Dynamic FAQs

The Problem

The government contractor where I worked used a distributed content management model for their intranet, in which subject matter experts (SMEs) were frequently assigned as site owners. Unfortunately, many of them lacked the technical skills required to effectively manage their site. Additionally, the intranet platform had known bugs with its page editing tools, making even basic page creation and editing a challenge.

I was on the team that oversaw front-end development and provided support to site owners as necessary. One recurring issue was how to handle the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) content. Site owners would often create their FAQ in a Word document, save it as a PDF, and upload that file to their site. This resulted in outdated FAQ sections that were cumbersome to navigate — overall, a poor user experience for both site owners and employees.

Objective

Improve the process that site owners use to create and manage their FAQ content on SAIC's intranet, while enhancing the employee experience by making the content more accessible and easier to navigate.

Note: I first developed the following system for the Multifactor Authentication (MFA) site on our intranet, and the examples in this project study are derived from that FAQ content.

For Site Owners

I wanted to address these specific aspects of managing the FAQ content:

• Separation of content and presentation

• Ease of adding and deleting items

• Flexibility in editing and rearranging items

Database

I used our intranet's rudimentary database feature to design a structured and user-friendly way for site owners to manage their FAQ content, without having to worry about creating and designing a page layout. The solution used two data lists:

For Employees

I wanted to address these specific aspects of viewing the FAQ content:

• FAQs delivered as intranet web pages instead of PDFs

• Pages cleanly designed and easy to navigate

Layout Options

Two standard ways of presenting an interactive FAQ page are with anchor links or accordions. Usability testing for a previous project showed that employees found our intranet platform's accordion design confusing, so anchor links were the obvious choice.

Displaying the FAQ Data

The intranet platform's default data display styles were notoriously basic and uninspired, so I wrote a custom style (HTML+CSS+JS) that dynamically generated a complete FAQ page with content from the data lists. Employees would still enjoy the familiar look of the original PDF files, but with all the benefits of an interactive and responsive web page.

After deploying the solution, I gave the MFA site owner a brief tutorial on how to manage the categories and FAQ entries. He found it very intuitive and picked it up right away; about a week later he sent me this short but powerful testimony: "This is great! Wow, so much better than a PDF!" I received similar feedback from other site owners after I helped them upgrade their FAQ sections.

The new approach to delivering FAQ content not only improved our employees' experience, but it also reduced the time and effort required by site owners to manage this content. The simplicity of this solution allowed for quick implementation, and the modular design ensured that it could be replicated across multiple sites, supporting consistency across the intranet.