Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Patrick Kennedy

Patrick Kennedy — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:32:52 GMT

Hi Laurie, I would normally not agree with the statement that an “intranet just a website whose users are internal” (but then again you were asking a question :-)

Anyhoo, on this occasion I am willing to agree that yes, in terms of the IA methods used, intranets are very similar to public facing websites. But as you point out, it’s the sticky issues which make all the difference. In particular the purpose of the site. Most people are able to tell you what their website is for, but when it comes to intranets you get some very wishy-washy answers. The fact is that intranets need to have a well defined purpose, there’s no point having one for the sake of it (which you might get away with with a website).

So the methods might be same but the outcomes and the political maneuvering are quite different. But hey, maybe we’ll conclude that I’m wrong and there’s nothing special about ‘IA for intranets’....if I write the article we can find out.

BTW: I’m delighted to have two ‘yes’ votes so far :-)

Patrick Kennedy — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:39:52 GMT

From the comments here, I think some people are confused about the purpose of surrogates. We’re not talking to surrogates as members of the target audience, nor are we asking them to pretend they are users. We’re talking to them about the target audience. So using surrogates is not the same as “grabbing someone in the corridor” and asking their opinion (such an approach has it’s place, but you need to be very careful in terms of what you take away from your corridor encounter because that person is unlikely to be representative of your target audience). Likewise, surrogates are not “power users” either.

Surrogates (or proxies or intermediaries) are used to learn more about the target audience, indirectly, but based on their direct experience with the target audience.

I wrote a blog post on this topic: Intermediaries in user research. Happy to hear more feedback.

Patrick Kennedy — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:47:07 GMT

Thought some folks might want to know a little bit more about what the article discusses, so here’s the opening few paragraphs…

A user research method I’ve used many times, and talked and written about several times too, is the cultural probe (also known as a ‘diary study’ or simply ‘user research diary’).

Briefly, the purpose of a cultural probe is to conduct user research from a distance. So rather than having to literally follow the user around for two weeks, they contribute to the probe, either explicitly by writing ‘diary’ entries, or implicitly by leaving ‘digital footprints’ of their online activity. One might label the former as a reflective diary probe and the latter as a ‘lifestream’ log probe. Both types are useful, the lifestream log as evidence akin to analytics of what they actually do, and the reflective diaries in terms of exploring the motivations behind what they think and do.

In years gone by, diary studies have ridden both peaks and troughs in popularity with social and market research practitioners, but these days there are now many ways to conduct a probe online, for little or no cost (aside from recruiting users and compensating them for their time). For example, you can easily setup a blog to act as an online diary—I’ve done this using WordPress on a number of occasions—but if you’re less technically inclined or want the convenience of using an “off the shelf” tool, then there are things like Tumblr and Posterous.

My colleague, Chris Khalil, touched on using a Tumblr blog in his UX Australia presentation last year. More recently I’ve been using Posterous for a similar purpose and thought I’d share some hints and tips.