archive.Joe Lamantia.com

Janus Boye (of CMSWatch) just published an article called The trouble with portal dashboards… in Enterprise Information, in which he discusses the usability problems of enterprise portals.

Janus identifies the essential problem of current portal design approaches built on flat tiles:

Today most organisations blindly adopt the default ‘building block’ approach to layout found in enterprise portals – a relic from the early days of public internet portals. But users complain that while such an interface may look slick in early sales demonstrations, in production it typically only facilitates work for technically adept super-users. The occasional user easily gets confused and frustrated working with a cluttered screen of little boxes showing many different portlets. Getting adequate value from the portal typically requires substantial training.

This is a good snapshot of the long term weaknesses of a flat portal user experience, what Janus calls “the default ‘building block’ approach” [emphasis mine]. It strongly parallels my recent post outlining some of the inherent usability weaknesses of portals, and is a great lead in for the building blocks. (Note: Janus uses the term building blocks differently.)

In another highlight worth mentioning Janus identifies six distinct types of portals, referring to them as use cases. I think of these as types of information environments. The difference is a semantic one that’s shaped by your context for the term portal. Janus is speaking from the business perspective, thus his focus on the business problem solved by each type of portal.

They are:

• Dynamic web publishing; the simplest use case and a common entry point for portal developers
• Self-service portal; enabling staff or customers to help themselves and obtain service on their terms
• Collaboration portal; enabling dispersed teams to work together on projects
• Enterprise intranet; helping staff work more efficiently, often via multiple specialised portal applications
• E-business portal; enabling enterprises to extend commercial information and services to external trading partners, suppliers and customers
• Enterprise integration; linking systems to achieve greater efficiency and agility.

What’s important to understand from this list is that the default flat tiles approach underlying these different environments is the same, and so are the resulting usability problems, with their attendant business costs. The building blocks will support all six portal types handily.