Sprint Intranet Redesign
Creating an internal collaboration tool that reflected the way employees want to work (simple, social and mobile) - also needs to take into consideration the UX of the CMS system for content publishers.
I was hired to guide the UX effort for the redesign of the Sprint intranet. The team was focused on ensuring the updated collaboration tool was simple, social and mobile. We leveraged a local Kansas City design firm Level 5 to help with UX research and front-end design and development. Since the site utilized 3 different back-end technologies (Jive, OpenText WEM, and Sharepoint), the interface design had to cohesively navigate the user through each unique experience.
The effort was an enormous undertaking, including cross functional collaboration between a number of business units (IT, Care, Sales Operations, HR, Communications). Because changing a platform involves changing user behavior, a large effort went into the communication and change management strategy before site launch. The team used contests, advocate programs, and count down reveals to get the Sprint employee population excited about the new intranet and “connecting to what matters most.”
The site won Nielson Norman Groups coveted “Best Intranet” award in 2015.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/intranet-design-2015/
The intranet communication strategy won a 2014 Gold Quill Award from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC)
http://gq.iabc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Updated-GQ-award-Winners_7_16_2014.pdf
Biggest Learning:
A lot of effort was spent on designing the user experience for the employee “user” of the intranet. There was no work done to understand the user experience of the content publishers and their need to update content on a daily basis using the WEM system. Although WEM provided the necessary security validations for controlled access to different areas of the site (one of the key system requirements), the steps needed for publishing articles on WEM were convoluted and time consuming. This resulted in a very poor user experience for the employees required to maintain the intranet content.
