As a UX designer with experience in design, research, writing, project management, and front-end code, I'm motivated to make things that solve problems while being a passionate advocate for users.

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Redesigning from scratch

Intranet Redesign

Problem

Turn an unused, outdated intranet into a central place for finding team resources, searching for staff, and learning about what's going on at the company

Challenges

  • Because the current intranet is difficult to use and most teams don't think it's useful, its content is old and untrusted.
  • Staff have little time or motivation to maintain content.
  • Users are spread across 26 teams around the world, and each team has its own needs.

Strategy

  • Analyze analytics to determine how intranet is currently used
  • Send out all-staff survey to confirm analytics findings and gather painpoints
  • Meet with teams that have the most active, popular, or unique pages to discuss content and needs
  • Based on user research, develop wireframes and meet with teams again to validate site structure
  • For each team, identify a liaison who will act as the team's representative during the design and content migration process
  • Using a clickable prototype built with mockups, meet with each team liaison to conduct user testing and share designs
  • Update designs based on testing and team feedback
  • Once key features of the intranet are built, meet with liaisons again for more user testing and feature refinement
  • After launch, continue to gather feedback and iterate, iterate, iterate

Key Lessons from User Research

Bookmarks

Staff love the 'Quick Links' section, but the pre-chosen links are not relevant to all users.

Solution: add a bookmarks section that allows users to have a personalized 'Quick Links' section on their homepage.

Flagging Out-of-Date Content

The intranet is littered with old resources and former staff, and teams don't have the time to keep track of what needs updating.

Solution: allow users to flag content as out of date, which will alert teams to update their content.

Consistent Navigation

The current intranet allows teams to determine their own navigation for their team sections. This means each team section is different, making it a challenge to find content.

Solution: create a consistent navigation for team sections that is broad enough to accommodate each team's special needs.

Wireframes

wireframe for intranet homepage

wireframe for team page on intranet

Key Lessons from User Testing

Highlight Popular Features

Staff primarily use the intranet to find people and resources, but the searches for this content are not prominent. Also, bookmarks are a hit and need to be highlighted.

Solution: on homepage, move searches and bookmarks to the top of the page.

Neglected Staff Profiles

Staff want to find out who works on what and find each other's contact information. But staff often forget to fill out or update their profiles.

Solution: add a 'My Staff Profile' button to the homepage to encourage people to review what's being shared about them on the intranet.

Email vs. the Intranet

Most communication about team news occurs through email. Teams aren't confident users would use the intranet to post or find this information.

Solution: whenever a team update is posted on the intranet, allow users to send an email to teams with the updated content and link (future feature not reflected in designs).

Designs

design for intranet homepage

design for staff member page on intranet

Next Steps

Culture Change and Gaining Trust

How do we convince staff that the intranet is a useful information-sharing tool with reliable information and wean them off the convenience (but disorganization) of email?

Content Ownership

How do we convince teams to maintain their content and realize the benefits of doing so? How can we improve the design to provide delight and pride in the content?