The Vanity Effect, the Hidden Civil War, the Sunday Edition Success — And Seven (or 8) Other Things You Should Know About Intranet Projects

Intranet projects are tricky. Stakeholder’s expectations are often inflated. Masses might be skeptical. Vested interests are common. It is hard to deliver something of value that also pleases all parties.

I’d like to share some real-world tactics that I’ve used to deal with common problems I've met in intranet projects and intranet designs. The problems - some smaller, some bigger - include:

The filtering fallacy The hidden civil war The pictures problem The buzzword trap The vanity effect The personalization peril

I can't go in to all these in detail. But for example, personalization is commonly imagined by stakeholders as a silver bullet for efficient information distribution within an organization. I'll show what the problems are: who will maintain the solution, and how is trust affected when misakes are made, and what is the better alternative?

I intend this to be a practical and useful session. People should walk away from the session aware of and prepared for some not always anticipated situations, and also encouraged to rethink some ”common knowledge”. Also, with some ideas to try to apply in their own projects - like

The Sunday edition success The journalism advantage The highlighting alternative The ”imagine an app”-approach - and others.

I’ll be drawing on my (and my colleauges') ≈15 years of experience in the intranet trenches of both the private and public sector, and as a trainer and lecturer.

I'm an information architect and UX specialist since 1994. I've worked as a consultant with IKEA, the Swedish Government, the Swedish Parliament, Council of Europe, and many others. I mostly do in-depth user studies and create high-level concepts