Discovery Research
The Question: How can our internal website better support employees?
My Role: Lead UX Researcher
Methodologies: Analytics review, employee survey, employee interviews, persona creation
TL;DR - A large employer was looking to update their internal website to better support their employees. They wanted to gain a deeper understanding of their employee needs before making any changes. As the lead UX researcher, I reviewed site analytics, ran an employee survey, and conducted employee interviews to learn more about their roles and how they interact with the site in their day-to-day work. I used the findings to create simple, easy to remember personas to help ground the product team when making user-center design decisions.
The Brief
A major financial planning company was interested in updating their internal website to better support their employees. However, the product team wasn’t very familiar with the various roles across the organization and wanted to make sure they understood their fellow employees before making changes that would impact hundreds of site users.
In order to make informed design decisions, they wanted to learn the following information:
What day-to-days tasks are performed by each role?
How do they utilize the current version of the internal site?
What do they like and dislike about the current site?
What other digital tools do they use alongside the current site?
How can an updated site better support their needs?
The Process
Before speaking with employees, I first reviewed existing analytics to gain a baseline understanding of how the site was being used across the organization. This included moderating a conversation with the client’s analytics team where we discussed how many people use the site, how frequently they log in, and what pages are most popular.
These insights informed the structure of the employee survey, which explored role-specific usage patterns and overall sentiment toward the site. The results of the survey let me know that employees, in general, felt positive about the site however, there were key pain points like site load times and search engine issues. These insights helped me when planning what questions to ask in the employee interviews.
Employee interviews focused on learning about their day-to-day tasks, goals for their department, and how the internal site fits into their workflows. These were one-on-one virtual conversations that allowed the employees to share their screen and walk through their workflows. The interviews provided deeper context around employee workflows, priorities, and the role the internal site played in day-to-day tasks.
The Insights
The most important deliverable of this project was to provide the product team with employee personas that would help ground them when making user centered decisions. The goal was to make these personas simple and easy to remember.
Research revealed that employee needs aligned more closely with workflow goals than with department structure. Their goals could be separated into two categories: selling or supporting. Either they were sales staff, who focus on selling products, maintaining client relationships, and growing the business. Or they were support staff, who provide customer service, process paperwork, and solve complex problems. This meant instead of thinking about employees in terms of their specific department or job title, the product team could now think about the key goal of the employee. Keeping the goals of the employee high level and simple, allowed for the team to keep their design efforts clear and focused.
The Impact
The personas and workflow insights gave the product team a clearer framework for prioritizing features and evaluating design decisions during the next phase of the redesign project. By starting with research they could confidently move forward with their work in building a better internal website.
Conducting research directly with employees has the added benefit of strengthening trust in the resign process by giving users an opportunity to share their frustrations and unmet needs.
My Reflections
This was a very successful project and I’m proud of the insights that were delivered. Due to time and budget constraints, interviews were conducted virtually and only 30 minutes long. If I had additional time and budget, I would have loved to meet with employees in person for longer sessions. This would have allowed me to get an even better understanding of their work environment and have deeper conversations about how the digital experience could be improved.
This project focused on discovery research. I also have experience with evaluative research. You can check out that case study here.