Nielsen Norman GroupEvidence-Based User Experience Research, Training, and Consulting
Intranet design has come a long way in the past 10 years, but far too many organziations are still plagued wtih cumbersome, disorganized intranets. Far from being just an annoyance, these systems can make basic tasks so difficult that employee productivity is severly impacted.
To help companies and institutions optimize this essential resource, we conduct direct usability studies of intranets in a wide variety of industries, visiting companies at their location and reporting back the most important findings and guidelines. NN/g also holds an annual intranet design competition, from which we generate a collection of case studies showcasing intranets with great usability.
The articles below summarize many of the main findings from these two branches of research.
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Employee collaboration and open communication are now business drivers in many companies, but social enterprise features are often poorly integrated with the rest of the intranet.
Winners of the Intranet Design Annual competition for 2013, with summaries of key intranet design trends. The number of people on intranet teams grew substantially compared to earlier years.
Although intranet design is improving, it hasn't kept pace with increased complexity in enterprise requirements, so measured usability is down slightly.
19 new case studies of enterprise portals find slow growth in new features; the focus is on robust integration and formalizing governance.
The average mid-sized company could gain $5 million per year in employee productivity by improving its intranet design to the top quartile level of a cross-company intranet usability study. The return on investment? One thousand percent or more.