Intranets: time to think differently

At the recent Employee Portal Evolution Masters conference (#epem) in Berlin last month, I must have seen 20 different intranet presentations, showcasing some genuinely excellent innovation.

But with huge diversity in the companies attending — from the heavy industrial energy company Wartsila (Finland) to Abbotts Laboratories (Pharma), I was struck by the incredible similarity in designs. Strip out the corporate colouring and nearly all intranets presented had a top-left logo with a top navigation of drop down menus (TLLTN). Is this convergent thinking, best practice in evidence, convention or just lazy design?

When I returned, I flicked back through James Robertson’s excellent book “Designing Intranets: Creating intranets that work” and saw this phenomenon repeated. James himself calls it “the all-to-familiar landing page”.

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