office interior design trends 2018
when jakob nielsen and i first dreamt ofthe intranet design annual back in 2001, we hoped to ferret out examples ofeffective and innovative intranet designs. for 17 years the winning designshave surpassed our expectations, and this year's designers have again impressed uswith their imagination and design prowess. and while each of the 10 winnershas its own unique style, there are some overlaps. allow me to share a few common trends.the first is: simplified design. the greatest feature-influencing trend this year is the overarching goal to streamline the intranet. almost like putting a moratorium on adding more and more features and overfilling pages. the designs are still exciting and feature-rich, but with maturity and knowledge, the best internet teams today
have less to prove and more to gain byfocusing on foundational design elements-- like information architecture, engagingcontent, and orderly page structure-- rather than exhausting efforts on the latestinteraction design fads. the next trend relates to aesthetics: very large headline text. in recent years, tiny text was synonymous with pretty text, but those weak letters have been booted for big, bold, beautiful headlines and titles.i couldn't be happier that large is used in lovely and elegant ways when it comesto intranet titles and headings, because it makes them easier to scan to and toread. designers: do use caution not to make headings and subheadings so disproportionately larger than
normal text, because this can make headingsappear to be banners or promotions to employees, who may in turn intentionallyskip reading them. the third and final trend relates to customer experience, andthat is: social site links. this year's winning intranets offer links to theirrespective organization's social channels; commonly: twitter, facebook, instagram,youtube, pinterest, linkedin, and yammer. most designs provide the icon for the social medium in the intranet's own brand colors, while others skip the icon altogether, and instead use just the link names for the social channels. whatever the format, including links not only makes it easy for employees to keep their finger on the pulse of their customers, but it reinforces which face their own organization
is showing to the public. more importantly, these little icons suggest something big to employees: that theorganization's social channels are important, and the employee should payattention to them. if you aspire to design like "the greats," consider this year's trends for your intranet project. for more, on these and other trends ingreat intranet design, check out our free articles and this year's full intranetdesign annual report; rich with illustrations, examples, lessons learned,from brilliant intranet designers.