4. • It has a motor
• It has a steering wheel
• It has a seat
• It has four wheels
Take the features of this item:
Laura Jones | @laurap_1989
5. • It evenly cuts grass
• You can change direction easily
But what about the goals?
Laura Jones | @laurap_1989
6. “When you have
been off it’s hard
to find out what
you have missed”
“Its all over the
place. It would be
better if its all in
one place!”
“it’s extremely
hard to find what
you need”
“If I didn’t have
my favourites, I
don’t know what I
would do”
“It can be embarrassing when
you’re with a customer and you
can’t find something, you look like
you don't know what you’re doing”
Laura Jones | @laurap_1989
7. Laura Jones | @laurap_1989
It starts with a survey…
Feedback form
Face to Face
ObservationsDrop ins
Updates page
Floor walking Branch visits
Huddles
Ambassadors
Leadership meetings
Secondments
Banners
Sneak Peaks
Card Sorts
Emails Articles
User Testing
Focus Groups
Laura Jones | @laurap_1989
I have been at The Co-operative Bank for just over four years in various roles in the Operational Comms Team and for the 18months I have been The Intranet and Control Manager.
This talk is about how we involve colleagues in the Intranet process and what we have gained from it.
Colleague feedback is now central to what is delivered, they inform the tools we build, the content displayed and most importantly how it is displayed.
Our Colleagues who have been involved and engaged in the process of either developing or delivering the Intranet use it more often and have a more positive attitude than those who haven’t. They naturally become advocates of the site and have helped embed the Intranet into their teams.
When I started looking at how we do UX, I wanted to ensure we where doing the right thing by everyone not just the people who spoke loudest, or where in a position of authority.
I often find myself saying to users, this is your site and you know better than I do what you need from it its become my mantra.
Before I tell you what we do I wanted to share why
We started to receive negative feedback shortly after a pretty large release, we had included all the features we had been ask for but for some reason it wasn’t working for colleagues, particularly those on the front line that use it most often.
I have borrowed this from uxtraining.com. Take this example. This product has the following features:
It has four wheels
You can sit in it
It has a steering wheel
It has a motor
If you where going to build this product based on these features, what is it you think you would build?A car right?
Right
But what if I add a couple of user goals for the same product? Users want to:
Change direction easily
They want it to be comfortable
and they want it to evenly cut grass
All of a sudden just one goal has completely changed what we all where planning to build.
This a bit of an extreme example but the point remains you can ask for and add lots of features to your products which are all valid but without truly understanding your users goals, your product might not do what they want it to do. It all comes from asking the right and enough questions, when you do UX do you ask enough questions?Its the same with your intranet it can have all the right components but if its not structured in the right way to help users meet their goals then is it really working.
As with most UX projects this started with a survey, here are a few of the comments we received, in most cases they didn’t say they felt content was missing just that they couldn’t find it, In fact a few people suggested new features that had actually been available for over 12 months they just hadn’t found them. It was clear like the lawnmower scenario we had all the features we needed but they weren't being delivered or structured in the right way.
This feedback only scratches the service and it isn’t enough for us to act on, it might give us the first goal on the users list but without more how do we know how best to change it. I didn’t want to build a car and find out it needed to be a lawnmower in the end.
Like I said before this is their site and they know better than I do what needs changing and how it will work for them.
We adapt our approach for a number of reasons sometimes because of timing or location we need to hold conference calls, when gathering feedback about specific features we might do something which will return less volume like post an article for comment or send an email to our group of super users / ambassadors who are positioned across the Bank.
The most effective method is definitely observations. It can be the most time consuming but the results are much better, Users don’t always know what they want you might observe something you think you can make more efficient or witness a moan from someone nothing to do with the Intranet but that you can solve. We would typically plan to spend a day with one team with a couple of 2hour observations one in the morning and one in the afternoon and work from a desk near the team for the rest of the day so that you pick up on passing comments.
A recent development that came from this process is a comms alert box that pops up in the header of the site, if there is more that one it tickertapes across but when no incidents or urgent comms are live there is nothing in the header. This came about as once in the contact centre I was sat with an advocate, listening to calls and watching their interactions with the Intranet, they didn’t go back to the home page in between calls just from one task/process to another so when an urgent message was published it was 20 mins later and only when a customer reported a problem the advocate looked for an update on the newsfeed. This new tool has been very well received by customer facing colleagues giving them fast accurate information as an when something happens, and as it disrupts the site slightly it draws their attention to it. Putting them on the front foot.
These 121 interactions are great you can really get to the root cause of feedback easily without digging about too much. We also widely promote a feedback form now that colleagues trust us to act their feedback in which they leave there name and contact info so we can ask more questions if we need to.
After all Colleagues who feel involved and engaged in the Intranet use it more often.
If time permits *A surprisingly useful source of feedback to me was, Secondments. Secondments are the most recent thing we have introduced but good when making big changes, we have had a number of colleagues from different customer and non customer facing teams join us for varied periods of time some for a few days some for a few months, not only does this support the colleagues development but it gives us a great insight to what its like in their normal role. It started as a way of getting some help validating content and migrating it onto our new intranet but it turned out to be much more valuable, they have kept us on track on stopped us, designers and developers going of track and forgetting what is important to the users.
They have provided some great functions that we have implemented and then when they went back to their normal roles they acted as genuine advocates of the Intranet and our team, they talked to their teams about us and what they had learnt.
My favourite comment from a secondees was “I never knew that all work went into what you guys do” It has really helped us break down the barrier between us and our users helping us to build stronger relationships.
My team now have an objective to visit 2 branches and 1 contact centre every quarter. This keeps us close to our users particularly frontline so that we continue to builds strong relationships and deliver what they need.
Now that more colleagues across the business know who we are they are more open with us about what they think, they are more confident in asking questions now and have a better understanding in how things work. We ensure we are providing colleagues with adequate time to get involved which reduces the ill feeling of changes being done to them and increases their engagement in their intranet as they become a part of it and we share everything we receive publicly so even the suggestions we can’t act on.
It’s an open and honest environment.
There is still a long way to go but:
Colleagues feel supported and listened to.
They have a route to feed in problems and suggestions.
There is a better understanding to what the comms team do and how the intranet works.
Colleagues feel engaged in the process and start to think of the site as theirs rather than something they just use.
Over all it has been a big success so far but time will be the real test, this isn’t about delivering a project and weather or not I would do something differently next time its about doing stuff and developing what and how we do it as we go through it’s a never ending cycle not a path. So if in 12 months time I can still say colleagues regularly feedback, attend focus session and are largely positive about their site I will know its still working.