Internal User Experience Research Comunication: Intranet Strategies and Additional Methods...

In today's digital age, a well-organized and user-friendly company intranet can be an invaluable tool for sharing and collaborating on UX research data. However, over the years, many intranets have fallen into disuse due to a lack of organization and usefulness. Here, we present best practices for reviving and optimizing your company intranet to support efficient UX data sharing and collaboration.

It's not advisable to share commercially sensitive research on a company's main website, and people often rely on copying and pasting useful information from intranets and sending it via email. This can lead to confusion, miscommunication, and a loss of critical data. By implementing the following practices, your intranet can become a central hub for UX data, reducing friction in finding insights and enhancing collaboration among cross-functional teams.

Best Practices for Optimizing Your Intranet

Keep navigation simple and task-based: Organize your intranet around user roles and actual tasks, using 5-7 top-level links. Avoid complex dropdowns to speed up discovery of UX data and resources.
Flatten hierarchy and improve findability: Avoid deeply nested folders and opt for flat team or communication sites linked to hubs with modern, clean page layouts. Use clear, intuitive naming conventions for UX data documents and assets.
Leverage metadata and tagging: Tag UX research reports, personas, usability findings, and design guidelines with consistent metadata types and columns to enable dynamic filtering, better search, and targeted views for different teams.
Design for user roles and audience targeting: Customize content visibility and site layouts based on who accesses the intranet. For example, developers might see technical UX reports, while marketing sees customer insights summaries.
Set role-based, minimal permissions: Regularly audit access rights to protect sensitive UX data but avoid overcomplicating security. Use group permissions aligned with roles rather than one-off individual access.
Create templates for recurring UX content: Use preconfigured page templates for common UX artifacts such as usability test summaries, research findings, or design pattern libraries to maintain consistency and efficiency.
Incorporate feedback mechanisms and analytics: Monitor what UX content is frequently accessed or searched for and gather user feedback to continuously refine intranet structure and content relevance.
Ensure content currency with expiration policies: Automate reminders or removal of outdated UX research reports or versioned design documents to keep information current and trustworthy.
Focus on user-friendly interface and engagement: The intranet should be intuitive, inviting employees to explore and regularly use it for UX data needs. Place the search bar prominently and highlight most-used or recent UX reports on the homepage to encourage engagement.
Start small and iterate: Pilot the revived intranet with one key UX team or department to refine navigation, content organization, and customization before scaling company-wide.

By implementing these practices, you can create a functional, engaging, and secure intranet that supports efficient UX data sharing, reduces friction in finding insights, and enhances collaboration among cross-functional teams.

Reviving a Dormant Intranet

If your intranet has been unused organizationally, it's necessary to advertise the availability of data and the improved user experience. Clear communication with other parts of the business will make it easier to get taken seriously when trying something new in research. The intranet can also provide backup to other communication channels, ensuring that important UX data is never lost.

Remember, the focus of the article is on the company intranet, and it should be restricted for access to only relevant parties. The header image for this article is "Author/Copyright holder: Observatoire de l'Intranet" and is copyrighted.

Reviving a company intranet for the purpose of sharing UX data could be beneficial for the UX project team, as it provides a centralized location for storing and sharing research findings, improving collaboration, and ensuring that critical data is not lost in the shuffle of emails and other communication channels.

This article is the final piece in a UX research communication series, demonstrating the importance of experimenting and trying new things in communication to better support UX research. By optimizing your company intranet, you can create a more efficient and effective environment for sharing UX data and collaborating on projects.

To optimize the sharing and collaboration of UX research data within a company, it's crucial to leverage technology by creating a functional and user-friendly intranet that implements best practices such as simple navigation, flattened hierarchy, metadata, audience targeting, and templates.
By reviving a dormant company intranet and transforming it into a secure, user-friendly platform for storing and sharing UX research data, technology plays a pivotal role in supporting the UX project team by providing a centralized location for research findings, improving collaboration, and reducing data loss.

Internal User Experience Research Comunication: Intranet Strategies and Additional Methods...