Usability Evaluation

 What?

An Intranet lacking Usability means decreased productivity, higher training/support costs and lower employee morale.

An unusable Intranet significantly affects the work rate of employees. If the Intranet does not support the users' tasks then they are likely to work at a considerably reduced rate. Equally if an Intranet does not match user needs the overheads for support can be substantial.

In most cases an employee needs an incentive to use an Intranet. In most cases this means making their job easier. If it doesn't make their job easier they will circumvent the Intranet and use other channels. In most cases this means accrued costs for the organisation.

Our Usability evaluation reports detail the findings in an easily digestible format - suitable for management and developer alike. Our approach is the most comprehensive way of improving Usability - it's based on proven Usability methodologies, real-life scenarios of use and real users of the Intranet. A Usability Evaluation will provide the intelligence necessary to improve an Intranet to enhance business processes.

We recruit a sample of the Intranet's intended users and ask them to perform a series of task that are typical of those they would be likely to perform using the Intranet in the real world (e.g. 'Find the name and telephone number of the HR Director'). While performing the tasks the users are observed and recorded. Afterwards participants are interviewed to gather further information about their experience. We can run the tests at our state of the art Usability facilities or at your location using our remote Usability lab.

We use specialised software to both collect and interpret participant behaviours. In addition to identifying Usability problems our approach enables us to make recommendations to rectify them. These recommendations allow action to be taken the very same day.

There are three key deliverables:

Usability report - detailed document outlining our methodology, results and their interpretation.

Video highlights - edited video clips of the most informative parts of the tests.

Presentation - an oral presentation communicating the most important findings and recommendations.