The Nielson Normal Group has released their 2007 Intranet Design Annual, naming the ten best Intranets for the year. To get on this list, companies submit themselves and are reviewed by a panel of three experts in the field from the Nielson Normal Group, including one of the founders, Jakob Nielson. The criteria include: navigation, design, search, personalization and news delivery, content, and overall. Each of these criteria is further broken down into subsections, (e.g, overall includes: innovation and fun, support for main functions, captures company’s spirit, accessibility). A summary can be found on Jakob Nielson’s web site and the full report is for sale through the firm. I was given a review copy of the full report, via Mat Schwartz, another panel member.

The 10 best-designed intranets for 2006 are:

American Electric Power (AEP), United States

Comcast, United States

DaimlerChrysler AG, Germany

The Dow Chemical Company, United States

Infosys Technologies Limited, India

JP Morgan Chase & Co., United States

Microsoft Corporation, United States

National Geographic Society, United States

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), United Kingdom

Volvo Group, Sweden

I was especially interested in the inroads of Enterprise 2.0 features and approaches. The summary said that the winners “took a pragmatic approach to many hyped “Web 2.0″ techniques.” So I approached this exploration with a little caution. Yes, many web 2.0 features have been hyped and fortunately I did not find the report reactionary in substance. Rather it offered some data on what is being done at several leading firms who are heavy intranet users, although I did take some exception to some unnecessary wording. For example, it said. “Several winners have weblogs this year, but the blogs are restrained, emphasizing useful information instead of “what I did on my last date.” This is an anachronistic straw man as business blogs have been around for several years, getting high marks for Fortune, Business Week, and Harvard Business review as early as 2005. However, in fairness the report went on to say, “Microsoft even has a blog for its intranet’s managing editor to discuss features and news coverage.” That sounds like a very practical and good use of blogs.

They reported that Ajax was widely used this year, primarily “applied as an add-on feature that’s integrated into useful contexts as opposed to being used for its own sake.” They gave some examples. “Comcast displays nicely designed content previews that look like super-tooltips when users roll over lists of brand assets. Similarly, AEP updates the user’s custom list of links without refreshing the rest of the page, DaimlerChrysler updates its homepage stock ticker, and Microsoft shows the results of employee polls (a popular feature on many intranets) as soon as the user has voted…RSPB’s carpooling page (seems interesting). When users click on a map marker, it brings up a photo and other information about the employee who’s driving from that location, without otherwise changing the map or the rest of the page.” This sounds both practical and creative.

They also found that Microsoft uses social networking in a pragmatic manner to make its employee search even better, sorting results by degree of distance from the user and noted that such “sorting can be very helpful in a big organization where many people may have similar names or the same job titles.”

They also found some wiki use on intranets beginning in 2005 and noted that this year “National Geographic Society employs many wikis in a highly useful manner” through its NG Lingo wiki, which explains its internal acronyms and specialized terminology. They noted that such an intranet feature is especially helpful for new employees and that “this year’s winners included many more features to facilitate the “onboarding” (new employee) process.”

I think that one of the most practical uses of wikis is event planning for both logistics and substance but that might not surface on the formal intranet stage. Another practical use is document sharing such the enterprise wiki set up by Novell.

The report did not say anything about tagging or mashups. One of last year’s winners, IBM, is big into both of these behind their firewall. Perhaps they were not looked into or included in the award submissions.

It seems that these high profile firms are beginning to integrate Enterprise 2.0 features in the manner proscribed by Andrew McAfee and many others, including the adoption tip writers on this blog. Beginning with practical, focused applications that address specific business needs to demonstrate the value of these approaches and tools. The idea is to win converts from the bottom up as people directly experience the benefits and ease of use that Enterprise 2.0 can bring. The big payoffs from broader adoption will come when this foundation is established. The report appears very useful for anyone wanting to keep up with what is happening at big firm intranets.