zzIntranet case study: Canon Australia

http://intranetblog.blogware.com/blog/Portal

 

http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_canoncasestudy/index.html

 

Intranet case study: Canon Australia

by Toby Ward on Sun 11 Nov 2007 08:32 PM PST

 

Canon Australia has an extensive portal-based intranet, known as iCON, for a number of years. As detailed in a very thorough case study from Australia’s Step Two Designs “the intranet continued to grow and expand, eventually being given the mandate to deliver to a diverse range of audiences, including both internal and external users (effectively creating an extranet).

 

 

Canon Australia intranet portal (wireframe)

 

“This widening of the audience prompted a re-evaluation of the intranet, with the goal of ensuring that the site is effective in meeting the needs of current and future users (see Intranet redesign for Canon Australia).”

 

In mid-2006, Canon sought the assistance of Step Two Designs to begin the process of evaluating and redesigning iCON.

 

The redesign project consisted of two phases: needs analysis and redesign. The analysis included:

 

·         interviews with a variety of staff

·         stakeholders ‘alignment’ workshop

·         analysis of usage data

·         heuristic inspection of the current site

·         task analysis

 

Key issues identified in the analysis and driving the redesign included those that are common to many enterprise intranets:

 

·         Inconsistent employee use

·         Frontline staff lack key information

·         Information is difficult to find

·         Organizational silos block information sharing

 

“Once the site structure had been finalized and tested, page layouts (or ‘wireframes’)

were prepared for key pages, including the home page, key navigation pages, content pages, and other special pages (such as search results),” writes Step Two’s Patrick Kennedy, a user experience specialist.

 

“Wireframes aim to convey the content and functionality of a site, without applying the full visual design. Whilst some aspects will change as the visual design is developed (and implemented) the finished site should reflect the wireframes at its core because they are based on usability principles, and more importantly, the needs analysis that was conducted.”

 

Departing from the ‘traditional’ home page intranet design Canon is rolling out a personalized home page.

 

This is a very well done case study from Step Two which you can read in full: Intranet redesign for Canon Australia