Nielsen has found49 that on many occasions, intranet designers said that people above them in the organisation, such as vice presidents, told them to add certain elements to the intranet. Sometimes, this meant dedicating a large part of the homepage to a particular activity, or giving more space and weight to certain group’s intranet section. Often, these changes didn’t fit well with the rest of the design and metaphors, but the designers were nonetheless compelled to make the changes.
Upper-level managers probably have good goals in mind, but they are usually not designers and are rarely involved in the overall design process. Management should communicate the intranet’s goals and key themes, and then give designers the flexibility they need to derive a simple interface that communicates them.
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