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The Spaces

Prepare your spaces to meet your objectives and attract your target audiences

Updated over 2 weeks ago

What to Do at This Stage?

  • Define your target audiences and the added value of your initiative.
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  • Build your spaces in the platform according to these audiences and their needs.
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Define Your Target Audiences and Their Needs

Now that you know what you want to achieve, it is essential to define the target audiences that will engage with your platform. List the key target audiences affected by this initiative (by function, by site, by subject of expertise, etc.) For example: managers, workers, head office employees, HR managers, the management committee, etc. To generate acceptance and commitment, each target audience must find valuable elements on this platform—information that assists them in their daily work. To facilitate this, answer the following four questions while considering each target audience: If I were X:
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  • What would I like to find here? What added value does it provide for me?
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  • What motivates me to visit or contribute to this platform?
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  • What is expected of me? What is my role?
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  • What challenges do I face?
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If you struggle to identify points of interest for certain target audiences, it may indicate that this audience is not impacted by the initiative, or you may need to reconsider how to add value for this specific audience.
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Define Some Usage Scenarios

With your target audiences in mind, quickly outline a dozen usage scenarios for these groups. These scenarios will help validate your structure: "Does it align well with what people expect?"
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For example:
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  • Every day, the quality coordinator publishes a new procedure in her quality space to make it accessible to all employees of the group.
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  • A member of our network could not attend a workshop: he searches for it on the platform by filtering workshops by theme and date, and watches it directly on the platform.
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  • A container park attendant proposes a solution to better manage collection in winter conditions and seeks feedback from colleagues on the proposed solution.
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  • During his daily train commute, a member of the IT department reads an article on his iPad about the Internet of Things and shares it in the IT department's technology watch area.
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Create a Structure Outline in Elium (Spaces)

One of the most critical decisions in Elium is related to architecture. By architecture, we mean the creation of groups (enterprise plan) and spaces that will establish the first level of structuring information sharing for your users. Why create a space? Under what conditions? What are the implications? We will try to clarify these questions.
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Definition of Space

A space is:
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  • A binding choice when sharing content.
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  • Defines access rights and a community.
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  • Clearly displayed during navigation.
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  • An essential filter when searching for information.
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Thus, it serves not only as a governance tool (defining rights) but also as a guide and an essential instrument during contribution, navigation, and research. This is why the choice of your spaces is a structuring element that influences and shapes usage.
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Five Perspectives or Criteria are useful for defining spaces:
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  • Spaces related to the organization (department, division, trades, teams, etc.).
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  • Spaces related to location (site, geographical area of activity, offices).
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  • Subject spaces ("community of practice" or "watch").
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  • Spaces by function or process (Marketing, HR, Innovation, etc.).
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  • Spaces for projects or objectives (collaboration for a defined period of time).
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These simple criteria can help you identify the key areas that seem most relevant and create an initial draft of the structure. However, for an optimal experience for your users and the creation of value, consider the following golden rules to determine if creating a dedicated space is appropriate:
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  • Confidentiality: When the same group of users has a recurring need to access a set of content that should not be visible to others, creating a dedicated space with restricted access rights is necessary.
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  • The Objective/Use: A space can be created to satisfy a particular objective or need of users (internal communication spaces, a space for exchanging good plans, a space for sharing information related to a specific mission).
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  • Content Coherence: A space can be created for each type of content to propose a strong categorization, facilitating the identification and access to this set of similar content (all presentation models can be utilized).
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  • The Freshness Rate and Volume of Sharing: A space that contains only three articles and is likely to have only two new ones in a year may be too small to justify its creation.
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  • The circle of trust between members who will share: Trust is a crucial factor in sharing. The most active virtual communities often have a real-life existence (meetings, conventions, sharing groups, etc.).
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  • The Overlap Between Spaces: Multi-posting can lead to confusion and duplication or may slow down contributions (users hesitate and do not know where to post). If some spaces appear to serve the same purpose or if there is uncertainty about where to post content, it indicates that the boundaries of these spaces need to be clarified and reviewed.
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Based on your initial intuition, try to visualize how you would like to organize the information (perhaps refer to the platform you intuitively created during your testing phase). Reassess the needs of your target audiences and usage scenarios, and closely examine your structure by asking yourself:
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  • Is it easy for each target audience to benefit?
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  • Is it easy to access information that some of my target audiences find essential?
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  • Do I provide a solution for the majority of my usage scenarios?
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💡 Note
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Don't forget:
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  • Always start from the needs of the user-contributor (not just the organization).
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  • Encourage the creation of virtual communities (spaces) that correspond to real communities (minimum existing uses).
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  • Promote transversality; do not attempt to reproduce a hierarchical classification plan.
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  • Choose a short and explicit space name and/or space group name.
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  • Opt for simple and clear rights templates (for more information, see the types of rights in ELIUM).
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Some Examples of Spaces:

  • Resources Area: The primary objective of this space (or spaces) is to provide users with a location where they can find all reference documents or materials useful for their daily work. The articles in these spaces are either imported from an existing database or shared disk, or collected from your company's key data. Often, the entry tab in these spaces is a library view, as the goal is to facilitate information search (rather than encouraging social interaction around the content).
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  • Project Area: The objective of this space (or spaces) is to provide users with a place to exchange, collaborate, and capitalize on the projects they are working on. These spaces have a temporary lifespan, from the beginning to the end of a project, and often contain a final deliverable that signifies the project's completion. They include a defined number of participants identified at the outset. These spaces offer an input view of activity flows with intelligent tabs that highlight key documents accessible in just a few clicks.
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  • Watch Space: The purpose of this space is to encourage everyone to share their insights and to disseminate information more broadly throughout the company. Every user is assigned the role of contributor, enabling them to share their information. These spaces are often public by default.
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  • Community of Practice Space: The aim of this space is to facilitate exchanges among users on subjects of importance to the company. The creation of these spaces either supports the realities of exchanges between communities of practice in the field or can initiate the process of exchange around specific topics. These spaces are often created based on regional (geographical areas communicating in the same language), business (major areas of activity of the company), thematic (transversal and varied themes, cross-departmental), or organizational (teams or departments) criteria.
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  • HR Space: The goal of this space is to make all documents essential to business life more accessible, providing a privileged channel for HR teams to disseminate information.
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  • Internal Communication Space: The purpose of this space is to disseminate information to as many people as possible, with the platform serving as a communication vector similar to email, company newsletters, intranet, or other tools.
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  • Space Dedicated to an Event: The objective of creating a complete space dedicated to an event is twofold: to capitalize on all information related to the event and to determine more precisely who can access this space.
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