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.
Hype comes and goes. In the late 1990s, intranets topped the wish lists of IT and marketing departments who hoped they would revolutionise the way employees accessed applications and corporate information. Since then, many intranets have failed to live up to the hype, while a wave of other technologies pushed intranet developments aside. As a result, many have fallen into disuse. But according to usability guru Jakob Nielsen, organisations can make their intranets a core part of corporate life.
Nielsen's Nielsen Norman Group has a competition each year to find the best intranets. And he claims the results show a revival of interest. The group received many more nominations than in 2001, and most of the nominated designs show that organisations are trying harder to better manage their intranets.
“Typically, most intranets are just a few static HTML pages,” explains Charlie Abrahams, European managing director of portal-vendor Plumtree. “At most, they might have a phone list.” Intranets need to offer more functions if employees are to use them frequently, says Abrahams.
The key to a good intranet, Nielsen argues, is to focus on employees' roles in the organisation. “If you look at most bad intranets, they're very often a chaotic collection of stuff. To get employees to use the intranet, you need to give them the motivation to go to it every day.” Outdated content is a recurring problem, as is lack of coordination between departments which means users have to learn a new set of rules for each department's section.
But producing an employee-focused intranet that appeals to all staff can be a challenge. A 'killer application' that is so useful that people will frequently visit the intranet home page can ensure an intranet's success.
In most companies, says Nielsen, an efficient employee search tool serves as that killer application. A section of a site that provides phone lists, email links, organisational responsibilities, and even photographs and biographies is often the most important tool an intranet can provide. Plumtree's Abrahams says simple administration forms and business tools, such as a travel booking application, can attract users. In some companies, says Nielsen, the most popular tool is a daily lunch menu for the canteen.
Mike Lucas, UK technology manager of software and services provider Compuware, says that one of the most popular parts of his company's intranet is the human resources section, where employees can find out to what benefits they are entitled and what jobs are available within the company. Lucas says that personalisation technology gives employees a sense of belonging. In common with most of the intranets that came top in Nielsen's competition, Compuware's network uses a portal as the entry point to the intranet. “People won't use a portal just because it's a portal,” say Lucas. “It needs to bring value to the employee and push relevant information to them.”
However, finding out what will be useful to employees can be challenging. Feedback from users via links on individual pages can be a source of ideas. “A lot of people on our intranet say 'It would be good if it could do this',” recalls Lucas. “Or 'It would be good if we could access this application'.” However, Nielsen warns that feedback can be biased by one or two people with strong opinions. Having a usability professional sit next to someone as they use the intranet, observing how they interact with it, can be informative.
Clickstream analysis of web logs to discover which users are visiting which parts of the site and how they get there can be useful. But whatever information this unearths, says Nielsen, organisations should avoid a complete redesign except in the most dire situations. “Even if it's hard to use,” he says, “employees will have started to get used to where everything is and how to use it.”
Search engines are a crucial consideration because they can affect employee productivity greatly. Users need to be able to find information quickly, so a good search engine is vital. Also, search engine logs show what employees have been looking for on the intranet and, in conjunction with the web logs, whether they found it. If the search engine is not returning good results, it can be tuned or replaced.
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.