Use accessibility as a lever to improve

I sometimes come across sites and applications on BT’s intranet which could be more usable.  I find it can be easier to pick up with the owner or developer about its accessibility as a lever to improve other areas such as usability.  Why you may ask?

Well there are some improvements which are a matter of opinion.  What is usable to one person maybe very unusable to another.  They are subjective.

But accessibility is NOT subjective.  Either a site is accessible or not.  Also in most countries there is a legal requirement for web services (this includes intranets) to be accessible.  The level required may vary.

Accessibility standards are available to everyone on the internet.  So whether a site or application is developed, published or managed inside or outside of your organisation, the information will always be there.

When a site or application’s accessibility is being updated it is a great opportunity to improve the usability and make other changes at the same time.

So ideally you can improve a site or application so it is legal and improved in other ways to give a better overall experience for all users.

Preventing accessibility problems as well as correcting existing problems is very important for your users as well as your organisation’s legal responsibilities.

I’ll post soon about what BT does on web accessibility.

Mark Morrell meets Oracle: update

I met with Oracle and other Oracle customers earlier this week.  This was the first of what Oracle hope will be regular meetings with their major customers in Europe.  The main focus was on content and document management product features and roadmaps.

I left with the impression that Oracle seriously wants to continue improving the usability of Universal Content Management by engaging with their customers through webcasts and meetings.  The next release of 11G using Fusion promises to move towards what I would like – a simple publishing experience which needs minimal IT involvement.

I would like the following to happen next:

1. Oracle should hold frequent webcasts with customers to cover future direction of UCM and other products like E-Business Suite.
2. Customer representatives should have more business users attending with their IT partners.  I was in a small minority at this week’s meeting.
3. Intranet managers who are Oracle customers should make sure they attend these meetings.
4. Intranet managers should improve their relationship with their IT partners so they are more involved in decision criteria on products so it covers usability and productivity costs during its lifetime.
5. Meetings should focus more on how Oracle products can be used by customers than on the components that make up the technology.
6. An agreed set of usability standards underpin the direction of product roadmaps.

We should never forget the goal is to make it easier for people to do their work by using technology that is giving best overall value to the business not to have the latest whizzy feature which doesn’t.

And that applies to any software from any vendor our organisations buys.

Benchmark to get the best value

I read with great interest Jane McConnell’s blog post on “Vanity” or “Specific value” benchmarking?’. BT has benchmarked its intranet for the past 4 years with the Intranet Benchmarking Forum (IBF). In fact as I write this two IBF people are doing an expert evaluation of our intranet!

BT’s intranet is benchmarked in four broad areas; strategy and governance; metrics and performance; communications and culture; design and usability.

The main aim is to find out where BT sets global best practice and where it can be improved. To assess whether it is meeting the needs of BT and people who use our intranet. All good stuff but…………

It can sometimes be difficult to find out apart from other IBF members where that best practice is and whether it is transferable to BT’s intranet.

It can also be difficult to use the data to justify further investment in BT’s intranet. The IBF do have a financial value benchmark area but that costs more.

So, I’m trying to address Jane’s three questions.

1. I would like to share my benchmarking data with other intranet managers of global organisations with advanced intranets. Any one interested?
2. Identify more of the full value an intranet provides in a form that can be used and understood by people who make the big financial decisions on future intranet investment. Any ideas?

I’ll share the key findings on BT’s benchmarking when known in April.

Mark Morrell meets Oracle

Next week I will go to Oracle’s Customer Advisory Council.  This is a meeting between Oracle and as many of their top 10 customers who can attend.  BT comes into that category so I’ll meet Oracle.

The aim of the council is to cover the user experience and how future versions of software being released will improve it.  It should also cover concerns like I have about the usability of their applications and making things easier to use.

So, this meeting won’t just be about the current or next release of Oracle UCM and how it meets BT’s needs but cover other applications.

I believe I will be shown the next releases to comment upon  and suggest how their future plans could improve the user experience.  I really would like Oracle to seriously consider working to some agreed usability standards.

So, this is your chance to help me by leaving a comment on this post or email me by next Tuesday 17:00 GMT (meeting is Wednesday and Thursday) on any usability issue you have that I can raise on your behalf.

I expect it to be a valuable and constructive meeting.  I hope to update you afterwards with the progress made.  I try to be optimistic!

Meeting mobile intranet users’ needs

Last Friday I was interviewed by the Intranet Benchmarking Forum about how BT was meeting our intranet users’ needs who use a mobile device.  I also came across a great blog post and an internet report on mobility (over 40mb!).

So, I thought I would share what BT has done and what I would like to do in this post as it is becoming a hotter topic.

I posted about BT Intranet mobile users in June 2009 which links to examples.  I feel progress in 2010 will move in different ways for content than for applications.

Content

Now: BT’s intranet standards make sure a PDA heading is on the templates used by our content management system for publishing information.  It means mobile users can click on this to see a text version of the same content.  Changes made to the main version automatically update the PDA version so people can rely on the content being the same.

Future: With the increased capability of mobile devices used by people in BT I want to make sure the coding (CSS) used for the content is capable of sizing up or down for any device and enable images to also adjust their size.  This means we only need one version that is usable and accessible to any device (mobile, laptop, desktop PC, etc) saving on costs and giving users a better experience.

Applications

Many of my regular readers will know my views about the poor usability of applications for intranet users and my concerns with Oracle’s applications on BT’s intranet.

For applications two versions are needed.  The full, standard, functionality is available for people to use but for mobile devices only the cut down, key functionality is available.

For example with BT’s Directory I can check a person’s contact details, manager, organisation chart, whereabouts, team members and their whereabouts.  For mobile devices only the contact details for the person found are available as that is the main reason why people use it.

The difficulty for me is persuading software vendors used by BT for intranet applications to understand why this is important and what is needed.  It should keep me busy during 2010!

The future for BT’s intranet?

At the end of 2009 I posted about BT’s intranet being 15 years old and the progress made in that time.

BT’s intranet has constantly evolved to meet the changing needs of the business and how it best helps people to be able to do their work as effectively as possible.

BT’s intranet has always aimed to be simple and easy to use.  People use it to complete an activity such as a room booking, check the latest news and more recently, publish and use opinions and views with people that have the same interests across BT.

So what’s my view on its future for 2010?  It’s likely to see BT’s intranet:

• become even easier to use, wherever you are – at home, coffee shop or BT building – whenever you want to and with any device – your PC, BT’s computing kit or mobile – and the real difference will be the experience will be the same.
• ease of use will also mean you won’t need to keep authenticating to use applications and content protected behind passwords.  Just login once and then loading up your browser will give you faster access to what you need.
• people will find it as easy to publish content they want to share or own as sending an email and be able to search for all the different types of information on BT’s intranet from one search page that gives you what you need.

Maybe these are not earth shattering aims?  But I know if I can help achieve any of these people in BT will benefit more from using our intranet. 

And that’s what my role as BT Intranet manager is.

BT Homepage: agreed by users

After testing with users on the changes to BT Homepage I have been able to launch it with the changes to some sections of the top page and site.

While some users when asked for their views wondered what all the fuss was about for the small changes proposed, most appreciated being given the chance to give their views and liked the changes.

I have greater confidence that I’ve made changes which users want and need to give them an even easier way to find what they need for their work.

A lesson I have learned is to try to make changes small rather than keep them back until a major change is needed.  It avoids users being disorientated with all the changes.  Of course keeping the number of times changes are needed to a minimum helps too.

Testing with users involves them more and suggestions made will help me make further small changes in 2010.

Here is the final version in normal colours and in Team BT/2012 Challenge colours when quarterly updates publicising progress and how people get involved are made.

BT’s intranet is 15 (yes, 15) years old

Just before Christmas 15 years ago a few grey pages appeared and flickered away on a computer screen in BT for the first time.  

What began as a small pilot project to look at the problem of “information overload” has led to being one of the best intranets globally with everyone in BT using it.

It’s now such an intrinsic part of the way that the company does its business that it is hard to imagine business life without it.  A BT person now uses the information network for a variety of tasks at work and also works with processes and systems which are intranet based.

 These include ‘killer applications’ at the start of our intranet that I have posted about before – BT Homepage, Directory, BT Today and more recently social media tools like Blog Central, BTpedia and Podcast Central.

Information and activities supported by the intranet include sales and marketing data, fault resolution, service planning and provision, facilities management, human resources support, senior executives’ sites and business intelligence.

All our key BT-wide applications most people need to use are online – whether booking a room, claiming expenses, ordering a PC, performance marking or training – saving time, paper, effort and transforming costs.

So what about the future?  I can’t predict for the next 15 years but I’ll post about the next 15 months soon.

New BT Homepage – what’s your view?

In the last BT Intranet user survey I carried out earlier in 2009 I asked people in BT if merging information and applications into logical groups based around activities/functions would help them.  The majority answered ‘Yes’.

I am now testing the new version that tries to do this with users and asking for their views.

The last major change to the BT Homepage was at the beginning of 2009 with a recent change in some of the colours when the 2012 challenge countdown began earlier this month.

I’m sharing the proposed changes and how we are testing these with users in these slides.

What do you think of the changes and how we are testing with people to make sure they are right or be able to make further changes to get it better?

PS I’m on holiday for the next two weeks.  My blog decided it wants a break too .  So, my next post will be in December.

An easy way to improve web accessibility

Has anyone seen the new free accessibility tool on the WAVE site?  I thought you might be interested in knowing there is a simple to use and visual tool out there compared with other tools that tend to be a bit ‘techie’ in their results.

WAVE is a free web accessibility evaluation tool provided by WebAIM. It is used to aid people in the web accessibility evaluation process.  Rather than providing a complex technical report, WAVE shows the original web page with embedded icons and indicators that reveal the accessibility of that page.

Even better from an intranet perspective, the WAVE Firefox toolbar allows you to evaluate web pages directly within your browser.  Because no information is sent to the WAVE servers, the toolbar allows you to evaluate password protected, secure, or otherwise sensitive web content.  The WAVE toolbar evaluates content as it is rendered within Firefox.  This allows dynamically created, modified, or scripted content to be evaluated in real time.