Elevating Employee Experience
Transforming the intranet experience for employees through a user-centric redesign, introducing a new homepage and strategic feature enhancements that tackle user pain points for an enhanced experience.
2023 (2 months)
Duration
MY Role
Product Designer
Information Architect
THE TEAMMATES
Kavuri Venkanth
Paula Alleyne
Julia Kim
Mitra Raveendaran
TOOLS USED
Figma
Miro
During my fellowship with MTA, I was able to contribute to the redesign of the new employee Intranet site. This case study is created to present the research and details on how the redesign was created to cater to employees day-to-day needs.
PROBLEM
Solution
Revamping the MTA Intranet involves creating a unified platform for all 70,000 employees, addressing issues of outdated information and feature visibility.
The redesign focuses on a dynamic homepage with regularly updated content, including MTA Today, board meetings, and multimedia.
Navigation will be streamlined, prioritizing quick links and implementing a user-friendly search feature. This approach aims to deliver an intuitive, engaging, and informative intranet experience, fostering improved communication and usability for MTA employees in the field and office alike.
PREVIOUS WEBSITE
The previous version of the site was operational. It did, however, contain pieces that were no longer in use or required. It also included visual elements that were not included in the new branding guidelines.
Research played a big part in this project because it helped me understand what features are needed and what are not. It also helped me understand what MTA workers need and want for their Intranet website.
We decided to send a survey of qualitative and quantitative questions and interview 16 people who asked about the process and the features they would like and what aspects of the process they want to improve.
KEY INTERVIEW QUOTES
What are the features you use most often? Do you have any pain points when using these features?
“Read the MTA Today main news article. The information is static. Used to get new articles everyday. Articles are displayed for days at a time. There is nothing to lure people to back to the site if you see the same information day after day. Information is outdated and not maintained the way it should be. The organizational charts are out of date. Not everyone has access to the site.”
What are the features you use most often? Do you have any pain points when using these features?
“I find there is a lot of stuff that’s difficult to find (searching for people), you have to know what you’re looking for to get it done. The info is never updated. Lots of clicking (not good at directing the user form page to page). Instead of directing to a powerpoint why not show it on the page. No way to go back to the home page (MTA today). ”
Are there any specific features we don’t have on the existing site that you would like to see on the new site?
“The site should be more dynamic and less static. The design should be more modern and fluid.”
Are there any specific features we don’t have on the existing site that you would like to see on the new site?
“It’s confusing to know what portal I’m going to know what I want to find (maybe add a table of contents/map).”
What improvements or enhancements would you like to see on the website?
“MTA Today should always be the first thing people see when they start their computer. Everyone should have access to the site including people in the field. Needs a usable search feature.”
What improvements or enhancements would you like to see on the website?
“Put quick links in the top right, put the home page in landscape mode, and make it less scrolling.”
USER PERSONAS
IDEATION
With this research and user testing with 8 people, I created low-fi wireframes that concisely presented the information and news.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Alamade One
The current navigation menu for the Intranet site is easily distributed and organized.
Outlook
The side menus and the announcements are a great touch and the overall header menu is simple and well laid out.
FINAL WIREFRAMES
By referencing the research, I redesigned the final wireframes to focus more on employee interests for news and upcoming events.
PROTOTYPE
What does the new Intranet site lead to after the launch?
Final home page with quicklinks, videos and resources for the employees.
Link to the prototype in Figma.
Future Steps
More Testing
The new intranet website went through more iterations and the development team has made it live for each internal employee at MTA IT.
This new calendar pop-up will let employees see upcoming events and holidays.
The new navigation is grouped more for organization and resources to make it less clustered than before.
REFLECTION
What was the impact that I had with this project and what did I take out of it?
01
Weekly stand-ups help drive the project forward.
Went through weekly design stand-ups to revise the designs and make sure they coordinate with the users' goals.
02
Card sorting is a key part of the process.
Understood Information Architecture and used card sorting techniques to make sure the navigation was clean and organized.
03
Prototyping shows impact of the designs in a clear way.
Further learned prototyping and key research and design techniques in Figma.
RESEARCH
How can we gain insights to improve the MTA Intranet site by speaking to the MTA employees?
USER FLOWS
Old Website User Flow
The previous website had 7 navigation items and a few were very similar which made it hard fo users to see where to go for certain tasks.
New Website User Flow
The new website flow has an improved layout and structure with fewer parent navigation and more dropdowns to help the organization based on user research.
