Thoughts on the LEXICON Framework Part 6: Optimize for Ease of Use

This is Part 6 of my seven-part series based on the comprehensive LEXICON Knowledge Management (KM) framework created by legal KM specialist Clare Bilobrk. LEXICON has applications well beyond the legal sector.

In this post, we’ll focus on Clare’s sixth point: Optimize for ease of use – Apply user-centered design principles: intuitive navigation, powerful search, and minimal friction.

As a quick reminder, LEXICON stands for:

• Link KM to daily workflows
• Empower champions
• eXplain the value
• Integrate with existing systems
• Cultivate a knowledge-sharing culture
• Optimize for ease of use
• Nurture feedback loops

Designing for Ease of Use

To design a KM environment that is easy to use, implement systems using the following five disciplines.

1. Information Architecture

Information Architecture (IA) is organizing, structuring, and labeling content in an effective and sustainable way to help users find information and complete tasks. Rather than install individual applications and then attempt to integrate them, have an information architect review the environment and help design a cohesive architecture that considers the current state and maps a path to the desired future state.

According to Peter Morville, Information Architecture is:

1. The structural design of shared information environments
2. The synthesis of organization, labeling, search, and navigation systems within digital, physical, and cross-channel ecosystems
3. The art and science of shaping information products and experiences to support usability, findability, and understanding
4. An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape

Furthermore, Morville describes the role of an information architect:

IA helps users understand where they are, what they’ve found, what’s around, and what to expect. An information architect must learn about business goals and context, content and services, and user needs and behavior; and then work with colleagues to transform this balanced understanding of the information ecology into the design of organization, labeling, and navigation systems that provide a solid but flexible foundation for the user experience.

2. Design Thinking

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success. When implementing a knowledge management system, using design thinking will help ensure it will meet the needs of the target users.

According to Sarah Gibbons of NNG, the design thinking ideology asserts that a hands-on, user-centric approach to problem solving can lead to innovation, and innovation can lead to differentiation and a competitive advantage. This hands-on, user-centric approach is defined by the design thinking process and comprises 6 distinct phases:

1. Empathize: Conduct research in order to develop knowledge about what your users do, say, think, and feel.
2. Define: Combine all your research and observe where your users’ problems exist.
3. Ideate: Brainstorm a range of crazy, creative ideas that address the unmet user needs identified in the define phase.
4. Prototype: Build real, tactile representations for a subset of your ideas. The goal of this phase is to understand what components of your ideas work, and which do not.
5. Test: Return to your users for feedback. Ask yourself ‘Does this solution meet users’ needs?’ and ‘Has it improved how they feel, think, or do their tasks?’ Put your prototype in front of real customers and verify that it achieves your goals.
6. Implement: Put the vision into effect. Ensure that your solution is materialized and touches the lives of your end users. This is the most important part of design thinking.

3. Usability

Usability is making products and systems easier to use and matching them more closely to user needs and requirements. A knowledge management environment that is highly usable will keep users coming back, unlike hard-to-use systems.

According to Jakob Nielsen, usability is defined by 5 quality components:

1. Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
2. Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
3. Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
4. Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors
5. Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

4. User Experience

User Experience (UX) is a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service. Applying UX concepts increases the likelihood that users will embrace KM processes and tools that are implemented.

All KM applications and systems should empower users in the following ways:

• Be easy and intuitive to use. This cuts down on user frustration, wasted time, and calls for help.
• Offer flexibility in access and use, e.g., online, email, mobile app. Optimize the user experience for each channel to minimize complaints.
• Allow simple and complete integration with other applications, e.g., enterprise search, email, HR systems, etc. This makes it convenient for users and requires less training.
• Provide rich functionality that is clearly better than other alternatives and helps people to much more readily do their work. This saves time and improves job satisfaction.
• Deliver a consistent user interface and dependable functionality. This makes life easier for the users.

The elements of KM systems that offer a great user experience include:

• Designed for usability
• Responsive performance
• Predictable availability and reliability
• Easy to learn and use
• Deliver expected results

5. Agile Development

Agile development is a way to manage a project by breaking it up into several phases. It involves constant collaboration with stakeholders and continuous improvement at every stage.

Once the work begins, teams cycle through a process of planning, executing, and evaluating. Continuous collaboration is vital, both with team members and project stakeholders. Agile development can be applied more broadly as agile management, which involves small teams and short cycles, is customer-driven, and is driven through a network, not a hierarchy. Taking an agile approach to KM implementation will likely speed up adoption.

Enterprise Search

Enterprise search is making content from multiple enterprise sources, such as databases and intranets, searchable to employees and other authorized users through a single, ubiquitous search engine.

Knowledge managers are often asked why enterprise search doesn’t work like Google or, in recent years, like generative AI. Unfortunately, for most organizations, matching the scale and power of the entire internet simply isn’t realistic—which means replicating Google’s algorithm is likely beyond reach.

Instead, knowledge managers can focus on finding other ways to deliver useful content in a way that mimics some of the classic search engine experiences users have come to expect. My article The Five Cs of KM: Curate, Part 1—Search Results, details how knowledge managers can approach this:

Beyond organic search results, useful content can be provided more intentionally. To do so, determine the topics of greatest importance to the organization, curate a list of relevant content that can be searched and filtered, and feed the entries as enterprise search results.

 

These can be in the form of curated search results:

• Best bets (thumbnails and links only)
• Authoritatively badged content,
• Quick answers (more complete content plus links) for the content deemed to be the best for each of these key topics.
• They can also be dynamically generated using attributes, tags, sorts, filters, human interaction, etc.

Here’s an example I provided to help contextualize this concept:

If someone searches for “vacation policy,” enterprise search may return many documents containing the word “vacation,” some of which will not be relevant. Given that vacation policy is something that people tend to search for, the official policy document can be predefined as a best bet, flagged with a special icon, and offered as the first search result. This allows users to get the information they are most likely to need right away, without any wasted time or effort.

Additional Information

For more about usability and findability, see:

• User Interface
• Advanced Discovery: User Interface
• User Independence
• Enterprise Search
• Advanced Discovery: Search
• Using Analytics: Understanding Search Behavior
• Curate Search Results
• Connect People to Content