Intranet best practice: Five dimensions of a great intranet

Im one of the few people you could meet who says, I really love intranets; and actually thats not completely true, as I love intranet projects.

I always tell my team that intranet projects can be both the best and worst projects to work on.  Worst, because of organisational complexity, often accompanied by heavy politics.  Best, because done correctly, they allow the user experience practitioner to deploy their full armoury of skills and techniques.

In over 15 years of working on intranet projects for large corporate organisations, I think Ive genuinely seen the best and worst.  And the category a project falls into depends almost entirely on the organisations willingness (or ability) to subscribe to just a few key principles.

Ive had the pleasure of working with, and leading, some incredibly talented UX professionals.  Our joint experiences led to the articulation of key principles we call the 5 dimensions of a great intranet.

The slideshow (below) walks you through the 5 dimensions and includes some of the big recent trends seen in intranets.  I hope you find it useful, and remember, Im always happy to talk about intranets!