Design for Usability - Intranet Design and Usability

Intranet Design and Usability

William Hudson was Director of User Experience for the Intranet Benchmarking Forum from 2002 to 2009. During that time he conducted more than 250 expert reviews of live intranets. Areas assessed included:

Content - structure, integration, scope, timeliness & ownership
Visual design - clarity of layout, use of graphics, colour & screen space
Navigation - terminology, images as links, journey paths, menus
Consistency - content, visual design, navigation, home page
Engagement - rewarding to use, interactivity, empowerment, community
Accessibility - usability with assistive technology such as screen readers
People and content search - effectiveness of interaction design
Readability - plain English versus pleonastic circumlocution
Navigational alignment (card sorting) - meeting users' expectations
Intranet user satisfaction surveys - a short survey of 13 questions

William designed and developed the benchmarking methods, statistics and reporting over that period. He also assisted in the design and improvement of a variety of intranets for organisations such as BT, CMC Markets, Kellogg's, Prudential Group and others. William was the author of the IBF's report on Microsoft SharePoint 2007 (MOSS 2007) usability and a briefing paper on measuring intranet readability.

We would be happy to assist organisations in measuring the effectiveness of their intranets. Contact us for details.

Keywords: intranets, intranet usability, intranet design