Employee Directory App

Discovery Phase

During the research phase we explored how and why employees used the Employee Directory app and identified opportunities for improvement and enhancements. A secondary research objective was to gain an understanding of what motivated employees to seek out others within the organization and the outcomes they hope to achieve after finding the contact. 

Intercept Interviews

We conducted twenty intercept interviews with a contextual inquiry component on the organization's main campus over a two day period. Software developers in a different city joined via portable robots. 

Findings

Less than half the participants were aware that the Employee Directory app existed. Those that knew of it were unaware of the features that allowed them to create favorites and add contacts. When asked to use the favorites and add contacts features, most users were unable to perform the task. The most common feature requests were the ability to identify employees based on their skills and to discover the physical location of other employees.

Employees found contacts in the following ways, in the following order: 

1. Asked a coworker 

2. Intranet 

3. Current Employee Directory app 

Additionally, we learned users commonly sifted through their emails and meeting invitations for names of fellow employees they didn't know who'd been cc'd on correspondence or invited to the same meetings. Once they found the names, they'd consult the Intranet for further details about the employees, such as bios and reporting structure. 

This data point was interesting because it revealed value in somehow linking employee information to meeting invitations and emails. 

Heuristic Evaluation

Understanding that employees wanted to discover more about each other's skills, backgrounds and place within the organization, the visual designer performed heuristic evaluations of popular mobile apps that encouraged these types of activities. She selected LinkedIn, Airbnb, Facebook and Instagram.  

Common features she discovered included:

• a persist search bar at the top, 

• an easily accessible bottom bar navigation,

• filters that were frequently located directly under search bar and

• recent searches being served upon the next visit.

White boarding

I facilitated design sessions where we listed top tasks users wanted to perform and the trouble spots with the original design. 

The cross-functional team whiteboarded and paper prototyped divergent and convergent designs to capture both practical and aspirational design ideas to fulfill user needs. One of the most interesting concepts was the sphere of influence. It's this notion of capturing who knows who, when and how.

Think six degrees of Kevin Bacon. People move around a lot at the company. To know where other people have been and who they know can help employees establish deeper connections throughout the organization. 

Wireframing

We went through two rounds of usability testing. Here are a few of the wireframes. People got through the flows easily because the design patterns we selected were ubiquitous. Regarding the search functionality, there were some nuances one wouldn't come across in a public app. Like the ability to search for someone by employee ID or their department code.