January 2008
World-Beating Intranet is Kiwi-Made
Provoke Solutions has been acknowledged for their work on the Ministry of Transport intranet which has been named as one of the top ten intranets in the world.
The Nielsen Norman Group, based in California, are recognised as world-leaders on corporate culture and the human-centered product development process.
The Intranet Design Annual is coveted by software firms, companies and government as the authoritative source for best practise in intranet design and user experience.
Nielson Norman Group have been releasing a "10 Best Intranets of the Year" list since 2001 and say that this is the first time a New Zealand designed solution has ever made the grade.
The 10 best-designed intranets for 2008 list are:
Bank of America, US
Bankinter S.A.,
Spain Barnes & Noble,
US British Airways, UK
Campbell Soup Company, US
Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corporation, US
IKEA North America Service, LLC, US
Ministry of Transport, New Zealand
New South Wales Department of Primary Industries, Australia
SAP AG, Germany
According to selector Jakob Nielson, consistent design and integrated information architecture are becoming standard on good intranets, to be awarded a place for this years list candidates had to show they could also deliver productivity tools, employee self-service, access to knowledgeable people (as opposed to "knowledge management") and better-presented company news. Evidently Provoke's MoT solution ticked all the boxes.
"User Centered Design means envisioning the product from an end-users point of view" says Zef Fugaz, head of the Experience Design team at Provoke. "For the Ministry we understood that find ability of content was key to its success.
So we designed the intranet in a way that users can browse and search content in a way which makes sense to them - by topic, content type, audience, transport mode and many other angles.
It's amazing to have our work recognised by world-leaders who understand the importance of creating a useful and usable tool which actually improves productivity in the workplace."
Managing Director Mason Pratt is very happy to be kicking off the New Year with continued success.
"With the MoT, a solution was required which delivered collaboration, content management, centralised communication and stakeholder management. We are industry leaders in our implementation of Microsoft SharePoint 2007 so we had the technology to do the job.
Add to that an ongoing commitment to excellence in design and usability and I guess that's what made the site as successful as it has been. It's basically just good to use - it's modern, flexible and it looks good. It's about people and that's what works for our customers." And he adds with a grin, "As far as government intranets go, it's a pretty sexy one."
Read full case study here
MoT | Discover Intranet »
The Ministry of Transport (MoT) have recently deployed their new Intranet (affectionately known as 'Discover') using the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) platform. Provoke were engaged by the Ministry to assume overall responsibility for the design, development and deployment of a new Intranet for the Ministry...
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