We started by interviewing employees, shadowing telephony staff, trying to understand communication patterns and cultural cues that could help us understand the needs and motivations at the company. We learned that the culture of flexibility and informality, coupled with a reduced investment in internal tooling had lead to a kind of exodus of employee community onto closed Facebook groups over the years. This created a data breach risk for the organisation.
So we wanted to create something that people would want to be a part of. At this time, most corporate intranets were one-way only, for broadcasting communications. But we quickly realised that a core principle for a new intranet would be that it needed to be social.
In presenting the concepts, we felt it was very important to get across that the intranet wouldn’t simply manage itself and that around 8–10 FTE would be needed to manage and promote it for success.
Research-led concept development for a social, employee‑centric intranet.
- Contextual enquiry & interviews
- Needs synthesis & principles
- Information architecture vision
- Concept modelling
- Stakeholder education
From the research, we synthesised some design fundamentals, which helped align stakeholders.
A slide I created to outline the main aspects of the intranet.
A simple visualisation I created to communicate the launch strategy.
Communicating required FTE investment to ensure sustained community health.
Value Created
Defined a people‑centred intranet vision highlighting social participation and required operational investment (8–10 FTE) to sustain engagement and governance
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