Patrick Cash-Peterson
Architect and Usability Designer with Sympraxis Consulting
Reykjavík, Iceland
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Patrick is a UX certified Nielsen Norman Group Professional specializing in site builds, migrations, and user experience. He has over 20 years experience working with clients as a project manager in many different fields. Patrick brings a unique understanding blending design, user experience, and project management to work with clients. He is skilled at balancing those goals against the project scope, requests, timeline, as well as easing concerns around the changes the projects can bring. Patrick enjoys digging content to help build strong information architecture as well as helping clients understand user experience and helping them implement best practices.
Area of Expertise
Topics
The UX Snapshot: How to Evaluate Any Intranet Site in 60 Minutes
Most intranet sites don't have a technology problem. They have a usability problem. Think about your new employee, can they find key documents or answers to their questions in a few clicks? Are they getting frustrated and asking someone a question? Chances are if your new employee struggles, so wont Copilot.
From first impressions to navigation, search, and Copilot readiness, this practical session focuses on creating a no-drama internet health check attendees can bring back and start using tomorrow.
This session walks attendees through five quick steps to review their existing intranet.
• Quickly evaluate an internet site when there’s no budget or time for a full UX study
• Spot the labels, links, and navigation choices that make employees mutter things at their screens
• Tidy up information architecture so people can find what they came for
• Use task-focused navigation to move from “What department owns this?” to “What do I need to do?”
• Rename vague pages, mystery links, and content chaos before Copilot starts confidently surfacing the wrong thing
• Make practical updates today without a full rebuild, or another committee meeting that should have been an email
Attendees will leave with a practical framework that connects usability, information architecture, governance, search, and accessibility into one usable approach they can bring back to work the next day.
Modernizing your pages with flexible sections
Have you heard about flexible sections but are struggling how to figure out how to implement them? After years of the SharePoint modern layouts, flexible sections are a breath of fresh air. Figuring out when and how to implement them in a strategic and complimentary way within your organization's governance and within usability better practices can be a challenge.
In this session, we'll
*Review the added benefits of flexible sections and how they can seamlessly integrate into your current intranet
*Discuss better practices around usability and how information is presented
*Discuss the pros and cons of implementation when it comes to governance and accessibility
This session is designed for those with a basic understanding of SharePoint page layouts who want to update their current intranet. The aim is for you to leave with an understanding how beneficial flexible sections are and which pitfalls to avoid.
Practical applications of SharePoint AI in page creation
Copilot is being integrated into our everyday life. It helps us take meeting notes, pull together daily to do lists and creating memes. Copilot is now part of the SharePoint page creation process with the introduction of Copilot enabled page and section templates. We can also use it as an option to help us write our content on the page. Does it create good, usable, content or is it more hassle than it is worth?
In this session we’ll discuss
• What are the options for using Copilot for page design and creation
• The better practices around usability design and accessibility for the web
• Benefits and pitfalls of using AI when it comes to usability and accessibility
• Building your own templates
• Copilot prompts to help create more usable and accessible page
Enhancing Usability of Microsoft Teams for Internal Collaboration
Everyone agrees creating a robust information architecture is important for your intranet sites. Do we put in the same effort into our Teams and collaboration sites? By applying basic information architecture principles to collaborations sites we can help our teams work more effectively, lower cognitive load of our users, and be more efficient in how they do it.
In this session I’ll cover
• Key usability heuristics to help make your team more effective
• How to organize content to make better use of search
• Incorporating good information architecture to assist users in finding documents easily
• How to combine the visual aspects of SharePoint Teams sites into Microsoft Teams
Join me in this session as I share firsthand experiences from working with clients, highlighting specific obstacles and how implementing practical usability better practices, improved their collaboration experiences.
Designing for Intelligence: How IA and Usability Shape Copilot Success in Microsoft 365
As organizations move quickly to adopt Microsoft 365 Copilot, many overlook a critical foundation: Copilot can only be as effective as the structure, clarity, and usability of the content it works with. This session explores
• The importance of information architecture and human-centered usability to aid in preparing your environment so Copilot can take this and provide cleaner, more accurate results
• Why we still need modern IA, clean metadata, purposeful navigation, and governance as we navigate the use of AI
• Better practices to help prepare your Microsoft 365 environment to work better for people and Copilot.
How Copilot and AI are evolving intranets and how our users interact with them
The world of information is always evolving. How we consumed web-based content in 2000 is different that we consume it today. Users have expectations on what answers they should get when they search or how an agent should react to their prompts. Copilot and other agentic experiences are changing the way users interact with information and their expectations. How do we evolve our intranets to meet these changing expectations and do it in a way that doesn’t hurt usability and accessibility? In this session we’ll cover
• The changes AI has brought to finding and searching for information
• How AI can be used for creating content and design
• What stays he same even with the use of Copilot and what may change
• The added value of human-centered design
Navigation That Doesn't Suck: Creating an Intuitive Intranet Experience
Most organizations design navigation based on how the company is organized. Users navigate based on what they're trying to accomplish. The challenge comes in working to blend the sometimes-conflicting information together into comprehensive but usable navigation. In this session we’ll cover
• Common navigation mistakes
• Task-based vs. department-based structures
• Global, hub, and local navigation strategies
• Navigation testing with real users
Attendees will leave with a practical understanding of how to design navigation around user tasks, which helps both users and organizations. Remember, the best navigation is the kind users barely notice because it simply helps them get things done.
Designing communication sites for humans: Why users ignore your intranet
Good usability is no longer just about helping users find information. In the age of Copilot, it's about helping AI find and understand information too. The organizations that succeed with AI won't necessarily be the ones with the best prompts. They'll be the ones with the best information architecture, content design, and user experience foundations. That’s why this session will focus the foundational elements to help get you there.
In this session, we'll explore
• Why might users be ignoring your intranet
• Mental model versus organizational structure approaches
• How to reduce users cognitive load
• Content design for better user experiences and findability
• Quick implementation wins to help your intranet today
• How all this can support AI findability
This session builds on proven user experience concepts while exploring how those same practices directly influence search, retrieval, and eventually Copilot outcomes. We’ll end the session with some practical design techniques to get you started today.
It’s not about you: Lessons for an intranet owner
As an organization’s intranet owner, you’re part of the discussion around page design, content, and navigational structures. You're often under pressure to build things a certain way based on executive level pressure. In this session we will talk about real usability concepts with demonstrated success and research behind it. We'll dive into mental models and usability design, specifically hitting topics like
• Examine why users ignore intranet content even when it is technically available
• Explore how mental models differ from organizational structures and why designing around real employee tasks creates more intuitive pathways
• Learn how cognitive load can affect intranet option and how to fix it
• Review how content design directly affects findability
• Identify practical improvements intranet owners can make immediately.
Attendees will leave with practical usability techniques they can use to push past opinion-driven design decisions and build intranet experiences around how people actually think, work, and search.
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