A Solid Intranet in Eight Steps
By Theo Mandel
"This year, I estimate that the world economy will lose roughly $100 billion because of bad intranet usability." —Jakob Nielsen
Corporate intranets are old news—everyone has one. But have you ever stepped back and wondered whether your intranet is cost-effective? Or, whether it increases your company's productivity? Have you ever asked your corporate users if they like it? For that matter, do they even use it?
Because intranets have become commonplace, it's easy to assume they're well designed and usable. Unfortunately, most intranets have grown undirected and unchecked, like weeds in a garden. To dispel the myth that good intranet design just happens, let's look at the rules that my colleagues and I follow when we design corporate intranets.
1. Forget about your Internet site.
For several years, designers have debated whether intranets should have the same look and feel as their Internet counterparts. Nielsen's 1997 article, "The Difference Between Intranet and Internet Design," highlights critical issues in site design. He details four key differentiators between intranets and Internet sites:
- users (your employees versus external customers or viewers),
- tasks (everyday work and apps versus browsing, buying, or research),
- the type of information (detailed, work-related documents and processes versus marketing and customer-support information),
- the amount of information (there is 10 to 100 times more information on an intranet than an Internet site).
