Microsoft TechNet (Version 1)

Challenge: Making a Large Library of Technical Information Accessible and Useful

The Microsoft TechNet CD, a monthly subscription service, provided content and tools for information technology (IT) managers, systems administrators, and helped desk professionals to plan, implement, and support Microsoft business products. Users most frequently found the information they sought by searching,rather than browsing. The key value proposition of the product was that TechNet was likely to contain the technical answer you sought.

TechNet's greatest strength also turned out to be its major challenge: the wealth of content could easily be overwhelming. Technological limitations of the 16-bit version precluded extensive hyperlinking or dependence on graphic navigation methods. Even a list describing all new content each month could be daunting to the reader. Furthermore, since the content was amassed from a variety of sources, there was great variation in the quality and integrity of each document's structure, so similar headings may have introduced very different topics.

A secondary, but also important, issue concerned the tree structure used for browsing. While searching was the dominant method of information access, browsing was still an essential task. The existing information architecture had been developed years previous when the volume of content and the number of products was much more manageable. Thus, current conditions made the "fewer and larger" folder structure much less useful than it was when it was first launched.

I devised "At-a-Glance" tables, which appeared at the top of each large article, to make it easier to determine if you've found the content you were seeking. The key point summarized the central thesis of the article in a concise manner that often eludes the abstract. Technical level and deployment phase helped readers immediately estimate the article's usefulness to the task at hand. Sections were defined by first level headings, and corresponding "What's There" descriptions helped by identifying the appropriate section of the document.