Has Filbert paid for this ad?

(the report is not free, in case you were wondering)

Posted by: MadMan on September 4, 2002 05:08 AM

 

Filbert did not pay. ;-) I decided to jump right to the chase. Yet again his article ends with a sales pitch. Just thought people would be curious.

Posted by: John S. Rhodes on September 4, 2002 07:28 AM

 

I know we've been putting the boot into Filbert quite a bit recently, but there is a reasonable amount of information in the page you're linking to, John. None of us would pay for the full report (I wonder how many do), but it's hardly an over-the-top sales pitch. One fact caught my eye - WalMart have 900,000 users for their intranet. Is that employees?

Posted by: Alan Fisher on September 4, 2002 12:07 PM

 

I purchased last year's Intranet report and found it to be intriguing and full of good ideas when planning, developing and implementing Intranets.

Given, I bought it through my company and thus didn't have to pay for it personally. I would assume that the majority of people that purchase this report do so on their company's dime.

jonathan

Posted by: jonathan on September 4, 2002 12:11 PM

 

I have bought this report (and last year's) with my own money !

I am disappointed with this report for the following reasons:

1) Where are the users?
It is stated in the annual that "we do believe that intranet usability studies are best conducted with users". Whilst none were carried out for this report, you can buy another report in November (Intranet Usability) that will contain results from 'proper' evaluations.

Have I been offered this other report at half price, or even free? No I haven't. I cannot find any mention of this 'Part 2' anywhere on the NNGroup site, whilst it is clearly trailed in the report itself (although by then you have already paid for 'Part 1' dohhhhhh)

In last year's Annual the following statement was made "Although usability testing was beyond the scope of this first exercise, we plan to integrate this into our next intranet review.". Yeah, and you'll charge me twice for the privelidge.

There are examples where whole sentences have been copied intact from last years annual, so I think they should have provided Part 2 free.

2) I want some more proof to back up some of the statements in the report. Many of the sites featured feature customisation options that allow users to subscibe to different channels so that they can personalise their experience. I want to know what percentage of users actually use the customisation features or have they been mentioned because the desginers put a lot of effort into them, or because the CMS salesman sold it as a 'sexy feature'.

3) What didn't work?
I want to know about this disasters and dead-ends that were followed by the design teams.
There is a short section at the end of the report that gives examples of common issues why some intranets were not selected for the report, but this is not good enough. We all know the most popular alertbox article of all time is Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design. I need so see the dirt under the fingernails!

4) What about the methodology?

I want to know how the Selection Criteria and Process changed from last year? What lessons were learnt? At first glance the main change is with the numeric rating criteria: Last year there were eight criteria, this year there are seven, with Clear labels and Clear links (names and marks) being replaced with Home page in the 2002 annual.

The only common theme across the winners from both Annuals is Limited use of graphics. I want to know why the common themes are so different this year.

Arrrggghh, now that I've re-read this post I realise I am actually very angry and feel that I have been ripped off.

Posted by: Mac on September 10, 2002 12:52 PM