The work reported here relates to collaborative platforms used in the knowledge management domain. Although these environments provide substantial help, first-time users are disinclined to use them because they are data- (or document-) centred. In this article, we study how new collaborative platforms for knowledge management can be more “user-centred”. The approach is based on observation of the collaborative activities in which the users are involved, in order to regulate the process better. The “traces” of the activity left by the different users of the platform are central in our approach, in order to exhibit specific indicators. Opposing a techno-centred and a user-centred approach, based on a real case study, a methodological framework to construct these indicators according to the real users’ needs is thus proposed, as well as a tool.