Intranet Usability Guidelines: Findings from User Testing of 42 Intranets Vol. 05: Information about People, Teams, Departments, and the Company (Incl. Corporate Policies)

Part of the Intranet Usability Guidelines Series

The employee directory is the most important and most used feature on most intranets. Many people use this every day, sometimes several times a day to find information about colleagues and groups. Ensure that people can find the right resources, and do so quickly and easily.

Thorough descriptions about the teams and locations at the organization, plus organizational charts, help to build a community, and helps people do their job with a less provincial outlook. Instead they understand a little more of the company's big picture.

(Searching the employee directory is covered in Searching the Intranet.)

This 187-page report contains 73 design recommendations based on our usability research. Discussions and 157 screenshot illustrations supplement the findings.

Topics

• Making it easy to find information about employees, groups, and projects
  • Teams and individual members
  • Organizing department pages
  • Targeting specific audiences
• Announcements about employees
  • New employees
  • Promotions
  • People leaving the company
• Employee directory
  • Best practices for directories
  • Reason you many not want an employee directory
• Employee profiles
  • Enhancing knowledge sharing and build community
  • Updating and customizing employee profiles
• Organizational charts
  • Online and print org charts
  • Employee pictures
  • Aesthetics and layout of org charts
• Corporate information
  • Information about management
  • Leadership communication
  • Information about various offices
• Calendars and events

Research Method

The information in these reports is based on three separate rounds of user research with company employees as participants. We used two different research methods:

• One-on-one usability testing
• Field studies, during which we observed employees as they went about their normal work

Hundreds of people tested 42 intranets. The studies took place in the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, United Arab Emirates, and China (Hong Kong).