Project Summary

   

For the redesign of the SSA Human Resources intranet website, research was conducted in an agile-like fashion in the SSA cafeteria during lunch hours to reach as many employees as possible.

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My Roles

Research (discussions with subject matter experts), brainstormed and planned a quick way to get feedback, facilitator during the lab sessions, assisted in analyzing results and presenting to the Human Resources team.

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The Problem

      

The current human resources unit of this organization is comprised of 9 different components. Each component has their own website – and each one has it’s own look and feel. Navigation is also inconsistent. With over 10,000 pages, and a search that is not helpful, information is nearly impossible to find.

 

The goal of the lab was to reach as many users as possible to:

• Obtain feedback about their knowledge and use of the human resources website

• Validate the UX teams hypothesis on the common issues and problems with the website

• Find out common reasons they visit the website as well as commonly used content and pages

• Obtain more information on they find and navigate information

• Obtain feedback on they felt could be better about the website

 

Three different activities were designed with each one taking the user no more than 5 minutes to complete. For three days, the team set up in the cafeteria of the organization. Visuals were used to catch their attention.

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1. Task 1 - Survey: Users were asked how they find human resources information. They were also to select the pages they commonly used from a list.

2. Task 2 - What’s your story: Users were asked to tell us about a time they visited the human resources websites; what they were looking for; were they able to find the information.

3. Task 3 - Card Sorting: This was not a typical card sort, over 60 cards were displayed with common human resources content. Users were tasked with selecting the content they would want to see on a human resources landing page.

 

Findings

   

The Guerilla Lab uncovered high level problems with the human resources website experience that users liked or disliked. It also revealed a branding problem as many users did not realize all the services that human resources provides. Findings included:

• Some users were unaware that human resources had an actual website

• Some users were unaware of the full gamut of services that human resources provided

• Some users were unaware that human resources was comprised of 9 different components

• Some users completely ignore the navigation and find information in other ways – via bookmarks, asking coworkers or calling human resources directly.

 

A few comments included:

“I don’t know what human resources actually does.”

“I didn’t realize that Career programs and Training were part of human resources.”

“Isn’t human resources Personnel?” (This was a common misconception but Personnel is just one of nine components.)

“Is Personnel part of human resources? I’m not sure what’s included in human resources.”

“I didn't know there was an actual human resources site. Is that the [main intranet] site?”

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This is an on-going project in which findings from the Guerrilla Lab are currently being used in the redesign of the human resources landing page. Each of the 9 components will be redesigned in turn, implementing a common information architecture and design. Additional research will be completed for each component. 

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The following slider includes a few images from the lab: