Most intranet search doesn't bring up the most relevant information. This can be for several reasons, some of which include 1) information on the internet is poorly tagged or categorized, and 2) information can be stored in areas the engine can't access.

Implications: People might act based on inaccurate information, or they end up wasting a lot of time struggling to find what they're looking for.

Poor Search Results

Content in a silo, is content that is difficult to discover because it is "walled-off" and hard to find. This can happen if the information is:
- not accessible via the search function
- absent from the global navigation and sub-navigation
- hidden based on user's role, due to personalization
- protected by a login wall

Implications: Silos make it more difficult for employees to find the right tools and updated content they need. Employees can feel alienated and disrespected if their level of access is different (lower) than that of other colleagues. Silos can waste the user's time, and lead to low job satisfaction.

Content in Silos

The visual layout of a page requires strategy, and it is impacted by
- text: color, size, typeface, bold/normal, line height/spacing
- graphics and images: position, size, color, relationship to content
- space: information density, white space, chunking
If text, graphics, or space are not used properly, pages can lack a clear visual hierarchy and appear cluttered. 

Implications: Poor visual layout can make scanning difficult, and make various elements less easy to distinguish. Users might find it difficult to determine which page elements are relevant to them. This can mean employees might miss important information, and/or waste their time.

Poor Visual Layout

There are plenty of cases of poor legibility of text throughout the intranet. This most often results from:
- poor contrast between text and page background
- tiny text
- flowery typefaces with complicated details

Implications: Text is difficult to read, and can be inconsistent across different devices. Glare from the sun can make low-contrast text unreadable. These mistakes force people to work harder to read what's on the page.

Illegible Text

When corporate content (such as announcements or promotions) looks too similar to advertisements, people will miss them due to "banner blindness." Intranets should have dedicated spaces for promotions so it is easier for users to tell the difference between ads and specific site content.

Announcements & Promotions that Look like External Advertisements

Disappearing navigation is prevalent on the internet. This issue occurs because typically content strategy and information architecture are only partially planned ahead of time. Another reason this issue occurs is because of web designers' attempt follow the idea of progressive disclosure, and declutter the page as much as possible to create an immersive experience. 

Implications: Failing to consider "global navigation" an important and crucial part of the page, leads to poor navigational control and violates the "user control and freedom" UX design heuristic. It is unexpected and unsettling for users.

Global Navigation that Disappears

Too often, content is placed in an external link, and those links are presented on a page without much context. While this can save space by consolidating information, you should provide some information of value for the user regarding the link, before they follow it. It is considerate to help the user fill in the gaps of what they're missing before they click the link, so they can better determine whether they need to access the information from that link, or not. This gives the user more control and freedom to decide how to spend their time. 

Implication: The user either has to take extra time to follow the link in order to receive the missing content, or they don't have time to follow the link and end up never receiving said content. This can frustrate users.

Portal Pages that Only Promise Content

Intranet tools and programs come and go, but bad UIs linger for years, impact employee productivity and morale, and ultimately increase organizational costs.

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

- Tooltip Guidelines
- 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design
- Visibility of System Status (Usability Heuristic #1)
- 5 Steps to creating a UX-Design Portfolio
- Complex Application Design: A 5-Layer Framework
- 8 Design Guidelines for Complex Applications
- Feature Richness and User Engagement
- Usability Heuristic #8: Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
- Social Media User Experience
- The Top Enduring Intranet-Design Mistakes: 7 Deadly Sins
- State-Switch Controls: The Infamous Case of the "Mute" Button
- Design Systems 101
- Interaction Cost
- Similarity Principle in Visual Design
- Design to Match the Medium
- Learnability vs. Efficiency in User Interface Design
- Cards: UI-Component Definition

Nielsen Norman Group Articles

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-intranet-design-mistakes/
Topics: Intranets,  Design Patterns
By Kara Pernice on November 27, 2016
Copyright © 1998-2021 Nielsen Norman Group, All Rights Reserved.

NNG Reference Article: The Top Enduring Intranet-Design Mistakes: 7 Deadly Sins

"Tooltips are user-triggered messages that provide additional information about a page element or feature. Although tooltips aren’t new to the web, they are often incorrectly implemented."

Tooltip Guidelines

These 10 general principles for interaction design, created by Jakob Nielsen, are broad rules of thumb rather than specific usability guidelines.

1. Visibility of system status
2. Match between system and the real world
3. User control and freedom
4. Consistency and standards
5. Error prevention
6. Recognition rather than recall
7. Flexibility and efficiency of use
8. Aesthetic and minimalist design
9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
10. Help and documentation

10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design

"Summary: A portfolio highlighting your design process and past work shows others who you are as a designer. The process of creating a UX-design portfolio allows you to reflect on your skills and achievements."

- What Hiring Managers Are Looking For
- Putting It Together
- Navigating Roadblocks

5 Steps to creating a UX-Design Portfolio

Complex applications are extremely diverse. However, they do have general issues they can face, even across different applications. These 8 guidelines can help address those general issues and improve user efficiency.   
 
1. Promote learning by doing.
2. Help users adopt more efficient methods to do their tasks.
3. Provide flexible and fluid pathways through workflows.
4. Help users track actions and thought processes.
5. Coordinate transition among multiple tools and workspaces.
6. Reduce clutter without reducing capability.
7. Ease transition between primary and secondary information.
8. Make important information visually salient.

8 Design Guidelines for Complex Applications

When designing for a complex application, designers should consider 5 layers of complexity based on context for the application's use.

- Integration
- Information
- Intention
- Environment
- Institution

Complex Application Design: A 5-Layer Framework

"Summary: The more engaged users are, the more features an application can sustain. But most users have low commitment -- especially to websites, which must focus on simplicity, rather than features."

Feature Richness and User Engagement

Summary: "No. 8 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to remove unnecessary elements from the user interface and to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio of the design."

Usability Heuristic #8: Aesthetic and Minimalist Design

There are elements within social media that make it compelling to use and it is a way for users to connect with people around the world without necessarily having to meet the person. Social media generates a way for users to reconnect with people from their past and haven't had the chance to interact with them in a while. 


Social Media User Experience

The Top Enduring Intranet-Design Mistakes: 7 Deadly Sins

Summary: "On–off controls that switch between two different system states need to clearly communicate to users both the current state and the state the system will move to, should the user press that control."
- Two Pieces of Information, Two Controls
- Two Pieces of Information, One Control
- State-Switch Control Recommendations

State-Switch Controls: The Infamous Case of the "Mute" Button

"Summary: A design system is a set of standards to manage design at scale by reducing redundancy while creating a shared language and visual consistency across different pages and channels."

Design Systems 101

"Summary: The interaction cost is the sum of efforts — mental and physical — that the users must deploy in interacting with a site in order to reach their goals."

User actions that add to interaction cost can include scrolling, reading, looking around for information, page loads, typing, and etc.

Interaction Cost

"Summary: Design elements that appear similar in some way — sharing the same color, shape, or size — are perceived as related, while elements that appear dissimilar are perceived as belonging to separate groups."

Similary Principle in Visual Design

"Avoid a one-size-fits-all approach to UX design. Consider the the strengths and weaknesses of each platform when presenting information."

For a great user experience, designers should try to take advantage of the strengths of each specific medium or platform, and do their best to overcome or avoid the weaknesses and limitations of each platform.

Design to Match the Medium

Summary: The most fundamental usability components or metrics are learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction. This video focuses on two of these; learnability and efficiency. Although these two concepts. arerelated, there is an important distinction.

Learnability vs Efficiency in User Interface Design

"Summary: A "card" is a UI design pattern that groups related information in a flexible-size container visually resembling a playing card." Thus, a card can be defined as "a container for a few short, related pieces of information. It roughly resembles a playing card in size and shape, and is intended as a linked, short representation of a conceptual unit. A lot of high-profile sites such as Google (Material Design), Pinterest, or Twitter use cards."

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