Pat’s Point of View

Today I presented a session on Needs based IA at the first Sydney workshop of the Intranet Leadership Forum. I got to talk about my two favourite subjects of the moment, ethnography and user-centered design!

I went through some basics of performing needs analysis to build a rich understanding of an organisation’s culture, work practices, work environment and staff’s information needs. I then broke down an intranet redesign project I performed last year, showing how the detailed research I did on the company and it’s staff made it possible to deliver a much more valuable information architecture (something more than a site map).

It was fairly successful but next time I do this I want to cut down the scope and focus the session more–the subject really was too broad for the time allowed. I’ll also make it more interactive, perhaps with workshop activities designed to get the group involved in using ethnographic techniques. And I’ll definitely devote more time to sharing some of the stories that I’ve come across during past projects. These are the juicy bits that get people excited about doing the work!

Wow, I’m definitely in presenter mode now, I’m even thinking of more topics (like Intranets for Advertising and New Media, that could be a good one).

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