Intranet diary

Google Analytics Realtime intranet statistics

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:23:00 +0000

Since Google introduced realtime analytics, we have been heavily, almost addictively, using this new toy to gain new insights into how staff are using the intranet.

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Could this be the start of a social intranet?

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 21:32:00 +0000

It's 5 o'clock on Friday afternoon, the day after our office Christmas party and I'm very much looking forward to going home. Just as I'm packing my things away I'm approached by one of the comms team...

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Content interaction vs content generation

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 08:23:00 +0000

Terms like social intranet and intranet 2.0 used to make me think "Facebook at work" (or indeed Google+ these days.) And that could be cool. But I ask myself "how connected are the people who work in the very different parts of our organisation?"

Intranet documents are not Russian dolls

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 09:49:00 +0000

Embedding and interlinking documents within other documents on the intranet creates a doll-inside-a-doll effect making it difficult for people to find the information that they want.

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Plain English content rewrite: July 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 13:15:00 +0000

We recently restructured some of our intranet sections and took the opportunity to do some plain English rewrites to the page content.

The horrors of devolved publishing

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 08:24:00 +0000

I like the idea of allowing staff to create and post corporate content on the intranet. But, in my experience, the idea hardly ever works well. It's essential that publishers know how to create effective online content. Devolved publishing makes it difficult to maintain consistent quality, structure and findability.

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Intranet information flow (Prezi)

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Sat, 28 May 2011 08:24:00 +0000

My first Prezi that I did for fun while experimenting with new presentation techniques. Here I try to show how we can improve a flat content structure by integrating social functionality into the intranet information flow.

Intranet information design must follow staff culture

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Sun, 08 May 2011 18:32:00 +0000

Sometimes users don't act as you'd expect. My recent analysis of search terms that staff use to find the online learning area of the intranet showed some unexpected results.

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Intranet publisher training course outline

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Sat, 07 May 2011 17:01:00 +0000

Learning the mechanics of pushing a piece of corporate content through a content management system and onto the intranet is only part of the skills required to be an intranet publisher. Creating quality material that is engaging, findable and useful to staff is equally essential so that the intranet does not become a place for trash.
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Introducing UX diary, my companion blog

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 16:19:00 +0000

I have started a new blog over at UX diary where I will write about my user experience and information architecture work on the corporate website.

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Plain text beats graphic content: A/B testing

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 21:56:00 +0000

A/B testing can help to pinpoint the type of content that staff are most attracted to. I ran an experiment to find out which advert was most effective in an internal campaign.

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Intranet roundup 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:38:00 +0000

2010 has been a year of fast-paced progress for the world of intranets. You can almost feel the ground swell and ripple with growth and evolution. The main drivers have been awareness, interest and adoption of social tools within the workplace. Here are the main themes that I've spotted throughout the year.

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Top tip to improve intranet A-Z index pages

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 00:13:00 +0000

A-Z index pages are very popular on our intranet. More popular than search. Our staff like to find what they want by looking it up in a list. If they don't find it in the list they may resort to the search box. By looking at what phrases staff use when they perform a search from an A-Z index page, we can get a good idea of what's missing from the A-Z listing.

Intranet show and tell Search event: 2 Dec 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 22:48:00 +0000

Partial wordcloud of staff search words

*Intranet search* was the subject of the Intranet show and tell event that took place at the Ministry of Justice in London on 2 December 2010. The bad weather meant that a lot of people could not make the event, but we managed to get 17 people around the table.

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Tagging users for intranet analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 21:24:00 +0000

In an attempt to get more out of our analytics data, I'm going to experiment with tagging users as they visit the intranet.

Social media & social networking 101: videos in plain English

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 22:01:00 +0000

A collection of videos explaining social media and social networking in plain English, /via @leelefever @commoncraft, including:

Social media
Social networking
Blogs
Twitter
Twitter search
Wikis
Augmented reality

How we increased feature news traffic by 53%

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 22:56:00 +0000

At the start of October we introduced the next step in our strategy to improve engagement with news stories on the intranet. A month later we are seeing a 53% increase in traffic.

News story pageviews comparing October (blue) to September (green)

Release the test tubes; time for more user experiments

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 08:21:00 +0000

As part of our efforts to save money across all parts of our organisation, we are combining many of our human resources, finance and procurement services into one central place.

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Shelf-stackers in the intranet supermarket

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 12:25:00 +0000

The job of the shelf-stacker is to fill the intranet shelves with junk. It's a fairly easy job. They don't have to think too much. It's not difficult to shove something on a shelf. They might stack it next to something similar, but it's not so important to them where it goes. Some of the shelf-stackers don't stack items with the labels facing the right way. As long as it's on a shelf.

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Evolution of an information architect

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 01:14:00 +0000

Last weekend I went to Bletchley Park, the home of the code-breakers and Top Secret government facility during WW2. The tour included a visit to the National Museum of Computing, which evoked some old memories. Since returning from the trip I've been reminiscing about the world of computers and information when I was a kid and what it's like for me now.

Old photo of Bletchley Park

How we improved our intranet search experience

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 14:32:00 +0000

We use the Google Search Appliance (GSA) across our family of intranets. In 2009 we launched a new search experience to coincide with an upgrade to the GSA.

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Analytics and statistics; what is the question?

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 15:39:00 +0000

Analytics, evaluation, data and statistics all have the gas turned up in the workplace. Rightly so. We need to make business decisions, evaluate performance, and design usability improvements based on hard evidence.

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Squiz is the shizz

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 20:03:00 +0000

Squiz provide and support the MySource Matrix content management system.

The nice men from Squiz came to visit us today and I have to admit to being excited before the demo of their product suite. I checked out their website a few weeks ago and was very impressed.

I don't know why I haven't bumped into them before now; they've been going for over 10 years. Probably because the product is Open Source and I haven't held out any hope of ever being allowed to use it.
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Managing the risks from online social networks

noreply@blogger.com (Luke Oatham) — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 16:46:00 +0000

Our public website contains videos from YouTube, photos from Flickr and we also have a Twitter stream. All open to the public so that they can see what fabulous work we do. But if you're a member of staff, you don't have access, at least not from the workplace desktop. C'est ridicule!

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