Managing content requests was time-consuming and risky. After an intranet redesign, a content strategy evaluation was conducted, and a better governance system was necessary. It was clear to us that automating workflows would better meet publishers’ and authors’ needs.
Automate a risky workflow for global intranet
UX design work products for story telling to sell the problem to leadership.
My Role
UX Designer
My Contribution
-
Conducted user discovery research with power users.
-
Mapped user flow, service blueprint and workflow.
-
Built a prototype and conducted user acceptance testing.
Other Collaborators
- Content author network (Subject Matter Experts)
- Content editor (sponsor)
- SharePoint Engineer
- Business Analyst.
Challenge
Develop empathy for the content manager (user) so that I could communicate the impacts of the project to get stakehoder buy-in.
Use design for storytelling to get buy-in for a problem pitch
Applying observation and light inquiry to gather preliminary data about current state
Delivering results from discovery
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.
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.
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.
Challenge
Create understanding among many different product owners about the source of problems, pains and impacts.
Define business needs and design feasibility
I leveraged expert knowledge share, data analysis and stakeholder interview to understand and communicate priorities.
- I tapped my peer networks who where content managers to understand best practices and gain unconventional knowledge around content publishing. This helped me to avoid a narrow lens of my own experiences.
- I collected content request logs for 2 years in Outlook and I reviewed Service Now tickets for the intranet, which helped me to build a broad data set of problems and challenges that I could prioritize.
- Finally I conducted interviews with company content authors where I focused on capturing tasks, expectations and requirements for the workflow. I was able to build an archetype of users and detail the challenges to intranet change management, completing tasks, learning tools, risk and productivity and the user experience of following the workflow.
Insights
Discovery & Research Learnings
Team faces steep learning curve
Lack of training and knowledge transfer
- Content network includes a diverse group of users, som
- Publishing workflow is extremely technical.
- The network frequently needed guidance on publishing processes.
It must be easy to repeat the workflow, and standards and requirements must be referenced.
Team structure poses risk to business goals
Content publisher is missing requests
- Publishers received content requests in their personal inbox.
- Request lead times where irregular and volume fluctuated. Updates to change requests were often missed.
- Backup or new content requestors ran the risk of being overlooked.
The workflow requires a system to reduce risk and resolve consistency issues.
Governance and knowledge share was a gap
- To support the platform's flexibility, we need an efficient way to inform the content network of changes.
- Previous content workflows did not provide enough stability to identify why content requests failed.
- Requests came in via many channels. Without a request format, there was a lot of back and forth.
Current system was poorly understood. I developed a framework to clear up the current system impacts the user experience.
Poor user experience
Content publisher hates redundant and tedious content policing task
- Publisher needs support for handling lots of repetitive tasks and managing many different roles.
Missed opportunity
to build a content archive to understand performance. The archive could also help with training content authors on what good looks like.
Design
Based on learnings, I created problem statements to communicate a MVP and a hypotheses to test prototypes.
From research findings into design
Problem Statements
As an intranet manager:
"I need to complete publishing requests for the intranet but the publish workflow is poor."
As a content author:
"I need to publish my content on the intranet but the publish workflow is poor."
Next steps
Following the research project I designed and delivered the UI and interaction design phase.
Outcomes
Translate research and observations into user insights and design direction. Following the discovery phase I was able to lead a UI and interaction design project with emphasis on technical feasibility and design intent for the user.
Inspired leadership
IT partnered with Digital Communications on this project as part of the intranet redesign initiative. My findings were presented to both the CIO and the VP of Communications, where it received approval and positive energy. The research was included as a key deliverable for the 2021 Intranet Redesign.
Project Brief (Executive Summary)
- Problem Story
- User Narrative (Journey Map)
- Hypothesis
- Design Objectives
Clear vision of the win
Work products translate research outcomes into design direction for the work to collaborate to produce and deliver. By conducting user research, we can save money and time, as well as communicate clear direction to a multifunctional team.
MVP
- Persona & Use Cases
- Wireframe
- Rapid Prototype
Screenflow
Business case
I delivered a concise business case to my manager, the director of digital communications. Identified key limitations of our current publishing workflow and I presented a plan for improving.
Technical Requirement
Work team
Delivery Requirements
In my managers reply I learned of some challenges to my project: I would not be afforded any budget; I would need to find my own internal shared resources to collaborate as a working team; IT required that I use tools that were part of the O365 Microsoft Suite.
Documented knowledge share
Improved Service Blueprint
