SharePoint and the User Experience

SharePoint and the User Experience

UIE Virtual Seminar
August 9th, 2012

Earley & Associates, Inc. | Classification: CONFIDENTIAL USE, NO REPRINTS
Copyright © 2012 Earley & Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Information Architecture Design Methodology

2


Strategy,
STRATEGY
& VISIONN

Current State Future Gap Heuristic Roadmap &
Assessment State Vision Analysis Evaluation Recommendations

2


Strategy,
STRATEGY
& VISIONN


Requirements
& DISCOVER
RESEARCH

Content Audience Task Requirements & Analysis
Analysis Analysis Analysis Definition Findings

2


Strategy,
STRATEGY
& VISIONN


Requirements
& DISCOVER
RESEARCH


Solution
& DEVELOP

Content Types Term Store Site Maps Use Cases,
DESIGN

Design
& Site Column & Taxonomy & Wireframe Workflow &
Documents
Design Development Design Authoring

2


Strategy,
STRATEGY
& VISIONN


Requirements
& DISCOVER
RESEARCH


Solution
& DEVELOP

DESIGN

Design
Documents
& VALIDATE

Test Plan
User Tagging Auto
TEST

Taxonomy & Execution
Interface Processes Categorization

2


Strategy,
STRATEGY
& VISIONN


Requirements
& DISCOVER
RESEARCH


Solution
& DEVELOP

DESIGN

Design
Documents
& VALIDATE

Test Plan
User Tagging Auto
TEST

Taxonomy & Execution
Interface Processes Categorization

Governance /
& ENHANCE

Governance Socialization Migration
MAINTAIN

Metrics Maintenance
Strategy Communication Strategy
Development Processes
& Guidelines & Adoption & Approach

2

The IA Design Process
• This is a conceptual representation of the IA approach roughly broken into five work
streams:
 Strategy and Vision
 Research and Discovery
 Design and Development
 Testing and Validation
 Maintenance and Enhancement

• These are not necessarily discrete sets of activities, there is overlap

• Each document icon (last column) represents a deliverable which summarizes activities
in that work stream. These may be combined into a single document.

• Chevrons represent tasks and activities. Not all need to be addressed or they may be
addressed as parts of other tasks.

• Steps are not necessarily sequential. For example, Governance and Socialization happen
at all levels

• Some deliverables are required as inputs for other processes. For example, Use Cases
and User Scenarios are required for testing

3

Organizing Principles
Organizing Purpose When to organize at this level Example
principle Organize multiple repositories Name collections according to major Human Resources
Site theme or over riding concept, such as Sales
collection business division or department Marketing
Repository that concerns a Name sites according to activity, process North American Sales
Site process, business unit or or business function Benefits
collection of information around Compensation
a business activity
Consolidation of content types Consider libraries according to a theme, Marketing materials
Document that are conceptually related process or concept. For example business Contracts & Agreements
Library development/opportunities, client project Sales Collateral

Consolidation of related data in List of values can be named according to Cities, Tasks, Project
List row and column format field name/ column or other concept Contacts, Events

Metadata field that describes an Columns are named in accordance with City, Location, Industry,
attribute of a piece of content standards like Dublin core as well as Solution, Date Created,
Column organization specific attributes. May be a Date Modified, Owner
list of values.
Collection of metadata Content types are fundamental pieces of Proposal, Project Plan,
attributes that form the “is- content that can be collected and Invoice, Medical Record,
Content
ness” and “about-ness” of a organized according to various Presentation, Article
Type
piece of content. Includes characteristics. Answer “what is this
rules, workflow, content thing?”
lifecycles content type used to
A special Multiple artifacts are collected and used to Marketing Event
Document manage a collection of related generate a single output. Also used to Sales Opportunity
Set documents manage processes such as the creation of
documentation
4

Other Core Architectural Concepts
• Managed Metadata Service – A hierarchical collection of predefined centrally managed
terms that are applied by publishers as metadata attributes for content items (new column
type).

 Term Store – A database that is used to house both Managed Terms and Managed Keywords.
 Groups - From a taxonomy perspective, a group is a flat list or hierarchical collection of related attributes
comprised of one or more Term Sets.
 Term Set - A flat list or hierarchical collection of related Terms that belong to a Group.
 Term - A word or phrase that can be applied by publishers and system users as metadata to content.

• Views – Leveraging metadata to create different ways of looking at content stored in a list
or library. Created within a list or library.

5

Translating Concepts into Design Elements
• Challenge lies in going from an abstraction to something concrete.

• Many organizations are trying to “make the information easier to use” which is a broad
ambiguous abstraction

• Need to answer:
 What information?
 For whom?
 Accomplishing what task?
 With what information?

• Many information management projects fail because they are too broad, scope is
ambiguous, and outcome is not measurable.

• SharePoint IA needs to start with a focus on problems and processes

• May be broadened from this starting point, but cannot solve ambiguous problems

6

Problems => Solutions

• Problems are identified through interviews, surveys, working sessions

• In each forum, we are making observations about the current state: how people accomplish tasks,
bottlenecks in processes, problems with information access and findability, challenges around
inaccurate and incomplete information

• Need to translate observations about the information environment into a vision of how those issues
can be resolved.

• User centric IA requires that we understand the mental model of the user: the tasks they need to
execute and how they go about accomplishing their work

• Steps to the process:
 Observe and gather data points
 Summarize into themes
 Translate themes into conceptual solutions
 Develop scenarios that comprise solutions
 Identify audiences who are impacted by scenarios
 Articulate tasks that audiences execute in scenarios
 Build detailed use cases around tasks and audiences
 Identify content needed by audiences in specific use cases
 Develop organizing principles for content

7

From Problems to Solution – Steps to the Process
Process Step Answer the following Example

Observe and gather data What are the specific problems • We can’t locate information about policies for specialty
(pain) points and challenges that users are coverage
identifying? • We need to look in multiple systems to find prior
Summarize into themes What are the common elements Inability to locate policy and underwriting informationhigh risk
experience data when underwriting new policies in using
to observations, how can areas
common terminology
symptoms and pains be • Different terminology is used in different systems making
classified according to queries difficult
overarching themes?
Translate themes into Wouldn’t it be great if we We could access all policy and prior experience data across
conceptual solutions could…? multiple systems using a single search query and return
consistent results?
Develop scenarios that What would a day in the life of a At a high level, describe how underwriters go about their work
comprise solutions user look like if this solution in writing policies for specialty and high risk clients. Describe
were in place? each potential situation and how they would go about their
Identify audiences who are Who are the users that are workmanagers, underwriters, sales personnel
Risk
impacted by scenarios impacted?

Articulate tasks that What are the tasks that need to For a given scenario, articulate tasks (research options, review
audiences execute in be executed in each scenario? loss history, locate supporting research, etc.)
scenarios
Build detailed use cases What are the specific steps to For a single task, list the steps to execute (this level of detail
around tasks and audiences accomplish tasks? is not needed in all cases). Step 1 – log on to claim system
Step 2 – search for history on the coverage type in geography,
Identify content needed by What content and information is Step 3 – etc. policy information, underwriting standards,
Claims data,
audiences in specific use needed at each step in the actuarial tables, fraud reports, etc.
cases process?
Develop organizing Arrange the things they need Begin with “is-ness”. What is the nature of the information?
principles for content according to process, task or Then determine “about-ness”, the additional characteristics of
other organizing principle the information. How would you tell 100 documents of that
type apart?
8

Relationship of Taxonomy to Information Architecture
• Taxonomy is the foundation for information architecture

• Every design element in SharePoint requires a consistent set of organizing principles

• If we start with the core organizing principles first, the IA is a matter of structuring these
into the constraints and constructs of SharePoint elements

 Site collection hierarchy - How multiple sites relate to one another, global navigation across sites
 Site navigation – Organizational construct within a site, how document libraries are named and
organized
 Document library organization – How libraries sort, organize and view documents
 Content model construction - Metadata fields (columns) that comprise content types
 List definition – Values that drive fields (columns) that use controlled vocabularies
 Faceted search – Metadata fields that are exposed to users to perform attribute based search.
Facets depend on user context and content model
 Roles for security and personalization – Types of users that have specific privileges or who may
be interested in specific subjects

9

Structural Disambiguation of a Concept - “Sales”

Organizing Concept Element Disambiguating principle
principle

You could have a collection of sites called
Site collection Sales Sales“sales”. Within them you would have to
further distinguish sales sites. What is the
North American One possible way to consider site and
difference between one sales this would be
Site Sales to distinguish between regions in different
Sales another?
sites
If we distinguished between regions at the
Library Sales Brand A Sales site level, we might consider different
libraries for various products
The actual product names would comprise
List Sales Products for Sale a sales related list

Product types for A column is a metadata value. A ﬁeld
Column Sales called sales does not have much meaning.
Sale
This may be a kind of sales
Product A content type is a collection of ﬁelds.
Content Type Sales What is the conceptual unit around sales?
Description
Product page or description.
The controlled vocabulary term would be
Term Sales Product Name the actual name of the product in a list

Document Sales contracts A collection contains things that comprise a
Sales transaction or natural grouping (process or
Collection and agreements
task based).
10

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Editor's Notes