Facilitating Organizational Information Access in Global Network Environments: Towards a New Framework for Intranet Design.

This paper proposes a user-centered framework for intranet design that is based on an understanding of people, their typical problems, information behaviors, and situated contexts. It is argued that by adopting such an approach, intranets can be designed which facilitate organizational information access and use. The first section of the paper provides a discussion on organizational information use and describes the potential benefits of intranets in supporting information access in global network environments. This sets the stage for the second section of the paper which argues the need for a user-driven framework for intranet design as a means of tempering current content and technology focused systems development approaches. The remainder of the paper builds on past theoretical frameworks and empirical investigation to provide a tentative, user-centered framework for intranet design, one that can be used to facilitate organizational information access. Several design principles are offered to guide the development of intranets; these can be used to help promote information access throughout globally dispersed organizations. (Contains 39 references.) (AEF)