For many years now the annual Intranet Design Annual report from the Nielsen Norman Group has set a very high standard in selecting 10 high-quality intranets from the many that were submitted.  Remarkably no European organisations made it to the final selection. The authors of the report are Amy Schade, Patty Caya, and Jakob Nielsen. The 10 best-designed intranets for 2010 are Enbridge, Inc.(Canada), GE (USA), Howard Hughes Medical Institute (USA), Huron Consulting Group (USA), NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), MITRE Corporation (USA), SCANA Corp. (USA), Trend Micro Inc. (Japan), URS Corp. (USA) and Wal-Mart Stores.

Each profile runs to around 40 pages of text, with screen shots, governance structures, technology roadmaps, and detailed descriptions of how the intranet was developed. Just occasionally the text seems to be a little bland, but this report is for public readership. Reading between the lines there are some interesting stories which cannot be told! Two of the intranets use SharePoint 2007, with many of the others using seriously powerful enterprise solutions.

An analysis of the profiles indicates that the average level of intranet support runs to one intranet manager for 3000 employees. This figure excludes Wal-Mart, as here a team of 23 supports 1.4 million users, and whilst impressive it seriously skews the data.

The synthesis of the trends illustrated by the organisations that made it, and some that didn’t, should be required reading for not only any intranet manager but their CEO as well. The teams on mobile access in particular are well argued. Only three of the ten intranets supported mobile access. Social features were also common on the winning intranets, both social features for employees as individuals and also workgroup support and other features that encourage work-related connections.

The authors note that many of this year’s winning intranets took explicit steps to manage design change and encourage users to try out new and improved features. For example, many teams conducted extensive user research before deciding on their design direction.Beyond user research, several teams engaged a wider range of stakeholders in early communication that continued throughout the design process. As designs became more defined, some teams fielded special early-access programs that let smaller groups of people use the new design before it was rolled out to everybody. Finally, once the new design launched, explicit internal marketing campaigns helped promote early uptake. This year’s promotional initiatives included an IT expo, cafeteria demos, posters, road shows, and emails. Four out of the ten intranets made specific provision for emergency preparedness. The trend toward using the intranet to help manage emergencies is a sign of maturity because intranets are becoming recognized as a key part of the organizational infrastructure.

As always the report is a gold-mine of ideas and any intranet team would be well advised to spend at least a day, if not a week, working through it. It is a pity that most of the winners are large companies. It would be nice to see some Best in Class intranets to inspire smaller organisations of under 1000 staff. Overall this report, like those in previous years, is essential reading for intranet managers and intranet consultants. More in hope than expectation I'll mention once again that an index to a report like this is absolutely essential but once again is missing. Try looking through 450 pages for ideas on marketing. Poor usability!

Martin White