UX Intranet Revamp
Facilitated product decision-making and enhanced information retrieval efficiency by initiating a revamp of the UX Intranet. Reduced operation time by 380%.
Company
Guidewire
Timeline
May 2023 -
Aug 2023
Team
1 UX Manager
1 Sr. UX Researcher
1 Sr. UX Designer
1 UX Researcher (ME)
Tools
SurveyMonkey, Card Sorting, Miro
My Role
💸 Business Discovery: Identified an opportunity to enhance the operation efficiency across the product development team
🔍Mix-method user research: Recruit over 40+ users within our company to conduct a series of research activities
🏆 Secure buy-ins: Crafted a story and communicated my findings to the stakeholders and got buy-ins
This project highlights my ability to identify opportunities, take initiatives to address them, stakeholder engagement and presentation skills.
Context
1. Frustration & Inefficiency
We just migrated from Microsoft suite to Google suite and Sharepoint links stopped working.
2. Hindering product decision making
Our old UX persona page (mock-up to the left, hid content due to company privacy) has poor organization and low site visits.
-
Flat list view
-
Organized alphabetically
-
70+ personas all listed out
-
No clear re-direction to this site
3. Inability to quickly query key info
Persona Cards are stored in flat PDFs, hence users cannot search on the website for key information. Instead, they have to open them one by one.
Problem
🔍 Scoping the problem:
In order to validate the findings from the PM initiative, I conducted some preliminary interviews to scope the problem.
💡Preliminary Interview
5 Participants
PMs & Designers
Findings:
-
People are accessing personas in a not-standardized, not-streamlined, and inefficient manner
-
Designers are aware of the UX Personas Page, while a large portion of PMs are unaware of this.
- UX Manager
Most of the time I just ask people who I know have done projects with it [this persona]. Sometimes I go to my Slack and find the links.
👀How might we provide easy access to critical information to help Product Development Department make product decisions efficiently?
1. Can access persona efficiently and in a streamlined manner
2. Help them find other secondary personas for their product
1. Increase the exposure of our work
2. Have a centralized hub to store our personas
Set up a framework that’s easy to maintain and update
Process
In order to gain more domain knowledge and understand the problem space, I researched different companies and looked into how they categorize their persona database. I also carried out secondary research into personas and insurance.
💡Competitive Analysis
5 companies + secondary research
Compared with our current inventory:
❓Problem 4
❓Problem 1
❓Problem 2
❓Problem 3
❓Problems:
-
Flat one-level categorization
-
Wrong Information hierarchy
-
Confusing categories names
-
Not comprehensive Inventory
Moving forward, I outlined the research plan to push forward this project (see below):
Based on the synthesized findings from the competitive analysis, I designed a survey and sent it out to the whole Product Development team, including PMs, Devs, Designers, and researchers, to get their feedback and thoughts on possible renovations to the persona categorization and the page overall.
💡Survey
13 Responses
PMs & Designers
Findings:
-
6 think current categorization is not effective
-
5 want to see the inventory categorized by products
-
10 access personas from channels other than the intranet persona page
Insights:
-
The current categorization method works; but could add additional categorization based on product
-
Direct people to use the person page as the only centralized hub for the inventory
-
Regular updates and maintenance of the inventory are necessary
“It's about access to information and culture. [...] I'd say share it and point people to it more often”.
- Lead UX Designer
In order to test the categorization prototypes, I conducted several usability testing sessions with our PMs and Designers, since they will be the main users for the persona database. From there I received some feedback and generated a couple more iterations of the structure.
💡Usability Testing
5 Responses
PMs, Designers & Researchers
In order to lean on our users’ knowledge of personas and put personas in a place where they expect to see them, I conducted a closed card sorting activity. I decided to do closed cart sorting because it gives the users a starting point, and I can test the proposed structure at the same time.
💡Card Sorting
12 Responses
Designers & Researchers
.jpg)
Insights:
-
There will be duplicates of the same persona
-
-> under one category there will be primary & secondary personas
-
-
External vs. Internal may help users distinguish Guidewire roles and Insurer roles
-
Additional personas need to be developed in the future as there exists a large vacuum for our personas
💻 Deliverables:
1. Future roadmap:
2. New Persona Organization
Impact & Learnings
✨ Impact
-
Positive qualitative Feedback from the Product Development team:
-
I presented the final structure in 5 team meetings, including UX Clinic, and Product Weekly meetings. And got positive feedback from at least 10 designers and PMs.
-
-
Stakeholder Buy-ins:
-
I also presented this to the Management team, including 3 UX managers and 1 PM manager, and got buy-ins from them to continue this project after my internship ends.
-
Eventually, I transitioned my effort to a full-time UX researcher, who will be implementing my recommendations to the Persona Page.
-
-
Reduced operation time by 380%.
- Senior Product Manager
I like that there are primary and secondary personas under one category. I can now locate what I want faster but at the same time not lose the context
✨ Learnings
Because this project directly stemmed from the PM initiative, I just jumped into the problem space assuming that they have done the research to prove the problem exists. If I were to do this project again with more ample time, I would...
-
spend more time in the research stage and segment the project into a couple of sub-projects.
-
As the findings in the project demonstrate, this is an overarching problem with a lot of sub-topics,
-
such as database re-categorization, page interactivity design, outreach communications improvement, etc.
-