In today’s diverse working environment, organizations face a challenge of providing systems that cater to a diverse audience. We’ve previously discussed this trend in our series of blog posts, “Anatomy of a Modern Intranet”. By 2020, there will be five generations active in the workplace. All with different work styles and comfort with technology solutions. It is vitally important to understand these differing audiences in order to engage users and drive adoption. Understanding our audience allows us to cater to their individuality and create an inclusive user experience. We thought it would be fun to examine some personality types that you will encounter on your journey to a modern intranet or digital workplace.
Here are four personality types for the modern intranet:
The individuals depicted here are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons within your organization is purely intentional.
1. Newspaper and Coffee Browser
There is something about sipping a cup of coffee and flipping through the newspaper that can be incredibly relaxing. Likewise, many of your users will feel similarly about your intranet. They will take the opportunity to read the latest news and information over their morning cup of “joe”. For this group, the focus is on building a portal that provides a positive user experience.
For these users, it is important to have a continuous stream of fresh and interesting content to peruse. Make content engaging with the inclusion of photos and video media. This will create a compelling experience that will bring these users back for more.
2. Catch me if you can
There will be subsets of your user population that will resist every effort to lure them to the intranet, perhaps missing vital information in the process. For these users, it may be necessary to leverage a multi-channel communication approach. Engage this user base through email newsletters, push notifications, and even offline methods such as posters and elevator message boards.
To convert these users it is important that your additional communication channels validate the intranet as a source of reliable information. Over time, these users will become accustomed to seeking information directly from the source.
3. Social Butterfly
The social butterfly values the ability to participate in a conversation as an active participant over a one-sided content delivery system. These users provide comments and feedback and often share your message with others in their circles.
Engage these users by enabling them to leave comments and feedback, as well as inviting them to rate and share content. Every organization has social butterflies, if your technology is not enabling this set of users, you are likely missing valuable organizational insights.
4. Just the facts
These users have many demands on their time and attention. Rather than browsing and discovering new content, they wish to find answers to their specific questions. These users are more likely to use search over navigation to find the content they seek. They appreciate content that is organized logically and the power of a good summary. They will spend less time on the site, therefore the time they do spend should be productive.
To appeal to these users, you’ll want to spend time honing your site’s navigation and search experiences. The site navigation should be logical and easily understood by the majority of users. Task-based menu approaches are more effective than menus that follow strict organizational hierarchies. Focus on providing an excellent search experience and curation of search results for commonly used search terms.
Impossible to please everyone
In designing your modern intranet experience, it is impossible to please everyone. Focusing on your users and the trends of how your users and organization are changing will provide valuable insights on how to reach your audience effectively. The realization that there will be many types of users and a variety of engagement styles will allow you to focus on the strategies that work better within your organization.
Perficient, modern workplace partner
At Perficient, we are experts in the modern workplace, building intranet and digital workplace solutions that enable users to communicate and collaborate more effectively. Our modern intranet and portal solution, Rise is purpose-built to deliver engaging user experiences on the Office 365 platform. Our blend of enterprise software solutions along with expert consulting services allow our customers to achieve long-term success. If you are interested in learning more about how Perficient can help you modernize your intranet, reach out to us today.
