William Amurgis
is manager of intranet strategy at American Electric Power (AEP), one of the largest electric utilities in the US. His team is responsible for the day-to-day management of the corporate intranet at AEP, serving 20,000 employees across the country.
What makes for a successful intranet? Specifically, what key factor distinguishes a successful intranet from a less successful one? I’ve pondered this question for 13 years, even before the term “intranet” was coined. I helped found a corporate intranet in 1995, and have been managing them off and on ever since, with varying degrees of success. I believe I now know the secret to success: Design.
Of course, design alone isn’t enough; your intranet requires compelling content and solid technology.
When I attend conferences or visit other companies, however, I can see that content and technology are well-represented. What’s missing – in virtually all instances – is attention to design.
But design is more than a color scheme, and not just a template applied after all other decisions have been reached. It’s much more, as I explain below.
First, a disclaimer: I’m not a designer, have never studied design, and have no artistic ability. My undergraduate degree is in statistics, which is about as far from design as it gets.
Consequently, I have no self-serving reason to elevate design. I’ve simply learned that its importance is too often neglected, mostly because many people define design too narrowly. Allow me to explain why design matters.
Looking beyond the visual impact of design
Yes, there’s a visual aspect to design, and all of us can distinguish between professional design and something my three-year-old twins might sketch (usually on a piece of furniture or a wall, to my chagrin). The crispness of color and contrast is a necessity, and your audience can easily tell if the design is less than professional.
Sadly, for many intranets this is the only dimension of design receiving consideration. Visual design decisions don’t even require a skilled designer. We all have taste and style, and believe we can tell what looks good visually. Indeed, most of the intranet teams I encounter don’t even have a designer on the team.
The risk, of course, is that your sense of beauty may not be as lofty as you believe. To paraphrase the comedian Woody Allen: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – but what if the beholder who designs your intranet has poor eyesight?
Design encourages interaction
An intranet is not something just to look at; its advantage over print is that you can instantly interact with an intranet – performing tasks, submitting requests and collaborating with others.
Good design, however, can serve as a lubricant to interaction – and bad design can introduce friction.
In this dimension of design, we focus on:
- Layout. The logical and consistent positioning of titles, imagery, text, navigation and other elements.
- White space. Using negative (empty) space to separate areas of content so that they can be easily distinguished and selected.
- Forms processing. Consistent labeling, formatting, and messaging (confirmation and error messages) across all fill-in-the-blank or selection forms.
- Visual dominance. Using design to direct attention to the most important aspects of a page.
Interaction design tends to be neglected by commercial (off-the-shelf) intranet products, particularly in their approach to visual dominance. I can always spot an intranet designed using such software, because its “boxiness” makes it difficult to distinguish between the relative importance of the information contained in the various boxes.
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