Today’s knowledge workers want quick access to relevant information for their work-related requirements. This knowledge comes not only from information products but also from people-to-people interactions. Focusing on such interactions, I worked on a project that dealt with designing a knowledge-sharing portal for enterprise users.
I began with a background study on the existing approaches and trends. This gave me a direction to follow during the research phase. Through user interviews, I gained an understanding into the knowledge activities in the ecosystem and helped me define the requirements for the portal. By mapping user behaviour to needs, personas were shaped to guide concept development. Feature conceptualization was done on the basis of pointers from both primary and secondary research. After that I determined the content and navigation by involving users in card-sorting. This subsequently led to the development of ‘information architecture’. Next, I explored the layouts on paper for creating the interface. Finally, detailed wireframes were created along with the final visual styling of the interface.
The project taught me how to reconcile user and business goals for a useful application that can address the needs of sharing knowledge in a community of practice.