Intranet Redesign to Maximize Employee Productivity and Engagement
Project Specs
Client Contacts: Lead Internal Communications Manager
Project Team: 2 UX Designers, 1 Content Strategist, 2 Technical Architects, 1 Business Analyst, 1 Relationship Manager
Timeline: 6 weeks
My Role: UX Designer responsible for co-leading user research, synthesis, and design; Project Manager responsible for status updates and client relations
Programs: Figma, Figjam, Mural, PowerPoint, Excel
The Challenge
A US-based financial institution specializing in home mortgages was operating with an outdated employee intranet. The site was confusing to navigate and at odds with employees’ workflows. This was leading employees to fall back on workarounds — such as saving documents on their desktop — rather than use the site.
Avanade was brought in to modernize this experience using Microsoft SharePoint and personalize it to the unique needs of employees from across the organization. This required collaborating across UX Design, Content Strategy, and Technical Architecture in order to form a cohesive strategy for the upcoming “Build” phase, including a comprehensive set of requirements and project timeline.
A Shift in Responsibilities
Shortly before the project was expected to begin, one of the team members was scheduled to undergo surgery. As a result, I was tasked with serving as the project’s ad-hoc project manager, in addition to UX design responsibilities.
This involved coordinating across the Experience, Content, and Technical workstreams to facilitate meetings with the client, lead weekly status reviews, and help create the user requirements document that would be needed for the subsequent “Build” phase.
Gantt chart used in the week 4 status update meeting
UX Research Approach
Before launching into the design phase, we dedicated the first weeks of the project to understanding the existing site and speaking directly with the bank’s employees to understand their needs and challenges.
Analysis of the Existing Intranet
We started the research process by familiarizing ourselves with the format, design, and content of the existing intranet site. We also reviewed the findings from a past design thinking workshop held with executive stakeholders from the company, which took place before this phase of the project started.
Review of Intranet Best Practices
While the site we designed would have to be tailored to the specific needs of the bank, there are also general best practices for intranets that we wanted to keep in mind throughout the design process. We reviewed articles from the Nielsen Norman Group as well as materials from Microsoft about SharePoint functionality.
Small Group Design Thinking Workshops
The most impactful part of the research process was in soliciting input directly from bank employees from across the organization via design thinking workshops. These 90-minute hybrid workshops brought together representatives from different departments for informal conversations about their experience using the current intranet and what the ideal future state would look like. In total, we held four sessions with employees from 15 different divisions.
Figjam board used for the employee workshops
Key Findings
The four workshops generated hundreds of individual notes across the discussion topics (e.g., describing how employees currently use the intranet; evaluating what makes different parts of an intranet effective; and imagining how the intranet would help them in various stages of their workflow. In synthesizing these notes, it was important to retain the voice of employees while also prioritizing the most important areas.
Sample quotes from the workshop participants
Based on a review of the Figjam notes from the design thinking workshops, we distilled the findings down to the following core themes:
Content Challanges
Balance between too much and too little company info (opt. in vs. opt out)
Lack of clarity about what’s public and what’s private (permissions / access)
There needs to be a “single source of truth”
Navigation Help Needed
Content not organized / grouped in an optimal way (too many options)
Want to see standardization in content layout (templates)
Workarounds to Usability Challenges
Browser bookmarks used to access most frequently needed pages
When can’t find relevant information, resorting to “phoning a friend”
Interoperability
Need for the site functional to be integrated across platforms (like Teams and Workday) and other apps in their workflow
UX Solution
Based on the research findings, we designed a few key screens to illustrate the future state of the intranet. The designs primarily leveraged out-of-the-box components from Microsoft SharePoint. However, we suggested using a custom element for the “Dashboard” (Viva Connections Cards) because this functionality addressed a key pain point brought up in the design thinking workshops about having content tailored to the user that helps them take action on outstanding and time-sensitive items.
Wireframe Illustrating the Future State Intranet Home Screen
Another strategic objective of for the site UX design was to create templates that the bank’s departments could use for their subpage. Implementing these templates across the site would establish consistency — making it easier for users to find what they’re looking for — and also make it easier for the site administrations to maintain.
Wireframe Illustrating a Template for a Department Page
An Unexpected Request
The day before the final presentation with the client, we received a message from Avanade’s Relationship Manager on the account asking for a different approach to the meeting. We had planned to use the hour to provide an in-depth walk-through of the findings and recommendations from the three workstreams (experience, content, and technical).
Instead, based on the Relationship Manager’s knowledge of the executive stakeholders who would be attending the meeting, he asked me to create a new deck summarizing our accomplishments at a higher level and focusing more on the next steps needed to get to launching the new intranet.
Slide from the revised deck summarizing the team’s accomplishments during the six-week project
Outcomes
At the end of the six-week project, I was involved in helping to deliver the following final materials to the client:
A set of wireframes of key screens, to be fleshed out as needed during the build phase.
A summary of key themes and insights from the UX research and design thinking workshops.
A comprehensive set of user requirements, catalogued in Excel and later to be imported into Azure Dev Ops.
A 12-week plan covering Content, Experience, and Technical (development) activities needed to get to launching the new, modernized intranet.
As a result of the work during this phase, the company continued its relationship with Avanade. A new scope of work for the build was created based on the recommendations and requirements, which has since been completed, (I was not involved in this subsequent phase of work since I had already been staffed to a project with another client.)
Feedback
The following quotes are from messages sent to me from the account’s leadership after the final presentation to the client.
Reflections
On some projects, my role is confined to just the “research” phase or just the “design” phase. So it was fulfilling on this short engagement to be involved in the process from end-to-end. This project also stretched me to take on new responsibilities as the ad-hoc project manager. In the end, it turned out to be beneficial because it led to closer communication with the Technical and Content leads, whose work was vital to the UX design decisions.
The final lesson I take away from this project is, as always, to be adaptable. The last-minute change in the final presentation to accommodate the executive stakeholders in the meeting was well-received and ultimately set up Avanade well for the next phase of work.
If I were to change something, I would incorporate usability testing into the project scope for this phase of work. Hearing feedback directly from users is always helpful and would have shaped our decisionmaking. Instead, we incorporated it into a later phase.
Summary of My Contributions
Co-facilitated four design thinking workshops with 17 employee groups to understand their needs and pain points for the intranet
Drafted wireframes that illustrate the proposed future state
Created a presentation summarizing insights and recommendations from the research
Worked with a Business Analyst to create a backlog for the next phase of work
Served as the team’s Project Manager: coordinated between UX, Technical, and Content workstream leads and the client; provided weekly status updates to the client