I have often said that intranets hold up a mirror to the organisations they serve. Their purpose, content, structure and navigation must all reflect the unique contexts that they sit in.

This can be seen in the top-level menu items of intranets. If there was one “right” answer, we’d see the same menu items across many sites; or at least, more similarities than differences. Scan your eyes over the collection of menus above: is this what you see?

I see a lot of variation. Some of this will be due to different staff needs, some will be variation for variation’s sake, while others will be bad design. But which is which?

The ever-present challenge for intranet teams is seeing other sites. This makes it hard to discern patterns, and for “best practices” to organically emerge, as they have done for public-facing sites. Should intranet navigation be more similar? Probably, although we need much more research (as an industry) to know what intranets should be converging on.

The first step is for intranet teams to follow a strong user-centred methodology when developing their intranet navigation, as outlined in Designing intranets: creating sites that work. We then need to find more ways as a community (and industry) for sharing experiences, so we can collectively learn what works, and what doesn’t.

In the meantime, we must not blindly copy designs, and be very conscious of the variations that exists out in the wild. Step-by-step we can then narrow down to good approaches and best practices.

(Thanks for the screenshots: AMP, Arup, British American Tobacco, Bennett Jones, Coca-Cola Enterprises, GE, Intermountain Healthcare, Kiwibank, La Trobe University, LSI, PwC Canada, Sutherland Shire Council and Westminster Abbey.)

Within the intranet industry, the homepage also inflames passionate debate. This is particularly true on the question of how long the intranet homepage should be.

In the earlier article Seven roles of the intranet homepage, a range of purposes were identified:

1. news
2. navigation
3. key tools
4. key information
5. community and culture
6. internal marketing
7. collaboration

Effective designs find a productive balance between these seven roles, without any one being excessively dominant.

This turns out to be extremely difficult if the homepage is kept entirely ‘above the fold’, squeezed into a single screenful. Within this limited space, homepages often end up being mostly news with a little navigation squeezed into the edges. Internal marketing and a few key links round out the mix.

If the homepage is made longer, much more content and functionality can be included. This could increase the value of the page, and help to balance competing priorities.

But can it be made to work?

[May KM Column, read the full article]

Working through our collection of intranet screenshots, I’m struck by how pedestrian many intranet homepages are. Despite huge advances in technology, and our growing knowledge as intranet professionals, little has changed on most homepages.

Take homepage news as an example. With the exception of a handful of innovators, most intranet homepages feature pretty basic news features:

• featured news items
• list of other global news items
• additional news boxes for industry updates, media clippings, etc

I’d love to start seeing much richer designs for intranet news. To get your creative juices flowing, I’ve created a quick mockup, shown below:

Far from a complete design, it does have a few features that are hopefully of interest:

1. Featured news item, still worth having.
2. News can be published at every level of the organisation, aggregated into a single list of news. Items are clearly differentiated, and are displayed based on the staff member’s geographic location, business unit, team, etc.
3. Commenting on every news item; something that should be standard on every intranet where the culture supports it.
4. Like Facebook and a dozen other sites, users can feed back what they want to see more (and less) of; the system then uses this to filter the flood of news.
5. Everyone can post news, even if it’s just a “bake sale” announcement in their local office.
6. Staff can see what’s happening elsewhere in the organisation, and can add other news feeds to their main list of news.

This is still a very basic design, and could get much fancier if social elements are included. There are a lot of additional “web 2.0″ style interactions that are also possible.

I haven’t usability tested this design (you should). It’s also just a quick scribble, with as many problems as good ideas. But hopefully it should spark your thinking, and encourage you to play some more when redesigning the intranet.

What are your thoughts on this design? How could it be made better?

There is also contention about the role of the intranet homepage:

• Should the homepage be mostly about news?
• Is navigation the key element?
• What tools should we surface on the homepage?
• How do we decide which links are included?

The many different stakeholders involved in the intranet will each have their own, potentially differing, opinions about these questions.

What is agreed is the importance of the homepage. It is the starting point for staff, and the jumping off point for the rest of the site. If the homepage doesn’t work well, then staff frustration will quickly be heard.

Time should therefore be spent carefully designing the homepage, and getting the balance of functionality right.

[October KM Column, read the full article]