Content Publisher
I designed an in-house product to simplify publishing for the intranet. I designed a workflow for publishing and merged 5 apps into 1 tool.
Case Study & Showcase
Establish governance for intranet redesign
Project Keywords
- Microsoft Power Platform
- No Code app
- Corporate Digital Communications
- Global Oi & Gas Company
Timeline
Dec. 2020 - Mar. 2021
Platform
Microsoft O365 Power Platform
My Role
Sr. Product Designer
My Role
As a senior member of the Digital Communications team at ConocoPhillips corporate headquarters, one of the roles I played on the team was digital and employee experience specialist. Our 5-person multi-function working team consisted of IT and communications specialists and functional leadership.
Skills
- Enterprise Analytics
- User Experience Designer
- User Research
- User Testing
- End-to-end product design
Research
UX Architect
-
Objective
Over the 6 previous projects that I worked on with the Digital Communications work teams, confusion and inefficency plagued the workflows and the employee’s experiences because governance and processes were not well documented or researched. So the goal of this project was to capture governance requirements and define a system to support improved content strategy.
Research
Features
The latest intranet design was the second major redesign in 5 years. The previous project had failed. One of the pain points was that many of the changes to the last redesign had reverted back to previous states of disorder. There were many assumptions about user expectations and behaviors.
Ethnographic research to identify users
My dual specialist role on the content publishing I was privy to lots of ethnographic data about the whole publishing workflow. I served as the analytics manager and intranet content manager.
- Content Authors
- Intranet Manager (Content Publisher)
- Governance committee
- Communications Manager/ Content Editor
Problem #2
The team had no accumulated knowledge of the user. On top of that there was no additional resources allocated research. So I had to establish the image of the user and systems on my own.
Workflow Map & Desktop Research
Too much depends on 1 user
I mapped the publishing workflow l identified why the content publisher posed the biggest risk factor to the intranet content workflow.
Workflow for publishing content on the intranet. Redundant and cumbersome content publishing
The content publishing workflow was very manual and redundant and the Content Manager (user) was the central cog to make everything work.
Roles, tools, tasks for content publishing Gaps in user knowledge and transfer
Onboarding was very difficult due to immature governance. Content manager's were poorly supported by the rest of the team because no one else was familiar with standards or the knowledge base.
Problem area topics learned from interviews. I used my visual communication skills to build visuals of insights about the users and the systems. The approach earned me buy-in for building a system.
Problem #3
The latest intranet design was the second major redesign in 5 years. The previous project had failed, one of the pain points was that many of the user behaviors from the last intranet strategy had reverted back to previous states of disorder. There were many assumptions about user expectations and adopting new behaviors, so learning about the user was a big insight.
Defining design needs
The foundation of IBM Enterprise framework is usability of for the business, systems and the user. Based on that framework I identified pains that impacted the key actor in the content publishing use case.
Intranet Manager
"My role requires many hats but what makes it most inefficient is how manual the work is. Also finding backup support adds lots of risk if I have to take off."
-
No documentation. Only a couple of team members knew how the workflow works and were capable of exectuting.Knowledge Transfer
-
Governance was identified as a gap during intranet audit. Roles, standards and task flows were undocumented.Knowledge Transfer
-
There was not training, but content authors felt the workflow had a deep learning curve.Knowledge Transfer
-
Need for new roles, no additional headcount resources.Content management
-
Maintenance and policing new standards.Content management
-
Workflow steps are cumbersome and require lot of redundancy.User Experience
-
Need for automation. Wearing many hats, lean resources.User Experience
-
No platform to support gaps. Requests all coming to personal inbox,User Experience
Desgn Challenge
Interaction Design
Designing a new content publishing experience
Quick and dirty prototype
Form MVP
I used an iterative approach. Testing features early and fast, with recorded interviews to captured user reactions.
I used Acrobat PDF to make a form prototype to collect feedback. I took the form into interviews to validate that my solution would work. I was able to gathered reactions from content authors about the change in processes. Tests helped me identify expectations about features.
I emailed a barebones PDF form to test the content networks expectations.
Approach
I translated user experience into design requirements with business and tech feasibility in mind. I am able to contribute to designing and building the final output from end to end. design implementation and build interactions from research insights.
InspirationWireframePresentationFeedbackCollect patterns & laws Test design ideas Share design story Iterate finer detail I collect reference interaction and design patterns to minimize user learnability and make the build feasible. For each story I build out the components and screens with boxes and lines to test the design. This is a collaborative step. Getting client buy-in is key to selling the approach. I build a storyboard of the design to show how it fits on the users journey. Collaborative communication is key to my approach, I rapidly design several versions and iterations in response to feedback. User Research outcomes
Content Publishing Workflow
Previous slideNext slide -
Objective
Using the insights and data I collected during interviews and analysis of ethnographic data, I organized the needs and prioritized what I need to design. Design pains impact users in 3 key areas, the business stakeholders, systems and users. I represented the business stakeholders so the design would impact system and users.
Design priorities and backlog
System Needs
system to support governance
- Solve for workflow risk and struggles
- Establish content standards & documentation.
User Needs
capture user feedback
- Prototype the app and test with real users
- Manage stakeholder expectations
- IT partners required the app to integrate with Micrososft O365
- The app needed to be simple enough to create with limited IT resources.
Approach
Architecting on 0365 tools
Managing multiple stakeholders requirements
- IT stakeholders- One of the early requirements the system would need to be built on the Microsoft O365 platform.
- Communication stakeholders - Leadership decided not to add this project to the budget. The first version of the solution would depend on internal resources to build and operate.
- Power Automate: automate workflows and tasks across applications
- Nintex: build dynamic forms with advanced logic, and it's drag and drop
- SharePoint: manage web databases, public facing websites, and advance permissions
Feature #1
The previous process had 30-40 distinct tasks, and used 5 different applications. The more intrusive pain points were caused from inconsistency and the whole thing was very manual. A single communication employee made the whole process run which was risky.
I used Power Platform apps to build an all-in-one system that content owners used to submit content requests to content Publishers.
System map for all-in-one content request system
-
Key features
-
Easy Interface for requests
-
Status dashboard
-
Content Archive
-
Tips & guides for content authors
-
Automated notifications & alerts
Feature #2
Content author was a cross-functional secondary role of the users of this system. The primary role was engineer, IT specialist, HR professional and media relation professional. Learning to use the intranet and submitting request was the top task that the system needed to solve. The users expectations was a sensitive topic because of had poor past experiences with the intranet.
Interface to inform requests
Dynamic screen flow for receiving content requests
I developed a 4 screen flow using Nintex to build a dynamic form and workflow. The request interface seamlessly integrated with the SharePoint list for the backend and the front end SharePoint intranet site.
Note: High-fidelity design was not in scope for this phase of the project. This version was a proof of concept to show how a system could improve the content publishing experience.
Content Authors prepare & upload content for articles
In prototyping I learned that producing clear content instructions and a simple content attachment uploader were key pain points for content authors. Request data was lost because it came from many different channels. Poor requests impacted the content strategy and the employee experience on the intranet.
Intranet manager has to repeatedly content coaching
In prototyping I learned that the repetitively the added tasks of teaching and policing content request standards added 40% more workload to the content publisher. This job was not supported by user training and also went undone when backups managed publishing if the primary was on PTO.
Feature #3
Learning how to user the intranet for publishing and how to satisfy the publishing standards were key obstacles to improving the user experience.
Onscreen Tips & Content Guides
I guided content authors to meet the content standards by building the steps into the form validation.
I created guides to define content standards and terminology, and linked them in to the form screens.
Links to helpful content guides
form validation error message
Feature #4
Status Dashboard
The interaction of the publishing workflow relied solely on the intranet manager. There were no tools for managing jobs and tickets so managing work was done in email. The messy nature of the chore added redundant tasks and caused many requests to be lost or missed if instructions changed.
I created a SharePoint list to manage all of the content request data. This separate tool worked sort of like a “IT Ticket box”. It made it easier for the intranet manager to track requests, changes and find story assets.
As a result there were fewer late and missing content requests, and the burden was reduced with Intranet manager went on PTO. I connected the form and the Dashboard with Microsoft Power Automate scripts. There was a "Status request view" for the intranet and a "Content request view" for the content authors. Feature #5
The latest intranet design was the second major redesign in 5 years. The previous project had failed, one of the pain points was that many of the user behaviors from the last intranet strategy had reverted back to previous states of disorder. There were many assumptions about user expectations and adopting new behaviors, so learning about the user was a big insight.
Automated Notifications & Alerts
The foundation of IBM Enterprise framework is usability of for the business, systems and the user. Based on that framework I identified pains that impacted the key actor in the content publishing use case.
Intranet Manager
"My role requires many hats but what makes it most inefficient is how manual the work is. Also finding backup support adds lots of risk if I have to take off."
-
No documentation. Only a couple of team members knew how the workflow works and were capable of exectuting.Knowledge Transfer
-
Governance was identified as a gap during intranet audit. Roles, standards and task flows were undocumented.Knowledge Transfer
-
There was not training, but content authors felt the workflow had a deep learning curve.Knowledge Transfer
-
Need for new roles, no additional headcount resources.Content management
-
Maintenance and policing new standards.Content management
-
Workflow steps are cumbersome and require lot of redundancy.User Experience
-
Need for automation. Wearing many hats, lean resources.User Experience
-
No platform to support gaps. Requests all coming to personal inbox,User Experience
Approach
I translated user experience into design requirements with business and tech feasibility in mind. I am able to contribute to designing and building the final output from end to end. design implementation and build interactions from research insights.
InspirationWireframePresentationFeedbackCollect patterns & laws Test design ideas Share design story Iterate finer detail I collect reference interaction and design patterns to minimize user learnability and make the build feasible. For each story I build out the components and screens with boxes and lines to test the design. This is a collaborative step. Getting client buy-in is key to selling the approach. I build a storyboard of the design to show how it fits on the users journey. Collaborative communication is key to my approach, I rapidly design several versions and iterations in response to feedback. Content Publishing App
A enterprise tool content managers that supports all phases of the publishing workflow.
Revised workflow
Content Manager
An Internal Digital Communications Manager uses this app to manage all phases of the publishing workflow. The app also trains content authors on governance and collects an archive of your content for analytics and measurement.
Key Outcomes
- Automated tasks for publishing content - reduced workload without additional headcount
- Reduced missed requests by adding a job status dashboard
- Designed and built internally by communications team, with almost no IT dependence