TandemSEVEN :: White Papers

Nine Common Mistakes in Designing a Usable Portal

By Nicholas Iozzo

A solid portal framework (and there are many good ones on the market today) provides a technical base from which you can manage, implement, and control the distribution of applications to all of your users—both internal and external. However, access to applications alone does not guarantee a usable portal. The standard, out-of-the-box design of a portal’s user interface can often be complex, confusing and even overwhelming to the user.

Who should read this?
Product, Marketing and IT Managers

Portal frameworks have implied design frameworks. For example, they may be structured to support three columns of content, include tabs across the top for navigation, and have a built-in search engine. Elements like these make certain aspects of designing portals much easier than designing traditional custom applications. But being forced to use these elements reduces the degree of freedom you have in your design, which heightens the importance and impact of every design decision you make. This paper describes nine common usability mistakes that people make when designing for a portal. After a description of each mistake, there is a brief explanation of how to avoid the mistake. Some of these problems are unique to portals, while others apply to application design in general.

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