[Sigia-l] Results of Designer Recommends [long]

[joe]

Hi all,
You might recall that I'd posted a request for recommendations. I wanted to test the pulse of the IA and user-centered community so that I could provide a more-objective recommendation to a friend, who's at the beginnings of an intranet redesign. My intent was to enhance my knowledge and experience with the help of y'all on the list.

Many thanks!!! You all are mahvelouos!

On with the show. First, two interesting comments:

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You realize of course that it's not a particular firm that's the answer but a particular team within a firm, that then gets thrown out in the trash tomorrow. Besides, I've seen many Interwoven implementations...the product (although admittedly one of the best) sucks so bad I've never seen anyone implement it effectively. Implementing the tool is an interaction design project all in itself and generally only technical staff are assigned to its implementation...thus the suckyness. 
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I would specifically avoid larger organizations just because many of them don't get it, in both they have hired and the approach 
they have taken. 

Most of the larger firms have run their course -- smaller boutique firms will give you a bigger bang for the buck
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Now, the lists:

WHO WOULD YOU RECOMMEND (NOT YOUR COMPANY)
720.com
Busee Design in Emmeryville, CA
37signals
Alison Head (www.ajhead.com)
Sapient -- Why?  Because they put skin into the deal by offering 
performance pricing.  They have a robust user experience team who are into 
using qualtative and quantitative user research to validate design. 
Plumb Design
Optivo
Inverse Ratio
Adaptive Path
Lou Rosenfeld
Fred Leise (very very smart man, can put together a team)
hot studio
Aaron Marcus 
Carbon IQ
Clear Ink
Addis

sELF-RECOMMENDATIONS
Razorfish
Plumb Design
IconMedialab
Organic
Genex
Tyrell
...plus several individuals who didn't identify a company name. I've forwarded their info but left it off of this post. Hope that's ok.

Anyway, this was interesting to me--and I hope helpful to teams looking to see some different names in the mix. Once again, this was TOTALLY unscientific...but it's an indicator to me.

Hope this was interesting for y'all, too.

joe