Summary

The ten winning intranets are:

• Defense Finance and Accounting Service (U.S.)
• Department for Transport (U.K.)
• Department of Veterans Affairs Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network (U.S.)
• Department for Victorian Communities (Australia)
• Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (U.S.)
• Government Offices of Sweden
• London Underground
• National Research Council of Canada, Industrial Research Assistance Program
• Senate Republican Conference (U.S.)
• Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario (Canada)

The intranets represent government organizations at the federal/national level, state/regional level, and city/local level. The average size of the winning organizations was 5,200 employees, but winners ranged from 400 to 15,000 employees.

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.

> Read Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox: main trends in this design competition
> See sample chapter as thumbnails
 

Best Practices

• Workflow support
• Ensuring fresh content
• Driving unified design through the organization
• Consistent navigation
• Integration of intranet with real-time mobile notification
• Development process for intranet redesigns
• Coordinating agency-level and government-level design
• Ensuring accessibility for employees with disabilities, beyond simple compliance with Section 508 (U.S.) or the Disability Discrimination Act (U.K.)

Table of Contents

150 page report with 74 screenshots

1. Executive Summary
   • Impact of Agency Size
   • Encouraging and Managing Content Contributors
   • Workflow Support
   • Help From Higher Level Offices
   • Technology
   • Usability Methods
   • Improvements in Metrics
   • Overview of the Winners
2. Common Themes Among the Winners
   • Devise a Consistent Design to Integrate Many Intranets
   • Include accessibility features
   • Support Users in Many Locations
   • Offer Authoritative, Accurate Content
   • Enhance Corporate Goals
   • Create Happy Users
3. Defense Finance and Accounting Service (U.S.)
   • Summary
   • URL and Access
   • Technology
   • Goals and Constraints
   • Basic intranet Features
   • Users
   • User Tasks
   • Background
   • Project Timeline
   • Results
   • Lessons learned
4. Department for Transport (U.K.)
   • (same subsections)
5. Department of Veterans Affairs Mid-Atlantic Health Care Network (U.S.)
   • (same subsections)
6. Department for Victorian Communities (Australia)
   • (same subsections)
7. Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond (U.S.)
   • (same subsections)
8. Government Offices of Sweden (Regeringskansliet)
   • (same subsections)
9. London Underground
   • (same subsections)
10. National Research Council of Canada, Industrial Research Assistance Program
    • (same subsections)
11. Senate Republican Conference (U.S.)
    • (same subsections)
12. Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario (Canada)
    • (same subsections)
13. Recommendations for the Intranet Design Process
    • Conduct Many Usability Evaluations and Visit Users
    • Make Accessibility Design a Part of the Process, Not an Afterthought
    • Partner with your Corporate Communications team
    • Track Your Successes
14. Intranets Not Selected: Common Issues
    • Homepage Lacked Information
    • Poor Page layout
    • Navigation That is Neither Consistent nor Persistent
15. Selection Criteria and Process
    • Summary of Submissions
    • Review Process
    • Initial Design Reviews and Rankings
    • Design Sorting and Thorough Design Review
    • Follow-up Interviews with Top Ten

Who Should Read This Report?

• Anybody in charge of an intranet or its design, especially if they work for a public-sector organization.

Collecting similar benchmarking and best practice information from a large set of intranets yourself would probably take you two to three months, if you could ever get enough other agencies to let you in the door. Realistically, reading this report is the only way you will get the scoop on this many intranet projects.

Please help us continue publish low-price reports by buying a site license if you have colleagues who will read the report. If you only need it for yourself, then that's obviously what the single-user license is for. If somebody "gives" you a copy, then please buy a download anyway to keep prices down in the future. 

Download Report (from eSellerate) $148 for the PDF file (150 pages, 74 screenshots), single-user license $348 for a site license to make copies and place on your intranet

Sector-Specific Intranets:
> Financial Services
> Technology Companies
> Manufacturing Industry
> Retail Sector
> Knowledge-Intensive

Intranet Portals
Report from the trenches.

Intranet Information Architecture (IA)
Analysis of 56 companies' IA.

User Research and Intranet Design Guidelines
For this series of 10 reports, we tested 27 intranets with real employees from each company to find out what worked and didn't work across a broad set of intranet designs.

• Check
• Bank transfer
• Purchase orders
• Faxed or mailed credit cards

We can also send you a paper invoice if your company requires that.

> in-house seminar for your intranet team
> public tutorial at the Usability Week 2008 conference (New York, San Francisco, London, and Melbourne)

We can conduct a usability review of your intranet.