An Improved Intranet Experience

Below is a PowerPoint presentation documenting my longest and most involved UX research project, where I led the effort to redesign a company-wide intranet homepage and global navigation. This presentation was developed for an external audience with no prior knowledge of the company or context— I would not take this approach otherwise.

The captions provide additional commentary, insights, and context.

NOTE: Identifying information has been omitted due to NDAs.

I chose a sailing metaphor, which I do my best to maintain throughout, for two reasons: The first is that sailing can be both highly technical and unpredictable (due to forces outside your control). The second is that I enjoy sailing despite the difficulty.

The goal of a lighthouse is to keep ships from crashing into the shore. There is no ambiguity, and there should be no competing signals.

I find it interesting that the same people who push the hardest for technical innovations often resist other forms of change.

I always like to finish what I start. Further evidence: I’m still working on a fictional story I started when I was 7.

It took several conversations (not structured interviews) with stakeholders to understand why the portal was in the shoddy state that it was and who could approve (or decline) any changes. The heuristic evaluation was a starting point: It helped stakeholders, particular product owners, understand the problem in usability terms.

When you can’t immediately jump into the work, you can at least put together a solid plan. Just don’t lose it. You’ll need it when the time is right.

I learned from the first round of interviews that when a non-technical user has a technical solution, a UX researcher should always listen. It’s likely to be the best and most creative — even if it can’t be done.

A small change for one person can be a revolution for another.

Nick has gone through many permutations, but I’ll never forget him.

Just a long-winded way of saying that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, even though the grease may be more valuable elsewhere.

This is rarely discussed in UX circles, but I don’t think there’s ever a case where our understanding of the problem does not evolve through research. It’s good to stay in the problem space as long as possible.

I find myself trying to get deeper into MY why all of the time. So many distractions in the contemporary milieu.

I put #7 in red because I learned a hard lesson from it: A lot of people, especially Americans, are uncomfortable reporting (and/or admitting) that they are “unhappy.” Some participants expressed multiple frustrations but nonetheless reported they were happy with the experience.

While it may seem odd to design with the content producers in mind, they were easier to access in the limited time I had to conduct research and easier to generalize (given that there were only a dozen or so active producers and hundreds of active consumers). The new hire group was even smaller but still representative of the larger consumer population.

I chose to pick on Craigslist here because even though I appreciate the simplicity, there is an appalling lack of visual hierarchy. It only works well if you already know what you’re looking for when you visit the site.

I cannot stress enough the importance of bottom-up information architecture. It’s misguided to impose a schema or mental model that lacks buy-in. What’s most important is that the majority of users can find what they are looking for quickly and with few false clicks. Other considerations, such as alphabetized menus and semantics, are secondary.

While it’s tempting to present them as such, solutions are rarely fixed states. To prove it, name the last time you solved a problem that did not return in some form.

What I didn’t add to this slide is that the SUS scores were further evidence of the fact that the portal was designed more for power users than for average users. I explain how I would rectify this if given another chance below.

Quick summary: Participatory democracy and fun are the most important values.

Recap: Democracy is good except when I want people to do certain things to make my job easier and don’t know how to get them to comply without some form of coercion. (Kidding…)