Comments on Intranet Design Annual: The Ten Best Intranets of 2001

Steven Garrity — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:38:31 GMT

Good points Lou. Also, silverorange is a web software firm – quite a unique situation to be in for developing a web-based intranet.

Louis Rosenfeld — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:38:31 GMT

My problem with this report: how can we compare apples (e.g., HP or IBM) to oranges (in this case, silveroranges)? More than half of silverorange’s staff was involved in the intranet design (something like 4 of 7 total staff). Which is wonderful. But how can that be compared to what Ford or Microsoft is trying to accomplish with their intranets? I’m certain that the report has a lot of value, but I think this issue emasculates any comparisons.

Steven Garrity — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:38:31 GMT

As part of the design team of one of the intranets featured in the report (silverorange), I obviously have a vested interest in the success of the report. However, I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t more in-depth criticism – then again, I they did pick what they thought were the best intranets from the submissions.

I was hoping for some criticism that would help us improve our next version. It is much more difficult to quantify the effectiveness of the interface of an intranet than it would be for something like an ecommerce checkout process. The circumstances of an ecommerce site can be replicated quite easily, as many customers shop only occasionally and would be no more familiar with the interface than short-term test subjects would. With an intranet, though, you are dealing with a long-term usage of a smaller group of users. They become very familiar with the interface and may use it a dozen times a day. This presents a whole different set of design challenges – and is much more difficult to test. The only way to truly know how effective an intranet is would be to observe an entire organization using it on site for an extended period or to use it yourself – and I mean really use it.

I was pleased to see that Nielsen does recognize the differences in design challenges between public websites and intranets in his books.

I do think that this report might be helpful for a company looking to develop or outsource an intranet design. And, of course, the report was great press!

editor — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:38:31 GMT

From time to time we will be reviewing books and publications that we feel are relevant and interesting to the audience of Boxes and Arrows. Our goal is not to necessarily promote one person’s effort over another but to provide guidance to our readers as to those books and pubs we think would enrich their practice as well as to identify items not worth the time.

heyotwell — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:38:31 GMT

Except this one, please, which happens to be a review of a publication. Reviewing Jakob’s $50 pdf report is no different from reviewing Jakob’s $50 book, is it?

surfmoc — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 00:38:31 GMT

please leave blatant ads out of this site!