Balancing user experience with an out-of-the-box design in SharePoint 2013

Rebecca JacksonIntranet Specialist@_rebeccajackson

Melbourne Business User Group (Mbug)28 February 2014

About Melbourne Water

• Victorian Government owned

• 1700 people with intranet access

• Caretaker for

• Water supply catchments

• Removal / treatment of sewage

• Rivers, creeks, major drainage

Intranet Redevelopment project

• Current intranet:

• End-of-life of life technology

• Content is out-of-date

• Limited ability to manage content and improvements internally

• Lack of innovation

• Difficult to implement governance

Intranet Redevelopment project

• New intranet:

• SharePoint 2013

• Improved user experience

• Fresh look and feel

• New information architecture

• Focusing on core intranet features

• No collaboration yet

• Limited social

Project status

• Current activities:

• In the final phase of development

• Majority of content is written, being reviewed

• Key activities to come:

• User acceptance testing

• Training

• Content migration

• Launch, currently planned for May 2014

OOTB vs user experience

A key project objective is around user experience.

We also have a requirement to meet A and AA accessibility guidelines as per WCAG 2.0.

This is sometimes at odds with our need to stay as close to out-of-the-box as possible.

A quick disclaimer

User experience approach

• Completed by a User Experience expert from PWC’s Stamford

• Based on functional requirements and persona needs

• Desk top review

• User interviews

• Three rounds, one after each iteration

• 16 users in total

• Spread across personas, business groups and roles

Newsfeed and social features

“I’m thinking maybe it [comments] would go into Yammer.”

SharePoint 2013 includes a number of out-of-the-box social features:

• News feed

• Following people and pages

• #hashtags

• @replies

Usability issues with social features.

• Users assumed the features were Yammer integration.

• Found the follow feature confusing.

News feed and social features

Comments (Note board)

There is a Note board feature in SharePoint 2013 which we renamed to ‘Comments’ to use on content pages.

Usability issues:

• ‘Previous’ and ‘Next’ buttons appear and look clickable, even if there are no other comments.

• Default message added confusion for users and referred to ‘notes’.

• There was no way for page owners or authors to know if someone had left a comment.

• People assumed comments were moderated.

Comments (Note board)

SharePoint terminology

Most users were confused by unfamiliar SharePoint terminology:

• Newsfeed

• SkyDrive

• Sites

Search

SharePoint 2013 search is a significant improvement for our users out-of-the-box.

However…

• Refinement options were completely overlooked by most participants.

• No partial search.

• Both for standard search, and for people search.

• Refinements in the header search were not clear for people.

• The search box and refinements were not clearly formatted.

• Multiple search views confusing.

Search

Search

Organisational chart

People loved that they could see reporting relationships on user profiles.

But…

• The profile page org chat display is inconsistent.

• There’s a ‘SEE MORE’ link, which most users didn’t notice.

• If they got to the Silverlight view on the next page:

• It was too small.

• The scrolling transition wasn’t easy to use.

Organisational chart

Organisational chart

• First screenshot shows only direct reports• Second one shows colleagues• Not easy to visually differentiate

My sites

• User profiles are a separate from the main SharePoint site.

• Makes standardising look and feel problematic.

Usability issues with My Sites

• Not clear for users how to navigate back to the main intranet.

• Contact details layout and spacing poor.

• ‘SEE MORE’ button hiding information.

My sites

Dot dot dot

Where there are more menu options on functions SharePoint 2013 uses ‘…’ to indicate there is more.

Problem?

• Users don’t see the dots.

• Further functions remain hidden.

Dot dot dot

Accessibility review

• Completed by an accessibility expert from PWC’s Stamford

• Against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0)

• Desk top review

• Assisted technology review

Accessibility findings

A selection of features that did not meet A or AA accessibility requirements.

• Features not keyboard accessible.

• For example: Formatting toolbar, certain buttons, dropdowns.

• Error messaging not accessible to screen readers.

• Some form fields missing instruction.

• OOTB images with alt text missing or inappropriately used.

• Focus order illogical, and in some cases inappropriately used.

Accessibility

Inappropriate use of focus – content preview is functional.

Conclusions

• An out-of-the-box intranet is unlikely to meet the usability requirements of your staff.

• Based on our testing accessibility wasn’t a pass out-of-the-box• We assessed the importance of the feature against the severity of

the issue.• Some changes could not be made for this development, but will be

road-mapped for post-launch improvements.• Build user experience and accessibility into your project and

requirements.• Test.• Test early.• Test throughout the project.

Questions?

Feel free to get in touch:

Rebecca Jackson@_rebeccajacksonrebecca.jackson@melbournewater.com.aurebeccajacksonblogs.wordpress.com.au