Redline IT Employee Portal

This was a redesign project for an enterprise-scale healthcare organization with a multiple-part IT platform that served over 80,000 users across several different departments and countries.

Note: The name of the company has been changed with data modified to protect confidentiality. 

Problem Statement

Surveys, contextual research, and interviews revealed a deep user dissatisfaction with the IT support platform in its current form, most grievously in its confusing navigability, dated look and feel, and confusing information taxonomy.  

My team and I were enlisted to help discover the root of the issues and to design and develop a total overhaul of the platform. 

My Role

Design Lead

Team Structure

1x Program Manager
1x Project Manager
1x IT Deparment Head
1x Design Lead
1x UX Designer
1x Developer

Project Length

6 Months

User Interviews

I interviewed multiple representatives from each user segment, from Interns to Management, to learn about pain points and specific needs, and to collaboratively brainstorm ideas.  

Personas

From the user interviews, we created "Personas" which are representative archetypes of the groups of users for whom we are designing. They play a vital role in the design process, acting as the checkpoints by which design decisions are made. "What would Sam Support think about this feature?" - for example. 

User Journeys

Our client had recently acquired a company and was struggling to quickly onboard and provide IT services to these new employees. User Journeys helped us to examine the differences in experience between these and other groups within the company, especially those with unique edge cases, for example, interns, and executive assistants.

Current Design Critique

It was clear to our team, from a look at the current design (shown in the below screenshot), and corroborated by negative user reviews, that a redesign was badly needed. Opportunities ranged from "low-hanging fruit" like updating the look and feel, to a fundamental restructuring of the information taxonomy and simplifying the navigation.

Additional Microsurveys

We followed up pre-project surveys with more targeted micro-surveys of our own to learn which features might be most valuable to users in a new portal. For example, we learned that the ability to view and manage current requests was of high importance. 

Collaborative Wireframing

I led multiple remote, collaborative ideation sessions with stakeholders and users, to dive-dive into use cases, examine problem areas, and brainstorm opportunities.

Collaborative Wireframing

In these workshops, optimizing information hierarchy was key. The data we gathered in our interviews and research with users informed the placement and priority level of each site feature. 

Service Blueprinting

We also used Service Blueprinting which helps shed light on possible gaps between what happens on the backend, between service providers, and what users see on the front end at different times.

Image blurred for confidentiality 

Open Card Sorting

To address the issue of a difficult-to-navigate set of services and categories, we used a tool called "Open Card Sorting" to learn more about how Redline employees think about the associations between services.  

A/B Testing

We tested two versions of the user flow to “report an issue”, a “short” single-page interaction vs a “long” wizard-style flow. Because the long flow cost users nearly double the amount of time as the short-flow, the decision was made to keep it short.

High-Fi Prototyping

Our team worked iteratively in review sessions with the client and users to evolve the designs.

First Click Testing

We tested new design prototypes against the original site design, to validate, and measure different UX KPI’s, and ensure users were getting to relevant information or services quickly.

Design System

My team and I helped convert the previous, outdated design system from Adobe XD to Figma, giving it a fresh update according to the most recent web norms and guidance from branding. 

Mobile Design

We designed a native app experience based on the existing ServiceNow Now Mobile architecture, which closely mirrored the web experience. 

Solutioning

We created a splash page to incentivize users to download the mobile app for on-the-go support.

Solutioning

Now, each support experience is immediately followed up by a survey so the administrators can continue improving the site going forward. 

Design System

Additionally, we built out an IT-specific icon set, for use across the platform catalog and widgets. 

Solutioning

Users now have a familiar-feeling shopping cart experience where products and or services can be bundled together for repeat needs. 

AI Search

Site analytics revealed 'Search' was the primary means for users to navigate the portal for services so we conducted several workshops to ensure the most relevant filters and tabs were shown. We used AI to optimize and personalize results per the user's department and past search history. 

Pilot Launch and Measurement

The product we launched reflects directly back to user feedback we received; "Request something" is given top priority, the ability to chat is viewable from all screens, taxonomy is improved, and branding conforms to the new style guide, with a ton of new features to improve usability. 

Initial measurements show a 30% improvement in findability and a significant drop in new tickets opening, indicating users were performing much more self-service.