Design for life
- Article 51 of 77
- Information Age, October 2002
Many corporate intranets have fallen into disuse. But innovative design can make them alluring and productive tools again.
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Establishing what employees need, redesigning the intranet to meet those needs then getting them to use it can be a long and expensive process, however. Nielsen says it can take two years, although this can be shorter if the intranet was designed well to begin with. “For a big company, it's a big project to redesign an intranet and roll out a consistent design across all divisions. Great intranet usability and employee productivity requires more work than just adding water to some portal software,” he says.
But even though the overall project can take two years, organisations should approach building their intranet in increments, advises Nielsen. “Some companies have been burned before by 'big bang' development projects that took forever to create,” he explains. For the largest intranets, it would be impossible to convert to a new design this way - American telecommunications company BellSouth has 3 million pages on its intranet, for instance. Instead, it is possible to gradually release templates, portals, search engines, personalisation features and other components on an individual basis. The central design team can convert individual departments to the new design, one at a time.
Implementing the changes and keeping content up to date is as much a business process issue as it is a job for the IT department. Plumtree's Abrahams says, “Any project that is IT-led will fail. The project has to start with a business case and have senior level sponsorship, typically from the marketing or communications department. And you have to get content involvement from users.”
Making a member of each department responsible for regularly updating intranet is vital, says Nielsen. Someone from the central design department should meet every department head to explain the significance of the intranet and to get feedback on what they want from it.
In short, if an organisation is to get the best productivity gains from and support for its intranet, it must both provide value and be easy to use. And even if these criteria are met, it will only succeed by getting support from all levels of the organisation.
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