Thursday, January 25, 2007

Portal Users are on a Mission

As we observed employees using their organization's intranet, we saw a stark trend: Almost always, users only fire up their browser when they have something to do. They have a mission in mind before they even bring up the portal's initial page.

The design of the portal's initial page has to service that mission, whatever it is. Well-designed portals do this by putting links to important content and functions (such as registering someone as a building visitor -- a common "important" function we've seen at many security-conscious clients) right on the initial page.

The remainder of the initial page's links need to direct users to the likely content. Users need a way to deduce where infrequently needed or less important content and functions are stored. The scent on the page is the critical tool to help employees achieve their objective.