The value of a more human touch

As modern business channels grow ever more diverse and technologically advanced, usability and accessibility techniques must evolve rapidly to keep pace. Specialist laboratories, industry benchmarking, eye tracking, automated usability tests and competitive analysis are all effective tools available to the modern usability consultant. However, our strong belief in a user-centric design methodology demands more than technical advances alone.

Recently I undertook an intranet development project for a major organisation which relied primarily on in-depth user based research. User based research requires the human touch. We submerge ourselves in the workplace culture and society of our clients in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the behaviour, communications, expectations, opinions and feelings of individuals. This particular project called for the redesign of a sizeable intranet guided by feedback from the end users themselves.

We involved individuals in group discussions and one-to-one conversations in their own workplace so that they felt free to talk about issues close to them in a familiar environment that put them at ease. When people have extreme views, usually about changing a system radically or leaving it exactly the same, it’s important they feel free to open up and not be on guard, which is one advantage of escaping a clinical viewing room or laboratory. It is always very revealing to see how people respond or don’t respond to the promise of change. Recommendations are far better informed if the culture of an organisation is better understood. How do individuals want to upload new information? How would they like to interact with it? What makes them trust information? Questions like these all impact upon intranet development to try and ensure as many different considerations are fulfilled. Internal culture mustn’t restrict design and development across an organisation, but neither should considerations be seen to be imposed from the top.

User based research works most effectively in conjunction with other usability research techniques such as one-to-one card sorting or telephone interviews. Feedback from multiple techniques can then be pulled together to create model personas that can be used to develop site maps and push on with the full design.

In the past an agency might have fulfilled a project like this by presenting a proven generic intranet model to high-level management within the customer organisation, and then consulting only those executives who hold the budget and IT reins. Now we know there is much more value in talking to the secretary that will actually use the new intranet most each day. This ‘bottom-up’ approach provides the right perspective and insight for the job. In the future, if budgets allow for it, we’d like to immerse ourselves even deeper into client culture, shadowing processes over a longer term and in a wider range of working environments to get the most value possible from the human touch.