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Understanding User Requirements for the Enterprise Information

Portal

InfoToday 2002May 14, 2002

Mary Lee KennedyMicrosoft Corporation

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Problem Statement

• What would it take to provide Microsoft employees with a sense of community in a web space targeted at the entire corporation?

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MSWeb’s Mission

• Engage employees with Microsoft’s organization and community by providing a primary online vehicle for communications, communities and enterprise information.

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Enterprise Information Portal Evolution

Web-site Access

Industry Information

EventsLOB

InformationArchitecture

MicrosoftCommunity“Anywhere

On any Device”

FY1996 FY1999 FY2000 FY2001

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Two Business Drivers in FY01

• Productivity – contribute to the development of the high performance employee

• Retention – contribute to employees intent to stay

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Success• Increased customer “engagement” • Editorial direction and features set to meet

persona criteria for building community, communicating our culture and business direction.

• Compelling user experience

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Introducing Personas• A concrete representation of a product’s

target users• An amalgam of real users based on detailed

customer data

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Why Use Personas?

Proven success• Focuses end-result on the customer• Improves communication within the product

development team• Narrows the target by aiming for the specific

rather than the average• Provides a solid basis for decisions

regarding features, communication strategy and implementation

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Steps in Creating Personas

Step Deliverable Data gathering Review of all information sources that will be

used to inform the data analysis. Requires relevance rating.

Data analysis Clustering, gaps analysis, and mapping of key findings. Exposes “anchors” for segmentation.

Audience segmentation Definition of each audience and development of foundation documentation. Feature set is established and prioritized with persona review.

Validation Priorities are validated with representative sample of personas.

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Archetypes

• Foundation is anecdotes, values, beliefs, rules

• Represent the extreme forms (superhero, alter ego) of the values, beliefs, and rules

• Used in editorial strategy as content, and as guides in how content is delivered

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Archetype Example

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Ongoing Impact• Influences editorial strategy

• Influences communications strategy

• Process to be applied at in other projects.

• Update as business drivers change

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Contact Information

• marylken@microsoft.com