Question 1

Why do so many intranet design projects fail to deliver what was promised?

Accepted Answer

Answer gMost intranet design projects don't fail on technology. They fail because the design reflects what the most influential person on the project thinks users need, rather than what users actually need. When a CEO or department head says "I think our people need...", teams tend to agree, and the result is a platform built for the person who commissioned it instead of the person who uses it.

Question 2

What is intranet user experience, and why does it matter more than features?

Accepted Answer

Intranet user experience is how easily a real employee, in their real working conditions, can find what they need and get back to work. Users are never a single homogeneous block: a driver starting at six in the morning and a back-office analyst have different needs, skills, and working conditions. An intranet that technically works but ignores those differences will struggle with adoption, however many features it has.

Question 3

How do you get honest consensus on intranet structure and navigation?

Accepted Answer

Use card sorting sessions with representative groups of users, give each group the same task, and compare what they produce. Then set two ground rules before you start: don't lead with "I think," lead with "what would my colleagues think?", and if you've been there so long the organization just makes sense to you, design for the person who hasn't joined yet. Without those rules, groups tend to coalesce around whatever the most senior group decided.

Question 4

How is AI changing intranet design and user experience?

Accepted Answer

AI is changing what an intranet can do: personalizing content, delivering information before people search for it, and reducing the friction between a question and an answer. Implemented around the question "does it work for the person who uses it?", it can transform the experience for employees who were always hardest to reach. Implemented to solve the wrong challenge, it simply amplifies the old ownership problem at greater speed.

Question 5

What comes next in this series?

Accepted Answer

This is the first post in a series. Over the coming months I'll look at what two decades of intranet projects have taught me about intranet user experience: what works, what consistently doesn't, and why the ideal audience for your intranet isn't as unique as you might think. Follow along on the Interact blog to catch each post as it's published.And whatever stage your own intranet or employee website design project is at, the place to start is the same as it was in 2007: good intranet design begins with the person who hasn't joined yet.

Steven Osborne

Twenty years at Interact: Two decades of intranet design and user experience