7 design flaws that can undermine your intranet

The past two decades have seen revolutionary intranet designs that have lifted employees to higher levels of productivity, motivation and communication.

Still, some untenable designs have inexplicable staying power. Don’t let your intranet fail on the user experience front because of the following flaws:

1. Poor search results

Most intranets have a search field and return results to user queries, but that’s a low bar for defining a successful search functionality, and many intranets still don’t rise above it.

Instead, relevant content is concealed from search because it is poorly tagged or categorized or because it’s stored in areas that the search engine doesn’t reach. Employees waste precious time trying to find what they need or using the wrong bit of content.

2. Content in silos

Content might be siloed in any number of ways:

Common examples of silos include:

Silos make it difficult or impossible for employees to find the right and most updated content and tools they need. Employees will feel alienated and disrespected if their colleagues can access content that they can’t. Silos waste users’ time and lead to low job satisfaction or even flight to other employers.