General Comments on Week 2 Homework (Survey)

You all made different assumptions about what access to computers people in the company already had.  In an actual development project, you would need to find out what equipment was available to employees in various locations before deciding to use a computer based survey instead of a paper based survey. 

A few of you provided examples of what exists on other intranets (benefits administration, company policies and handbooks, department policies and handbooks, company news, job openings, job descriptions, training information, organization charts, ….). This is useful in helping employees think about what might be useful to them personally. 

One of you planned to send out a preliminary questionnaire to determine level of interest and knowledge and then use the results to design the final questionnaire that will be sent to a larger audience. This technique can be useful if you really don’t know what you can assume about the target audience.

One of you thought that it might be necessary to develop some unique functions by department or by location.  This is possible and in some cases it might make the difference between a system being accepted by a particular set of users. 

You disagreed on whether or not to survey all employees but you all provided good supporting reasons.  You may need to consider the culture of the company where you are designing the intranet system.  At some companies, the employees are used to being consulted and expect surveys to include everyone.  At other companies, supervisors might consider widely distributed surveys a waste of time. Also, you made different assumptions about what percentage of the employees would actually be using the intranet. On a real project, you would validate these assumptions with the system owners and this would help you decide whether or not you wanted to survey everyone.

Some of you collected basic demographic information to help in analyzing the questionnaire such as how long have you worked for the company and how many days per week do you work from home. This is useful if you have a plan for using the information in analyzing the results.

At the beginning of your questionnaire, some of you gave survey participants a good explanation of the project and its purpose as well as an explanation of what could be done on an intranet. This is a good idea. Assuming the people have knowledge about your project and its purpose could be a false assumption.

Some of you gave thought to capacity, security, and privacy issues.  It is good to start addressing these issues early in the project.