Creating a Great User Experience in SharePoint

Who Is Marc?• Co-Founder and President of Sympraxis

Consulting LLC, located in the Boston suburb of Newton, MA, USA. Sympraxis focuses on enabling collaboration throughout the enterprise using the SharePoint application platform.

• Over 30 years of experience in technology professional services and software development. In a wide-ranging career in consulting as well as line manager positions, Marc has proven himself as a problem solver and leader who can solve difficult technology problems for organizations across a wide variety of industries and organization sizes.

• Three-time awardee of the Microsoft MVP award for SharePoint Server (2011, 2012, 2013).

Session Overview

• Building solutions in SharePoint isn’t simply about getting the functionality right based on the business requirements

• Developers and designers must think about the entire user experience

• How should the user feel when they use this piece of functionality?

• Will they see it as saving them work or creating new work?

• How will it compare to what they see on the consumer Web?

Forrester Report on SharePoint Adoption“Dissatisfaction is centered on several areas, including adoption challenges, a dislike for the SharePoint user experience, a preference for other tools like email and skepticism over its business value.”“Business management’s dissatisfaction with SharePoint and perception of its value is hurt by uninspired user experiences.”

Microsoft SharePoint faces a challenging future: Forrester | PCWorldhttp://www.pcworld.com/article/2027391/microsoft-sharepoint-faces-a-challenging-future-forrester.htmlSharePoint Adoption Faces Three Barriers: Mobile, Social, Cloudhttp://www.slideshare.net/johnrrymer/share-point-survey-2012-slideshare

What’s the Solution?

SharePoint

Use SharePoint as an out-of-box application whenever possible - We designed the new SharePoint UI to be clean, simple and fast and work great out-of-box. We encourage you not to modify it which could add complexity, performance and upgradeability and to focus your energy on working with users and groups to understand how to use SharePoint to improve productivity and collaboration and identifying and promoting best practices in your organization. “The New SharePoint” by Jeff Teper on the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=1012

What Is “User Experience”?

User experience (UX or UE) involves a person's emotions about using a particular product, system or service. User experience

highlights the experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of

human-computer interaction and product ownership.

How does the user feel when they are finished using SharePoint each day?

“User experience” from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience

Consumer Web

• The consumer Web is both a source of inspiration and an anathema for enterprise developers

• Our users expect no less than what they see on Facebook, Dropbox, Google, etc.

• It’s an expectations problem

Image from The Conversation Prism http://www.theconversationprism.com/

How Can We Succeed?

Form vs. Function

Form FunctionTypically the domain of Designers, Marketing folks

Typically the domain of Developers, IT folks

RealityIt has to be both:“function requires

form” The Form v Function Ratio by Dan Antion http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/expert/The-Form-v-Function-Ratio

Information Architecture

A sound Information Architecture provides:• Consistency• Simpler maintenance• One version of the truth

Use wisely:• Content Types• Managed metadata• List-based Site Columns

Image from “Explain IA Poster” http://userallusion.com/blog/2010/10/explain-ia-poster/

Be the User

• Don’t think about what SharePoint does or how it does it. Think about what your users want.

• Too many developers eschew SharePoint as a collaboration tool. Use what you build.

Collaborative Development

• Sit with your users• Listen to what they

are asking for• Repeat what they

want• Iterate, iterate,

iterate with your users

• Lather, rinse, repeat – it’s never “done”

Consultative Services

• Don’t expect your users to understand everything

• Training can’t cover it all

• Be an internal consultant

• “How can I help you to solve your requirements?”

Use the “Mom Test”

Questions to ask:• Can a relatively inexperienced technophobe make sense of this?•Do we feel like people will need training? Why?•How often will they use it?• Is it visually appealing?• Is it “accessible”?

Don’t Talk About Budget

• Your end users don’t care about your budget

• Figure out how to help them

• Look for quick wins – they can help fund the big changes

• Decide if the workloads SharePoint supports are important enough

• Find executive support

Speed Matters

Two Seconds

Boston Globe, February 02, 2013: Instant gratification is making us perpetually impatient ow.ly/i8Pth

Ramesh Sitaraman, a computer science professor at UMass Amherst, examined the viewing habits of 6.7 million internet users in a study released last fall. How long were subjects willing to be patient?

Size Matters

• Large images can kill the UX

• Views should show the amount of information required to make decisions, no more

• Carefully balance server side and client side code

Lowest Common Denominator• Browsers• Brands• Versions

• Screens• Size• Resolution• Shape

• Bandwidth• Available RAM

Mind the Fold

• If users have to scroll every time they land on a page, you’ve put things in the wrong place• Eyes scan from upper left to lower right, much as a TV “paints” the screen

Use Real Estate Wisely

• Decide on your design aesthetic• Few dense pages vs. many sparse pages• Graphics vs. text• Color vs. monochrome

• Pet Peeve: Executive images or senseless banners

Error Messages

• Please, please, please NEVER: “Contact your administrator”

• Correlation IDs – Good idea, horrible execution, especially for SharePoint Online

• Instead:• What happened?• What did I do to

make it happen?• How can I fix it?

Never-ending Quest

• “Best search is the search you don’t need to do”

• Search isn’t “turn it on and leave it”

• Adapt search results• Mine search terms• Revise information

architecture

SharePoint 2010 Example:Switching Views

• Bad UI choice in default SharePoint

• Don’t settle for things like this

• You can improve on the basics

Relinquish Control

• Remove the developer from the equation

• List-Based Settings vs. Property bags

• Give users control – it’s their system

• Focus on important development work

Additional Thoughts and Contradictions• Consistency to a fault -

don’t be constrained by what SharePoint gives you

• Yet, you’ve bought a box, don’t stray too far out of it

• Name it – it’s not SharePoint

• Visual cues – not just text

It always comes back to “It Depends”

Remember…

Form vs. Function

Form FunctionTypically the domain of Designers, Marketing folks

Typically the domain of Developers, IT folks

RealityIt has to be both:“function requires

form” The Form v Function Ratio by Dan Antion http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/expert/The-Form-v-Function-Ratio

Contact InformationEmail marc.anderson@sympraxisconsulting.

comBlog http://sympmarc.com

SPServices http://spservices.codeplex.com

SPXSLT http://spxslt.codeplex.com

eBook http://bit.ly/UnlockingDVWP

The Middle Tier Manifesto

http://bit.ly/middletier