Project Background

Symbio is an ASX-listed tech company specialising in providing communications software & infrastructure to the globe.
They employ over 300 employees, also known as ‘Symbions’, across Oceania, Asia & Europe.

Team:
• Jimmy Hua (Project Lead + UX/UI Designer)
• Andy Szetho (UX/UI Designer)
• Alex Stylianou (UX/UI Designer)
• Angelo Delmastro (UX/UI Designer)
• Clare Tang (UX/UI Designer)
• Iris Dai (UX/UI Designer)
• Kitty Lee (UX/UI Designer)
• Lawrence Fung (UX/UI Designer)
• Meg Tseng (UX/UI Designer)
• Tasha Surya (UX/UI Designer)
• Terry Christo (UX/UI Designer)

Symbio Team:
• Sylvia Xu-Connor (Senior UX/UI Designer)
• Joel Tolli (UX/UI Designer)
• Hardip Kaur (Head of Strategic Business Partnering)
• Fergus Watson (Engineering Manager)

My Responsibilities:
• Leading a Team of 9 UX/UI Designers
• Stakeholder Engagement & Management
• Project Management & Tracking (via Trello)
• Delegating Roles & Responsibilities
• Overseeing all UX Phases & Deliverables
• Hosting & leading daily stand-up meetings & WIPs
• Organising & Scheduling Interviews & Workshops
• Presenting back to the client

UX responsibilities:
• Surveys (questions, format, distribution)
• Interviews (conducted 3, creating questions & format)
• Desktop Research (competitive & white paper analysis)
• Synthesising Research Data
• Facilitating Co-design / Ideation Workshops
• Minimum Viable Product (MVP) & Information Architecture
• UX Copy, Content & Writing; Proof & Editing
• Usability Testing Workshops (conducted 2, writing script & insight synth)

UI responsibilities:
• Sketching UI & Wireframes
• UI Prototyping & Iterations (low, medium & high fidelity)
• Accessibility Analysis (W3C WCAG 2.1)

Tools: Figma, Miro, Trello, Photoshop, Figjam, Pen & Paper, Slack, Zoom, Canva

Platform: Desktop Web (100% of survey respondents prefer to access the intranet via desktop/laptop)

Our team were tasked with analysing Symbio’s internal intranet platform (Launchpad) to identify areas it can improve to better facilitate positive outcomes for the company’s global workforce, the Symbions. Our primary objectives included:

Collect & collate qualitative and quantitative research by surveying & interviewing Symbions about Launchpad

Initial Client Brief

Design a new Launchpad intranet system based on research and user insights.

Present opportunities for improvements to Launchpad, based on research

Compile a comprehensive competitor analysis of existing intranet providers.

Discovery / User Research

I contributed to & carried out the following tasks in the discovery / research phase:

  • Created survey questions

  • Created interview scripts

  • Interviewed 3x AHAs

  • Analysed 1 academic paper

  • Competitive analysis

  • Synthesising & affinity mapping insights

After discussing the brief as a team, we mapped out & actioned our research strategy which involved:

Surveying 23 Symbions

Interviewing 17 high-level Symbions including department heads, managers & general managers

Consulting 2 published books on intranet-design best practices

Analysing 8 Intranet-providing competitors

Upon summarising the research, we discovered Symbio’s workers were experiencing several pain points with the internal Launchpad intranet, including:

Lack of personalisation & customisation due to fixed navigation & design

Lack of centralisation as features useful to Symbio’s workers are scattered across the platform

Search function returning mostly irrelevant & useless results

Clunky log-in process requiring too many clicks, which is putting off workers from using Launchpad.

Lack of inclusivity & global workforce cohesion as company updates & perks are mostly Australia & Oceania-centric

Upon collating all the research and summing all our newly found insights, we formulated a new problem statement to help navigate & define the problem space:

Problem Statement

Symbions looking to access resources & features on Launchpad feel frustrated with the intranet platform due to issues with search, navigation, logging-in, customisability, inclusivity & how it lacks as a tool for global team cohesion.

Defining the Problem

I contributed to creating these artefacts in the definition phase:

  • Persona

  • Journey Map

  • How Might We (HMW) Statements

Armed with our new problem statement upon collating the research, we formulated all of this into 2 sets of personas & journey maps to succinctly sum up our findings to present back to the client.
Our first persona is Liz, representing domestic Symbions based in Australia; and James, presenting Symbions based abroad:

After defining our personas & journey maps for Liz & James, we collectively (with Sylvia & Joel from Symbio) brainstormed, voted on multiple ‘How Might We’ statements to bring into ideation workshops with our Lizs’ & James’. We settled on 2 which we all felt would adequately address all our personas’ pain points around the intranet:

How might we make it easier for Liz & James to find the tools & resources they need on Launchpad?

How might we make the Launchpad more useful & enjoyable for Liz & James?

Designing the Solution

I contributed to these tasks & artefacts in the design phase:

  • Co-hosted 2 ideation / co-design workshop with 9 Lizs’ & James’ in total

  • Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Matrix

  • Hosted meeting with the stakeholders to clarify feasibility and viability of MVP

  • Information Architecture

  • Wireframes

We held 2 ideation workshops with 9 Lizs’ & James’, running through a couple of activities (crazy 8s & brainstorms) with the HMW statements as prompts. Dozens of ideas were generated, voted on, then mapped onto a minimum viable product (MVP) matrix, with consultation from one of Symbio’s engineers to clarify the viability & feasibility of features.

After finalising the MVP, our team went about defining user flows to represent how the redesigned solution would be used in a real scenario. We also mapped out the information architecture to illustrate the features to be designed & prototyped.

To begin translating the features from the information architecture out into the digital domain, we began sketching them out with pen and paper and creating rough wireframes on Figma.

Delivering the Solution

I contributed to these tasks & artefacts in the delivery phase:

  • Prototypes (newsfeed on landing page & top navigation bar + components, variants, animations @ low, medium & high-fidelity)

  • Usability Testing Script + Creating Tasks & Exercises

  • Conducting 2 Usability Testing Workshops (1x low-fidelity & 1x high-fidelity)

  • Checking Accessibility against W3C WCAG 2.1 Guidelines

  • Carrying out a Heuristic Evaluation of the prototype

After sketching, we held a meeting as a group with 2 UX/UI designers & an engineer from Symbio to discuss which sketched features addressed Liz’s and James’s pain points with the intranet system most effectively, then moved on to design the prototype in Figma- starting at low fidelity then later on moving onto medium & high fidelity. We factored WCAG 2.1 guidelines into all our design choices in order to maximise usability, accessibility & inclusive design.

For our low-fidelity prototype, our team (with consultation with the client) decided to adopt a ‘concept validation’ approach to confirm which features appealed the most to Symbions, as a high number had been ideated in the workshops. This involved another round of surveying and Zoom interviews utilising comparative tests, in order to compile a final list of features to finally design in medium & high-fidelity.

The medium & high-fidelity prototypes were tested with multiple Lizs’ and James’ to ensure our design was not only addressing their pain points effectively, but was delightful to use. We utilised a System Usability Scale (SUS) scoring system, measured by an online survey, to gather scores on how our prototype performed.

Our high-fidelity prototype saw improvements from the medium fidelity on most fronts but lacked in navigational confidence & task efficiency, which we’ll address in our ‘next steps’.

Our prototype can be tested above
(please ensure you toggle fullscreen by clicking the icon located top-right inside the frame;
and select ‘fit to screen’ or ‘fit to width’)
Or click here to open the prototype in a new window!

Outcome & Feedback

Next Steps

As we wrapped up the first phase of the project, 3 primary next steps were identified as areas to focus on for the next phase:

Build a mobile web-responsive version or app of the Launchpad intranet platform, as our quantitative data found 57% of Symbions would like to access the platform via mobile.
(Short-medium term)

Looking at an off-the-shelf competitor product, we recommended Sharepoint with IntranetPro implementation + Okta & Windows/Azure AD as the ideal solution for Symbio due to several benefits which tackle Liz’s & James’s pain points, including:

  • Easy, cheap & seamless implementation as Symbio already use the Microsoft O365 ecosystem

  • Better search capabilities via IntranetPro’s comprehensive smart search functionality

  • Super quick log-in with minimal clicks via Okta or Windows/Azure AD to enable true SSO.

  • Customisability

(Medium-Long term)

Further testing and iteration of the prototype (including card-sorting) to finalise features & placement & arrangement of navigation, information architecture & colour schemes. (Ongoing)

Retrospective

Looking back, we identified 2 areas we could’ve improved upon to ensure an even better project delivery:

Clarifying Software Requirements

We had 2 instances where interviewees or workshop participants were expecting to use Microsoft Teams (as this is what’s used as Symbio). This resulted in time lost and a testing workshop unable to be carried out, since our team used Zoom.

More Stringent Parameters for Usability Testing

We had instances of miscommunication when carrying out A/B & comparative testing. To mitigate this, we would use a script or guide next time to ensure questions and language are absolutely clear.

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