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The Junk Drawer Intranet

The "Junk Drawer " Intranet

The "junk drawer" intranet is the opposite problem to the "static" intranet that we've just discussed. Where the problems of the "static" intranet come from too much central control, the problems of the "junk drawer" intranet come from too little control. There is a huge quantity of content available, contributed by a large number of authors, but there is much duplicated work, appearing in a variety of formats and layouts, and with no way of identifying the quality of the content. There is no easy way to find the information that you need without looking through many different microsites within the intranet. Inevitably, each microsite uses a different design, uses slightly different terminology, positions the navigation in a different place and hence forces you to spend time re-learning the interface rather than concentrating on finding the information you need. The junk drawer intranet can be summed up as "Here's everything that I have" rather than "Here's everything that you need".

Some symptoms of a "junk drawer" intranet are:

You regularly spend a long time searching for information on the intranet, and even then you often don't find it.
There is no consistency between different areas of the intranet.
It's easier to write a new page for the intranet than it is to find an existing one.

When is Decentralized Control Appropriate?

For some segregated parts of the intranet, it may be appropriate to allow complete freedom to the authors, without any of the practices to limit this. For example, in a microsite that is a technical knowledge base for a small group of engineers who know each other and their field well, there is no need to establish trust between the author and the reader. Incomplete or outdated content is not a major problem, because the readers will know the field sufficiently well that they can benefit from incomplete information without being confused by it. Consistency is easy to ensure within a small space, and consistency with the rest of the intranet is not important while the microsite remains a segregated information silo.

However, as soon as this segregated area becomes accessible to the rest of the company, then this idea breaks down. All these individual content silos may be useful in themselves , but someone who has to deal with several of them will end up very frustrated and confused.

So, while complete lack of control can be useful in a very small intranet, or in a restricted area on the intranet, as the intranet grows and becomes more widely used it begins to cause problems.

Selling Consistency to Authors

We've already discussed the importance of having a consistent intranet style in Chapter 6 on Usability. A consistent style means that the user doesn't have to think about the layout of the intranet, and re-learn the interface in every section. This means that they can spend more time focusing on the intranet content, find what they need faster, and get more use out of the intranet.

"A consistent style means that the user doesn't have to think about the layout of the intranet, and re-learn the interface in every section"

While it's easy to maintain a consistent appearance if there's only a small team working on the intranet, it becomes much harder when there's a large group of distributed authors. In order to have an intranet with a consistent appearance, it's necessary to convince your authors that design consistency is important and make it easy for them to comply

If authors are working within the framework of a CMS, then it is much easier to produce pages that are consistent, because they will all use standard templates. In fact it may be very hard not to produce pages with a consistent design. If they are not working with a CMS, and especially if they are creating microsites on separate servers from the main intranet server, then consistency is harder to achieve.

We've already mentioned the creation of an ECI (Electronic Corporate Identity) earlier in this chapter and in the previous chapter. As we said before, as long as you explain to the authors that the ECI benefits the users of the intranet, then they are more likely to use it than if the ECI is seen as an attempt to enforce consistency for the sake of the corporate image.

Duplicate Content and "Satisficing"

One of the problems of the "junk-drawer" intranet is that similar information may appear several times and in several different places. If there are various possible solutions to a given problem, it's likely that the best one won't always be found and used. This is due to a phenomenon called "satisficing". This is a word that comes from combining " satisfying " and "sufficing", and means "being sufficiently satisfied". Because intranet users don't have the time to search for what might be the best solution to their problem, they will instead use the first solution that is good enough. Hence, if there are several pages providing a solution to a problem, and the user comes across one of the less useful pages first, then they are likely to stick with it rather than bothering to search further.

So, how can you prevent this from being a problem? Before entering information into the intranet, authors should get into the habit of searching to see if similar information is already there. This requires that the intranet search is accessible from the authoring environment - if it's too hard to do, authors won't bother. If there is existing information, the author should be able to update or amend the information with as little trouble as possible - either by contacting the existing author, or by editing the content himself.

"Because intranet users don't have the time to search for what might be the best solution to their problem, they will instead use the first solution that is good enough."

With an existing "junk-drawer" intranet, the problem is harder. The best approach is the "big bang" - to spend some time going through all the contents of the intranet evaluating its worth. Irrelevant material can be deleted, and similar pages can be merged. Unfortunately, this can be time consuming and expensive, and will require experts to assess the value of content.

There may be time or money constraints that prevent the "big bang fix" from being an option. In this case, the only option is "continuous renewal". When an author is updating a page, she should search the intranet to see if there are any other pages with similar content, and if so, then merge the pages. This is not a great solution, because it may take a very long time to remove or rework all duplicate documents, but it's better than doing nothing and letting matters get worse .

Establishing Trust in Intranet Content

Knowledge on the intranet is useless unless it can be trusted. In an intranet with tight central control, then intranet readers can be fairly sure that the information has been checked before it was put onto the intranet - but it may have become outdated since then. In a "junk drawer" intranet, there is no guarantee that the information has ever been checked, and the reader needs to make their own judgments about whether it is trustworthy based on what they know of the content, the author, and the intranet as a whole.

There are two aspects to trust on the intranet - first, convincing a user that the content is trustworthy, and second, ensuring that their trust is well-placed. The two can be combined by not attempting to convince the user of anything, but instead giving them all the necessary information for them to make an informed judgment.

Establish Trust in the Content

If I know about a subject, then it's not too hard for me to work out whether an article on that subject is trustworthy. I can compare it to my own experiences, and if what the article says agrees with my existing knowledge, then I'm inclined to trust the new information that I learn from the article.

If I don't know the subject, or don't know it well, then additional cues are necessary to establish trust. The customer book reviews at Amazon are an excellent example of this. They provide a simple rating, and a space for comments. Although I don't know the individual reviewers, I can use their opinions to work out whether I'll put enough trust in the book's content to buy it, and if there are multiple opinions I can see if there is a common theme across them.

Feedback is valuable for two reasons. First, it helps the reader assess the trustworthiness and usefulness of the material presented to them. Secondly, it rewards the author for their work. Peer recognition is more important to many knowledge workers than small direct rewards (although it can lead to indirect rewards such as increased job security and promotion).

A major influence on the perceived trustworthiness of a piece of information is its presentation. Simply by making sure that information is displayed in an aesthetic , elegant manner, with correct spelling and grammar, you can make it seem more trustworthy. So, make sure that your knowledge base is using a well-designed template and stylesheet, and there is an integrated spellchecker. However, unlike the other ways of establishing trust that we're discussing, this technique does not help the reader discriminate between useful information and out-dated, irrelevant information - both will be perceived as trustworthy if they are both presented well. Therefore use it carefully .

If the information is based on other sources: people, books, web sites, or whatever, then providing a link to those sources helps the reader establish trust. First of all, it lets them evaluate the information based on the trust that they place in its original source, and secondly, it allows them to obtain further information if that provided by the author is not sufficient.

Establish Trust in the Author

The primary factor influencing whether we trust a piece of information is who tells it to us, and what we know about them. I will take medical advice from my doctor, but not from a stranger. I'm not likely to trust "Dr. Bob's Medicine FAQ" that I've found on the Internet, although I might if several friends recommended him to me. One reason for this is that I have met my doctor face-to-face, and I've seen his office, his receptionist , and other signs of his authority, whereas "Dr. Bob's" authority is not so easy to ascertain - he is an unknown entity.

We've already mentioned that the name and e-mail address of the author should be on every intranet page they've written. In a small company, this may be enough to establish trust - if I can see that the information comes from a colleague who I know and respect, then I will trust it.

However, this doesn't go far enough to establish trust in a larger company, where I don't have first-hand knowledge of all the contributors to the intranet. I need more information about the author.

It would help establish trust if I can find other pages that they've contributed to the intranet, assuming that those other pages are highly rated and have enthusiastic comments. It is possible to automate this kind of system; for example, the Slashdot community web site ( http://slashdot.org/ ) gives an automatic ratings bonus to new posts by consistently well-rated authors. However, an automated system doesn't build trust, it only makes the information available so the readers can assess it for themselves.

A useful addition to the company address book is a section that can be edited by each employee, to which they can add biographical information, projects they have worked on, hobbies, or links to personal web sites. This can provide some of the context about the author that helps to build trust.

Establish Trust in the Medium

If the user has previously been disappointed by the accuracy and usefulness of what they found on the intranet, then it's going to be hard to convince them to use it again. Conversely, if they regularly obtain accurate information, then they're more likely to trust other pages from it.

For this reason, the quality of information obtained from the intranet should be obvious. This is not to say that all the information on the intranet should be thoroughly researched, checked, and evaluated by experts - even if the time needed for this approach was acceptable, then the cost certainly wouldn't be! Rather, it means that there should be a clear indication of whether the author, and whether other readers, consider the information to be accurate or not. If a reader of the intranet finds that a piece of information marked as "possibly true" is wrong, then it will shake their trust less than if they found that one marked "totally accurate" is wrong.

As described above, there needs to be a feedback mechanism in place so readers can rate pages, add comments to pages, and report inaccurate content. In addition to the benefits for increasing trust, adding a comment to a page is a good first step in becoming an intranet author.

It is generally best to simply remove content that is inaccurate, or de-activate it until the author has time to improve it. Some information may have value even if it is not perfect; for example, it may be sufficiently correct to point a skilled user in the right direction, or to suggest ideas. However, most intranets have the problem of too much information rather than too little, and anything that removes excess pages is worthwhile. If the content does remain on the intranet, it should be clearly marked as untrustworthy, and shouldn't be ranked highly by the intranet search engine (this does mean that the search engine should be able to rank pages on criteria such as this, and not all are able to).

If time or money precludes improving the quality of information on the intranet in the short- term , it may still be worthwhile to create a clearly branded "walled garden" of high-quality intranet knowledge. Information can be promoted to the "walled garden" when it is recommended by users, and the intranet search engine can be set up to return results from this area at the top of its list. Users will know that the information that has come from this area will be more trustworthy.