Making information easy to find — a UX case study
As someone who’s worked in large organizations before, I can understand that sometimes there could be outdated or too much information that its no longer relevant to your role or company culture. For example, at a previous company I worked for, I remember taking on a task to audit every document in our dept database for relevancy. I found most of outdate information was useless and never pertained to our role in the department.
This time, A team of designers worked with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to asses the information architecture of their internal HR page. Specifically, the company conducts an employee satisfaction survey every two years to determine areas of improvement.
Understanding business needs
They found that a large percentage of people reported interest in flexible work arrangements but only about half were actively participating.
We found that the organization offered 5 different types of telework. 3/5 of those options were actively being used while the others haven’t been used for some time.
We then met with leaders at the IMF to determine their goals for the project. We found that the organization wanted information regarding telework to be more accessible. There had been a recent push by the organization to direct employees to the ‘Flexible Work Arrangements’ page, but leaders found that the page had been outdated and needed help assessing information regarding different types of telework.
Understanding employees at the organization
As designers, our work is to create and design for our users. To better help serve the organization, we needed to find out what employees were saying about flex work. We first began by conducting a site audit.
Site Audit
Our first task was to conduct a site audit to determine areas of improvement. We found the following key insights;
- Information overload — the site was covered in text. There wasn’t much room for pictures or sections
- Site/landing page name — At first, we found it difficult to locate the flexible work arrangements page. We found that the page name was called “ balancing work/life”. We initially were looking to words like, “ flexible work arrangements”, “telework”, or “work from home”.
- Unusable/broken links — some links to essential documents were broken or unavailable. When clicked to download, the browser opened to a blank page.
User interviews
We interviewed IMF staff and managers over the course of 3 days; looking to find out what employees were saying around flex work, how they felt, if they had ever used this benefit, did they have the right knowledge around this subject.
Are you familiar with Flexible Work Arrangements at IMF?
Have you ever used this benefit?
To get a FWA approved, what is the process?
Do your supervisors use FWA?
What are your thoughts on FWA being available at IMF?
Key takeaways
We interviewed 12 employees from different departments and role types. From economists, department chiefs, managers, staff assistance; the majority of employees noted the following;
- better data management
- could be easier to find things
- links are broken
- managers aren’t aware of guidelines
Usability testing — the current intranet
To confirm some of these responses, we conducted usability tests on the current intranet. We had employees complete the tasks below. These scenarios would be typical of different situations regarding life at the IMF. To be able to receive all perspectives, we create scenarios for both staff members and managers;
Staff
Scenario 1 —You are a new employee at the organization, you discover about the company’s flex work options and you want to learn more, navigate to the page where you can find more information about it — do not use the search feature.
Scenario 2 — You’re concerned about how your FWA may impact your benefits or salary, where would you go to learn more about this?
Managers
Scenario 1 — An employee wants to learn more about the different teleworking options. You want to support your employee and find more information on different types of flexible work options. Navigate to find this information.
Scenario 2 — Your employee comes to you inquiring about FWA, As a manager and someone who needs to approve FWA, Navigate to find some guidance regarding information on approving a flexible work arrangement.
Findings
From our testing, We uncovered two key insights;
Users were often lost trying find the correct page
We found that users had a difficult time navigating / to find the “balancing work/life” page. When asked to locate more information regarding FWA (without using the search function), users would often resort to the A-Z directory.
The average time it took for employees to find the FWA page took the majority of our time testing. On average, Once the user found the page, it still took them an extra minute to find the resource they needed. Theres was a ton of information that users needed to read.
“ I have to read through all this but I think its on this page”
Confusing title pages
Another insight we uncovered was users would often get confused with the wording “balancing work/life”. Some users would skip the link and end up on some irrelevant page. When asked to then go ahead and use the search function, users would search for words like Flexible, Flexible Work Arrangement, Flex Work, Work At Home, or Work From Home.
Designing for Employees
Throughout our research there was one constant theme; Difficulty accessing information. The research we received confirmed our initial problem from our user interviews.
Problem: Managers and staff need a way to easily access information regarding FWA because the current intranet is difficult to navigate.
Solution: By improving the content structure of the FWA site will make desired information more accessible to employees.
Site Map
Beginning with page categories, we created four action items,
FWA Overview — understand the process and benefits of FWA
Flex Options — learning about different types of flexible work arrangement options
Managing flexibility — a toolkit to help managers approve, oversee, and utilize the benefits of FWA
Request flexibility —tips and resources for staff members.
Design Studio
We then conducted 2 rounds of design studio sessions. Conditions and process were as follows;
5 minutes of rapid wire framing
2 different design concepts each.
Quick feedback session
Usability testing
We then conducted further usability testing on our solution for the organization with a total of 6 participants. We found the following insights from users;
This feedback helped us going back a relook at our design from a different angle. We addressed those pain points users were having with our MVP and improved the usability of our solution.
Better explanations with infographics
It seems that infographics become more valuable as our need to understand a complex world increases. I created an infographic to show the process of achieving/attaining a flexible work arrangment.
The Final Solution
Final thoughts
By keeping employees at the center of our solution, We wanted personalize their experience to meet their needs. If someone wants to find more information, let’s not create a maze for them to achieve it. By streamlining information we believe that our solution will make desired information accessible to all employees.
