Date post: | 27-Jan-2015 |
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Balancing user experience with an out-of-the-box design in SharePoint 2013
Rebecca JacksonIntranet Specialist@_rebeccajackson
Melbourne Business User Group (Mbug)28 February 2014
About Melbourne Water
• Victorian Government owned
• 1700 people with intranet access
• Caretaker for
• Water supply catchments
• Removal / treatment of sewage
• Rivers, creeks, major drainage
Intranet Redevelopment project
• Current intranet:
• End-of-life of life technology
• Content is out-of-date
• Limited ability to manage content and improvements internally
• Lack of innovation
• Difficult to implement governance
Intranet Redevelopment project
• New intranet:
• SharePoint 2013
• Improved user experience
• Fresh look and feel
• New information architecture
• Focusing on core intranet features
• No collaboration yet
• Limited social
Project status
• Current activities:
• In the final phase of development
• Majority of content is written, being reviewed
• Key activities to come:
• User acceptance testing
• Training
• Content migration
• Launch, currently planned for May 2014
OOTB vs user experience
A key project objective is around user experience.
We also have a requirement to meet A and AA accessibility guidelines as per WCAG 2.0.
This is sometimes at odds with our need to stay as close to out-of-the-box as possible.
A quick disclaimer
User experience approach
• Completed by a User Experience expert from PWC’s Stamford
• Based on functional requirements and persona needs
• Desk top review
• User interviews
• Three rounds, one after each iteration
• 16 users in total
• Spread across personas, business groups and roles
Newsfeed and social features
“I’m thinking maybe it [comments] would go into Yammer.”
SharePoint 2013 includes a number of out-of-the-box social features:
• News feed
• Following people and pages
• #hashtags
• @replies
Usability issues with social features.
• Users assumed the features were Yammer integration.
• Found the follow feature confusing.
News feed and social features
Comments (Note board)
There is a Note board feature in SharePoint 2013 which we renamed to ‘Comments’ to use on content pages.
Usability issues:
• ‘Previous’ and ‘Next’ buttons appear and look clickable, even if there are no other comments.
• Default message added confusion for users and referred to ‘notes’.
• There was no way for page owners or authors to know if someone had left a comment.
• People assumed comments were moderated.
Comments (Note board)
SharePoint terminology
Most users were confused by unfamiliar SharePoint terminology:
• Newsfeed
• SkyDrive
• Sites
Search
SharePoint 2013 search is a significant improvement for our users out-of-the-box.
However…
• Refinement options were completely overlooked by most participants.
• No partial search.
• Both for standard search, and for people search.
• Refinements in the header search were not clear for people.
• The search box and refinements were not clearly formatted.
• Multiple search views confusing.
Search
Search
Organisational chart
People loved that they could see reporting relationships on user profiles.
But…
• The profile page org chat display is inconsistent.
• There’s a ‘SEE MORE’ link, which most users didn’t notice.
• If they got to the Silverlight view on the next page:
• It was too small.
• The scrolling transition wasn’t easy to use.
Organisational chart
Organisational chart
• First screenshot shows only direct reports• Second one shows colleagues• Not easy to visually differentiate
My sites
• User profiles are a separate from the main SharePoint site.
• Makes standardising look and feel problematic.
Usability issues with My Sites
• Not clear for users how to navigate back to the main intranet.
• Contact details layout and spacing poor.
• ‘SEE MORE’ button hiding information.
My sites
Dot dot dot
Where there are more menu options on functions SharePoint 2013 uses ‘…’ to indicate there is more.
Problem?
• Users don’t see the dots.
• Further functions remain hidden.
Dot dot dot
Accessibility review
• Completed by an accessibility expert from PWC’s Stamford
• Against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0)
• Desk top review
• Assisted technology review
Accessibility findings
A selection of features that did not meet A or AA accessibility requirements.
• Features not keyboard accessible.
• For example: Formatting toolbar, certain buttons, dropdowns.
• Error messaging not accessible to screen readers.
• Some form fields missing instruction.
• OOTB images with alt text missing or inappropriately used.
• Focus order illogical, and in some cases inappropriately used.
Accessibility
Inappropriate use of focus – content preview is functional.
Conclusions
• An out-of-the-box intranet is unlikely to meet the usability requirements of your staff.
• Based on our testing accessibility wasn’t a pass out-of-the-box• We assessed the importance of the feature against the severity of
the issue.• Some changes could not be made for this development, but will be
road-mapped for post-launch improvements.• Build user experience and accessibility into your project and
requirements.• Test.• Test early.• Test throughout the project.
Questions?
Feel free to get in touch:
Rebecca Jackson@_rebeccajacksonrebecca.jackson@melbournewater.com.aurebeccajacksonblogs.wordpress.com.au