WAND Inc. Client Goodwill® Awarded Nielsen Norman Group Recognition

DENVER, Feb. 8, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- MyGoodwill, Goodwill Industries International's intranet, was selected as one of "The Year's 10 Best Intranets" by Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g), a leading user experience research, training and consulting firm that advises companies how to improve bottom line through human-centered design of products and services. Goodwill's agency partner, WAND Inc., identified appropriate business taxonomies to apply to the site, and worked with site owners to customize them.

Helping to revamp its previous, outdated site, which contained a user-generated taxonomy that had expanded to include 13,000 terms (with typographical errors and redundancies), the WAND Inc. and Goodwill teams worked to streamline MyGoodwill's hierarchical structure for its metadata, resulting in  improved search and streamlined navigational components.

The team started from scratch, using WAND Inc.'s library of pre-built taxonomies as a starting point in order to reduce the duration of the intranet's taxonomy build phase. Then WAND Inc. worked with Goodwill subject matter experts across eight different business areas to customize the pre-built taxonomies for Goodwill's specific needs, resulting in a final taxonomy of 1,000 terms.

"Transitioning from a site with an overgrown, employee-generated folksonomy to one with a clearly defined taxonomy helped the Goodwill Industries International intranet become a place for employees to share information with its numerous local, independent member organizations," said usability expert Jakob Nielsen, principal of Nielsen Norman Group.

The winning intranets are each described in detail in Nielsen Norman Group's Intranet Design Annual 2017: The Year's 10 Best Intranets. The report recognizes and highlights features, trends and information about corporate intranet sites, including a graphic-first approach, and a focus on the needs of their organizations' stakeholders. 

"We are honored to receive this prestigious distinction for our intranet," said Beth Perell, vice president, member relations, for Goodwill Industries International. "Goodwill Industries International is committed to employee and member communications, and is leveraging technology to promote a culture that encourages the development and sharing of new ideas, resources, best practices, templates, and learning opportunities across the 163 autonomous Goodwill organizations in the United States and Canada."

"WAND Inc. is incredibly proud to have been a small part of Goodwill's award winning intranet project. Taxonomy is the backbone of a well-organized intranet where users can quickly find the content they need," said Mark Leher, COO of WAND Inc. "Our project with Goodwill is a perfect example of how starting with pre-built foundation taxonomies from WAND's comprehensive library enables rapid delivery of a high-quality taxonomy."

ABOUT WAND INC.
Since 1983, WAND has developed multi-lingual taxonomies to improve the way our clients search and organize unstructured and semi-structured information. WAND is the premier source for industry vertical taxonomies, business taxonomies, and specialty domain specific taxonomies. The breadth and coverage of WAND's taxonomy library is unmatched, and, for years, WAND Taxonomies have been used by thousands of companies around the world to organize information.

Applications where the WAND Taxonomies are being deployed include enterprise content management, e-commerce, spend analysis, enterprise search, behavioral targeting, big data, text analytics, business intelligence, semantic technologies, local search, online yellow pages, and business directories.

WAND's taxonomy professional services practice offers taxonomy development and customization, taxonomy mapping, and data classification services. Our professional services team makes sure that our clients are successful when deploying taxonomies.

WAND is headquartered in Denver, Colorado.

ABOUT GOODWILL INDUSTRIES INTERNATIONAL
Goodwill Industries International (GII) is a network of 163 community-based, autonomous organizations in the United States and Canada with a presence in 13 other countries. GII is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that is recognized by GuideStar with its Platinum Seal of Approval, the organization's highest rating for charities. GII was also ranked by Enso as the #1 brand doing the most good in the world, and was the only nonprofit brand rated in Forbes' 20 most inspiring companies for three consecutive years. Local Goodwill organizations are innovative and sustainable social enterprises that fund job training programs, employment placement and other community-based programs by selling donated clothing and household items in more than 3,200 stores collectively and online at shopgoodwill.com®. Local Goodwill organizations also build revenue and create jobs by contracting with businesses and government to provide a wide range of commercial services, including packaging and assembly, food services preparation, and document imaging and shredding. Last year, local Goodwill organizations collectively placed 312,000 people in employment in the United States and Canada. In addition, more than 35 million people used computers and mobile devices to access Goodwill education, training, mentoring and online learning services to strengthen their skills. To learn more, visit goodwill.org.

For more information or to find a Goodwill location near you, use the online locator at Goodwill.org or call (800) GOODWILL. Follow us on Twitter: @GoodwillIntl and @GoodwillCapHill, and find us on Facebook: GoodwillIntl or Instagram: GoodwillIntl.

ABOUT NIELSEN NORMAN GROUP
Nielsen Norman Group (http://www.nngroup.com) in an evidence-based user experience research, training and consulting firm that advises companies on how to improve the bottom line through human-centered design of products and services. NN/g principals Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman and Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini are each world-renowned user experience experts who were advocating human-centered design and usability long before it became popular to do so. Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, NN/g evaluates interfaces of all kinds and guides the critical design decisions that make websites, applications, intranets and products achieve their full potential for businesses and their users.

SOURCE Goodwill Industries International