Usability Impact Analysis of Collaborative Environments

Setting The Stage

This research will look into a large scale deployment of over 80,000 collaborative sites. Each site is unique in its design, development, and business function. Therefore, many of the user tasks are also unique. We will look to discover the impact of applying usability principles to the collaborative environment and the end user experience. The basic research question revolves around the idea that if we apply usability principles to the original design then does the collaborative environment shows an increased use from the community? Much like web site metrics of page views or transactions, we will review the number of document managed, the number of members of the community, page views, and several other base measurements in order to determine the impact of usability and design. Most information technology professionals push to deploy collaborative solutions out of the box with little effort to improve the usability of the application. However, we will show that this strategy actually limits the value-add opportunities. The goal is to show that the more usability principles and early design methodologies applied to the collaborative space the greater value the company will gain from the deployment.