IBM Domain Site
Introducing a new, complex domain to a global organization with 12,000+ employees.
Product
Using Figma and W3 Publisher, IBM's internal website building tool, my team members and I built and launched a comprehensive site on IBM's w3 intranet portal. The website covered the DS&I domain as a whole, as well as went in-depth into each of the 5 sub-domains: Design, Strategy, IT Operations, Ways of Working, and Mergers & Acquisitions. As interns on the Design team, we focused in particular on the CIO Design sub-page.
Time
3 months
Team
2 UX Designers
1 Content Designer
1 Design Op
1 Visual Designer
Role
UX Research, UX Design, UI Visual
Deliverables
Fully built-out DS&I landing page and Design sub-pages
Site map
Frameworks for sub-domain sub-pages
For my internship project, I was tasked with building a website that would introduce a new, complex domain to a global organization with 12,000+ employees. The IBM CIO office had recently undergone re-organization, and the "Design, Strategy, and & IT Operations" domain had been established. However, these sub-domains had previously existed independently, and many IBM employees were confused about how these teams fit together and the functions of other parts of their domain.
HMW introduce and explain this newly-formed, confusing domain to employees in a clear and concise way?
We designed a comprehensive website explaining the structure and function of a newly-formed, confusing domain.
Background & Starting Challenge
PROCESS
RESEARCH
User Research
When seeking to understand user needs and content that should be included on the site, we conducted interviews with 21 users, surveyed 190 users, and hosted stakeholder discussions.
While the DS&I domain is newly established, many of the sub-domains had existing sites, so we also analyzed these sites to understand more about the teams and determine which content should be incorporated into our site.
Interviews
Survey
Site Analysis
Previous CIO Design site and existing CIO domain sites
In addition to user research, we also analyzed existing domain sites to gather information about what content the new domain site should include.
DEFINE
Summary of research findings
Through our research, we discovered that:
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Users are unclear about how the DS&I sub-domains fit together
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While senior-level employees could articulate how the domain fits together better, most employees not in managerial positions had little understanding of other sub-domains functions and how they related to their own work
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Of the completed surveys, ~17.8% understood their team's purpose, but not others
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Users want to know how to access design assistance, custom to their needs, and where to easily find them
Empathy Maps
We created 15 separate empathy maps and grouped the way what users say, think, feel, and do by user group.
Insights Grouping
Stakeholder Mapping
IDEATE
Site Map
Before starting to think about possible layouts, we established the core features that must be included in the DS&I site and the Design sub-page in the site map.
Sketching possible layouts
We began by sketching mockups of what the landing page and sub-pages could look like.
Shifting to w3 Publisher & Dot Voting
Next, we familiarized ourselves with the design tool, w3 Publisher, and its limitations. This stage was essential as we discovered possible iterations that are possible within this website-building platform.
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At this point, the other designer and I each created 2 mockups of the landing page on w3 publisher, making them each as differentiated as possible. We then dot-voted as a team on which layouts we preferred and then created one combined version.
PROTOTYPE
IBM Design System & Accessibility
Accessible Design
We chose high contrast, clean, and simple designs while used components that are accessible to screen readers (minimizing carousels, images) to make sure our design was accessible to a range of users.
Align with IBM Design System
Content: Sentence Case
Color: IBM Blue
Font: IBM Plex Sans
Working with Content & Visual Designers
We collaborated with a content designer to ensure the language was clear and concise – and visually consistent.
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We also provided a design brief to a visual designer who created graphics for our site.
TEST
User Testing
We conducted user testing with individuals from each of the sub-domains via Zoom.
We designed screener questions and a series of tasks and questions for the users to complete. After, we reviewed the qualitative and quantitative data, analyzing the recordings and key metrics that helped us identify areas for improvement. By watching recordings and reviewing the user data, we incorporated suggestions from users to improve the user experience.
We tested our designs with users and their insights informed our design decisions – for example, asking which of these two ways of displaying the craft and quality lead contact information they preferred.
Version 1
Version 2
Users preferred seeing the faces of Craft Leads along with the clickable links to their emails and slack handles, leading us to move forward with Version 1.
FINAL PROTOTYPE
Takeaways & Next Steps
Here are the landing pages of the DS&I domain and the CIO Design sub-site.
ADDITIONAL PROJECT
CIO Intern Website
In addition to my main project, I also pro-actively volunteered to lead design of a department-wide intern yearbook site.
REFLECT
Takeaways & Next Steps
This project was a great experience collaborating with a varied team of designers as well as navigating conflicting stakeholder feedback.
Due to the scale of the site and the short timeframe, building out each of the sub-pages for the site fell outside of our scope. We created sub-domain structures and pages in the Publisher site, which we handed off to the leaders of each sub-domain upon completing our internship.