CLIENT
INDUSTRY
TEAM
Information Technology
IRIS Software, Inc.
Shachi Kaul
TOOLS
Sketch, Zeplin
Invision, Jira
PROJECT
OVERVIEW
Iris Software is a professional software services organisation offering high-quality solutions to businesses.
It services the information technology requirements of companies ranging from the Fortune 100 to medium-sized firms by utilising specialised domain knowledge, best-of-breed technologies, rapidly deployable proprietary frameworks/solutions and flexible engagement models. However, IRIS software’s own intranet system called MYIRIS which serves as a knowledge management platform for its employees was proving to be highly inefficient in its design, hence they approached us to redesign the portal. Following is the story of my contribution towards building an intranet website which helped the employees in improving their work efficiency.
UX-UI LEAD
MY ROLE
I led the project right from the first kick-off meeting with the stakeholders till its launch. I was responsible for the UX-UI design of IRIS Software’s desktop and mobile intranet portal. I was also in charge of managing client expectations and guiding the development team on the implementation of its design.
CHALLENGE
RE-DESIGN INTRANET PORTAL CALLED MYIRIS
IRIS Software is an organisation headquartered in New Jersey with 1500+ employees divided within 8 departments. The company, especially its QMG (Quality Management Group) department is heavily dependent on their desktop and mobile intranet portal called MYIRIS for sharing company data and computing resources among employees. Although, because of the portal’s inefficient design structure, it was extremely under-utilised by the employees of other departments. Our challenge was thus to redesign the MYIRIS intranet portal by getting a deep understanding of its users and the organisation.
The system was built on Sharepoint which is primarily a highly configurable document management and storage system, hence another important challenge thrown at us was to understand how share point works and how we could implement our design within its limitations.
Important challenge thrown at us was to understand how share point works and how we could implement our design within its limitations.
APPROACH
AGILE MANAGEMENT
I opted for an agile management approach which emphasised on product development in a highly flexible and interactive manner along with the stakeholders. This helped in maintaining transparency across teams and taking crucial inputs from the stakeholders along the journey of building the product.
The design would start with branding, high-level research and synthesis, conceptualisation, moving on to low-fidelity sketches and finally to visual design compositions for every screen. There would be quick iterations on each task flow with the stakeholders. The visual prototype would be informally validated with actual or pseudo-users at key points during the design process. After the completion of design, Design For Use would continue to support the development effort through assets production, quality checks, transitions feedback on builds and fine tuning the design deliverables.
BECOME A PART OF IRIS SOFTWARE
Since I was designing for the intranet portal of IRIS Software, I wanted to work with and around its employees. I decided to sit out of IRIS Software’s office in Noida through most part of the project to get first hand information of users’ problems
THE DISCOVERY
FINDING THE SKELETONS-2 DAY WORKSHOP
I started the discovery phase with a stakeholder workshop to understand what IRIS software does, its employee structure, their business processes and the work undertaken by each department. It was also important to understand our client’s vision, challenges and expectations and metrics for this project. The QMG or quality management group of IRIS software initiated the need of having a better intranet system in place to improve the business processes of the firm focused on consistently meeting customer requirements and enhancing their satisfaction.
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IRIS software which services the information technology requirements of various companies around the world currently employees fifteen hundred people divided among 8 departments ranging from QMG department to the supporting staff like finance, HR and talent management. Each department maintains their own set of systems and documents to keep the processes in check.
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If one has permission, an employee could access the documents of any department. Although, because of the complexity of design and user experience, instead of using the internal portal to access the information, employees found it easier to seek the same information in person from the department heads. This resulted in waste of time and effort and other resources.
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The intranet is used by employees at various levels of hierarchy. Hence, how the system is used and viewed by employees varies according to their level of authority. We concluded this to be the key to designing the system.
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It was also mentioned by the stakeholders that the system had been built using an out dated version of share point which lacked a lot of basic features, thus they wanted to move to the latest version of it along with the updated UX and UI to support the new features.
The intranet is used by employees at various levels of hierarchy. Hence, how the system is used and viewed by employees varies according to their level of authority. We concluded this to be the key to designing the system.
PERSONA SKETCHING EXERCISE
I then made each of the stakeholders sketch out proto-personas to understand their views on the users’ goals and needs, demographics, behaviour pattern, pain points and motivations. This activity was key to understanding the current users as we were dependent on the stakeholders for this information. These persona archetypes would help to guide us throughout the process.
DIGGING DEEP
After I gathered and organised the information I got from the stakeholders..well, I dug deeper for some more. The second phase of discovery was a quick, high‐intensity effort that allowed me to define project goals, audit the existing work and get a deeper understanding into user needs and the processes that are run to manage IRIS software. I also kicked off a technical discovery phase to understand feasibility and constraints. Tight timing meant that I needed to be efficient at conducting the site audit. I also took a range of interviews with the employees of IRIS software.
USER INTERVIEWS
The key takeaways were:
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Information systems of QMG and ISG departments are viewed most frequently across all departments.
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Employees hesitate to visit the portal even though it plays a vital role in the exchange of information within the organisation.
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Team members visit their dept. heads to help them fetch documents which are not easy to locate on the system.
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Department heads use the system more often and have key actions to take to manage the data
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Team members with limited authority on the system use it less frequently, mostly because of complex design and irrelevant data.
SITE AUDIT
Site audit gave me an in-depth understanding of what existing functionality and content would be useful, what tasks needed supporting, what opportunities were available to innovate and also what could be discarded from the existing website.
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Site auditing revealed that the UI was really outdated.
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A very old version of share point was being used which didn’t allow for any customisation of the website as per the employees needs.
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The user experience was complex, information architecture was incorrect and consisted of mystery meats.
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Most of the information on the portal was irrelevant and outdated.
SITE NAVIGATIONAL STRUCTURE
HOMEPAGE
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Cluttered Design
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Two navigation bars - on top & on the left
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Customisation is lacking
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Too many action points
7
KEY INSIGHTS
These varied research techniques helped me to quickly gain insights into the needs of our users and gave me a concrete understanding of the environment and workflows.
My research revealed the following key insights:
1
Design looks dated
& lacks navigational
structure.
5
MYIRIRS is used more frequently by head of depts. who have authority to take actions on the data
2
The content is not structured according to the frequency of tasks undertaken by the employees.
6
Employees miss vital announcements and events.
3
Relevant & contextual information is
not available
7
The website lacks personalisation
4
Outdated version of Share Point doesn’t support a lot of required functions
8
Easy access to everyday info. like holidays, roster,
etc. is required
PERSONA DEVELOPMENT
Key insights helped me in designating persona types. I used personas constantly throughout the project to guide design decisions, priorities, and create empathy amongst the client and our team. My persona hypothesis consisted of two different archetypes which I used to facilitate discussions about our users needs, desires and varying contexts of use. Through careful analysis of our research, I identified sufficient behavioural variables to segment my user audience. These variables could be categorised into activities such as the authority level of the employee and the frequency of use. I discussed the personas with our client to develop a clear picture of who the design of the app would target in the current phase.
MAPPING THE JOURNEY
Once I was done defining the personas, I used journey mapping to visualise and communicate the users end‐to‐end experience across various touch‐points during his/her interaction with MYIRIS. This allowed me to represent user pain‐points and see where I needed to focus my attention. Mapping out the users emotions was key to setting client expectations about the aspirational emotional state I was aiming to design for.
THE DESIGN PITCH
THE PROBLEM
Our client, IRIS software, has a problem with low usage of MYIRIS (intranet system of IRIS software) by its employees due to its outdated design, lack of personalisation and inefficient implementation.
THE SOLUTION
My idea to address this problem is to redesign the intranet by making it relevant, modern, easy to use and by structuring the content according to the frequency of tasks undertaken by the employees. This would ensure that the employees are up-to-date with the affairs of the company and are able to view or upload data easily, conveniently and effectively.
PRIMARY USER
The main groups of people who will benefit from our solution are the employees of MYIRIS.
PRIMARY BUSINESS GOAL
The primary business goal our solution addresses is the need of having a better intranet system in place to improve the business processes of the firm focused on consistently meeting customer requirements and enhancing their satisfaction.
PRIMARY USER GOAL SUPPORTED
The primary user goal our solution supports is improving the employee efficiency at IRIS software.
MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT
By defining the exact problem I was able to identify the essentials that would help users to complete their tasks more efficiently. This gave me a way to visualise what existing tasks would be useful, which one needed supporting, what opportunities were available to innovate and also what could be discarded from the existing website. This helped shape the user stories as well as minimum viable product offerings as seen below.
MUST
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Data must be relevant and contextual
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Must use latest features of sharepoint
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Admin must be able to take actions on data easily
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Must be able to view and search for data easily
SHOULD
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Modern UI
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Should cater to both the personas-Admin and Viewer
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Be personalised
COULD
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Access everyday info like holiday, rosters, etc. easily
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Have updated content
WON'T
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SETTING THE DESIGN DIRECTION
I started with defining a basic structure (Design Concept) for the key flow of the website - which gave my stakeholders an insight in to how the elements would be arranged/positioned in the website pages as the user proceeds along with the layout of the intranet system,. These were in the form of sketches.
The purpose of this was to provide a visual understanding of the pages early in the project before the creative phase would start and to ensure content and functionality are positioned correctly based on user needs.
The main concept of the redesign was to:
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Consolidate all scattered UX elements in the existing homepage design within one global navigation.
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Show relevant and contextual information to the user at any given time
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Personalise the homepage according to the department one belongs to
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Create the design keeping both the persona scenarios in mind-Admin and the viewer
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Reorganise and restructure the information to simplify the user experience
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Aid the admin in taking relevant actions on the documents page easily
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Building an information architecture for the system was imperative to understand the overlapping information in the existing design and how items relate to each other within the system. IA helped me focus on organising, structuring, and labelling content in an effective way. The goal was to help employees and department heads/admin easily find information and complete tasks. I observed that a lot of information was overlapping and the labelling consisted of a lot of mystery meats.
WIREFRAMING
Once I was sure of the architecture of the content, I then started creating detailed wireframes for each of
the user stories using sketch. I used marvel app for quick prototyping which helped in creating transparency
in our design process. My what you see is what you get approach strengthened my relationship with the stakeholders and allowed me to gain feedback and approval from both the stakeholders and development partner early on. My main focus was to personalise the page for all employees by making the content relevant.
The new homepage design aimed
at consolidating the scattered elements present in the original design and making the content relevant to the user.
USABILITY TESTING
I defined tasks, establish objectives for the employees of IRIS software to help evaluate the website. I tested with department heads of the QMG department as well as the finance department. For my second persona,
I interviewed trainees who were being inducted. Following was observed:
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Departments heads/admin were easily and clearly able to understand the tasks at hand and actions to be performed on data
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Users were easily able to filter the documents
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Users wanted to see upcoming holidays and roster details at the top of the homepage
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Forms and Templates in the global navigation could be a part of 'For reference'
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They found ‘For reference’ Labelling a mystery meat.
UI DESIGN
As the wireframes got approved, I started working on the UI concepts using Sketch. I incorporated all the solutions to the problems that the users faced during the testing. I was aiming for an interface which looked modern, clean and inviting. It was imperative that the data and tables don’t appear daunting and cluttered. We also wanted the CTAs and secondary action buttons to stand out and be self-defining. We used the ‘card format’ on the homepage for the design to be flexible and so that addition or subtraction of data could easily be done.
HOMEPAGE - (PERSONA 1: ADMIN)
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The homepage has been divided into two parts. The upper half is personalised for the admin to take relevant actions easily and to view the information related to their own department. The second half stands global for all users and consists of relevant message boards.
All the information is displayed in a card format to keep the layout flexible.
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Global Navigation consists of the most frequently used documents (ISMS, QMS, QDB, SPEG) as direct links. Documents of other depts. have been put under 'Reference docs'. The left navigation bar from the previous homepage design was removed and consolidated within two drop down sections to become a part of the new global navigation.
UI DESIGN - HOMEPAGE
MORE DESKTOP SCREENS
DOCUMENTS PAGE - MANAGE DOCUMENTS PAGE
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Manage documents section within the Documents page consists of a clearly laid out documents table. There are various action buttons given at the top of the page to help the user perform different tasks with respect to the table.
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The left side of the page consists of a filter through which the documents data could be searched easily. We wanted to change the complex terminology used in the original design, such as 'Cabinet' and instead use words like 'group' which are easier to understand.
HOMEPAGE
MENU
MOBILE RESPONSIVE SCREENS
DELIVERY FOR DEVELOPMENT USING ZEPLIN
The final screens were delivered to the development team using Zeplin which really aided me in building a style sheet, maintaining a repository of all the screens and marking comments on any changes made. Zeplin also helped in guiding the design to the developers by giving the exact details of all the UI elements that were used. Final deliverable was presented to the client in HTML/CSS format to be integrated later with the latest version of share point 10 by the IRIS team.
IMPACT
The newly designed intranet website largely received a positive feedback both from the department heads and from other employees. Users responded well to the website’s simple and efficient UX and relevant features. Employees were very pleased with the modern looking User Interface. As told to us by the department heads, there was a significant drop in manual transfer of information as it was easily discoverable on the website now. Unfortunately, negative feedback largely related to the users not being accustomed with the functions of the latest version of share point 10 which was used to build this website.
"Visual design is sleek, modern and very pleasing to the eye
"As a manager, I can now easily perform actions on the documents page and complete my work quickly"