Department Community Redesign
R&D IT Usability Report w/ Callouts
R&D IT Usability Report w/ Callouts
Community Home Page Layout
Challenge:
Improve the findability of information and resources on the GSK R&D IT myGSK Portal Community. Overcome assumptions by senior executives that R&D employees prefer splashy non-standard navigation over more consistent menus and news.
Biggest Achievement:
Indoctrinated senior R&D IT staff in on user centered design philosophy. Taught the group the value of UCD and getting user feedback by having them facilitate some user study sessions.
Method:
Analyzed proposed site to determine possible issues that users would have finding their way around. Shared these risks with project members and determined tasks for the study. Documented which groups visited the site and recruited participants from executive, managerial and technical groups.
Built a usability study test plan to test the above assumptions, validated the plan with project members, and conducted sessions with over 30 participants.
Throughout the testing schedule, I checked in with co-facilitators to see how their assumptions changed. Most of the facilitators were surprised that their initial design was difficult to use. Since most facilitators take pride in their non-technical user-centered focus, they had to admit that the design needed work.
Following the studies, I collated the results from all sessions. I analyzed the results and redesigned their information architecture based on the feedback. I also translated the findings into a visual map of the community, to help the project prioritize the redesign work.
The project then agreed to most of the findings, and I provided a functional prototype illustrating how to change the community. The complete project spanned about four weeks, with the redesign work lasting about four days.
