Designing a knowledge portal people want to use

Here is a quiet test for your knowledge portal. Watch someone with a problem open it. Then count the seconds before they give up and pick up the phone. Most portals are not bad. They are just built for the people who run them, not the people who arrive at them. They open on news nobody asked for. The search box is small and halfway down the page. The menus are named after systems and teams. And on a phone, half of it does not fit. The person arriving has one thing on their mind: their problem, and usually not much patience. This article argues that you should design for that moment. Put search first, big and obvious. Show the handful of answers people actually need most, not the newest ones. Use their words, not ours. Make sure the portal works properly on a phone. And always show a clear way to get help when the answer is not there. A good portal does not feel like a library. It feels like someone was expecting you. The test is simple and honest: if a person with a real problem cannot find a path to an answer quickly, they will pick up the phone, and the portal has failed them even if every article in it is accurate.