Design research firm awards Habitat with top 10 intranet/extranet site honor

ATLANTA (Jan. 6, 2011) – Habitat for Humanity International’s intranet/extranet site has been recognized as one of the world’s top 10 sites by research design firm Nielsen Norman Group. The site provides a single location where users can access and share knowledge, resources and tools needed to help eliminate poverty housing.

“We are honored to receive this award,” said Drew Hancock, senior webmaster, Habitat for Humanity International. “With a large network of Habitat local offices, it is essential to have a central location where the most up-to-date information can be easily accessed. Our intranet/extranet site meets this goal and also provides a way for our local offices to share best practices with each other.”

Aided by AW Systems, an Internet technology consultancy, Habitat’s intranet/extranet site was implemented in 2009 and has more than 25,000 registered users, including staff at Habitat for Humanity International and at more than 2,000 Habitat affiliated organizations around the world. The site contains a wealth of information on a variety of topics from operations, construction, family services and community development to volunteer engagement, fundraising, advocacy and disaster response. Users can browse subjects by topic or content type and can customize their view by regional and language preference.

“By reorganizing site content, breaking down site barriers, and offering useful tools for sharing information, the Habitat for Humanity International team created an authoritative resource to support the needs of all of its 25,000 registered users scattered all over the world,” said Jakob Nielsen, principal of Nielsen Norman Group.

This is the 11th year that Nielsen Norman Group has held the design competition. Habitat is the only nonprofit organization to receive the award in 2011. Other recipients include AMP Limited (Australia), Bennett Jones LLP (Canada), Bouygues Telecom (France), Credit Suisse AG (Switzerland), Duke Energy, Heineken International (The Netherlands), KT (Republic of Korea), Mota-Engil Engenharia e Construção, S.A. (Portugal) and Verizon Communications.

About Habitat for Humanity International
Habitat for Humanity International is an ecumenical Christian ministry that welcomes to its work all people dedicated to the cause of eliminating poverty housing. Since its founding in 1976, Habitat has built, rehabilitated, repaired or improved more than 400,000 houses worldwide, providing simple, decent and affordable shelter for more than 2 million people. For more information, or to donate or volunteer, visit www.habitat.org.

About Nielsen Norman Group
Nielsen Norman Group (http://www.nngroup.com) is a user-experience research firm that advises companies on how to succeed through human-centered design of products and services. NN/g principals Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman and Bruce “Tog” Tognazzini are world-renowned user-experience pioneers who advocated human-centered design and usability long before it became popular to do so. Besides authoring books and evangelizing at NN/g events about user experience, they and others on the NN/g team offer high-level strategic consultation on the usability of websites, consumer products, software designs and anything else that needs to be easy to use.