http://intranetblog.blogware.com/blog/Portal
Intranet design is not about design
by
Toby Ward
on Thu 27 Sep 2007 05:13 PM PDT
Forget
the look-and-feel. Put it out of your mind. The look-and-feel or design
of your intranet or portal is window dressing – a distraction from what
employees need.
I
mention this as we (Prescient Digital Media) talk with so many clients
and prospective clients that want to see ‘screenshots’ as fast as
possible. Screenshots are important and serve a purpose, and I
completely understand having run an enterprise intranet before;
everyone wants to see what others are doing.
Fidelity Investments intranet home page
However, don’t
ask me to produce a design concept in response to your RFP when I, and
all other vendors, know virtually nothing about your intranet other
than the very select information provided in the RFP itself. If I whip
up a design concept it will be entirely flawed, pointless, and
completely counterproductive because it’s based entirely on guesswork
because I don’t know:
- The cultural preferences and needs of employee users to different design treatments
- The mandatory or necessary requirements of business owners and senior managers
- The subtle nuances of a preferred an optimized information architecture
- The
optimal page layout (whether 2, 3, 4 or more columns) with the right
ration of text to white space (which varies for every organization
depending on their culture and level of web savviness of users)
- The necessity nor capacity for individual personalization and customization
- Political consideration for the use of the home page
- Strategic initiatives of the organization that must be hooked into the intranet
- The type, quality and quantity of content on the intranet
- Etc., etc.
If
I know little or none of the above, to what end or what purpose is
served by developing a design concept based on guess work? To qualify
our design capabilities? If you’re choosing an intranet consultant
based on their ‘design’ abilities then you have no business running an
intranet (see How to hire an intranet consultant).
That’s
not to say that design (look-and-feel) doesn’t play a roll and isn’t
important to users. Design is important, but it doesn’t crack the top 6
or 7 priorities. On average, based on my experience working with dozens
of intranet clients, design is equivalent to between 8 – 12% of the
total intranet’s value. What is really important is content (20-30%),
search (15-20%), information architecture (20-30%), and governance and
planning (20-30%).
Unlike
YouTube or an entertainment website, users don’t really care about
design nor video, flash, and bells and whistles that distract and
entertain. Employee intranet users want one thing: to complete a task
or to find the content or tool they need to do their job, and to do it
or find it as fast as possible. In short, employees want speed. On our
roads, speed kills; on our intranets, speed wins.
The
following represents our updated model (based on many years of
experience), the Nexus of Intranet Success, which visually depicts the
critical components of a successful intranet.
Note
the importance of people, particularly executives (executive support)
and end users (motivated employees). Design helps facilitate the
process, but never should be the focus or centerpiece. Argue with me or
debate me if you like, but you will lose (see the original feature, Nexus of Intranet Success).
Just
as the intranet is evolving and in need of constant refinement, I’m
still refining this model as technology, employee needs, and companies
change and evolve. More to come in October...
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