Project Goal
Creating a sense of community and an identity for the organization globally. There is no one location where all the teams can share events, ideas, and news to other teams. Through this platform, employees will be aware of what other teams members are doing. There will be one location where all the events hosted for employees be posted so the employees can easily access and register for upcoming events. Employees will also be able to easily locate previous talks and events recordings and watch them if they missed them. From the news section, members can suggest stories for their accomplishments and share them to the community. How can we rethink the organization, entry points and design of the Inside Org content within Org Web in order to help members be more informed of the news, activities and events within the organization?
Internship Project
User Experience Design Intern
May 2020 – Sept 2020
Project Overview
Inside Org used to be its own website and around 3 years ago (2017) it merged with Org Web. Now, Inside Org is a section within Org Web. The vision for this project was to create a sense of community within the organization. Inside Org would essentially be a hub for all employees to share team projects, accomplishments, and the team members. The audience for this section would only be specific to this org's employees, excluding any contractors and vendors,
all over the globe.
My Contributions
I was a user experience design intern. I conducted user interviews and documented for later usage. The team now is using my research and designs as reference to move forward with the project.
How might we use Org Web to sustain a strong sense of community
with the growth of the organization?
Project Impact
There has been a 80% growth in the number of employees in this organization over the last 5 years.
First, I was trying to understand the low traffic to this website so, I started off by asking if they can even find Inside Org.
9 out of 13 people were NOT able to find the entry point
10 out of 13 people had a very difficult time
To gain a global insight, I interviewed 13 people from SCV, Tokyo, and Singapore.
Exploratory Research
User Research Learnings
🔍 Discoverability - All contents should be quick and easy to find. People are busy and don't want to even spend 10 seconds looking for content. Will just give up
🧠 Intuitiveness - Organization and categories
📣 Amplifying All Voices - People outside of SCV Feel like they don't have a voice within the organization. E.g rather than using 'they', use 'we'
👥 People-oriented - People want to learn more about other people
⏳ Timely Content - For example, picking one day to update contents. Every Friday at 10am one news letter will be published. 1st of the month something else, etc.
✨ Exclusivity - If this is only available for this specific organization employees, make sure it ~feels~ exclusive. Show more inside content. Inside news that can be ONLY found here.
User Story Boarding
Wireframes
Design Validation through usability research
I took my wireframes and performed usability testing with 10 different users. I tested the flow and the layout of my designs .
From my study, I found that users want quick aggregated data to skim through and if only when they are interested in wanting more then the users have the ability to drill down.
The main feedback from users were they want some quick way to digest the information or RSVP to events or look for resources.
The current Inside Org Design pain points
Inside Org right now consists of only two sections, news and resources.
News is an infinite scroll of all the new articles thrown into one tab and resources is most a static page with no other updates.
The biggest pain point for News is that 'suggest a story' option in news is all the way at the bottom of the scroll.
Potential Design Solutions
🔍 Discoverability
Adding a button at the top navigation so the users can quickly access the org site.
✨ Exclusivity
Dedicating a big section with a different aesthetic so showcase that it is exclusive to only to this org.
🧠 Intuitiveness
Adding on the top navigation within the website section for high level navigation
👥 People-oriented, &
📣 Amplifying All Voices
The news shows the time when published. The news is broken off into categories so the users have the flexibility to toggle between each new section. The users also will have the ability to 'Suggest a Story' to write their own story and submit it for publication.
Key Takeaways
🧠 Independent Thinker
Usually at school, I will bring maybe 50 sketches and my professor will pick one that they liked.
Through this internship, I was able to be an independent thinker together. Meaning, I would always ask my manager “what do you think of my work? What do you think about this? What do you think about that?” And he would always turn that question right back to me and ask, “what do YOU think? What are you trying to solve? What are you trying to convey?” He really helped me think on my own and validate through users. At the end of the day, I’m designing for users not for my manager.
📚 Research
Since I come from a design school, I wasn’t used to research. In my 6-hour course, we would maybe research for
2 -3 hours and spend the rest brainstorming and wire framing and go straight into ui design.
So, the first 2 weeks, I would be asking “am I done with research now?” While the other interns were asking, “Can I continue with research? I need more.” Through this short time, I really understood the value of research and how research is a critical chunk in the ux process.
👥 Collaboration
Lastly, collaboration. In school, if I had the choice to work individually or in a group, I would always choose to work alone. Whenever I worked in a group, I would end up doing all the work alone and basically giving 4-5 people just As for that project.
But here, I learned to really enjoy collaboration and working as a team. My final designs are not my work but a compilation of all the other inputs that the ux team and users have given me.