Standards for Good Intranet & Extranet Design

1. Simple and intuitive user interface and architecture: Users should not require training or explanation to use the site. It should not be intimidating, nor should it require a lot of thought or practice to use it effectively.
2. Easy orientation: The entire content ëlandscapeí should be visible or at least apparent from the home page. No navigation tool or sitemap should be needed.
3. No overlap with content of the organizationís other websites: This entails knowing who the siteís ëcustomersí are, and when they should use an Intranet or Extranet versus a public Internet website. Generally, the Intranet is for employees and contractors, the Extranet is for ërealí customers of the organizationís goods and services, and the public Internet site is for prospective customers, alumni, prospective recruits, students, researchers, and the public media. Where there is overlap of content between these user constituencies it probably makes sense to repurpose the content for different audiences anyway.
4. Table-, macro- or CSS-driven: Changes and additions to content should not require html recoding. External websites may benefit from occasional refreshing or redesign for aesthetic or market-driven reasons, but internal site design should be driven by functionality and be changed as little and as rarely as possible.
5. ëBookmarkableí: Every resource should have its own unique URL that users can bookmark and find their way back to. That means no frames.
6. Expandable: The site should accommodate new individual and group web resources (e.g. blogs, wikis) without a need for redesign.
7. One-click access: Users should be able to get from the home page to the resource they seek in a single click. That may require use of menus that only show up when you hover, or scroll through lists in small windows, to prevent the home page being overwhelming.
8. ëTaskonomyí rather than taxonomy: In the siteís design, architecture and organization, ëwhy are you looking?í should prevail over ëwhat are you looking for?í
9. Personally reconfigurable: Menus or scroll lists should be able to be personalized to accommodate each userís browsing orientation (i.e. viewed/resorted in different ways).
10. User-driven content and tools: Content and tools offered on the site should be what users have indicated they want, rather than what ësuppliersí of content want the site to host. Likewise, content should be organized according to userís needs, not the content supplierís convenience. For example, internal news should be delivered through subscribable e-newsletters (see standard #14 below), instead of cluttering up Intranet and Extranet home pages.
11. Tools, not just content: The site should provide simple access to all the connectivity and other tools and technologies (both web-based and downloadable) that users need to perform their jobs effectively, along with online learning resources for each tool that teach users how and when to use each tool.
12. Search in context: Each search bar should only search a predefined subset of relevant content, not everything on the site that meets the search terms. The home page should therefore have different search bars for different purposes (e.g. search for people, search for documents, search for news, etc.) Nothing discourages users from ever visiting a site again more than lots of ëfalse positivesí in search results.
13. Use of clickable graphics: Recognizing their higher development and maintenance cost, selective use should be made of ëactiveí graphics (e.g. organization charts, process charts) where these make finding or browsing easier or more effective.
14. Really simple publication and subscription: Sites should use RSS to allow users to ëpublishí their content to the Intranet or Extranet, and to allow them to subscribe to a wide variety of internal and external content using a single ësign upí, and get that content delivered the way the user chooses (e.g. e-mail, aggregator page).
15. Accommodates different ways of finding: The site should give users three choices to find the information theyíre looking for: browse, search, or subscribe.
16. Security is ëunder the hoodí: Depending on your IDs and passwords (stored on your machine) users shouldnít need extra sign-ins and log-in steps, and they shouldnít see what they donít and shouldnít have access to (to avoid both temptation and resentment).

Iíve designed a website for my client that meets these onerous standards (sorry, I can’t share it yet), but since this client does not currently have a large amount of content to share, this was not that difficult a task. I suspect that for large organizations with well-entrenched legacy systems, meeting these standards would be imposing, perhaps even prohibitive. But Iím always amazed at what good designers and programmers can come up with remarkably quickly and inexpensively.

If you have an Intranet or Extranet in your organization, how close does it come to meeting these standards? Are we missing some important characteristics of great sites? And does the value of most sitesí content and tools even warrant the investment in upgrading they, or would such an upgrades just revealhow thin, stale and useless their current content and tools really are?