User-experience research firm Nielsen Norman Group, which has studied the rise and evolution of the intranet for more than two decades, announced today the 10 global winners in its 19th Intranet Design Annual contest and recognized them as proof that the intranet has solidly arrived as the hub of the digital workplace.

“Intranets have long struggled to find and take their rightful place in today’s digital workplace. Small steps from previous years, such as being a ‘portal’ and including links to a few commonly-used tools, have now given way to more robust ways of organizing, linking, summarizing content and exposing tools and features that employees need,” said usability expert Jakob Nielsen, principal, Nielsen Norman Group.

Demonstrating the elevated role of the intranet as the hub of the digital workplace are the world’s 10 best intranets for 2019, which are featured in detail in Nielsen Norman Group’s 682-page report Intranet Design Annual 2019: The Year’s 10 Best Intranets. In alphabetical order, they are:

  • 3M (US), a global science company
  • Anthem, Inc., (US), one of the nation’s leading health benefits companies
  • BHP Billiton Limited (Australia), a leading global resources company
  • Duke Energy (US), one of the largest electric power holding companies in the US, supplying and delivering electricity to approximately 7.4 million US customers
  • European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) (UK), an international, multilateral development bank that provides financial instruments and advisory services that strengthen economies on three continents
  • Flight Centre Travel Group (Australia), the world’s largest independent travel company, specializing in vacations, tours, and corporate travel
  • The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) (US), an American multinational technology company
  • Lamprell Energy Limited (United Arab Emirates), a leading provider of engineering, procurement, construction and other contracting services to the offshore and onshore oil, gas, and renewable energy industries
  • Messer Construction Co. (US), an employee-owned commercial construction company
  • Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization (Norway), a shared services organization within the central government of Norway

Five of the 10 winners are headquartered in North America, two in Australia and the other three in Dubai, Norway, and the United Kingdom. The median company size of this year’s winners is 33,000 employees. On average, the winning organizations have 72,330 employees, from 1,200 employees at Messer Construction Co. to 380,000 at IBM.

Some of the trends covered in this year’s NN/g Intranet Design Annual, which includes 232 screenshots, are:

Hub of the Digital Workplace

At almost any organization, the number of applications available to employees can be countless; knowing when to use which tool, mystifying; and how to find the right tool, impossible. But today’s intranets are very good at finding the applications that employees need and making them readily available.

Keeping Content Current

Ensuring that content is current is the bane of many intranet editors. This year’s winners advanced the quest for current content in thought-provoking ways such as offering a mini-form that employees can use to provide feedback about page content, or doing a monthly content audit with key content managers.

Flat is Out. Individual Visual Design is In.

Usable, useful, and beautiful describe this year’s winning designs. Flat is gone. Now, even minimalist visual designs include subtle but noticeable signifiers to indicate that a link is clickable and that a button is a button. Text is legible, yet calm, and color palettes make pages look good while helping to create visual hierarchies.

Nielsen Norman Group's Intranet Design Annual 2019: The Year’s 10 Best Intranets, co-authored by Kara Pernice and Patty Caya, is available to download for $248 (group license $488) from the Nielsen Norman Group website at http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet-design-annual/

About Nielsen Norman Group

Nielsen Norman Group (http://www.nngroup.com) in an evidence-based user experience research, training and consulting firm that advises companies on how to improve the bottom line through human-centered design of products and services. NN/g principals Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman and Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini are world-renowned user experience experts who were advocating human-centered design and usability long before it became popular to do so. Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, NN/g evaluates interfaces of all kinds and guides the critical design decisions that make websites, applications, intranets and products achieve their full potential for businesses and their users.