Intranet redesigns
Intranets often grow organically, with new sections and pages added over time. This leads to a huge volume of information, but little overall structure. An intranet redesign is designed to address this, improving the structure of the site and ensuring staff can quickly find what they need.
Do you need a redesign?
Start by assessing your current intranet to identify areas of strength and weakness. This will tell you whether you need a redesign, as well as the areas to focus the redesign project on.
The Intranet Review Toolkit contains a comprehensive set of heuristics (guidelines or criteria), allowing a detailed intranet review to be conducted that focuses on a wide range of functionality, design and strategy.
The Toolkit has been published under a Creative Commons license, allowing it to be freely downloaded and used (as long as certain conditions are met).
Read more:
- Intranet Review Toolkit (separate website)
Intranet Roadmap
There are many activities involved in an intranet redesign, and these need to be carefully planned if the project is to finish on time and on budget. All the participants and stakeholders in an intranet redesign also need to be working in a coordinated way, with a common understanding of the process being followed.
The Intranet Roadmap provides a complete methodology that describes all the activities required to develop (or redevelop) an intranet.
Beyond just implementing software or redesigning the site, the Intranet Roadmap covers activities in five key streams:
- strategy
- design
- content
- change & communications
- technology
The Intranet Roadmap does more than just indicate what activities need to be conducted, it clearly shows the sequence of activities required, and the techniques that will help at every stage of the project.
Read more:
Approaching the redesign
The goal of an intranet redesign is to produce a site that works well for staff, as well as delivering benefits for the organisation as a whole. The needs of staff must be understood, and best-practice approaches used throughout the project.
Read more:
- Intranet (re)design wrap-up
- Your new site will be 20% different from current site
- Content migration: options and strategies
- Escaping the organisation chart on your intranet
- Intranets when organisations merge
Continuous improvement
A single redesign project, no matter how large, will never be able to address every aspect of the intranet, or deliver every hoped-for improvement. Intranet teams should therefore take a ‘continuous improvement’ approach to the intranet, finding ways of steadily and incrementally enhancing their sites.
Read more:
- Intranet change: evolution or big bang?
- Improving your intranet, task by task
- Full site redesign? Start by addressing the home page
- Creating an upwards spiral for your intranet
Case studies
We have helped many organisations to redesign their intranets, within Australia and internationally. Some of these projects have been shared as case studies, to help intranet teams get a concrete idea of how it all works in practice.
Read more:
- Intranet redesign for Canon Australia
- User-centred redesign of the FaCS intranet
- Case study: Hunter Health intranet
Improving usability
One of the key goals of most redesign projects is to make the intranet easier and quicker to use for staff. This requires the use of best-practice usability and information architecture techniques. Read more
Improving intranet content
Improving content on the intranet is a key part of an intranet redesign, and the content migration gives an unparalleled opportunity to do a cleanup. Read more
Working within a strategy
An intranet redesign will only deliver short-term cosmetic changes if not done within the context of a broader intranet strategy and roadmap. Read more
Our services
Step Two Designs has extensive experience conducting intranet redesign projects, whether via consulting or mentoring. Use our experience to deliver new intranet that meets the needs of staff and the business. Visit our intranet services page for more information.
