Introduction

Web usability has developed substantially over the last few years, thanks to the visionary work of Jakob Nielsen and Jared Spool in particular, but also as a result of the realization on the part of web managers that paying attention to web usability has a substantial benefit for the organization. The objective, as summed up so elegantly in the book of the same title by Steve Mulder, is ‘don't make me think’. In general, good website design has reached such a level that, as users, we can immediately recognize and avoid a website in which the concept of usability has clearly not been considered by the web team. The range of resources on web usability is very wide, including a US governmentsupported website on the subject.

However, a search on www.usability.gov for ‘intranet’ reveals just seven references to intranets on the entire site, and several of these have little to do with usability testing. That is not to say that the principles of usable website design do not apply to intranets. Intranets present a very significant challenge because of the range of tasks that they typically support. Websites are highly focused on a relatively small number of tasks, most of which are likely to be the provision of information that will ensure that the visitor generates revenue for the website owner, either directly or indirectly.

In theory, intranet managers are in an enviable position because they have a fixed number of users and know their names, roles, locations and much else, information that is not available to a web manager. This advantage will be offset by the need to optimize a substantially wider and probably ill-defined set of tasks, and often a total lack of support for user-centric design and usability testing on the part of the organization. Lack of investment in usability testing is usually justified on the basis that the organization has invested in a search engine, and so if staff cannot find what they are looking for, then they can use the search engine.