let's talk.
Get in touch with me
connect.
Find me on LinkedIn
Working with the global technology team at Accenture, I was charged with evaluating the user experience of a self-service HR portal built on the ServiceNow platform. The goal was to bring the portal at parity with similar, easy to use, consumer-facing products by identifying usability issues and proposing ways to resolve them. While the UI design was out of scope, I did create some mockups for inspiration.
I began by going through the site, testing each page and documenting the impediments that prohibit users from navigating the site and accomplishing their goals. I captured my observations in a comprehensive report, presenting the issues to the team.
Leveraging UX heuristics, I ranked impediments by severity, using a color coded usability scorecard. The severity of a usability problem was determined by a combination of three factors: frequency, impact and persistence—ranging from cosmetic (1) to catastrophic (4).
Having completed the evaluation, I put together design recommendations and mid-fidelity wireframes to help the client focus on the most critical/severe usability concerns: navigation (labels and wayfinding), functionality, (page load and interactive elements) content presentation (visibility, labeling/grouping, sorting/filtering and hierarchy) and visual presentation (look and feel).
The hero module was redesigned to serve as the primarily engagement point, leading the user into the page content. With more purposeful imagery, this space would be dedicated to housing content that reinforces the company culture, with the intent of stirring employee pride.
Replacing the Announcements and Quick Links, the homepage is now a more visually appealing area, populated with engaging content modules to encourage discovery. I recommended that the content be updated regularly to encourage repeat visits.
Profiles of current employees were added as a new feature to encourage employee interaction, social activity, and collaboration. The space could also be used to promote roles within the organization that employees can either apply to or refer someone in their network.
Hero text and imagery are now aligned so that the purpose of the page is clear when users land on the page. Breadcrumbs are also added to help users orient themselves throughout the site experience.
Links are now labeled and grouped intuitively, where the previous ones did not accurately set user expectations pre-click. Extraneous links were replaced by the most common actions and the most popular forms.
Ask a Question and HR chat buttons were replaced with a live chat feature, combining the two redundant functions. Live chat now appears on all pages, enabling users to get help no matter where they are.
The centerpiece of this exploration is the ‘My Information’ page; an area of the platform that is essentially a personal dashboard, composed of various modules that allow employees to quickly access essential information (i.e., benefit elections, payroll information, time off, performance reviews, upcoming travel itineraries, etc.) in one place. Depending on the user’s credentials, the content within the tabs will populate with relevant information specific to that individual—a feature that hadn’t existed before.
This dynamic module enables new employees to efficiently manage all of the activities related to their onboarding process. Presented as a linear timeline, the information in the module is real-time (new activities will appear, on completion the activities will disappear).
Rather than reading through laborious pages of healthcare plans, this module makes benefit enrollment fun by using a questionnaire. Benefit plans are recommended based on the employee’s answers. All questions are lifestyle based inorder to take the anxiety out of the process.
This module enables employees to book and manage their business travel itineraries directly within the platform. With a third-party API like Concur, users can set up an account, set travel preferences, and submit expenses to their approver without leaving the dashboard.
