About Shiv Singh
Shiv Singh is a Director of Enterprise Solutions for Avenue A | Razorfish, building intranets and extranets for such clients as Avaya, Genentech, Thomson, Verizon, and Western Union. He writes regularly on intranet design and recently spoke at the 53rd Annual Society for Technical Communications Conference.
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Articles by Shiv Singh
Each time an intranet manager establishes the annual budget for an upcoming financial year, he or she wonders if it is missing something important. The budgeting process forces the manager to think more deliberately about the enterprise intranet—where it is, where it needs to go, how many enhancements can be done in the next fiscal year, and by whom. Historically this has been a relatively simple exercise size as intranets haven’t needed to mature quickly, with companies only embarking on significant user experience or technology upgrades after much deliberation and planning.
I wonder how different the Web would be if all Internet users were required to attend one-hour training sessions on Web site surfing before firing up their browsers for the first time. Would Web sites be designed differently? Would they be more complex, functionality rich, and design immersive? Would usage be higher? In contrast, in the intranet domain we can require our users to read guides, view Web-based seminars, or even attend instructor-led training sessions (ILT) before they are given access to the company intranets. Training has become more important as intranets evolve to include new content, collaboration, and office productivity applications.
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