User centred or Department centred? Intranet design

11 | March 2nd, 2010 | Posted in Design

Help! I’ve been talking about ‘user centred design’ for our intranet, but I now need to put it in writing, which means I need to specify the following:

Information will be published in the relevant, logical (to our people) section of our intranet, rather than within the Department section. While Departments will continue to own and publish the information they won’t place it in their Departmental website, but rather in the logical section where the information fits best, relating to similarly themed content, as laid out in the overarching Intranet Structure Map.

‘Department websites’ on our intranet will be reserved for obvious, natural team information such as how to ‘contact us’.

Example:

A web page (and associated PowerPoint process map) entitled: Amending Your Pension Payments.

The Pension Department will publish this page within the main, well known, “How do I” section, alongside other personnel and job management pages. It will not reside within the little ‘Pensions’ website, within the HR departmental intranet site.

Well? What do you think? Is this the right thing for me to insist upon? If so, have I written it in an understandable manner?

Please help; this is a real life situation for me, and my stakeholders haven’t any time to even consider what I’m talking about – the very concept of ‘where pages reside’ is too detailed for them – I need to lead on this.

Thank you

[Wedge]

Photo credit: Howard Gees

If you’re willing to help this query reach more people, please tweet this short URL: http://kilobox.net/1352

kilobox communiqué discusses the theory and practice of 'Internal Communications', touching on all aspects of good communication including writing, channels (e.g. intranets), best practices, technologies and the needs of the audience. I re-launched kilobox communiqué in July 2008, and I'm thrilled to have met so many communication professionals and practitioners online. I read every comment.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Or maybe you'd prefer
to subscribe by email? You can even follow me on Twitter for updates.

Follow Wedge on Twitter
Tagged in: , , , , ,

Five points for good writing

1 | March 2nd, 2010 | Posted in Communications

My writing started in school, where I was fortunate enough to be allowed to take Media Studies and English Literature (teachers said it was ‘too specialised’ but allowed me when I demonstrated by commitment to writing). I continued at college, where I took further creative and literary courses (and mostly failed to take them seriously I’m sorry to report [family crises]). But it was only when I started doing some external comms that I truly reflected on the needs of the reader, and it was only working with awesome bosses that I began to learn about grammar!

So I’m a hands on writer now; I’ve honed my craft in real-life situations, and I’ve learned the rules and when to break them. I’m still learning of course, and I hope the bits I share with you are useful. Here are five more ideas to guide writers and communicators when the message really matters.

The first draft is powerful; the sixth, spineless – of course I use review cycles; of course news, articles, pages and documents need approving. But committees will hack into the tone and style when they don’t need to. Content and style are separate.

Words without meaning – have no place in our clear communications. Oh the comedy!

Enough is as good as a feast – the balance between clear concise communications and the need for context and understanding.

The difference between good writing and a good message – almost a manifesto! Several good ideas to free your writing, plus three lists to help you hone your message.

Who’s asking who when you write questions? – a personal vendetta of mine. Don’t change ‘voice’ in your articles.

Please do leave your comments and ideas on the relevant article, or lay it on me below.

[Wedge]

If you would like to share or tweet this article, the short URL is: http://kilobox.net/1343

Tagged in:

Five further ideas for Internal Communications and your intranet

1 | February 24th, 2010 | Posted in Communications

As an Internal Communications geek, specialising in the intranet, I’ve been sharing ideas for many years now. Might I interest you in the following?

Your intranet is not a channel for you to vent on –
regardless of how few people took note of your article or attended your event…

Everything you know about intranets is wrong – well, maybe not what ‘you’ know, but you’ll recognise these communication fallacies I’m sure.

The future of internal communications – my word; I wrote a fair essay on what I don’t want for the future of comms, and I’m wondering what the real future of Comms 3.0 might be.

You can’t make people care – you can’t, but you can use communications to lead in to engagement activities. Check my six points for how you can do more than merely answer people’s needs and queries.

How to provide your company policies – different Document Control Systems use / demand different processes for publication, but the intranet is often the default distribution system, so how best can you provide high-level documents?

I mentioned my five best intranet design ideas earlier, if you’d like to check ‘em out.

Please do leave your comments and ideas on the relevant article, or lay it on me below.

[Wedge]

If you would like to share or tweet this article, the short URL is: http://kilobox.net/1335

Photo credit: dailypic

Tagged in: ,

My five best intranet design ideas

4 | February 22nd, 2010 | Posted in Communications, Design

I’ve been writing about Internal Communications for many years now, and have focussed on intranet best practices quite a bit in recent years. Here are five good ideas for designing and improving your current intranet:

Seven easy intranet
improvements to make this month – with no financial outlay and just some common sense, you can improve your intranet pages now and forever more.

The disappearance of front page news –
how do your readers find your intranet news stories? – ‘news archives’ are usually a poorly designed ‘black hole’ where stories go to die. How can we improve the archive’s usability?

The font size in your communications – Microsoft Word, emails and the intranet all have different default font sizes, and different font measurement scales.

Grab your reader by the eye balls – people ‘see’ the page before they read it. The secret is to have good layout with multiple locations for the eye to rest on and a flair with images.

One for external websites – Are you chasing PageRank and SEO? – Five things you can do to raise your external / customer facing website’s profile.

Please do leave your comments and ideas on the relevant article, or lay it on me below.

[Wedge]

If you would like to share or tweet this article, the short URL is: http://kilobox.net/1328

Photo credit: clarksworth

Tagged in:

Knowledge Management – why should I share my expertise and know-how with office idiots?

1 | January 27th, 2010 | Posted in Rants

Before we start, don’t talk to me about altruism; I’ve done my social psychology homework. Today, my perspective is from within a massive office.

Sorry about the title. I don’t know any ‘office idiots’ and I absolutely agree that ‘ignorance’ (of a system, of a process) is not a crime, but merely a ‘learning need’. ‘Ignorance’ is not an insult judgement word, it is a describer. I am ignorant of court etiquette, no biggie!

That said, I want to ask the big philosophical question of:

“Why should you share your expertise with an unknown office person who you don’t have a relationship with and never will? Especially when their role or expertise can never benefit you or your role.”

Read More »

Using URL shorteners for your intranet

3 | January 18th, 2010 | Posted in Communications

You must have heard of TinyURL.com, bit.ly, ow.ly, goo.gl, droplr.com and other such ‘web address shortening services’ and you may well be using them without fuss or thought in your emails and tweets.

But do you use them when you’re at work with colleagues or do they cause confusion with non-techy people?

Did you know you can use your fave shortening service with intranet URLs? Oh yes. And here’s why you would want to.

Read More »

Tagged in: , , , , ,

Use infographics to communicate meaning

0 | January 13th, 2010 | Posted in Communications, Design

The Interwebs loves infographics; funny Venn diagrams and pie charts have entire web communities devoted to their production. Internal Communications can make good use of graphics to explain and display numerical data, and I’m not saying you should take a screen shot of a bar graph you made in Excel. No, in 2010, graphics need to be pretty. Sorry, but style does matter, and the substance benefits from good styling.

Create graphics by hand, using Photoshop, Fireworks. Serif or your favourite image creation software. You’ll want to create coloured circles and squares; it’s not too much of a challenge so give it a go.

Before you start though, check out 11 Ways to Visualise Changes Over Time – which shows you what lines, circles and squares can do for you and your communications.

I’ve used some simple graphics, see:

[Wedge]

Tagged in: , ,
RSS for Posts RSS for Comments

Switch to our mobile site