Based on the theoretical and empirical research, eight improvement recommendations are made for the Mobile Routing social Intranet:
1. Usability Weekly tips
The respondents had experienced two different types of challenges:
Technical challenges when uploading the content and uncertainty of where to find certain information
On top of these in some cases, it may be that the employees are not too familiar with Sharepoint as a tool and how it works, which may cause some hesitation to using it. Therefore, it would be useful to publish weekly tips on the Intranet homepage on Sharepoint usability, content, or functionality and encourage employees to look for certain content available, new functionalities, and other items worth noticing for. These tips should be located in a consistent manner in a centralized location on the Intranet.
Consistent structure
Consistent structure would make it easier for the user to navigate within the site, and find information. The current Mobile Routing Intranet has inherited some content and sites from previous organizations, and it would be rather time-consuming to start changing the structure, but on the other hand, based on the user feedback, it is absolutely worth doing for. Surely, there is also a lot of old and outdated content in this heritage, so it would be useful for both the users and the content owners to review it thoroughly and update it.
Contact details for the authors
The Mobile Routing Intranet contains a lot of different pages and sites, which then break into several different areas. It would be more user-friendly to publish contact details for the author, for example in the bottom of the page.
2. Search
Proper search functionality was identified as crucial by all respondents and it also was highlighted in the previous literature. Therefore, it is imperative to improve the current search functionality. It would be ideal to add Sharepoint’s search server, FAST search server (McKenna et al., 2011, p.
498), and query server to the current infrastructure, in addition to supplement better keywords and metadata to documents, and implement RSS functionality on the Intranet. The most important thing is to make sure the user experience is pleasant to make sure the user will visit the site again. Also, it would be helpful to provide extensive contact details for whom to contact when the user faces challenges on the search page.
3. Blogs
The existing Mobile Routing blogs, which are published online on the Mobile Routing Intranet and distributed also by e-mail to target audiences, were highly appreciated and especially the e-mailers were thanked.
Therefore, it would make sense to continue producing the weekly blogs in a same fashion as before and make sure the blogs will be developed as the organizations develops.
4. Fun items
It would be ideal to implement a weekly poll, in which the questions could differ between business and casual topics. This would increase the usage of the Intranet site as promoted in the previous literature. Also, a discussion group should be established with casual topics to raise the team spirit, and finally, contest could be created on certain themes for
example on a quarterly basis with rewards. A contest could be related to business items, but implemented with a sense of humour.
5. Homepage
The existing Mobile Routing Intranet homepage requires a re-design in terms of usability. Nielsen and Krug highlighted the importance to make more effort on changing the homepage to serve users better.
The current homepage could be changed to become more user-friendly for example from the news feed point of view. Also, it would be ideal to be able to implement a functionality to highlight latest documents, functionality, or any other item important for everyone to notice for. News tip functionality could also be implemented on the homepage.
6. Discussion groups
Discussion groups for innovation and team spirit are both needed. It may well be that the employees are not too eager to start discussions, and therefore a reward of a small item could be considered at least in the beginning. Another opportunity to inspire discussion would be for administrators to start weekly discussions. It would be outstanding if the leaders and managers in the organization would have time to contribute in the discussions. That would show great example for other employees.
7. Training
Once the first improvements are implemented on the social Intranet, it would be worth considering for arranging onsite training for people who are not comfortable using the site on their own in the beginning. Training could be also arranged for content providers. Depending on the content of the training, it could be an option to produce short videos on how to do certain tasks in the Intranet.
8. Suggestion box and regular user surveys
A suggestion box could be implemented to provide a vehicle for users around the world to submit their ideas, improvement proposals, and complaints. The suggestion submissions could be related to anything on the Mobile Routing items, not limited to Intranet.
As recommended by the ―Intranet gurus‖ – Nielsen and Krug – regular user surveys should be performed to be able to serve the target audience as well as possible. Due to the lack of resources in administrating the Intranet, a quarterly user survey would be achievable and doable.
Finally, it would be recommended to investigate further the possibility to get more user statistics on the Intranet downloads, views, and visits.