Customizing The Sharepoint Interface For Usability: Key Principles
Understanding User Needs
To create a SharePoint interface that matches users’ needs and workflows, it is critical to first understand those needs through analysis of current pain points and key tasks. By surveying end users and reviewing analytics on platform usage, designers can discover areas for improvement.
Analyzing Current Workflows and Pain Points
Observe how users currently utilize SharePoint to complete business tasks. Note points of friction where they struggle to find information or have difficulty with platform tools. Analyzing workflows will uncover optimal task flows to support.
Conducting User Interviews and Surveys
Directly engage with end users to gather feedback. Conduct one-on-one interviews to have in-depth discussions about their requirements. Distribute surveys to collect perspectives from a wider group. Inquire about their main uses for the platform and solicite ideas for enhancements.
Prioritizing Key User Tasks
Review accumulated usage data and user feedback to prioritize addressing key user tasks. Ensure customizations directly serve high-value business objectives by enhancing the most frequent and critical workflows. These may involve search, content collaboration, or form submission.
Optimizing Navigation
An intuitive navigation scheme is vital for findability. Evaluate how users browse for content and resources to optimize the information architecture. Adjust global and site-level navigation links to facilitate access to key pages and simplify drill-down to deeper pages.
Adjusting Global and Site-Level Navigation
Modify global and site-level navigation to only showcase the most relevant destintations to users. Remove redundant or orphaned links. Organize content hierarchies logically based on user mental models. Make key landing pages prominent in the IA through primary nav placement.
Enhancing Megamenu with Custom Links
Implement custom branded megamenu solutions to improve discoverability for large information architectures. Megamenu allows expanding key nav links into sub-groups of pages. Customize these layouts with link labels tailored for user IA understanding.
Streamlining Information Architecture
Continuously refine and enhance the IA through user testing feedback. Consolidate sites, subsites, libraries and pages that address related topics. Use descriptive and consistent metadata and URL naming for findability. Create navigation term sets for faceted browsing.
Improving Search
With the wealth of content in SharePoint, effective search is critical for matching users with the information they seek. Optimize search center pages for usability. Improve results display relevancy. Add filters and refiners for drilling down to niche topics.
Configuring Search Center Pages
Set up dedicated search center sites at the root and site collection levels. Tailor the search box and paging components for easy-to-use interactions. Pull in metadata facet web parts to provide intuitive filtering based on managed metadata term sets. Show popular queries.
Customizing Search Results Display
Make results easier to parse by formatting result types separately as expandable containers. Highlight key metadata like title and description. Remove unnecessary information density from the default list view. Pull search refinements into sidebar web parts.
Adding Refiners and Filters
Supplement default metadata refiners with custom managed filters for drilling down to specific content sets. Refiners may involve content types, taxonomy filters, locations, etc. Choose refiners based on analyzing search terms and user needs.
Enhancing Forms and Views
The interfaces for users interacting with lists and libraries can be honed for usability. Customize list forms to only show fields needed for key tasks. Craft views to incorporate powerful conditional formatting and summarization. Add custom web parts that visualize form data.
Custom List Forms for Specific Tasks
For list-driven processes requiring data entry, optimize forms for each usage scenario. Create separate new, edit and display forms showing only relevant fields. Format them attractively using PowerApps or InfoPath. Remove unnecessary columns. Pre-fill values with defaults.
Conditional Formatting in Views
Transform list views from basic data grids into dynamic dashboards via conditional formatting. Highlight records meeting criteria important for workflows. Call attention to items needing action. Summarize lists numerically and graphically based on key fields.
Custom Web Parts for Data Visualization
For frequently updated transactional systems, embed custom web parts that visualize submission trends over time. Use charts, graphs and dashboards pulling from list data to enrich views. Allow finding data anomalies and issues quickly.
Simplifying Branding
A branded look and feel fosters adoption by matching company identity and styling. Create master pages, edit page layouts and apply CSS. For clarity, customize interface text like quick launch links. Add stylistic flair with images, iconography and colors.
Applying Color Palette and Logo
Use an on-brand palette for prominent global elements: top navigation bar, suite bar icons and links. Pull colors from logo. Apply to text links and buttons for bold identification. Use white space and divide pages into clear visual hierarchy.
Styling Pages with CSS and Master Pages
Leverage cascade style sheets (CSS) and SharePoint master pages to control page styling globally. Master pages allow setting headers, footers, and content placeholders. CSS enables formatting everything from links to buttons to tables.
Crafting Interface Text for Clarity
Ensure all custom link labels, button text and informative page text aid findability and usability. Use familiar terminology known by users. Avoid technical jargon when unnecessary. Write text concisely, favoring brevity. Consider readability guidelines.
Testing and Iterating
Continuously test customizations on an ongoing basis to address evolving user needs. Conduct user acceptance testing with target audiences to uncover usability issues. Be prepared to reassess assumptions and rebuild interfaces based on feedback.
User Acceptance Testing
Prior to rollout, conduct testing with groups of end users performing routine tasks. Have them verbalize thought processes during execution to identify points of confusion. Task efficiency and completion rates reveal opportunities.
Gathering Feedback
Provide ongoing avenues for user feedback, even after deployment. Distribute surveys following major feature upgrades. Monitor support tickets for common questions. Track analytics for low-traffic pages. Be prompt in addressing user concerns.
Making Continual Improvements
View interface optimization as an ongoing process, not a one-time initiative. Continually refine sites based on user feedback and behavior changes. React quickly to new business demands requiring functionality. Set regular redesign review schedules every 1-2 years.
