| |
|
 |
373 pages PDF format
Download Report
(free download)
The retail value of this report is $198, but it is free as our gift to our loyal readers, as our thanks for your support over the years.
|
|
|
Summary
|
|
This report reviews the designs and usability of ten intranets that were chosen from a much larger number of nominated designs. The report is richly illustrated with 215 full-color screenshots, giving readers the unique opportunity to see good intranet designs that are usually hidden behind a firewall.
The ten winning intranets are:
- American Electric Power (AEP), United States
- Comcast, United States
- DaimlerChrysler AG, Germany
- The Dow Chemical Company, United States
- Infosys Technologies Limited, India
- JPMorgan Chase & Co., United States
- Microsoft Corporation, United States
- National Geographic Society, United States
- The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), United Kingdom
- Volvo Group, Sweden
These intranets represent big companies with large amounts of documents and mission-critical applications such as sales force support. But most of the lessons from these winning designs apply to smaller companies as well.
The bulk of the report consists of detailed case studies of each of the ten winning intranet designs, including discussions of the main problems they faced, how these problems were overcome in the redesign process, and how the new design compared with the previous design.
Wall Street Journal coverage of the report:
> Interview about good intranet design (paid access required)
> Annotated screenshots (warning: PDF file)
> Read Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox: main trends in this design annual
> See sample chapter as thumbnails
> 2007 Intranet Design Awards: Learn more about the winning teams
|
|
Best Practices
|
|
Some of the key areas for which best practices are presented in the report are:
- Company and industry news
- Editorial control of the intranet homepage
- Keeping the intranet up-to-date
- News feeds (RSS) and e-mail newsletters with intranet updates
- Supporting factory-floor employees
- Onboarding of new employees
- Consistent navigation
- Multilingual intranets; supporting international employees
- Mobile intranet access
- Multimedia and video on intranets
- Collaboration tools and discussion boards
- Internal weblogs
- Intranet search
- Development process for intranet redesigns
- Staffing of intranet teams; where they report in the organization
- Updating and maintaining standards and guidelines for intranet design
- Intranet branding
- Polls
- Staff directory and employee profile pages
- Corporate calendars
- Promoting new intranet features
- Photo of the day
- Ajax
- Wikis
- Personalization
- Non-profit intranets supporting
volunteers
|
|
Table of Contents
|
|
373 page report with 215 screenshots
- Executive Summary
- Rise of Usability in Manufacturing
- Multimedia, News, and Ratings
- Multinational Intranets
- Technology Platforms
- Standard UI, No Standard CMS
- Web Trends Without the Hype
- Breaking Web Usability Guidelines
- Intranets Becoming Established
- Who Owns the Intranet?
- Intranet Branding
- ROI
- Overview of the Winners
- Five Countries
- Eight Industries
- Larger Winning Organizations
- Larger Teams (Though Still Relatively Small Given the Work
They Do)
- Increased In-House Design
- Tap the Winning Designers. Advice
- Common Themes Among the Winners
- Manager Support Across Groups
- Personalization
- e-Cards
- Photo of the day
- Video and TV
- Corporate Calendars
- World Clock on the Homepage
- Improving the Work/Life Balance
- Rate Stories
- News: Increased Variety and Categorization
- Themes that Repeat from 2006
- American Electric Power
- Summary
- URL and Access
- Content Management
- CMS, Templates, and Directing Design
- Manual News Feeds
- Technology
- Core Technology
- Ajax Workaround for IDs
- Goals and Constraints
- Goals
- Constraints
- Basic Intranet Features
- Users
- User Tasks
- Intranet Team
- Background
- Design Process and Usability Activities
- Redesign Kicks Off in New York Diner
- From Tablecloth to Mock-Up
- Going Greek
- Putting Design into Practice
- Launching a Preview Site
- Timeline
- Results
- Guiding Users Through the Redesign
- Weighing Feedback
- The Value of Collaboration
- Tracking Page Views and Costs
- Future Plans
- Lessons Learned
- Comcast Corporation
- Summary
- URL and Access
- Content Management
- Technology
- Goals and Constraints
- Basic Intranet Features
- Users
- User Tasks
- Intranet Team
- Background
- Design Process and Usability Activities
- Timeline
- Results
- Lessons Learned
- DaimlerChrysler AG
- Summary
- URL and Access
- Content Management
- Technology
- Goals and Constraints
- Basic Intranet Features
- Users
- User Tasks
- Intranet Team
- Background
- Design Process and Usability Activities
- Timeline
- Results
- Lessons Learned
- The Dow Chemical Company
- Summary
- URL and Access
- Content Management
- Decentralized Content Management
- Required Intranet
Page Elements
- Translating Stories
- News Feeds
- Technology
- Goals and Constraints
- Basic Intranet Features
- Users
- User Tasks
- Intranet Team
- Background
- Design Process and Usability Activities
- Timeline
- Results
- Lessons Learned
- Infosys Technologies Limited
- Summary
- URL and Access
- Content Management
- Sparsh: Decentralized content management
- Content Owners
- Enforcing Design Standards
- Technology
- Goals and Constraints
- Basic Intranet Features
- Users
- User Tasks
- Intranet Team
- Background
- Design Process and Usability Activities
- Redesigning the Interface, and Governance
- Usability Techniques
- Usability Surprises
- Timeline
- Results
- Increased Page Views, Accolades
- New Features
- Post-Launch Challenges
- Lessons Learned
- JPMorgan Chase & Co.
- Summary
- URL and Access
- Content Management
- Distributed Content, Controlled Templates
- Intranet Design Review Board Sets Standards
- Prototype Toolkit Helps Enforce
Templates
- Technology
- Redesign Goals and Constraints
- Basic Intranet Features
- Principle Features
- Tool Facilitates Enterprise Portal .
On-Boarding.
- Users
- User Tasks
- Intranet Team
- Team numbers
- Intranet Oversight
- Honing the Team Through Mergers
- Background
- Design Process and Usability Activities
- Redesign Impetus
- Test Techniques
- Employees. Reliance on Search
- From Research to Redesign
- Multiple Inspirations
- Timeline
- Results
- Streamlining Creates Cost, Content, Usability Improvements
- Gauging Redesign Impressions
- Lessons Learned
- Microsoft Corporation
- Summary
- URL and Access
- Content Management
- SharePoint Server
2007
- How MSW Hosts
Content
- An Intranet . Merger.
- Driving Consistent
Page Design
- RSS Feeds and E-mail Consumption
- Technology
- Internal Showcase
- MSW Search
- Ajax in Action
- Goals and Constraints
- Overall Goals
- Redesign Goals
- Constraints: Pacing SharePoint,
Culling Content
- Basic Intranet Features
- Communicating Information Across the Company
- Content
- Users
- User Tasks
- Intranet Team
- Team Composition
- Team Reporting Structure
- Background
- Design Process and Usability Activities
- Upgrading to SharePoint 2007
- Reviewing Intranet. s Goals and Top Features
- Honing the MSW Brand and . Chrome.
- Card Sorts and Usability Techniques
- Balancing Global and Local Navigation
- Timeline
- Results
- Major New Features
- Happy Users Come Bearing Suggestions
- Search Improvements
- Lessons Learned
- National Geographic Society
- Summary
- URL and Access
- Content Management
- Content Authors
- Site Framework (Information Architecture)
- Documents Types & Categories
- Page Designs
- Technology
- Goals and Constraints
- Basic Intranet Features
- News
- Directories and Whom Do I Call?
- Submit Information
- Forms
- Resources
- Divisions
- Libraries
- Wikis: Libraries Start the Trend and Facilitate
Cross-Organization Adoption
- Women Explorers Wiki
- For Me
- Calendars
- Users
- User Tasks
- Intranet Team
- Background
- Design Process and Usability Activities
- Card-Sorting and Survey Exercises
- Project Databases
- Timeline
- Results
- Redesign, Part 1
- Redesign, Part 2
- Gauging The Impact of Changes
- Lessons Learned
- The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)
- Summary
- Technology
- Hand-Crafted Code
- Images and Statistics
- Google Search
- Ajax
- Goals and Constraints
- Basic Intranet Features
- Feedback
- Future Plans for Department and
Project Areas
- Lessons Learned
- Volvo Group
- Summary
- URL and Access
- Content Management
- Common Back-End CMS
- Content Owners
- Templates Ensure Design Consistency
- Technology
- Goals and Constraints
- Basic Intranet Features
- Users
- User Tasks
- Intranet Team
- Background
- Design Process and Usability Activities
- Creating a Common Communication Channel Back End
- Three Task Forces Help Identify Top-25 Problems
- Usability Testing Techniques
- Usability Surprises
- Timeline
- Results
- Calculating ROI
- Lessons Learned
- Recommendations for the
Intranet Design Process
- Intranets Not Selected: Common
Issues
- Selection Criteria and Process
- Initial Design Reviews and Numeric Rankings
- Follow-up Questions with Top Tier (When Necessary)
- Design Sorting and Thorough Design Review
- Follow-up Interviews with Top 10
|
|
About the Free Download
|
|
We give this report as a gift to our loyal readers, as our thanks for your support over the years.
Even though the download is free, this report is still copyrighted information. Please do not distribute the PDF file on the Internet (or otherwise), but instead link to this page where people can download their own copy. (And please do link here — to this HTML page — and not directly to the PDF file, following the guideline to use a gateway page to avoid "PDF shock.")
|
|
Who Should Read This Report?
|
|
Anybody in charge of an intranet or its design.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
 Download Time |
| The PDF document is a big file because of the many illustrations (30 MB). Downloads may take a few minutes.>
|
| File Format |
| The report is a standard PDF file, formatted to print on both 8.5x11 and A4 paper. Any recent version of the Acrobat Reader will suffice to read or print the file. No special software is needed. The file is not copy-protected: we trust you to buy a site license if you are going to have several people read the report.
|
|
