Good design focuses on the user, as well as the structure of information, including the information type and how it is formatted. This page outlines some of the major design activities you should complete if you want to ensure your intranet or web site is simple, easy and enjoyable.
This activity is used to create a personality from bits of data collected about users. It is a model of a 'person' that identifies common characteristics of a typical user such as:
User Personas are developed primarily for web sites or online applications where gaining access to 'real users' may be difficult. The user personas help to focus the designers and developers on who would really be using the site.
This activity involves reviewing organisational structures and interviewing users to determine their existing skills and knowledge as well as the tasks they perform in their jobs. By collecting this information in a systematic way you are able to match people's information needs to what you provide on your site. Typically detailed user task analysis is conducted when designing large intranets.
Information architecture analysis and design (or IA) is used to determine:
Structuring and classifying your information will ensure you have a framework to build your user interface face on. If form follows function, then your site information architecture is function and the user interface design is the form that the architecture takes. The information architecture will define your intranet navigation model, determine how your search works and how users can browse your your site
The goal in user interface design is to make you sites user experience as usable and useful as possible.
It is in this activity where you create page layout designs and create a visual identity for your site. These are usually represented as either static mock-ups of your design or you my build a working prototype.
At this point you also do some preliminary testing of site usability with key members of your organisation. Also at this point you have the opportunity to review both the operational and technical assumptions of the design.
The user interface design should not only translate into web pages on your site, but should also be defined in a style guide that describes the screen elements, their usage and their behaviours. Separating visual style and behaviour from content allows you to create templates for contributors to use. This ensures visual consistency, maintains ownership of content with the people providing it and decentralises content production.