Improving the Intranet
@ Canada's National Ballet School
Role: UX research consultant
As part of the University of Toronto’s capstone requirements, my team served as UI/UX consultants for our client, Canada’s National Ballet School. They sought help enhancing their intranet by making it more engaging and easy to use.
Our qualitative research uncovered various usability and visual issues alongside a lack of user engagement features, negatively impacting users’ intranet experience. Consequently, our client gained a clear understanding of key user experience pain points, enabling them to prioritize improvements in usability, design, and engagement to boost intranet satisfaction and adoption.
Keywords: intranet, internal product, website, interview, expert review, literature review, secondary research, method triangulation, qualitative research, exploratory research
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Background
Image 1. Screenshot of Canada's National Ballet School's intranet homepage.
Following the recent development of an in-depth communication strategy, the client felt the organization's intranet was an underserving tool for its communication objective. The client sought support to assess and improve the intranet, transforming it into a digital space that feels easy to use, engaging, and welcoming to their staff as a reflection of their brand.
Based on the objective, the project aims to answer the following research questions:
To be answered through primary research —
- For those who have used the intranet before, what are their current pain points and unmet needs?
- For those who have never used the intranet before, what is their reason behind not using it?
- Do they have any unmet internal communication needs that an intranet platform could fulfill?
- What are the differences in communication needs/habits between desk-oriented and non desk-oriented staff?
- How does it affect their intranet usage?
To be answered through secondary research —
- What are the usability issues of the current NBS intranet?
- How might we improve them?
- How do they compare to best practices?
- What are common intranet pain points users have?
Image 2. Screenshot of Canada's National Ballet School's lunch menu page.
Methods
We conducted 30-minute interview sessions with 9 internal NBS staff.
Due to the small number of interview participants, we conducted further studies to strengthen the validity and reliability of our research findings. The project followed a strict timeline, thus recruiting more participants was not time-efficient at the time.
Additionally, a team member performed an expert review of the intranet with a focus on glaring usability issues.
Lastly, we performed secondary research (i.e., literature review and online research) using peer-reviewed/trusted sources.
Participant Criteria
- NBS staff of varying demographics in:
- Workflow (desk OR non-desk oriented)
- Intranet usage (yes OR no)
Due to the internal/sensitive nature of the target participants, participant recruitment was administered by our client.
Results and Recommendations
1. Uncovered pain points related to the homepage's content readability
We identified four visual issues that were negatively impacting content readability. To address them, we shared design recommendations supported by intranet homepage best practices and a visual example.
As a result, the client gained actionable insights to enhance the intranet’s visual clarity, likely leading to improved content readability and a better overall user experience.
2. Identified pain points with search & navigation
Three navigation concerns were outlined. To illustrate an improved search and navigation experience, we shared intranet best practices along with visual examples.
As a result, our client gained a clearer understanding of effective search and navigation design principles, empowering them to make informed improvements to their intranet.
3. Revealed opportunities for user engagement
The research revealed a significant gap in user engagement opportunities. To support our client in generating ideas for engagement features, we curated examples of engagement functions from other intranets.
As a result, the client was better equipped to conceptualize and implement features that could boost user interaction, foster community-building, and enhance overall intranet adoption.
4. Discovered the negative impact of information gap on internal collaboration
Our research highlighted that the quality of information posted on the intranet is underserving users, with issues such as outdated content and a lack of contribution from various departments. We identified unclear content management governance as a potential root cause.
To help address this, we presented different types of content management structures, along with their pros and cons, to serve as reference material should the client choose to restructure the intranet’s content creation workflow.
As a result, the client is better positioned to implement a more effective content management strategy, ensuring fresher, more comprehensive information on the intranet and improving user trust and engagement.
5. Next steps
In continuation, our team developed several intranet designs that tackled the various issues outlined through the research.
Reflections
- Elongated timeline due to internal research recruitment. When working as an external contributor for a product used by internal users, budget for a longer timeline due to internal recruitment processes.
- Thoughtful research results structuring. Research results are easier to digest when insights are grouped together based on common themes (e.g., search, navigation, visual clutter, etc.) Avoid grouping insights only based on the research methods used.
💭 Why interview? To supplement the exploratory nature of the research need.
As the team lacked strong research hypotheses due to a lack of prior data points, an interview became the method of choice due to its open-ended nature.
💭 Why expert review? It's a valuable method that doesn’t rely on many resources (i.e., time, participants, monetary incentives, etc.)
In addition, the team are trained to evaluate designs and find UI/UX issues. Subjective biases were accounted for by pairing the results with other data points.
💭 Why secondary research? To familiarize ourselves with intranet design best practices and learn from the mistakes of indirect competitors.
💭 Why these criteria? To account for the diverse nature of the NBS staff community.
Realistically, the intranet will be utilized by all community members. Thus, to ensure an inclusive and applicable research result, the participant pool should reflect the diverse community’s characteristics.