In his May 23 Useit.com column Jakob Nielsen talks about intranet design and how more and more intranets are beginning to look alike.

“Homepage layouts are becoming more and more similar over time,” writes Nielsen in the Canonical Intranet Home Page.

With some exceptions of course, he’s right. More and more organizations and consultants are getting smart about universal practices with respect to layout, usability and content. Design is also being driven by off-the-shelf portal and content management solutions that standardize the design and layout.

Ultimately, if the designing organization knows the user audience well, then it probably understands that “speed wins.”

Employees want speed: to get information as fast as possible.

To achieve the speed principle, design takes a backseat to ‘effective information’ retrieval. As such, by default, design begins to become homogenous with other successful intranets that adhere to universal usability and layout practices.

Where I tend to diverge from Nielsen’s thinking is the emphasis he puts on usability and design. If you read his annual Intranet Design reports you might be left with the impression that usability and design were the two most important elements of a successful intranet.

Truth of the matter, based on my years of experience working with several dozen organizations, is that usability and design take a back seat to content and planning. In fact, Prescient Digital Media has a methodology for evaluating and scoring the value of an intranet and usability and design each account for about 13% of an intranet’s value while content and planning & resources (including governance, process, people, and funding) account for 50% of a site’s value.

Nonetheless, an intranet’s design should support and enhance the organization’s brand and culture while ensuring that employees are able to get the information they want, when they want, as quick as possible.

If you want to focus your intranet energies on any one or two areas, focus on content and process.