: Pooling development and maintenance resources
means that each intranet site is kept up-to-date for a fraction of the
cost of updating each site as a separate instance.
o Content sharing: Content sharing and collaboration among editors
saves time for the ministries, providing increased quality for less cost.
o Enterprise search: Having an intranet with good enterprise search
results saves time for all employees, allowing them to find needed
content and helping them perform tasks more efficiently.

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Measuring the Impact of Improved Search
Knowing that improvements in search functionality greatly impact use and the quality of
intranet usage overall, the team set out to ensure that search reporting was of the highest
possible quality.
Initially, the team relied on SharePoint’s standard statistics reports. These reports present
usage patterns for search, abandoned queries, and zero-result queries, but the team found
that these reports needed a lot of post-processing to offer any value, and it eventually
decided not to use them. Instead, it presented a summary of findings from these reports,
supplemented with the search manager’s interpretation of the data.
The major issue with the standard SharePoint reports was that they could not be broken
down by ministry. So, to provide editorial group members with additional data on search
usage for their specific users, the intranet team added Matomo, a JavaScript tracking API, to
the search solution. When it introduced Matomo, the team also created a generic search
dashboard for each member of the editorial group.
Although the organization does not formally report on KPIs, search is the exception. To
measure search KPIs, it has established a framework inspired by ideas presented in Louis
Rosenfeld’s book Search Analytics for Your Site. Currently, the team monitors generic
search usage patterns, trends in abandoned queries, zero-result queries, relevancy trends
for the top 30 popular search terms, and precision trends for the top 30 popular search
terms. These KPIs are part of a monthly presentation to the editorial group, which includes
results across the following search areas:

Since launch:
• Trends in relevancy
• Trends in precision
• Queries per month
• Average query length per month
• Average number of terms per query per month
• Trends in abandoned queries
• Trends in zero-result queries

Previous month:
• Number of queries per search tab per day
• Unique users per day
• # of queries per user, per day
• # queries per 25 most popular topics
• Recent trends in query terms, with content suggestions
• Top 10 abandoned queries and zero-result queries
Last three months:
• 25 most popular topics per month

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Softer Measures
Content quality is assessed primarily through feedback generated from an intranet form
and, for now, this feedback is not quantified. However, the team plans to quantify the
feedback in the future, and also to set goals.
The practice of frequent user testing—both of new features and of the intranet as a whole—
will continue. Several ministries are also conducting user interviews or using questionnaires
to track user response, but these efforts have not been summarized yet.

Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet Analytics Tool. Matomo collects and

analyzes traffic from all of the intranets on the platform. Each editor has access to
information on her or his intranet. Administrators can access data on all intranets and
crunch the numbers to create aggregate views into the data.

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Pictured: Norwegian Government Intranet—Improving Search. The enterprise
search portal is closely monitored to improve search precision and relevance. This
image shows two pages from the periodic report produced by the search manager.
These two pages illustrate (from top to bottom, left to right): trends in relevancy,
trends in precision, average number of terms per query per month, trends in
abandoned queries, and trends in zero-result queries.

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LESSONS LEARNED AND BEST PRACTICES
After the new intranet launched, members of the intranet team and intranet editors in the
ministries were asked to identify the project’s successes and areas that needed
improvement. The most important result that emerged was that everyone was happy with
the new intranet platform. Also, satisfaction was high related to governance, continuing
development, and the team’s commitment to conducting user tests and issuing new releases
every month.
But, for all of the positive feedback, these surveys also revealed project shortcomings,
which the team took to heart and other teams can learn from.

Lessons Learned
• Be specific with specifications. “The intranet team could have been more
precise when specifying tasks sent to developers, potentially saving time and
cost on superfluous meetings. Using Scrum/Agile methods, the development
team of three felt that only one product owner responsible for specifications
was insufficient. More team members should have worked with stakeholders
and users to specify the design details and new functionality. Also, staff
members of the team changed a lot during the development period. Skills and
knowledge were not always on the required level, and this caused delays in
the process.”
• Don’t overlook training. “Some editors wanted more training and courses
to adapt to the new platform. The needs for training vary a lot. It is a
challenge to satisfy all needs when time, money, and resources are limited.
However, the concept of ‘open house’—where intranet editors and DSS team
members get together on a regular basis to go through new concepts and
functions, and work on content—has proved to be an excellent platform for
sharing knowledge, defining best practice, and helping each other.”
• Sometimes functionality can change culture. “In the new intranet
platform, employee search was a part of the enterprise search (Finn :D).
Previously, employee search was a unique search function with its own
specific interface and functionality. Introducing an entirely new search
concept caused some resistance, as users of the old version were used to
certain tools that no longer existed. These users particularly missed being
able to create lists of employees that could be easily pasted into Excel for
further use. This was considered to be out of scope for the new search
project, but it is very likely that as part of the post-launch development
activities an alternative search display will be developed to meet these
requests.
“The old employee search was mainly directed at finding people in your own
ministry, with a different search for all ministries, with limited information.
The new Finn :D search made all ministry employee information available to
everybody, and this challenged the culture in the ministries.”

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 • If you build it, they may not come, so plan accordingly. “Users in the
ministries are generally employees with good education and high professional
skills, and a strong sense of pride in the work they are doing. However, many
of the most experienced employees have fairly low skills and interest in
adopting new technology, and this causes some challenges when introducing
new systems. Also, it can be difficult to motivate users to fulfill tasks for
which they see no direct benefit for themselves. An example is updating
personal profiles with experience and work tasks. Lack of data for many users
reduces the value of the employee search and the possibilities of finding
resource people, thus leading to less frequent use of employee search.”

Best Practices
• Identify opportunities and change direction if you need to. “In the
initial phase of the design process, the scope was to upgrade and redesign the
intranets, without changing the concept of separate intranets. Enterprise
search and shared content between extranet and intranets was not within the
scope of the project, and budget and deadlines were set accordingly.
However, after seeing results from insight and research work, and wishing to
fulfill requests from stakeholders (in the ministries), it was decided to widen
the scope of the redesign process to get a platform that would serve users
better, and save resources in the long run. More funding was provided and
deadlines extended, all in collaboration with management and stakeholders.”
• Work lean. “During development, we used Prince II, Agile, and Scrum
methods, with releases every month. Intranet editors had access early on,
allowing for user testing and dealing with requests from the very start. In the
process, we used insight, research, and analytics (metrics, KPI) to adjust and
improve. We also arranged frequently user tests, often on smaller groups for
easier administration. This proved to be very helpful in the process of
achieving a user-friendly intranet. After launch, it was user tested and
improved a dozen times.”
• Create opportunities for collaboration. “Previous experience from the
regjeringen.no project had indicated that regular ‘open house’ meetings
where all editors could meet DSS team members (an, in some instances,
external consultants involved in the project) to go through new concepts and
features, and work together on concrete content production and problem
solving, had been extremely useful. Throughout the intranet development
period, open house meet-ups were held biweekly (or weekly), so that editors
got accustomed to the platform and could get mutual help in creating good
content.”
• Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. “In general, reusing design, concepts,
technology, and methods from previous projects (most notably the
regjeringen.no process) was deemed successful, and also caused great
savings in terms of money and time to target.”

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United Nations (UN) (2020)
OVERVIEW

COMPANY LEADERSHIP TEAM

The United Nations (UN) is an international The UN Intranet-iSeek (designated as “iSeek” in
organization founded in 1945. It is currently made the rest of this document) operates under the
up of 193 Member States and two Observer States. supervision of an editorial board composed of
Due to the powers vested in its Charter and its representatives from several departments in the
unique international character, the UN takes action UN, under the leadership of its Chairman, Maher
on the issues confronting humanity in the 21st Nasser, Director of the Outreach Division in the
century across four main pillars: Peace and Department of Global Communications. It is led by
Security, Sustainable Development, Human Rights the Manager of the Knowledge Solutions and
and Humanitarian Assistance. Design Section, Helga Leifsdottir, and by the iSeek
Team.
The Secretariat staff, made up of international civil
servants and locally recruited staff, support the CORE TEAM
UN’s work for peace and help the organization
deliver on its commitment to people around the Helga Leifsdóttir, Knowledge Solutions and Design
world.The UN provides a forum for countries to Section Manager; David Mimran, iSeek Team
come together to tackle the most challenging Leader;
issues of our time. Team members: Frédéric Fath, Annie Paprocki,
Headquarters: New York, US Renée Luque, Stéphanie Spiegel; Sara Hohn,
Consultant; Eric Hahn, Web Team (Development)
Locations: The UN has offices all over the world; Team Leader
its 8 main offices are in New York, Geneva, Nairobi,
Addis Ababa, Vienna, Beirut, and Santiago. It also SENIOR LEADERSHIP
has 5 regional commissions, 14 political missions, Department of Global Communications /
14 peacekeeping missions, and many other regional Outreach Division: Maher Nasser, Director and
and country offices.
Chairman of the intranet editorial board; Maha El-
Locations where people use the intranet: iSeek is Bahrawi, Deputy Director; Ramu Damodaran,
accessible without login to staff at all UN office Deputy Director
locations, and through mobile devices anywhere in WIDER TEAM AND IT SUPPORT
the world via password protected access.
Web Team: Catherine Pysden, Debra Ramsthaler,
As of July 2019, 90% of UN Secretariat staff use
Sat Byell-Lee
iSeek as their only intranet. In 2015, that number
was only 22%. Graphic Design: Ziad Al-Kadri, Team Leader;
Annual revenue: The UN is a nonprofit Team Members: Martin Samaan, John Gillespie
organization. It is financed by assessed and Office of Information and Communications
voluntary contributions from its Member States. Technology: Sirhan Chaudry
THE INTRANET
Users: All UN employees (approximately 37,500)
use iSeek for internal communications and
knowledge sharing. The platform helps staff located
at duty stations and field missions all over the
world keep up to date with new policies, find the
information they need to do their work, and
connect with colleagues.

Mobile approach: Responsive web design

Technology platform: Drupal 7

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INTRANET TEAM

Team members shown here (left to right): Stéphanie Spiegel, David Mimran, Fred
Fath, Renée Luque, Helga Leifsdóttir, Annie Paprocki, and Eric Hahn.

HIGHLIGHTS ABOUT THIS WINNER

The UN Intranet-iSeek (i-Seek) is the primary internal communications and knowledge-
sharing tool for the United Nations’ global workforce. Accessible to 37,500 users across
all UN office locations and through mobile access everywhere in the world, iSeek helps
staff members in all duty stations and field missions keep up to date with new policies,
find the information they need to do their work, and connect with colleagues.
A combination of global and localized content—accompanied by authentic imagery and
video—bring people together while also providing a window into the people-first aspects
of this distributed organization. With some users working in harsh or extreme
environments, iSeek unifies staff under a shared mission. Like a standard intranet, iSeek
brings tools and systems to employees’ fingertips, but its human-centered approach to
content and features provide staff with a greater sense of meaning and belonging. Those
features include:
• Emergency response: When Haiti was hit with a 7.0 magnitude earthquake
on January 12, 2010, the UN lost more than 100 staff members in a single
moment. Editors from many offices utilized iSeek as an emergency hub and to
honor staff members whose lives were lost while serving in a peacekeeping
mission. iSeek’s homepage design was changed from blue to black and grey,
and the team dedicated an important part of its editorial efforts to drafting
obituaries, which were posted daily on the intranet for more than a month.
This brought people together and reminded staff of the role that iSeek plays
in providing a support system in the face of tragedy.

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 • Expansive footer toolkit: The Toolkit is the name for iSeek’s stunning footer
that appears on every page. It surfaces popular and frequently used links,
which could otherwise be difficult to find in such a large site. It is tailored for
each duty station and, because essential tools can vary considerably among
duty stations and missions, iSeek works with Focal Points to select the right
mix of tools and content to meet the unique needs of different user groups,
while maintaining a core set of global links.
• Integrated job search: A powerful search connects job seekers around the
world with the right UN opportunities. Having a robust global jobs section
facilitates career development for employees, while also supporting the
organization’s core mission to serve countries and people around the world.
• Purpose-driven app catalog: Modernization is essential for the UN to carry
out its mission and mandates, and enterprise systems are integral to those
efforts. The global app catalog offers a quick, single-page view of all of the
applications developed by the IT department. It provides links to launch the
apps, helpful resources, and support.
• Self-serve business card app: An integrated app helps users create and
customize their UN business cards from a standard template. Staff can choose
from one of four beautiful back-of-card designs; the app then generates a
dual-sided, print-ready PDF. Employees can print the cards themselves or
take them to a print shop to complete production.
• Worldwide classifieds: The UN has a mobile workforce and staff members
move frequently from duty station to duty station over the course of their
careers. The intranet can help staff quickly sell their furniture in one location
and rent an apartment in another duty station, all using the iSeek classifieds.

BACKGROUND

Uniting the United Nations

iSeek is the official internal communication and knowledge-sharing platform for UN staff.
Like the wider UN, one of iSeek’s goals is to bring diverse groups of staff members together.
Sometimes that can be challenging.
The UN comprises more than 37,500 employees dispersed across eight major duty stations
and dozens of field offices. They deal with a wide array of issues, from socioeconomic
research and human rights to international law and conflict resolution. Convincing people in
these diverse roles that one unified platform could address all of their specific needs was not
always easy.
iSeek was founded in 2005 at the direction of the Deputy Secretary-General, the UN’s
second-in-command. The project was housed within the Department of Public Information
(DPI) (now the Department of Global Communications)—one of the nine main UN
departments—with technical support and development under the purview of the IT
department. As a top-level project, buy-in was guaranteed. So initially, persuasion wasn’t
necessary.
Fast forward to 2007, and iSeek was in crisis. A change in the UN’s senior leadership meant
that the project lost its buy-in and the small iSeek team was left with little authority to
govern the internal communications systems created by other departments. The first to

698 [email protected] United Nations (UN) (2020)

jump ship was the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, one of the largest UN
departments. With vast field operations, Peacekeeping could not count on iSeek as a reliable
tool to connect with its staff in locations where establishing a LAN connection was not
possible. Moreover, iSeek’s cumbersome CMS meant that loading an article could take up to
45 minutes—an efficiency cost that was simply too great to bear. Peacekeeping therefore
chose to set up its own intranet on SharePoint.
Peacekeeping’s breakaway compounded iSeek’s challenges and the organization’s overall
efforts to unite its global workforce. Not only did iSeek lose a major contingent, it also lost
its operating budget. And, because it could no longer rely on the financial contribution from
Peacekeeping, iSeek was left with a (nonsalary) operating budget of only $5,000. With next
to no funds, iSeek had limited ability to update its aging platform. Then, other departments
began to follow Peacekeeping’s lead and opt out of the platform.
The period between 2007 and 2015 was marked by an uphill battle to obtain a modern
platform and the effort to persuade departments to move back to iSeek. Overcoming these
obstacles required a long-term vision and strategy. It meant leveraging whatever resources
could be found in-house and marketing iSeek as a valuable technological proposition. The
team’s approach was to try to engage allies first and skeptics later, and only then to
persuade management.
Team members had to do many things to bring iSeek back, but their first task was to find a
platform.
The Search for an Efficient Platform
The impetus that led many departments to abandon iSeek was the platform’s limited
technological capability. So, the first step toward unification was to upgrade the platform.
The team considered adopting WordPress as a quick, short-term solution, but WordPress
was not a UN-sanctioned software at that time so the IT department would not be able to
support it. The iSeek team understood that going it alone would not be a sustainable
solution. In 2011, the UN finally adopted new IT standards and iSeek began its conversion
to a Drupal-based CMS system with the ability to address the needs of its clients. Landing
on Drupal was a huge step. But iSeek also needed a makeover.

Reinventing iSeek from the Outside In

In 2015, a redesigned iSeek debuted. It had a dramatically different look and feel on a
modern, responsive platform, and it came with a slew of new features and dynamic content,
including: Toolkit, an extensive footer with links to important tools and information; In the
Spotlight, a space on the homepage to advertise campaigns; a widget for the UN Twitter
account; and a new events calendar. Contributors and editors were enthusiastic and
appreciated that it was easier to add and manage content.
Concurrent with the redesign, the team also transformed its editorial policy to keep up with
the era of short attention spans. The new policy reduced the length of articles to 350 words
and gave contributors greater editorial authority. The goal was to help them improve the
content and avoid UN jargon. This required constant effort, but the payoff was worth it as
readership increased. New features, such as likes and comments, encouraged staff
engagement. And later, in response to staff feedback, announcements and events were
featured more prominently. These changes occurred in parallel with the technological
improvements, which meant iSeek wasn’t just shiny and new on the outside; it was fully
refurbished and open for business.

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If You Build It, Will They Come? Maybe Not
The team hoped that the new design combined with modern features and useful tools would
entice breakaway departments to return to the fold, but it just wasn’t that easy. It took a lot
of convincing and adapting to the needs of clients to make the reintegration happen. And
some of the obstacles were ones it never expected.
One challenge the team encountered was with perception. Across the organization, iSeek
was thought of as a “New York product.” As such, departments thought it would be
dominated by Headquarters’ interests and thus would fail to fully consider their unique
needs. Overcoming this misperception required an internal marketing campaign. The
intranet was rebranded, from “iSeek” to “The UN Intranet-iSeek,” to reinforce the idea that
it was the official platform of the entire organization. The team also abandoned its distinct
logo and adopted the UN emblem instead, in an effort to communicate its motto: “One
intranet for ONE UN worldwide.”
The lesson learned: marketing matters, even for an internal project.

Working Toward Unification

Armed with a modern, redesigned platform, the iSeek team could now tackle a longstanding
challenge: how to convince departments that had abandoned iSeek for their own intranets
to come back. To bolster the case, the team used global survey data to show that staff
members in these departments were very interested in gaining access to iSeek.
The team then worked to gain allies, one department at a time, starting with those most
ready to join; it left the highest peaks to tackle later, once it had accumulated some buy-in.
Convincing the Department of Political Affairs, with its many field missions, to integrate into
iSeek in 2018 was a milestone. This process involved a thorough analysis of the
department’s existing intranets and extensive consultations with the communications and IT
professionals working in remote locations. The iSeek team then took their requirements
(security alerts, social media widgets, customized homepages, etc.) and created a dozen
“mission” templates. It then presented the templates to mission staff members, who
selected their favorite.
This victory provided a proof of concept, which opened the doors for many other field offices
to follow suit. From there, the team was able to persuade Peacekeeping—the first defector—
to rejoin in 2019.

A Flexible, Global Platform

With all that going for the team, the only thing left to reach the final frontier of universal
adoption was to bring the unconvinced on board. The team stood firm that these groups
would need to adopt the iSeek template look and feel, but offered flexibility in the content
types that they could serve. That’s where the Drupal CMS proved to be pivotal. It enabled
the platform to provide a new mix of content, relevant to all staff, everywhere, letting global
content stand alongside content that would be of local interest only. This meant that stories,
features, announcements, events, and many navigational elements could be customized by
location.
To support that model, the small iSeek team—six people based at headquarters—manages a
global network of content managers called Focal Points. The Focal Points are authorized to
manage the site needs for their offices, and the iSeek team supports them by offering
training and making sure their content is up to date and adheres to guidelines.

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Also pivotal was the iterative approach the team adopted to unify the intranet—rolling out
technical and design changes on a monthly basis, rather than waiting for one big redesign.
This “launch first, refine later” approach allows iSeek to be improved constantly, and will
hopefully prevent it from falling back into the trap it found itself in 2007 when offices began
abandoning the platform.
The team periodically collects user feedback, through global surveys and focus groups,
usability tests, and interviews. It also uses analytics generated by the CMS and Google
Analytics to track user behavior. This data helps the team assess the effectiveness of
various content types and internal communication campaigns.
This long, slow march toward intranet reunification was difficult, but worth the effort. The
reintegration of iSeek across the UN has reduced fragmentation and saved money.
Worldwide staff members are getting the same messages, so they feel more connected and
more united in their purpose. And that benefits everyone.

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Pictured: This shows the UN intranet homepage as it was in 2015.

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DESIGN REVIEW

Homepage and Navigation

Pictured: iSeek’s homepage balances global and local content with the aim of making
all staff members feel at home regardless of their work location.

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Homepage and Navigation

Pictured: iSeek’s drop-down menus, duty station menu, and mobile navigation are
fully responsive so users can find exactly what they need on any channel.

Homepage and Navigation Highlights

With its modern fonts, breathable spacing, and clearly defined content slots, iSeek’s
homepage caters to on-the-go staff, as well as people working at the UN’s duty stations.
Available in either a global or duty-station specific view, the homepage displays critical news
and announcements, provides quick access to frequently used tools, and offers a window to
external content via a social media widget.

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 1. Utility navigation: The links in iSeek’s utility navigation are available
on every page and allow users to quickly access the global intranet and
bespoke versions for each of the UN’s eight duty stations around the
world. Employees can also access their account information, log in, and
easily toggle their language preference between English and French
(the two languages iSeek supports).
2. Global drop-down: The Global view of the iSeek homepage contains
information relevant for all UN staff, regardless of their location.
Employees can also select a specific duty station from the global drop-
down menu with options for: Addis Ababa, Bangkok, Beirut, Geneva,
Nairobi, New York, Santiago, Vienna, Field Missions, and Regional
Centers. Upon selecting a duty station, the homepage seamlessly
displays relevant content localized to the selected duty station.
3. Search bar: A prominent search bar in a familiar location connects
users to key pages and policies they need. iSeek’s search is kept
relevant and tidy through diligent efforts to preserve the metadata of
the content presented, and older content is often unpublished in an
effort to continually improve search over time. Results can be refined
by duty station, level, and so on. iSeek uses Solr search, which is the
approved UN standard search technology.
4. Toolkit anchor link: The first link in the main navigation is Toolkit, an
anchor link that gracefully jumps users down to the highly functional
and rightfully named footer.
5. Main navigation: To determine which links to place in the main
navigation, the iSeek team relied on analytics data and usage trends to
understand which site areas employees visit most often. Links to topics,
departments and offices, emergency information, iSeek info, workplace
apps, and the staff directory won these coveted spots for the Global
view. However, for localized versions of iSeek, the main navigation is
tailored to users’ specific needs in each respective duty station.
6. News and staff stories: The noticeable placement of news above the
fold, the attention-grabbing photography and clear headlines, and the
counts and iconography for comments and likes make this news widget
quite wonderful.
7. Staff directory: Here, staff can find colleagues’ contact information
(email, phone number, office) by searching for names, locations, or
departments.
8. Most popular: Links to the most-viewed pages live here, updated daily
based on analytics. A subtle grey background appears behind each link
to create the visual separation needed for users to easily distinguish
between links.
9. Announcements and events: Placed prominently on the homepage,
this top iSeek feature showcases UN happenings, holidays, and UN days
so staff can stay informed in advance about what’s going on at the
organization. Events and announcements are also tailored to each duty
station and can be managed by Focal Points or empowered staff

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 members with the proper credentials to post events and
announcements on behalf of their offices.
10.Calendar: The homepage’s calendar widget provides a helpful reminder
of the date and the events that are scheduled for that day. It also links
to the powerful monthly view.
11.Classifieds, jobs, policies: User can access three of the most popular
iSeek content areas—classifieds, jobs, and policy information—directly
from the homepage. The large, blue text link placed on a subtle grey
background helps distinguish these helpful features while colorful-yet-
informative iconography visually reinforces their meaning.
12.In the Spotlight: Whether related to work policies affecting
employees, time-sensitive content, or information that ladders up to the
Secretary-General’s priorities, the In the Spotlight area of the
homepage sheds light on featured content that is of primary importance
to generate staff awareness.
13.Management and staff content: iSeek provides a platform not only
for management to talk to staff, but also for staff to respond via
comments and likes. Individuals can ask questions and expect a
response. Conversations are sparked between staff and management
that otherwise may not have a place to begin. The intranet is viewed as
an essential tool, and management actively promotes iSeek use
throughout the organization.
14.Social media: Born from a survey that indicated staff wanted access to
employee-only information—as well as public-facing content—from
within iSeek, the social media widget helps demonstrate how internal
communication supports the work that is visible from the outside. Users
can thus see the wide variety of themes featured on the UN’s Twitter
account.
15.Weather: A weather widget is displayed on the homepage because UN
staff members are present in so many places around the world. The aim
of this feature, however, was less to offer the weather forecast for each
duty station than to act as a world clock in different time zones—fueling
the perception that staff are working “around the clock, all around the
world.” At the same, it does display the time and temperature—in
Fahrenheit and Celsius—to help staff better plan their trips.
16.I found it on iSeek: From this linked space on the homepage, users
can access a unique communications campaign that strives to raise
ongoing awareness about iSeek’s global usage statistics and
improvements, through a retrospective look back over time. Dating all
the way back to 2011, credibility-boosting infographics help employees
to see just how far iSeek has come in terms of stories posted,
comments received, number of sessions, page views, and more.
17.Toolkit: The footer Toolkit provides easy access to myriad popular and
frequently used items, including HR information, salary and benefits,
rules and regulations, and travel resources. The Toolkit also includes
links to major enterprise applications and select digital productivity
tools, organized by themes, personalized for each duty station, and

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 available on every page. Some links point to content or tools available
on iSeek (such as IT information and UN holidays), while others link to
external sources, such as the Dag Hammarskjöld Library, which is a
public website.
18.Quicklinks: As its title suggests, Quicklinks offers users fast access to
forms, an alphabetical index of pages, a link to About content, iSeek’s
mission statement, and a link to easily get in contact with the team.
19.Back to top: As the Toolkit anchor link in the main navigation
gracefully scrolls users down, the Back to top link smoothly scrolls them
right back up.

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News Story

Pictured: News stories on iSeek include prominent, easy-to-grasp headlines,

undistracting imagery, proper techniques for length and formatting, and social
capabilities, such as likes and comments.

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News Story Highlights
News stories originate from employees and Focal Points across the organization. This
enables iSeek to deliver fresh and interesting daily content that employees truly care about.
The team publishes three to five stories per day, which represents over 900 stories per
year.
For example, UN staff felt passionately about the issue of plastic pollution and its
devastating impact on the environment, particularly when it ends up in oceans. Wanting to
free the UN Headquarters from single-use plastics such as plastic bags, straws, and cutlery,
staff members began writing opinion pieces on iSeek that advocated for their removal.
Other employees chimed in with comments and likes, expressing hope that the organization
might eliminate all single-use plastics from campus. Through the power of these news
stories and employee engagement, single-use plastic consumption ended at UN
Headquarters in 2019.
In another example, Chloe, the cute and friendly English Bulldog that serves as the UN
therapy dog in New York, started a conversation about stress in the workplace and became
a mascot. All of the news stories involving Chloe shot up to the top of readership. People at
the UN clearly like animals, as staff worldwide requested therapy cats, goats, bunnies, and
monkeys in response.
1. Clear display of story attributes: Users aren’t left guessing whether a piece
of news is recent or stale, as each story leads with its full publication date
displayed in international format. Readers can also immediately see the duty
station, office, and author of the story.
2. Noticeable-yet-informative headlines: The main headline is prominent and
eye-catching, but also clues the reader in to what exactly the story is about.
3. Static hero image: Like a perfectly fitting puzzle piece in iSeek’s page layout,
the main image that coincides with the news takes up enough space to
effectively communicate, but not so much that it needlessly decorates the
page. Because images are static (rather than contained in a rotating
marquee), there’s no risk of distraction and readers can focus on getting the
information in the text content they seek. This also complies with web
accessibility guidelines.
4. Image gallery: For stories with multiple images, users can click through a
gallery of complementary photos to help visually reinforce the key messages
contained in the news.
5. Article summary and length: UN employees are busy with the important
work of bringing countries together to solve some of the most critical and
pressing issues of our time. As such, they don’t have a lot of time to devote to
reading iSeek news. The inclusion of an italicized summary and a concise-yet-
comprehensive writing style allow staff to quickly scan the content, grasp the
core points, and stay informed efficiently.
6. Right rail: As users scroll down the page, they see commands such as Like,
Email, and Print, along with relevancy facets in the form of tags, topics, and
audience groups. The office, duty station, and author responsible for publishing
the story are also reinforced in the right rail for easy reference. Each link takes
users to more news stories that contain the same attributes.

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 7. Content formatting: Formatting techniques such as using chunking, white
space, bold keywords and phrases, bullets, blue link text, and clear subheads
all lend favorably to the scanning behaviors that users demonstrate when
reading online.
8. Comments and likes: A critical way of facilitating more two-way
communication between employees is the incorporation of social features on
iSeek’s news articles, events, and announcements. The quantity of likes
displays next to the familiar thumbs-up icon, and comments appear below in
grey boxes. Each comment includes the employee’s name, time, and date of
submission, and users can reply to comments or add their own. As the
transparent and contextually relevant helper copy states, comments shouldn’t
exceed 1,000 characters and are moderated by the iSeek team to help deter
controversial or inappropriate discussions. Comments prove to be a useful way
to engage readers and capture feedback about how to improve iSeek and the
UN as a whole. The iSeek team tracks engagement with likes and comments,
and has seen a steady increase each year. Many departments even look at the
number of likes and comments on their news stories and wish there were
more.

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Submit Content Guidelines

Pictured: Clear guidelines for submitting content are available to staff members to
ensure content meets iSeek’s quality parameters and publication standards.

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Submit Content Highlights
The Submit Content page on iSeek takes all of the guesswork and intimidation out of the
distributed content creation and contribution process. This simultaneously helps UN
employees feel welcome and empowered to contribute content, while the clear limits on
length, the process requirements, and the blatant for how to unpublish work to preserve the
integrity and relevancy of iSeek’s content.
1. Page headline: The blue headline is large enough to stand out and indicates
exactly which page the user is currently on, helping to avoid any confusion
among potential contributors.
2. Section-specific navigation: Contained in grey tab-like elements, the
secondary navigation links to content that’s directly related to posting content
to iSeek, including a sitemap; the network of Focal Points, contributors, and
team members; new iSeek features; frequently asked questions; and an
online form to contact the iSeek team directly if questions arise.
3. Breadcrumb: Having the breadcrumb at the top of the page helps users
understand how the site is organized and the paths they can take to find what
they need. The page title exactly matches what is shown in the last position in
the breadcrumb, which is favorable—and a breadcrumb best practice.
4. Purpose-driven page statement: New users may not understand what’s
behind terms such as “Requirements for posting.” Because of this, using
plainer language, such as Submit Content reinforces the page’s objective and
communicates exactly what users will find and what they should do next.
5. Table of contents: The table of contents recaps each type of content a user
can submit to iSeek. Clicking on a content type anchor link from the table of
contents takes the user down to the corresponding set of submission
requirements. In keeping with best practices for anchor links, the title for the
table of contents prominently displays at the top, is visually distinct from the
rest of the page (as it is contained in a grey box), and each blue link truly
looks like a link. As an added bonus, each of the link labels matches flawlessly
to the content-type headline that appears in the corresponding section below.
6. Content types: Naming conventions for content types are clear and
straightforward, making it easy to distinguish them from one another. From
their names alone, contributors can envision what the content names stand
for, even if they’ve never actually seen that type of content. An example of
each content type in use on iSeek also helps to demonstrate what it actually
looks like.
7. Submission guidelines: Each set of submission guidelines provides the
exact purpose of the content type, and its word/character limits and
image/multimedia requirements. The guidelines also include process touch
points for each submission, so that contributors know exactly what to do at
each step along the way. Links to guidelines, how-to pages, step-by-step
tutorials, and checklists within each content type also help to ensure that
contributors can effectively self-serve and get answers to their questions. A
convenient Back to top link scrolls users back up to the top of the page so
they can revisit the table of contents.

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Department Homepage

Pictured: Department-specific homepages provide context and information for staff

members within the department as well as those working outside of it.

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Department Homepage Highlights
Because content ownership is distributed on iSeek, department pages are kept tidy and
organized through embedded Focal Points. Each year, the amount of content submitted to
iSeek from departments increases. As managers and leaders recognize the benefit of
reaching staff through iSeek, most have adopted departmental homepages as an integral
part of their own department-focused communication strategies.
1. Department name as H1: A prominent H1 page title that leads with the full
department name, followed by the department’s acronym, helps users
understand exactly which page they are on and how people typically refer to
the department. In an organization as large and cross functional as the UN,
these extra details help to maintain clarity and alignment regarding
department names and functions.
2. Department-specific secondary navigation: Contained in grey tab-like
elements, the secondary navigation links to content that’s directly related to
the department. A sitemap, office locations, topics of interest, information
about management reform, a suggestion box for staff, and department
newsletters can all be found here. Arrows indicate which menu items have
drop-downs containing additional subcategories.
3. Vision and mission: The department's vision statement is located at the top
of the page, and appears in slightly larger text so that users can immediately
see what this department aspires to achieve. A bulleted list containing links to
the department's mission statement, annual priorities, and a UN System org
chart translated into six languages helps staff members quickly get to know
the area. A mini-image carousel allows users to freely peruse a series of
featured content recently published by or of importance to the department.
4. Leader bio: Offset in a subtle grey box, with a title that directly corresponds
to the department's name, staff members can immediately find a biography
about the department’s leader (under-secretary). An adjacent link to Read
more is also available for employees who want more information on the
department head.
5. About the department: The What We Do section outlines what the
department does, including the functions of its various subdivisions and links
to their own iSeek pages, websites, and Facebook and Twitter accounts. Links
under the subhead for the office of the Under-Secretary General direct users
to committees and services, awards, and content about UN staff day.
6. Consistent look and placement of widgets: Department-specific news
feeds into department homepages so that relevant information can be
disseminated accurately. Quicklinks and In the Spotlight widgets on the
department homepage are consistent with their look and location on the main
iSeek homepage. Reliable look and feel and placement of widgets across
pages lowers the overall interaction cost of the intranet as users always know
exactly where to look to find specific information.

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Directory

Pictured: iSeek’s global contact directory makes it quick and easy to find a colleague’s
email address, phone number, duty station, and more.

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Directory Highlights
The employee directory is iSeek’s most-used feature. It relies on a contacts database in
which staff can find email and phone contact information for colleagues by searching by
name, location, or department. Employees are sure to find who they're looking for given the
tool’s ability to execute an advanced search or exact search, and filters that enable search
by duty station.
1. Search area: Users begin their colleague searches from iSeek's homepage
where results appear in a streamlined overlay window. The user's query is
passed through to the results overlay, where it is contained in an eye-catching
search field. Staff can perform an exact search to find a person who matches
exactly what they entered, or an advanced search adding additional
parameters to narrow the search scope.
2. Close: An "X" icon closes the overlay, yet iSeek doesn’t just assume that users
will know what the "X" icon does. Following best practice, the overlay includes
the word Close in close proximity to the "X" icon to reaffirm what clicking it will
do.
3. Filters: Because many large organizations have employees with the same or
similar names, filters by duty station allow UN staff to find colleagues at
specific locations. Users can sharpen their search by choosing a duty station
with the simple click of a filter button labeled with the city (or by clicking again
to toggle to deselect).
4. People results: A noticeable results count appears along with the results,
which contain the contacts' titles, last names, first names, email addresses,
phone numbers, mobile numbers, duty stations, buildings, rooms, and
organizational units. This provides everything a colleague needs from an
employee directory. And the ability to sort alphabetically by last name and a
clear pagination element make this results set really stand out.
5. Update information: Who hasn't searched for themselves on a company
directory or search engine? If staff members notice a discrepancy in their
listing, iSeek directs them to the office in charge of modifying their personal
information through a convenient Update my information link. Helpful
resources are also available if users run into roadblocks.

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Search Results

Pictured: Search results on iSeek include sophisticated sorting and filtering

mechanisms and a clean, simple page design.

Search Results Highlights

iSeek uses Solr, the approved standard for search technology at the UN. Search results and
filters depend on content metadata. In most cases, iSeek uses a combination of faceting and
keyword searching, and presents filters for all normalized metadata fields whenever

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possible. Over time, search functionality has been enhanced, allowing for more refined
results by duty station, level, etc. The team has been working on the next step to improve
search, which is to offer preferred results from curated terms to help staff go directly to the
most relevant pages. Unpublishing older content is also part of the efforts to improve search
over time and to avoid crowding the results with old stories.
1. Search area: A prominent search bar lives in the header so users can search
from any page on iSeek. When they click of the search button, results display
on this uncluttered page template. The query is maintained and passed
through to the results page, where users can then search for files, forms, and
documents by selecting the appropriate checkbox underneath the search field.
2. Sorting and refinements: Users can sort search results by relevance, from
oldest to newest, and from newest to oldest. They can also refine results
through various facets—such as announcements and events, news articles,
pages, departments, and duty stations—and remove search refinements with
a simple click. A noticeable results count helps users understand how many
results the set contains.
3. Results: Each result listing prominently features a clearly linked page title,
which matches the H1 on the page. Also contained in each result listing is the
content type, which matches perfectly with the refinements above; the date
of publication; and the duty station or department to which the piece or page
belongs.
4. Pagination: The consistent pagination element matches the refinements
design and closely mirrors the design of this component across other iSeek
pages.

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AppCatalog

Pictured: Unite AppCatalog displays an extensive inventory of all the digital

applications used by the UN. Beyond the links to these resources, it also directs users
to help, training, and support.

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 Pictured: Learn More buttons take users to a designated page for each digital
application where they find a brief introduction to the software and its features, user
guides, the latest tips and tricks, training opportunities, and how to get support.

AppCatalog Highlights
Recently created to help staff move toward a single set of shared tools, facilitate increased
productivity, and support collaboration, the Unite AppCatalog shows the full suite of digital

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applications available to UN staff. These global solutions strengthen security and
performance across the organization and allow employees to collaborate in new ways,
centralize information, make better-informed decisions, and much more. Using the same
systems across the UN means that staff members do not have to learn new systems or
sacrifice their data and information when changing jobs or duty stations. These tools also
better support telecommuting and nontraditional work environments.
1. Page title and copy: A straightforward page title and introductory body copy
lets UN employees know exactly what the AppCatalog does and why these
tools are so important to their work.
2. Filters: Consistent with the filter presentation and functionality in other areas
of iSeek, the AppCatalog filters help users narrow the set of application
results to a specific job function or branded suite of tools.
3. Application spaces: For each application, such as Microsoft Outlook, there is
an icon, a clear description of the software and its purpose, a link that opens
the application, links to how-to guides, training opportunities, and user
support hosted on iSeek.

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Jobs

Pictured: A searchable database of all available jobs is fully integrated into iSeek so
staff members can find positions at other UN offices.

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Jobs Highlights
iSeek integrates a jobs feed from another UN enterprise application that supports talent
management and training. Relevancy is achieved for the job search application by expiring
old content automatically and offering both keyword searching and powerful faceting.
1. Jobs introduction: Users see the same bright yellow briefcase icon here,
which is reminiscent of its use on the homepage to represent jobs. These
consistent threads signify users are in the right place if they are looking for a
new job. Brief helper copy leads users to search by keywords, duty stations,
or the filter categories on the left side of the page. The search box itself
contains a helpful reset button that will clear the current query and allow
users to start fresh on their quest for a new job.
2. Filters: Jobs have six different filter facets, including duty station, temporary
job opening (TJO), level, department, network, and job family. Once a specific
facet is applied, it shows up under the respective filter. Users can remove the
attributes by clicking the “X” icon found on each refinement. As more filters
are added or removed, the quantity of results updates accordingly.
3. Job openings: Alternating grey and white backgrounds help offset different
list items in the job results. Each position includes parameters that exactly
match the filters on the left, as well as start dates, end dates, and links to
apply for the job.

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Business Card App

Pictured: iSeek’s business card application allows staff to customize their own
business cards, starting with a standard template.

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Business Card App Highlights
Before the launch of this application, there was no common template for UN business cards,
and every office had its own—inconsistent—card design. This application conveniently
generates a print-ready PDF and even stores past versions of business card designs.
Employees can print the cards themselves or take the PDF to a print shop.
1. Purpose-driven page title and visuals: The page title is straightforward
and tells users exactly what they can do with the content they find here. A
visual of the front of the finished business cards sets expectations for what
the card will look like and helps users understand which areas they need to
customize.
2. Helper copy: Concise helper copy indicates that users can choose from one
of four different designs for the back of their business cards. The text also
recommends that users take the print-ready PDF to a print shop, but also
provides clear directions for exactly how to print the cards—and which paper
to use—if employees prefer to print the cards themselves.
3. Multilingual and saved cards: Users can create and print business cards in
either French or English. In addition, an anchor link scrolls users down to the
bottom of the page where they can see a table with all previous versions of
their business card designs so they can print cards that they’ve previously
created seamlessly.
4. Back-of-card artwork: Images that showcase the four different card-back
options also aid users in making an informed decision about which design to
choose.
5. Saved previous cards: Employees can also access past versions of their UN
business cards. From the table, which is pleasantly offset with alternating blue
and white rows, users can download PDFs, edit the designs, or delete them
from their account. The card creation date and time make it easy to keep
many different versions straight.

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Classifieds

Pictured: One of the most popular iSeek features is Classifieds, which allow the UN’s
global workforce to buy and sell to each other. This is particularly helpful as staff
members regularly move to new duty stations.

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Pictured: On the Classifieds detail pages, users can see a larger image of the item, a
brief description, and who to contact if interested.

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 Pictured: Rather than having posts vetted before they appear, staff can post
directly. They must acknowledge the rules, however, and they are responsible for what
they post.

Classifieds Highlights
iSeek Classifieds offer a safe, user-friendly space for employees to sell items or start looking
for a new place to live. The platform is safe because users know they will be selling, buying,

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or renting to and from their peers; it is user-friendly because they can easily find services,
housing, or items for sale at their location or another duty station. Classifieds is also a
powerful magnet for staff from other entities within the UN System, who regularly request
individual access to iSeek if their organization doesn’t provide it.
1. Posting and rules: Evolved from a physical bulletin board to a modern
digital version, users can quickly post an ad without training or assistance,
with a clear set of rules and FAQs to preserve the integrity of the listings.
2. Search: By automatically expiring old posts after 30 days, Classifieds
maintains its search relevancy. A convenient reset button helps users quickly
start a fresh search.
3. Filters: UN employees can filter classifieds by item categories and locations.
Multiple refinements can be added to better refine the results.
4. Classified ads: Each classified ad contains an image, clickable headline,
posting date, seller name, description, and location. The grey containers keep
the structured content and page grid tidy, allowing users to scan the items
available.

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Sports, Games, Clubs

Pictured: iSeek includes pages for sports, games, and clubs to build community,
promote health and wellness, and provide outlets for employees who share common
interests.

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Sports, Games, Clubs Highlights
On these pages, which use a consistent iSeek template, employees can see photos from
events at the more than 60 participating clubs, as well as understand each group’s vision
and get to know the instructors or people in charge. Links to social media channels such as
Facebook also help employees feel welcome and stay informed about what's going on with
the club.
1. Photo gallery and vision: Users can freely scroll through a gallery of photos
from club events and happenings. Rather than containing these photos in an
animated gallery, which can be quite distracting, the arrow icons make it easy
for employees to remain in control of the photo browsing experience. The
transparent, consistently placed vision statement communicates the club’s
purpose and what it aspires to achieve.
2. Sponsor information: Here, employees can find information about the club’s
leaders and leadership council. Contact information, including a liaison phone
number, is also posted. This leadership module has a consistent appearance
and placement across iSeek pages.
3. Coaches and schedule: Contained in a grey content slot, employees can get
information about when classes are offered, the coaches and instructors who
will lead the sessions, the cost, and what the program entails. A table below
outlines when various events will take place, who to contact with questions,
where the events will be held, and how much participation costs.

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iSeek Statistics

Pictured: This feature gives employees a behind-the-scenes look at platform analytics

over time and is presented in a visually appealing infographic format.

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iSeek Statistics Highlights
Featuring data from as far back as 2011, iSeek Statistics provides a historical look at how
intranet content and engagement have evolved over time. Users can see how many stories
tout a global focus, versus how many are duty-station specific. Stories published by office
and the top-10 most popular content types are also among the trends shown. A companion
page, What’s New on iSeek, offers a historical look at the intranet’s evolution, listing
detailed design, technological, and content updates monthly since 2013 and historical
documents and screenshots since 2004.
1. Content and engagement metrics: Users can see the number of stories
posted, comments received, sessions, and page views. This area’s design
includes logical iconography and emphasizes numbers in bold blue typeface.
2. Map: A visually appealing map showcases the share of stories with a global
perspective and those that focus on a particular duty station. The green,
yellow, and grey bubbles represent the number of stories contributed from
various office locations.
3. Pie chart: A perimeter pie chart shows an even more detailed breakdown of
stories published by office location.
4. Top-10 content: The most popular content on iSeek shows the top-10 most
frequently visited sections, along with the annual increase of users who
access iSeek via mobile and tablet. It also details the number of special
political missions that joined the iSeek platform in 2018.
5. Download PDF and back-to-top: Users can also download a PDF of the
year-in-review; because this page is quite long, a helpful back-to-top link
scrolls users back up.

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Emergency and Security Alerts

Pictured: Emergency information is included in the top menus and emergency

messages can be posted at the top of the homepage. An entire page on iSeek outlines,
in detail, the processes and protocols during times of crisis.

Emergency and Security Alerts Highlights

Many UN staff members do not spend much time at a desk; instead, they are in the field,
engaged in activities such as removing landmines from a soccer field in a former conflict

734 [email protected] United Nations (UN) (2020)

zone, coordinating humanitarian assistance at the site of an earthquake, supporting late-
night treaty negotiations on the sidelines of an international conference, or providing
security at a refugee camp.
The digital tools on iSeek are central to supporting a mobile workforce, and a big part of
that is keeping that workforce safe. The intranet was not originally instituted as an
emergency response tool, but when Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012, iSeek played a crucial role
in informing staff about closures and developments at HQ. The fact that iSeek also manages
the posting of broadcast emails has placed it in a central role to disseminate information.
Crisis simulation exercises conducted by security and the business continuity offices have
revealed that information disseminated on iSeek guides staff members’ emergency-related
actions.
1. About the framework: Introductory copy outlines what the Organizational
Resilience Management System (ORMS) does and how it helps to prepare
employees for crisis situations and supports them when they occur.
2. Links to tools: Text links to contextually relevant, helpful resources stand
out in a light grey box. The bulleted list helps to break up each link with
ample space in between each clickable phrase.
3. Familiar modules: Prominent contact information is available for the
program officer. The officer’s name stands out in bolded font, and all
appropriate contact methods—including email address, telephone, and cell
phone—are listed.
4. ORMS graphic: The hub-and-spoke graphic illustrates and visually reinforces
all of the system’s critical functions and elements.

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iSeek Mobile

736 [email protected] United Nations (UN) (2020)

 Pictured: iSeek is fully responsive, and UN employees can access it on any device
from anywhere in the world.

iSeek Mobile Highlights

iSeek’s responsive design means that it looks good on any device. Without a larger team or
budget to support a custom application, this mobile design philosophy is both the most
practical approach and the one that iSeek users prefer, according to user research.
1. Intuitive mobile navigation: The same navigational elements are available
across channels, and users can access the duty station menu via the same
drop-down style that’s available on desktop. Use of the familiar hamburger
menu and a subtle grey background calls attention to the primary mobile
navigation.
2. Strategically placed components: Important elements—such as search,
the staff directory, most popular links, and announcements and events—
appear well above the mobile fold so that users can retain access to the
homepage areas they use the most.
3. Single column grid: Use of a single-column grid ensures that content won’t
get too squished or become too small to be readable and usable on mobile.

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DESIGN PROCESS AND USABILITY WORK

An Agile Approach to Design and Development

Since 2015, the iSeek design approach has been iterative.
Two members of the team are primarily responsible for handling user requests and liaising
with contributors from offices and departments to ensure that their content looks good,
adheres to guidelines, and is regularly updated. And, because they work so closely with
iSeek Focal Points, the two team members are well positioned to escalate user issues or
suggestions for new features.
The iSeek team uses a ticketing system (Jira) and conducts weekly meetings to
communicate with the developer. Together, they set the priorities and establish timelines for
improvements. The team’s user-centered philosophy is to roll out technical and design
changes on a monthly basis, rather than wait for one big redesign.
This “launch first, refine later” approach was a driving factor when the team launched iSeek
on Drupal with the previous IA in place. This decision meant that there was no waiting
period for an in-depth redesign. Similarly, the team launched the classifieds and jobs pages
with basic templates and later refined their functionality and visual design.

Data-Driven Design
The team supports its design decisions with data gathered through qualitative and
quantitative methods. For example, the iSeek team ran regular global surveys in 2015,
2018, and 2019 to assess user satisfaction and identify areas for improvement. They also
listen to staff during the frequent (once per day on average) team-led trainings, as well as
in communications meetings and other forums. Further, they frequently seek feedback and
support from the iSeek Focal Point Network.
In addition to all of these active-listening activities, in 2019 the iSeek Team ran focus
groups and usability tests, and conducted interviews. This helped the team learn more
about what users want—and what they don’t.
Google Analytics is also used to track user behavior, page views, and sessions.
This data, drawn from a variety of sources, cumulatively helps the team assess the
effectiveness of various types of content or internal communication campaigns.

2019 Research Initiatives

As new staff members from global field locations are brought into the intranet platform, it’s
especially critical that the team consider their user needs in iSeek’s roadmap planning.
Thus, as part of the team’s continuous design research efforts, it launched several initiatives
in 2019 to gauge perceptions of iSeek, understand current usage, and gather insights about
pain points in the UX.
This research included:
• Current state audit to identify quick wins and longer-term enhancements to
align with intranet best practices.
• Accessibility audit to identify key considerations for web and mobile
accessibility and serve as a template for ongoing reviews.

738 [email protected] United Nations (UN) (2020)

 • Google Analytics monitoring at global and local levels to identify popular
content and track mobile usage, geographical reach, performance issues, and
other trends.
• User satisfaction survey, first launched in 2018 and redeployed in 2019, to
gather feedback on key features, as well as the perceived value and utility of
iSeek. The 2019 survey of a representative sample of 3,000 staff members
revealed the user satisfaction levels: 68% Satisfied or Very Satisfied, 24%
Neutral, and 7% Somewhat or Very Dissatisfied.
• One-on-one interviews with iSeek editors and contributors around the
world who serve as trusted partners and ongoing sources of feedback.
• One-on-one interviews with global iSeek users in field locations who
offer valuable perspectives on their unique needs and ideas for how to direct
future iSeek efforts.
• Focus groups held at UN Headquarters in New York allowed the team to
perform more detailed task analysis and usability testing, as well as discover
the content types users value most.
This 2019 work builds on the major 2014 research effort, which the team undertook to
inform its complete site redesign in 2015. That earlier research effort included:
• Analytics review to understand usage trends and determine which site areas
were visited most often and thus should be prioritized in the revised IA and
design.
• Global survey with six focus groups to understand the functionality, look,
feel, and structure the staff was looking for in a new site design.
• Interviews with senior officials from seven UN offices to seek high-level
feedback and buy-in.

Information Architecture
There were four primary IA requirements:
• More information presented above the fold to give better exposure to
announcements and events, classifieds, jobs, and essential UN policy, which
were among the top features according to usage statistics.
• More exposure to emergency information, the staff directory, and the user’s
team information in the top menus.
• Footer should appear on every page and be filled with essential links (Toolkit)
categorized by themes.
• Site should include news feeds to departmental homepages in order to better
disseminate information.

Adoption/Buy-in
In addition to gathering innovative ideas from staff and management about the intranet
they would like to see, the findings from the 2015 and 2019 research initiatives lent weight
to the iSeek team’s vision for the redesigned site as a go-to place for staff information that
was user friendly, easy to navigate, and had a more modern look and feel.

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GOVERNANCE

Ownership
In other organizations, HR or IT may own the intranet, but at the UN, the Department of
Global Communications manages it. And, as the name implies, that department comprises
communications professionals who are primarily focused on creating awareness of the
organization’s work and priorities. Because the iSeek team is situated in this environment, it
can attract talented internal information specialists, with skills in information management,
graphic design, website development, translation, and communications. So, this ownership
model is beneficial because the focus is on effective communication, resulting in a less
“corporate” intranet. The challenge with this placement is that the team is located outside of
the management department’s decision-making process.

INTRANET TEAM RESPONSIBILITIES

Role Responsibilities
iSeek Team • Manages the UN intranet, including
An eight-person team (six providing governance and user support
iSeek members, one section • Trains users and iSeek Focal Points on how
manager, and one developer) to use, edit, and write for iSeek
based in New York • Designs and develops new features and
tools
• Creates, reviews, and publishes content
• Coordinates the iSeek Focal Point network
• Manages access and permissions
iSeek Focal Points • Coordinate the creation and review of
a 250-person network internal communication products (articles,
graphics, pages, videos) for their respective
UN offices, departments, duty stations, or
missions
• Submit global stories to the iSeek team for
publication and may publish local stories
directly
• Liaise with iSeek team on user issues and
needs
• Promote iSeek to their users
• Represent their office in iSeek Focal Point
meetings
• Either personally update their content on
iSeek or delegate task to Content Editors
• Coordinate training and editorial access for
Content Editors (with the iSeek Team)
Page Managers and • Publish content on behalf of their office,
Contributors staff club, association, etc.
• Update information as necessary

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URL AND ACCESS

ACCESS INFORMATION
Item Status
URL iseek.un.org

Default Status The intranet is set as each user’s homepage in

Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge browsers, but
not in other browsers (such as Chrome).

Remote Access • Users need to log in with a valid account

(assigned by IT) before accessing iSeek
content remotely.
• The iSeek team can also create accounts for
individuals. This is mainly used to give
access to staff from UN entities outside the
secretariat.
• Remote users can access iSeek via a
redirect to the iseek-external.un.org alias.
Shared Workstations Some users access iSeek from shared workstations
in UN libraries. Also, visual signage in the UN
Headquarters complex displays a slideshow of
iSeek stories and other internal communications
content. The iSeek application hosts these
slideshows on its infrastructure; although the
screens support touch, this interface hasn’t been
leveraged yet.

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TIMELINE

742 [email protected] United Nations (UN) (2020)

 PROJECT MILESTONES
Milestone Date Milestone Description
January 1, 2004 • Launch of the UN intranet, iSeek, an
initiative of the Deputy-Secretary-General
August 29, 2005 • First Redesign
April 6, 2006 • Integration of the Global Staff Directory
2007 • The Department of Peacekeeping chooses a
different platform, moving away from iSeek.
2011 • Drupal is approved as an official standard,
and iSeek and IT prepare business
requirements for development of a Drupal
platform. This project is abandoned after IT
runs out of resources.
November 7, 2013 • iSeek is recreated and relaunched on Drupal
7 by its web team, after migration of
existing content.
December 2013 • Commenting feature is introduced, first as a
pilot due to concerns by the Department of
Management. (The iSeek team moderates
comments before they are published.)
September 2014 • iSeek becomes mobile (responsive) with
remote access enabled through password
protected log in.
June 2014 • Calendar view for events, holidays, and UN
Days
December 2014 • Preparation begins for a major redesign,
drawing on business requirements from the
team, global survey, case studies, focus
groups, and interviews with top-level
managers.
June 2014 • Classifieds app launched
May 2015 • Business card application launched
August 2015 • Major redesign touches on visual design and
IA
December 2015 • Login credentials now aligned with the UN’s
enterprise application
April 2016 • New redesign, including new fonts and a
visual look that emphasizes stories, jobs,
announcements, and the most popular
content
October 2016 • iSeek team begins offering staff training on
platform features (iSeek 101).
February 2016 • The Department of Social Affairs
reintegrates iSeek.
November 23, 2016 • The regional office in Beirut integrates iSeek
and closes its local intranet.

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 May 2, 2017 • The regional office in Geneva integrates
iSeek and closes its local intranet.
November 2017 • The regional office in Bangkok integrates
iSeek and closes its local intranet.
March 2017 • Design changes move the jobs sections
higher on the page and provide localization
for the spotlight content.
July 2017 • iSeek team relaunches its course on how to
write stories and provides coaching for
participants.
December 2017 • With the creation of the Secretary-General
Priorities pages, the iSeek team takes on
more of an advisory role in communication
from the Secretary-General.
April 2018 • The “I found it on iSeek” communications
campaign is launched to raise awareness of
the platform’s benefits.
April 2018 • Jobs search is totally revised to offer a
complete feed that contains all jobs
available at the UN.
May 2018 • The Department of Political Affairs
integrates iSeek and closes its local
intranet, with integration facilitated by
extensive online training for contributors.
December 2018 • The regional office in Nairobi integrates
iSeek, but also relaunches its separate local
intranet catering to entities outside the
Secretariat.
December 2018 • Classifieds template completely rebuilt
January 2019 • The Department of Peacekeeping integrates
iSeek with a first mission as a pilot.
July 1, 2019 • The Department of Peacekeeping integrates
iSeek and shuts down its local intranet.

CONTENT AND CONTENT CONTRIBUTORS

Contributors and Contributions

Anyone with intranet login credentials—any staff member, entity, branch, or UN
department—can contribute content to iSeek. Users can submit content to the iSeek team
via a contact form, send an email (for stories or announcements), or post content
themselves using the CMS if they have permission to do so.
People can submit content or post directly in several ways:

744 [email protected] United Nations (UN) (2020)

 • Submit a story on behalf of UN departments or offices: Most stories are
written by communications professionals or subject matter experts in a UN
office. Once written, management and the iSeek Focal Point designated by
that unit vet the story. It then goes to the iSeek team for review to ensure
that it meets the iSeek editorial requirements. Before being published, stories
are edited for style and grammar, and then translated. The unit and the iSeek
team work together to agree on the story’s publication schedule.
• Staff Voices story: All staff members can submit posts about personal
experiences related to their UN work.
• Classified ads: All users can post ads and are responsible for following the
rules.
• Comment: All users can post comments, which are moderated by the iSeek
team.
• Announcements: Many contributors are empowered to directly post
announcements about events or initiatives using the CMS.
• Pages: A smaller, more restricted group of users (verified by their offices)
can create pages for their offices and post local content on their respective
homepages, such as stories or announcements with a local audience.
A network of more than 250 Focal Points supports contributors from locations across the
globe. Focal Points are either communication specialists inside departments or staff
members designated by their entity to perform this function in addition to their regular
duties.
While most intranet contributions are submitted at the initiative of an office, iSeek team
members also constantly monitor the activities/news/work the UN is doing and sometimes
ask for contributions on a specific topic or issue.

Content Management
The iSeek team manages articles via an editorial calendar. Once a submission is received,
the calendar manager and editors vet the content for accuracy and rules compliance, edit
and translate it, and give it a spot in the calendar.
The editorial calendar is used to manage global articles—which appear on every local
iteration of iSeek—as well as local articles that are managed by local teams in different
departments or duty stations and that appear only on their iteration of iSeek. This allows for
greater flexibility and helps increase the feeling of belonging for sub-entities whose staff can
read global articles as well as articles that concern only their duty station/entity.
Other types of content are managed according to type:
• Events and announcements can be managed either by Focal Points or by staff members
who have permission to post these on behalf of their entity.
• Classified ads, a popular iSeek feature, are posted by individuals, including staff from
other entities that have requested an account.

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Training
“Write for iSeek” training sessions are offered regularly to encourage staff members to
contribute pieces/articles/stories so that they can share their work with colleagues around
the world. By mid-2019, 24 training sessions had been organized and 219 staff members
had been trained.
In addition to the writing sessions, training sessions are offered several times a week to
teach users how to manage local pages and content. These are aimed at staff members,
Focal Points, contributors, and page managers who manage the content on their pages.
So far, approximately 2,000 staff members have been trained to perform various activities
on iSeek.

Maintaining Quality
As iSeek’s popularity has increased over the years, staff member content submissions have
also increased—though this content does not always fit the quality parameters. To address
this, rules and guidelines are offered to staff members to help improve submission quality,
and iSeek team members are always available to give advice (in person, by phone, or
email) to those who want to write for iSeek. Rather than turn down contributions, the team
tries to encourage contributors to improve their text. This approach helps foster the feeling
that everyone belongs to the vast community of UN staff members around the world and
iSeek is an inclusive platform.
A comprehensive page on the intranet offers specifics on content requirements. Following is
an example of the requirements for story posting:

News and Staff Stories

• Maximum of 350 words in English and/or French
• Title is maximum of 65 characters (includes spaces)
• Include 1 to 10 photos (minimum width of 800 pixels, landscape)
• A video from YouTube, Vimeo, or UN Web TV (Brightcove) may be
embedded
• Keep in mind the Secretary-General’s priorities of gender parity and
diversity when drafting your content, including the visuals
• Be sure to coordinate with your departmental Focal Point and verify
that the content is approved by them and/or managers
• Stories written on behalf of a department or office will be sent to
[email protected] by the Focal Point
The iSeek Team exerts editorial control on applying the iSeek guidelines,
especially for length, and makes adjustments regarding style. It also has
control over drafting the title and lead.
You will be informed of the day and time the story will be published. The team
can provide you with statistics on your content and prepares infographics with
yearly statistics on stories.

746 [email protected] United Nations (UN) (2020)

Culling Content
Because iSeek has kept content, especially stories, since its inception, it has become
necessary to establish rules for removing content (that is, deleting or unpublishing it).
Unpublishing older content is also part of the effort to improve the search and avoid
crowding the search results with old stories. For example, classifieds expire after 30 days,
and announcements are unpublished after one year.

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Pictured: This page provides the intranet’s founding principles, as well as
requirements for iSeek contributors, including details for each type of content and
retention policies.

748 [email protected] United Nations (UN) (2020)

TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY
Category Technology Used
Web Server Hardware and • iSeek is hosted on an internal Drupal farm,
Operating System which is managed by the UN’s corporate IT
department
Bug Tracking/Quality • Jira
Assurance
Design Tools • Adobe Creative Cloud

Site Building Tools • Drupal

Content Management Tools • Drupal
Search • Solr
Other Functions • Git for source code control management

Replacing Obsolete Technology

Until 2014, iSeek was hosted on a combination of outdated technologies, including Lotus
Notes and ASP 1.0. These technologies were out of support and lacked integration. Several
previous attempts to update iSeek’s infrastructure had all been unsuccessful due to
migration process complexity and a lack of dedicated personnel. The redesign process that
began in 2014 was successful, in part, due to the dedicated collaboration between the UN
corporate IT department, the iSeek editorial team, and the iSeek development team.
Rather than take a waterfall approach, discrete sections of iSeek were migrated in iterative
sprints, which allowed for more manageable tasks and shorter development cycles.
Successful sprints also demonstrated progress to the integrated project team and to
management. By the time the entire iSeek application was fully migrated, the project had
an iterative development process in place from which to innovate further as it developed
new functionalities and applications.

MOBILE
iSeek became been available on mobile devices (smartphones, tablets) and any computer
browser in 2014—a year before the major redesign. Currently, about 10% of traffic comes
from mobile users.
Accessing the intranet remotely was an essential feature for a tool serving an international
organization with staff located all around the world. Since iSeek went mobile, all staff
members have been able to access it from wherever they are, without being tethered to a
local network. This also opened the door for intranet access for employees traveling and
telecommuting. In addition, mobile access impacted content contributions, as it made the
ability to post remotely a reality. Editors and contributors can now create and edit content
on the go. And they can respond to requests to add new content even more quickly.
Mobile access is not only a convenience and an efficiency for the team, but it also provides a
pillar of business continuity in times of crisis or emergency. For example, in an emergency,
the iSeek Team can alert staff and update them about developments without having to be in
the office.

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The goals were to make the mobile version easy to access from anywhere and to ensure
that it met the accessibility standards for people with disabilities while featuring all the same
tools and information as desktop.
iSeek’s responsive design means it looks good on any device. And, without a larger team or
budget to support a custom app, this approach is both the most practical and the one that
iSeek users prefer; in both focus groups and surveys, most UN staff members told the
design team that they did not want to download an app onto their personal devices.
Site analytics show that UN staff members are more likely to access iSeek on a desktop
computer at their workstation than on a laptop or phone. But such access is changing
steadily, especially as the UN is making a hard pivot to support more flexible working
arrangements and telecommuting.
iSeek mobile usage grew 71% in 2018; staff members report using iSeek on laptops and
smartphones while traveling and working from home, and during their daily commute.
The team’s next step in mobile development is to create “iSeek Lite,” a low-bandwidth
version of the site that is optimized for staff working in conflict zones or remote areas,
where internet is patchy and load speeds are slow. The UN staff that work in these
challenging field locations are less likely to be working at a desk and more likely to access
iSeek from a mobile device.

SEARCH

Filtering
iSeek has several different search applications whose filter mechanisms depend on content
metadata. In most cases, the intranet uses a combination of faceting and keyword
searching. For example, the classifieds search has multilevel facets for category and
location, while the jobs search has six different facets. iSeek search results include filters for
all normalized metadata fields whenever possible.

Search Relevancy
Making sure the search tool returns relevant results is an ongoing challenge on any intranet.
On iSeek, search relevancy is maintained through various means, including expiring old
content automatically and offering powerful faceting tools along with keyword search,
particularly within applications such as jobs and classifieds.
Search relevancy is also being actively improved through a new UI that will provide a more
intuitive filtering process.

750 [email protected] United Nations (UN) (2020)

 Pictured: The default keyword search results page allows for further refinement by
content type, duty station, and more.

ROI
Measuring Success Through Metrics

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The UN team relies on some hard numbers and some softer measures to gauge the
platform’s success.
• Sessions and page views: The iSeek team reports the annual number of
sessions and page views to managers, and a new target is set each year. The
number of page views has increased consistently year after year; it currently
stands at 12.2 million views annually.
• Story submissions: In addition to collecting site traffic and usage statistics,
the iSeek Team also tracks which offices and departments have submitted
stories to the intranet, as it considers this a KPI. Each year, the number of
offices with story submissions increases as more managers recognize the
intranet’s value as a critical way to communicate with UN staff. For the iSeek
team, the overall goal is to ensure that iSeek represents everyone in the
organization.

Measuring Success Through Engagement

Each year, the amount of iSeek content submitted from UN offices and departments
increases. Managers in these offices recognize the benefit of reaching staff through iSeek
and have made it part of their internal communication strategies. For example, in 2016,
iSeek published 561 stories. By 2018, that number had grown to 903, and it is on track to
climb to more than 1,000 stories annually.
iSeek provides a platform not only for management to talk to staff, but also for staff to
respond via comments and likes. With iSeek, individuals can ask questions and expect a
response. This sparks conversations between staff and management that otherwise may not
have had a place to begin.

LESSONS LEARNED
The iSeek team members have given their lessons learned a lot of thought. They’ve tried
hard to figure out what worked and how to benefit from it, and what didn’t and how to learn
from it and do better in the future. Among these lessons are the following.
• Evaluate what “business” you’re in. “The Deputy Secretary-General—the
UN’s number two—launched the iSeek platform as a vehicle for internal
communications, but over time, because of the lack of means and the loss of
management engagement, the focus of the team became to manage the
intranet. Between then and now, iSeek has come to support more and more
staff—over 90% in 2019—and is gaining recognition from the highest levels of
all departments. By being at the epicenter of all internal communications and
recognized so by the office of the Secretary-General and management, its
staff is in a position to create the assets all departments use to promote the
priorities of the UN. This positions the iSeek staff as much more than an
intranet support organization, as they should be, given the intranet’s role in
furthering the mission of the UN.”

752 [email protected] United Nations (UN) (2020)

 • Acknowledge the uniqueness of your organization and work with its
limitations. “The United Nations has a culture of consensus. Combined with
the global and multidisciplinary nature of the organization, this means
decisions require the involvement of all stakeholders. A good example of this
culture in action was around adding commenting and liking features on the
intranet. The team considered these tools as critical to facilitating more two-
way communication in the organization. And while this had become standard
functionality on the web, even for internal tools, it was initially challenging to
gain the necessary approval to launch this feature at the UN. Management
was concerned that staff would voice grievances or post inappropriate
content. So the first step was to establish governance rules for the tools: the
iSeek Team would vet comments and they would only be published after they
were approved and a three-month trial commenced.
“The team quickly learned that staff didn’t submit anything controversial or
inappropriate, and over time very few comments were not approved. Only
through this trial was the feature allowed to become permanent, and it has
since become a much-used tool. And, while this trial was intended to test the
reaction to the tool, it also fostered trust between senior management and
the intranet team. With earned trust in place, the intranet team is able to
respond more quickly to the needs of users.”
• Engage users where they live. “As new offices were integrated into iSeek
and closed their local intranets, it became apparent that there had to be a
balance between global, organization-level stories, and local information. The
new Drupal CMS allowed for a combination of local and global stories for each
location based on editors’ choices. Now each duty station’s homepage
balances global and local content and provides a window to the outside via
social media. The importance of this external news was revealed in a survey
in which users expressed that they were not simply interested in internal
information and that iSeek—being a portal—should open its scope. Showing
social media indicates that internal communication is supporting the work the
UN does that is visible from the outside.”
• Expand your reach by responding to unexpected situations. “Two
unfortunate crises have played an important role in iSeek’s development and
its recognition by staff and management as an important tool: Hurricane
Sandy and the earthquake in Haiti. While the intranet was not originally
instituted as an emergency response tool, when Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012,
iSeek played a key role in informing staff about closures and developments at
HQ.
“With the Drupal content management system, emergency information is
included in the top menus and emergency messages can be posted at the top
of the homepage. The fact that iSeek also manages the posting of broadcast
emails has placed it in a central role to disseminate information. The
importance of these features on iSeek was illustrated during the Haiti
earthquake.”

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 o Haiti earthquake: In 2010, when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake
hit Haiti, the UN lost more than 100 staff in a single moment
and the iSeek Team stepped in as an emergency hub. Editors
from offices around the world were put to work to honor staff
whose lives were lost while serving in a peacekeeping mission.
The design of the homepage was turned from blue to black and
grey, and the team dedicated an important part of its editorial
efforts toward researching and drafting obituaries, which were
posted daily for more than a month on the intranet.
This brought people together and reminded staff of the role that
their intranet could play in giving them a sense of belonging in
the face of tragedy.

Best Practices

Content
• Allow for distributed content ownership. “Allowing for content autonomy
over individual areas helps generate pride and create community amongst
contributors. iSeek provides the platform and governance, and then news and
stories originate from all over the world, enabling fresh and interesting
content to be generated daily.”
• Make it personal. “Like a standard intranet, iSeek provides tools and
systems at users’ fingertips, but iSeek’s human-centered content provides
staff with a sense of meaning and belonging. By featuring a mix of global and
local personal stories, along with the accompanying images and videos, the
intranet serves to connect people and provide a window into the human
aspects of this distributed organization. With some staff working in harsh or
extreme environments, the platform unifies staff under a shared mission.”

Personalization & Customization

• Let users see themselves in the experience. “People want to see
themselves in their intranet. As iSeek integrated more and more offices, it
increased the visibility of these offices in the navigation as a way to remind
users that they’re part of a global organization.”

Management
• Move from a product-orientation to service-orientation. “When iSeek
first launched, the team was almost entirely responsible for creating and
sourcing stories. Now, stories are created and submitted through a more
distributed model and iSeek is being used to shift toward having an active role
in building awareness, oversight, maintaining guidelines, and providing
training and education. The platform has been transformed into more of a
two-way communication tool.”
• Stay lean. “The iSeek team’s flat hierarchy and ability to reach out within the
UN has enabled it to move fast and innovate.”

754 [email protected] United Nations (UN) (2020)

 • Take risks. “The manager of the iSeek team displayed this in her office for
years: ‘Please make mistakes.’ It’s good advice. If you don’t try and fail
sometimes, then you have not taken any risks.”

Technology & Integration

• Practice iterative development. “Integrating new features every month
and tweaking the design progressively has allowed the team to not have to
wait for a big splash to improve the platform.”
• Scale as needed. “A single intranet in a large organization can only function
if it’s able to respond to the multiplicity of user needs and serve many
purposes. This mantra has served the organization well, particularly in
response to scaling content localization in its role in publishing official and
informal news and acting as a content repository, and also in some of its best
features, including: the planning calendar, the business card generator,
emergency information dissemination, and the pragmatic service of classified
ads.”

Support & Help

• Responsiveness yields trust. “The iSeek team responds quickly to
questions and helps with publishing and translating. They also play a big role
in negotiating with constituents when content will appear, especially given
sensitive information, priorities of senior management, and multiple time
zones.”
• Provide frequent training opportunities. “If you train editors and users,
they then act as ambassadors for the service.”

Users & Stakeholder Involvement

• Cultivate and maintain an active network. “iSeek has an active Focal
Point network [of content managers] covering all departments, service units,
and duty stations. Due to the limitations of a six-person team in a single
location managing a global intranet, it’s important to leverage Focal Points to
become champions across departments and geographies.”

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 755

About the Authors

In addition to those listed below, we thank co-authors Candice Goodwin, a journalist and
usability consultant (2001-2003 Intranet Design Annuals), and Mathew Schwartz
(penandcamera.com) (2004-2007 Intranet Design Annuals) for their essential work.

Kara Pernice is Senior Vice President at Nielsen Norman Group and works with clients to
derive UX strategy and designs that meet business goals. With more than 20 years of
experience in management and user experience (UX) research and design, she has led
many major intercontinental research studies, authored a variety of research reports and
hundreds of guidelines, and coauthored the book Eyetracking Web Usability. The Wall Street
Journal called Pernice an “intranet guru.” She has lectured around the world on a wide
range of topics, and her client work spans many businesses and industries. Before joining
NN/g, Pernice gained invaluable experience pioneering UX and building and managing UX
teams in an assortment of development environments and established several successful
user experience programs. A champion for usability, Pernice chaired the Usability
Professionals’ Association 2000 and 2001 conferences, and served as 2002 conference
advisor. She holds an MBA from Northeastern University and a BA from Simmons College.
Amy Schade is a Director at Nielsen Norman Group with more than 20 years of experience
in usability, user research, and website design and development. She has led research,
authored reports, and taught courses on the usability of intranets, mobile websites and
applications, responsive design, emerging design patterns, email newsletters, and
ecommerce. She co-authored the Intranet Information Architecture report and has co-
authored the Intranet Design Annual since 2010.
Schade works with clients large and small in industries including telecommunications,
ecommerce, nonprofits, government, education, and publishing, including extensive work on
corporate intranets. She has conducted worldwide user research, including longitudinal
studies, remote studies, accessibility studies, and eyetracking research, running studies in
the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Before joining NN/g, Schade worked as an information architect. She previously held a
variety of positions in advertising and web production. She holds a master’s degree from the
Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and a BA in
communications from the University of Pennsylvania.
Patty Caya (www.pattycaya.com) is a freelance journalist (writer and editor) and an
award-winning digital media producer. In her business writing, she specializes in topics
relating to usability (including social media and mobile design) and the business and
technology of the web. She has co-authored the Intranet Design Annuals for NN/g since
2008. She wrote and edited the report, Mobile Intranets and Enterprise Apps, and the 1st
and 2nd editions of Social Features on Intranets: Case Studies of Enterprise 2.0. She
authored the 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions of the report on intranet portals and contributed to
the Application Design Showcase (2nd Edition).
For more than a decade, Caya has split her time between journalism projects and web
consulting. She is an experienced content strategist and interaction designer. She has
consulted for many of Boston’s top interactive agencies, leading web and intranet
development projects as well as usability testing, research, and design initiatives. Her client
roster spans a wide range of industries and includes leading national brands alongside
mission-driven nonprofits. She has a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the

756 [email protected] About the Authors

Arts and has completed coursework in the User Experience Program at Bentley University.
Dr. Jakob Nielsen is a principal of Nielsen Norman Group. He is the founder of the
“discount usability engineering” movement, which emphasizes fast and efficient methods for
improving the quality of user interfaces. Nielsen, noted as “the world’s leading expert on
Web usability” by U.S. News and World Report and “the next best thing to a true time
machine” by USA Today, is the author of the bestselling book Designing Web Usability: The
Practice of Simplicity (2000), which has sold more than a quarter of a million copies in 22
languages. His other books include Hypertext and Hypermedia (1990), Usability Engineering
(1993), Usability Inspection Methods (1994), International User Interfaces (1996),
Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed (2001), Prioritizing Web Usability (2006),
Eyetracking Web Usability (2009), and Mobile Usability (2012). In 2013, Nielsen received
the SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award for Human–Computer Interaction Practice.
Nielsen’s Alertbox column on web usability has been published on the internet since 1995
and currently has about 200,000 readers. From 1994 to 1998, Nielsen was a Sun
Microsystems Distinguished Engineer. His previous affiliations include Bell Communications
Research, the Technical University of Denmark, and the IBM User Interface Institute. He
holds 79 US patents, mainly on ways of making the internet easier to use.
Maria Rosala is a UX Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. She plans and executes
independent research for NN/g and leads UX training courses. Maria carried out usability
testing on a variety of intranets at public and private organizations in North America and
Europe for the 4th edition of the Intranet Guidelines Report. She is also an author of the
2020 and 2021 Intranet Design Annual.
Prior to joining Nielsen Norman Group, Maria worked as a UX researcher at The Home Office
in the UK government, where she carried out research in the UK and internationally to
improve numerous digital products and services, including internal casework systems, online
visa applications, public-facing websites, and various other online and offline services. In
late 2017, Maria led a UX team of researchers and designers in a high-profile program to
deliver new digital services for use by millions of people in the UK.
Maria has a BSc from the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the
London School of Economics and Political Science, and an MSc in Human-Computer
Interaction and ergonomics from University College London.
Anna Kaley is a User Experience Specialist at Nielsen Norman Group. Prior to joining NN/g,
Anna worked for more than 10 years in user experience architecture, design, and digital
strategy. She conducted complex user research, service, and experience design for
healthcare, agriculture, finance, tourism, retail, nonprofit, and engineering clients. She also
worked for a global, enterprise-level retailer where she was responsible for ecommerce and
software as a service UX across B2C (business-to-consumer) and B2B (business-to-
business) channels. Anna is skilled at applying insights from qualitative and quantitative
research to drive conversion, increase revenue, and improve user satisfaction in digital
products. She also has expertise in digital media planning, search marketing, and graphic
design.
Anna held UX roles on both client-side product teams and in digital agencies of various
sizes. She understands the challenges that user experience professionals face in both
contexts. This familiarity helps her bring a well-rounded approach to her projects and
instruction. She creates experiences that meet user and business needs while balancing
technical pragmatism. Anna has a Bachelor of Journalism degree with an emphasis in
Strategic Communication from the University of Missouri, Columbia. She is also a certified
Professional Scrum Master.

© NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP WWW.NNGROUP.COM 757

A Leading Voice In The Field of User Experience Since
1998.

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