Project outcome: the new intranet navigation and homepage were successfully launched in 2023 Spring and are now being used by all employees.
Problem Statement
Being used for over two decades, the previous MTA intranet which was used by over 75,000 users had been increasingly outdated in both visual and usability aspects. Visually, it contained elements inconsistent with the new MTA branding guidelines. In terms of usability, users encountered issues such as outdated information, challenges in locating resources, and a lack of uniformity across various agency intranets.
Previous homepage of the NYCT (New York City Transit) Department
Interview
To better understand the users' needs, we conducted over 20 interviews with employees covering different age groups (mainly Gen Y, Gen X, and Baby Boomers) and different types of employees (office & field employees) across multiple agencies. The objective was to delve into how the intranet integrated into their daily work routines and to identify the employees' expectations for the new intranet.
Key Questions
- What are the features you use most often on a daily basis? Do you have any pain points when using these features?
- In what scenario do you think the intranet could help you more as an employee?
- Are there any specific features or improvements you would like to see on the new intranet?
Personas
Insights
1. Information Everywhere and Nowhere
“You know what? it is today when I was talking to you I first realized there was this whole benefits section for the employees.”
Similar to a lot of intranets, MTA's intranet contained so much information that it became easy for the employees to get disoriented. A lot of useful resources were secretly hidden somewhere. Most employees usually had great difficulty finding them out or just never realized they ever existed. The new intranet should make information and resources more discoverable and accessible to the users for their convenience.
2. Varied Homepage Information Preferences
User 1: “I would say most of the stuff I really did not ever pay attention to. I mean, the only reason for me to use the site is to get my job done.”
User 2: "The homepage has stayed the same forever. I would definitely want to know more about the most recent corporate news to get more involved.”
The goals for using the intranet really diverged among the users we interviewed. There we had those "minimalistic" users who would only click a few links required by their work. This was especially common among field employees who rarely spent their hours sitting in the office and staring at the computer. At the same time, we had users who, besides using the intranet for work, opened the intranet almost every day to see whether there was any update and wanted to use the intranet to be more engaged within the company.
With that being said, the objective of the homepage redesign was to enhance work productivity for every employee while also cultivating a sense of corporate culture and pride as expected by some employees.
Information Architecture
To increase the discoverability of the information, the design team worked on the information architecture of the intranet. While previously differed among different agency portals, the new IA would be consistent across different agencies. After the reorganization, the new IA also reduced the number of categories in the main navigation from 7 to 5.
Site Navigation
Alongside the newly organized information architecture, we revamped the intranet's navigation bar to enhance browsing efficiency. Three options included:
- Horizontal Global & Vertical Local Navigation
- Mega Menu Navigation
- Horizontal Global & Local Mavigation
After weighing the pros and cons of each design and conducting guerrilla tests with fellow employees, we opted for the mega menu approach for intranet navigation, a choice commonly used in e-commerce and other information-dense websites.
launched mega menu
Tailored Homepage
Combining the feedback from the user interviews and some design examples from the
Nielsen Norman Group 2021 Intranet Design Annual Report, I designed a homepage that would mostly reflect the needs of the employee's daily work and the information they wanted.
Rescoping
However, with the limited engineering resources and the tight timeline to launch the new intranet, not all of the modules could be implemented. Therefore, we used the Impact-Effort Matrix to determine which modules to prioritize. Those that offered the highest impact while requiring a reasonable amount of engineering effort were retained.
A new module called Keep Track (for employee recognition) was also added to promote employee pride and build a sense of community. The modules kept on the home page addressed various levels of employee needs, including company-wide aspects through 'Top Stories' and 'Keep Track,' agency-specific information through 'Updates & Events,' and individual employee resources through customizable 'Quick Links.'"
launched new homepage
Reflection
Collaboration makes perfect.
Through the internship, I learned how collaboration was so essential to making good progress. Within the design team, members gathered every day to sync up on the progress and brainstorm to generate new ideas. More than that, we also regularly communicated with the product manager and the engineering team to make sure that everything was on the right track and that the design could really be grounded in the later stage of the project.
Advocate for every user.
It was amazing for me to have this opportunity to design the MTA intranet, of which there were various types of users with very different user behaviors. During the process, I kept reminding myself to consider the scenarios for every type of users to make the design accessible for all.
