"Roll up, roll up" - is it time to get out and meet your intranet audience and see what they really think? Image: dhammza

Before we begin: this post is aimed at folks with intranets to run, but I think the lessons can be applied to external sites too...

The beauty of running an intranet is you can easily meet your audience in the flesh, but it can still be easy to hide away in the office and not take advantage of this great opportunity.

A few months ago I was working with the UK Parliament Intranet Team (Maria, Liz, Alex and Ros). They were in the middle of a big piece of work to shift the entire intranet from a department and team structure information architecture to a task based model. And rightly so.

What was so impressive was the level of engagement they had with the intranet´s userbase around Parliament.

The headline event of this consultation was the hosting of a day-long presentation stand in the busy Portculis House (opposite Big Ben) where many MPs have their offices. You know the sort of thing… a few hanging posters, some flyers, free pens…

The aim was to meet the intranet´s users in person and discuss and gather feedback on the upcoming changes.

Afterwards I asked the team why they thought it had gone so well (it clearly had) and if there was anything they would have done differently. These were the key points:

1. Be clear about what you want to achieve

If you´re not focussed on your reasons for setting up a stand you will struggle to get useful feedback. This ambiguity will come across to the visitors at your stand and they´ll be unsure what you expect from them. Focussed examples could be:

• “We want to change the design of the intranet and we need feedback on our prototypes.”
• “We know the HR section of the intranet is not great and we want to find out what our audience need from that section.”

It is important to communicate the purpose of your stand at all stages, from the advertising (email invites, bill-board posters, oral invitations, etc) to the way you start conversations with people at the stand.

There is no harm in spelling it out with a big call to action… at Parliament they had big posters and a great looking scrolling presentation on a TV with words like this: “Use the intranet? Help us improve it by telling  us what tasks you perform.” Most people can get their head around that and give you some useful feedback in 60 secs.

2. Advertise your stand and spread the word

Obvious really, but that is what the guys at Parliament did really well and it made the difference to numbers on the day. This is especially important if you can´t get the busy spots, outside the canteen for example.

You run the intranet so advertise the session on the homepage and make it sound interesting and worth the effort popping along, remembering to be clear about the purpose of the session and who it is aimed at.

And put a bit of pressure on your intranet friends around the organisation to spread the word for you and bring along their colleagues.

3. Time, location, and set-up of your stand

Think carefully about the best day and time of day to run your stand to get the most impact from your effort. That will largely depend on the location of your stand, so using the canteen entrance example it will obviously be best at breakfast and/or lunchtime. Ask the advice of the person who arranges the booking, they will have a good idea.

As for the actual stand, you do need to look the part if you want to be taken seriously. At Parliament they got one of the web designers to knock up a colourful poster design which they had professionally printed. They also had a simple, but professional, scrolling presentation on a big screen to turn heads.

Tip: A really simple, but effective technique is to have a bowl of sweets on the stand. It was amazing how many people at Parliament would come over to get a free lolly. And once they have taken one, you have every right to ask them: “Do you use the intranet…?”

4. Lots of lovely, and not so lovely, feedback

If you ask for feedback, you had better be ready to capture it.

Because the Parliament guys had clear objectives for their stand (What are the most common tasks our intranet users want to perform?) they asked that question on pre-printed forms with a nice big box to scribble the answer in. They had a few more fields to capture the name and audience group of the user, e.g. MP or MP staff, but kept it minimal and focussed. A nice touch was a branded ballot box (fashioned out of a printer paper box and glued on flyers) for folks to cast their completed forms. Very apt for Parliament.

Now not everyone wants to or has the time to fill out a form so try to complete it for them as you talk. Sometimes they may have already left the stand, but capture as much of the useful stuff as possible and pop it on the pile. This isn´t scientific research so don´t get too hung up about completing every field.

By the end of the session you will hopefully have some great data that starts to answer your questions.

You will also get negative feedback, and often warranted. But this is the juicy stuff (mostly) and you have the perfect opportunity to ask them what they think it should be like or why they don´t like something. It can be really tough to publicly open yourself up for criticism, but it´s vital you don´t become defensive and miss the opportunity to better understand your users.

5. Set expectations or it will come back to bite you

If you aren´t careful you will hear this line 6 months after the session: “…I told your team about this months ago and no one has bothered to do anything about it.”

Asking people what they think is not the same as saying: “we are going to act on what you think”. But don´t presume everyone who comes to your stand gets that. Be clear from the start that this is part of a bigger process… you are looking for trends… you are gauging opinion… however you want to say it, don´t let them think you are going to act on everything they say. That would be crazy.

6. Now do something about it

What you do with the findings of the session will depend greatly on what you were trying to find out, but I would suggest these actions:

• have a wash-up meeting with everyone on the stand to discuss how the session went: key themes, immediate concerns, actions (with owners), lessons learnt for next time…
• process the data on the feedback forms ASAP – if your session was trying to identify the most popular tasks on the intranet (as in the Parliament example) run the numbers and pin up the results on the wall for everyone to see
• send round an exec summary of the session to your team and other key people, spelling out what this means and next steps
• get a follow up news item on the intranet homepage thanking those who came along and tease them with some of the findings and what you plan to do with them…  and if you have the time to send these people an email even better

7. Few last tips for running a successful stand

• ask the people who come to your stand if they are willing to be consulted in the future – these are often the perfect people to demo prototypes to or conduct user testing sessions with. Tip: don´t shy away from asking the most critical people, they are often the most rewarding people to work with
• rotate the people on the stand - it gives people a break but it also means more people in the team gain the invaluable experience of meeting users face-to-face (this again worked well at Parliament)
• get your boss along and helping out, sure they are busy, but they need to hear this stuff and it gives the rest of the organisation a good impression of a united team effort supported from the top

If I´m honest, I was actually a bit sceptical when asked to help out on the stand at Parliament and wasn´t convinced it was the best use of my time. But I was wrong. If done properly it is a very efficient way to better understand your intranet, it´s purpose and the people who use it.

As ever, let me know how you get on.

Liam