• Conduct early and thorough holistic analysis. Engage actual users to learn the online and offline activities that affect collaboration, as well as the "soft" issues of casual interactions and informal knowledge sharing. Translate what is seen and heard into a model for collaborative behaviors that can be delivered using a combination of core collaboration tools and extended e-enablement features available via the portal.
• Never rely exclusively on what people tell you about how they collaborate. There are often significant gaps between how people describe what they do and how they actually behave. A "simulated" scenario can identify critical information that supports your approach to deploying collaboration features to the right people in the right business context.
• Engage first-hand users from different functional groups. Take into account not only differences in their functional role, but also their familiarity and comfort with technology. Balance structured tasks with open-ended questions and discussions and be sure to probe for issues. Users often communicate as much nonverbally with hesitations, facial expressions, or body language as they do with words.
• Focus on optimizing business performance, not just use of a single set of work tools. Test how users interact with the entire portal prototype and not just with specific tools. All too often, usability is reduced to making sure users can find the right button on the right page.

Learn more about some of the features one can expect with an LDS portal solution.

• Collaboration
• Making Collaboration Work