User Experience: FAIL!!

As seen on a recent Adaptive Path post:

OK.  I get most of it but what are the two before "Don't Feed the Squirrels"?

Design Patterns for Social Experience

Yes...I know...it has been a long time since I have posted anything in this space. Let me just start out saying that I have been really busy! I am still the sole intranet resource for my company (of 4500 employees) and I am doing the job of 2 or 3.

That being said, I have been working on revamping our "People Finder" application and finally adding some more social features such as two way connections, status updates, and activity feeds.

I have been doing quite a bit of research and found this really great article on Human 2.0 titled Design Patterns for Social Experience.

This really spoke to me:

...social experience design is about the interaction between people rather than the interface between the human and the computer – and that while you can fairly well control one person’s experience with a system, you cannot predict or control how people will choose to interact with each other.

As such, when you design a social experience, all you can really do is provide a framework. You can set the basic rules and capabilities, but the participants will finish the design for you.

Even though this article is about as old as my last post, I think it is worth a read for any intranet manager working on social projects.

What makes a successful intranet manager?

Just found a very interesting podcast on what makes a successful intranet manager of Catherine Grenfell by Jane McConnell of Globally Local. Check it out here: http://www.netjmc.net/globally_local/2009/11/catherine-grenfell-on-successful-intranet-managers.html

Don’t miss the boat!!!

The annual “Global Intranet Trends” survey closes in just a few days (10 to be exact). 

If you run an intranet make sure you take the survey!  Oh, and by the way for doing the survey (took me less than an hour) you will be send a free copy of the 2009 report!!

So don’t miss the boat!

http://www.netjmc.net/intranet-trends/how-to-sign-up-for-2009-survey.html

Just finished the Global Intranet Survey…have you?

If you are involved in your company’s intranet and have not yet taken Net Strategy JMC’s Global Intranet Survey 2009, you should.  Just head on over to http://netjmc.typepad.com/globally_local/2009/06/2009-global-lntranet-survey-goes-live-participate.html to sign up.

Cheap recognition

These days it seems like everyone is trying to save a dime and companies are obviously no different.  The problem is in corporate America, employees tend to get a little sore if they loose all the little recognition perks they have been so used to getting.

At my company, we have been working hard this year on putting in a few little features into our intranet so employees and leaders can provide no-cost recognition to peers and subordinates.

P.R.O.P.S.

P.R.O.P.S. or People Recognizing Other Peoples Success is a little tab on our employee yellow pages that allows employees to send a quick message of encouragement or congratulations.  The message is posted to the employees profile page where the whole company can view the success (unless it is marked private).

Employees can send up to 10 of these little gems per month.  We limited it so each time a kudos is sent, it really has some meaning behind it: “I can only send 10 of these out this month, I’d better make it count!”

eCards

The other little project completed this year was a branded eCards site.  This simple site also allows employees to send a message to other employees (or out side of the company for that matter) a branded image and message.

Messages include Happy Birthday, Congratulations, Thank You, Job Well Done, and the like.

Unlike P.R.O.P.S., eCards are privately sent only to the intended recipient.

 

I hope you can see that it does not take too much effort to provide creative solutions to employee engagement and recognition.  A few simple tools strategically added to your intranet can turn it from dull business site to socially engaging intranet!

Run an intranet??? Take a survey!!!

Jane McConnell of netjmc.com is running an intranet survey through the end of August. For your effort, you will get a copy of the 2010 "Global Intranet Trends" report. That reminds me....I still need to take the survey...thanks for extending it Jane!

The 4th annual Global Intranet Strategies Survey opened at the end of June and will stay open until August 31. All participants receive a complimentary copy (pdf) of the " Global Intranet Trends for 2010" report that will be published in the second part of October.


The key themes this year are:

- The workplace: Are intranets catching up with what people need to do their jobs?
- Collaboration: How does the online workplace support virtual teams and communities of practice?
- Social media: To what extent is social media being used internally and for what purposes?
- Search: Is enterprise search still a perennial problem? What strategies and resources are being put into place to optimize it?
- Ownership, governance and strategy: Who owns the intranet and what operating models and strategies are in place to drive business value?
- Measuring value: What indicators are being used to measure the value the intranet brings to an organisation: adoption, usage, satisfaction, workforce coverage, reduction of risk, business value?

Instructions for applying:
http://netjmc.com/survey/sign-up-JMC-global-intranet-survey-2009-2010.html


More information: 2009 Global lntranet Survey goes live! Participate!
http://netjmc.typepad.com/globally_local/2009/06/2009-global-lntranet-survey-goes-live-participate.html


You can contact Jane McConnell (jane@netjmc.com) directly for more information.