Marylou Novak    UX Research  |  Content Strategy

Research and content strategy for the replacement of an existing web-based administrative tool

Business Problem and Project Goal

 

• A decade into its existence, the internal business portal platform was outdated, difficult to maintain, and a potential security risk.

• Business systems now included more functionality and stakeholders had begun to offer content locally.

• The technical team could not justify the expense to replace the portal with a fully featured solution.

• Management moved to decommission the platform's server as soon as possible.

Because several thousand internal users relied upon the portal to access multiple administrative functions, a new entry point for essential business systems had to be created.

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Challenges

The timeline was very tight and no development resources were available. The solution would have to rely on website visual design and content management, so I worked closely with a UI designer and business analyst.

 

We had to find a way to give people easy, intuitive access to the tools they needed to get their jobs done, even though the portal-platform functionality many had come to rely upon was being eliminated.

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Research Approach

 

Primary Questions

 

1. What do our core users need to get their jobs done? What do they want to be able to do?

2. Are people aware of existing alternative options to access key functionality and content?

3. How can we deliver a simple, usable solution in a compressed time frame?

Methods

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• Analytics review to determine most-used areas/content

• Interviews (stakeholder and core user)

• Personas (one primary, two secondary)

• Content Audit (outdated, redundant/available elsewhere)

• Sketches (for discussion with visual designer)

• Wireframes (for discussion with visual designer, stakeholders, small selection of users)

• Usability Testing (three rounds on high-fidelity prototypes with 20 people total)

• Survey (pilot period and post-launch)

Results

Based on what we learned, the key was to help people to log into the systems they needed as quickly as possible so as to perform tasks there instead of relying on the portal to interact with deeper system functions.

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• We decided to use a tabbed structure with internal accordions for its familiarity to the primary audience and the ability to fit a large amount of information onto a single page with minimal scrolling.

• I streamlined the content to focus on essential system logins first, and moved secondary information to other tabs.

• I also worked closely with business stakeholders from several departments to ensure that their site content was appropriately represented and linked.

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In usability testing we seemed to be on the right track through three iterations with 20 testers.

 

• People responded well to the “clean, updated” look-and-feel and streamlined content.

• Most testers quickly caught on that they could log into the source systems to perform the functions they had done on the old portal, while some had never relied on the portal for those tasks.

Pilot and survey results were more mixed.

 

• Some people were angry that the old portal’s key functionality had been eliminated - many had never navigated to the functions within the business systems themselves, and didn’t realize that they could.  

• Others complimented the updated organizational structure, usefulness of the remaining content, and updated visuals.  

• A few admitted to just not liking change.

Follow-up analytics confirmed user priorities: to log in to systems, not to explore secondary content.