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the Free CMSWire NewsletterIn 2009, half of the winning intranets, as determined by Jakob Nielsen, used SharePoint, specifically the MOSS platform. SharePoint’s notable popularity is particularly interesting considering that from 2003–2006, the Nielsen’s winning intranets didn't use earlier versions of SharePoint at all.
Yet, building a company intranet with SharePoint may limit a design’s flexibility. Because intranet designers may not be building intranets from scratch as much as they used to, their focus has shifted towards improving usability as a way to influence the look and feel.
Like any website, in order to improve the usability, it’s essential to define who the user is and what tasks are expected of them. For general public websites, the user is a consumer, from whom a monetary transaction is desired. But for a company intranet, the user is the employee and the intranet is designed to help improve their workflow.
When building any intranet it’s important to consider guidelines for accessibility and usability specific to the platform, just as you would for consumer websites.
Interfaces
Four of the 2010 winning intranet sites (as judged by Jakob Nielsen) used SharePoint and all were able to capture a specific and different look. Some provided sites that resembled traditional home pages while others provided a dashboard of controls.
Integrating widgets and tools can help employees find relevant information easily. Yet, just because widgets can be easily embedded doesn’t mean that they should haphazardly pepper a page. Whether it’s a weather, web traffic or calendar widget, designers should ask if the information provided actually helps save an employee time or supply information that would be hard to access otherwise?
Widgets and other embeddable tools may look fun and exciting, but as Gerry McGovern reminds us:
Focus on service. Focus on your employees' time. Be relentless in seeking to save it. If you do you will create a great intranet.
Mobile interfaces for intranets are also becoming more prevalent. This year, 30% of the intranets reviewed by Jakob Nielsen had special mobile features. As well, many organizations have begun to recognize the needs and requirements of its mobile workforce and are developing interfaces designed specifically for smart phones and table devices.
Navigation
Just because an intranet is designed for internal users doesn’t mean that navigation shouldn’t be strategic. Designers should figure out the tasks involved and lay out the site accordingly. A well designed top-level navigation can save users time as well as make the intent of an intranet evident to everyone.
Once you decide on the tasks to be carried out, consider how an organization works and how they describe their work. Using language that is too formal or too relaxed can backfire and cause issues.
Nielsen provides a breakdown of how some winning sites named their top-level navigation.
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