Intranet usability by walking in the corridor

Probably all of you have heard about "management by walking in the corridor". But usability - how does that work? It is easy, fun and uncomplicated and you get the results instantly. I will tell soon how...


I have been running an Intranet project for quite some time now. We are planning to launch the new site - a customer website for internal customers - at January 2011. Right now we are moving data at a hectic speed. In December we will have time for quality improvements and updates due to the new organization.

We have had several usability tests in different stages of the project but there are a lot of graphical design, interaction design and other communication problems to be solved.


Graphical design, usability, accessibility and content is part of a BIG communication task. All pieces need to work to make the visitor do what we expect him/her to do. Not a single aspect may be neglected.

It has to look good
On top of that I also add - it has to look good. A website that looks and feels good makes the visitor wanting to go there and stay there for a longer time. A bit seductiveness  is never wrong ... just function makes it boring. We want the users to explore and try to help themselves instead of picking up the phone as soon as they have found the contact information. They need to feel good with the interface - not only about function. The fun here is enjoying the interface. (It has to be "fun" is my leading star as always.)

A very nice way to test usability is to walk along the corridor talking to people, showing them printouts of new interface or let them try at the development server. I very often do the sketches in Powerpoint when ever the coding isn´t ready. This is smart since I save few dimes on the consultants account if we test before he codes.

So how do I do these tests?
I sit down and figure out what I think the problem is. Then I add a few extra questions since I will have a living person I can confront with new tasks at my side. I will not neglect that chance. It is important to choose the words for describing the task to the user. A single bad word might ruin the whole test. Either because you give a more or less unconscious hints or you distract the poor user with wrong or irrelevant words. But if you make that mistake - just add one or more test candidates to make up for that mistake.

Then I just catch anyone available - preferably none who have been involved before (people tend to learn too fast). It only take three minutes per person - no one have so far rejected my corridor attacks. And we have fun.

Sometimes I even bring printouts to the coffee-room or conference centre - to catch new people. It is great to try the design on people from other sections at the organization I work for. We are 53 000 employees working with everything from health care to car pools, from cleaning the floors to education, from doing the laundry to designing infrastructure for transportations. So the understanding of what my project is about is very varying.

These strange birds - I mean from other parts of the organization - are often found in the conference centre. I just wait for their coffee break... like a predator at the water hole waiting for the bird of preys coming to quench their thirst.

Friday afternoon
Last Friday I did that kind of usability test. I was so tired and bored of designing start-up page and I needed new impressions and a few giggles. After asking six persons and five gave exactly the same answer I needed no further testing. I saw what mistakes they made while trying to solve the task I had given them. I could hear them swearing. I could watch every single mistake in the design of conference room description layout.

The result was more than welcome - it is better to change now than later in the project or after the launch. People tend to adjust to design mistakes which makes it impossible to change to a better solution later. So me and my editor had to change our idea instantly. Instead of saving a one click we kept it happy not having started to move that data yet. Without that extra click the task was not understandable since the graphical design and interaction design was in contradiction.

Copyright Bettina Braesch-Andersen

At the train
This Friday I had another usability test. This time by walking along the train. Do not fret - I did not torment any innocent citizen or the cats above. I found a colleague that had been involved very early in this project. She was perfect - almost a blank card testing a brand new start-up page. And there was lots of new mistakes and sentences and description lines made for misunderstandings. I was happy to catch a few more of those. Before launch date all these problems have to be minimized.

You do not need a big test reference group more than a few times in a web project. Downsize and make small test along the path between the reference group meetings. Do not guess and hit the wall later in the project. Test and test again. Why not try usability by walking in the corridor!



published 2/10 2010