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_Project Overview

With the addition of a Senior End-User Computing Manager, he had the insight to bring on a User-Experience Designer in hopes of revamping the experience of the employees in regards to I.T. Support. This required the re-evaluation of all employee facing process and material of the department.

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* Please be mindful: This project is under a blanket NDA and I will provide key narratives and takeaways of my journey.

Team/Duration: 5 (x1 UX Designer, x2 HelpDesk Onboarding Specialists, x1 HelpDesk Manager, x1 HelpDesk Asst Manager) / 6 months.

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Tools: Marker, Whiteboard, Confluence, Google Drive, Google Slides, Photoshop, Illustrator, Fresh Service, Google Doc, Google Sheets, Google Drive.

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Methods: Information Architecture, Site Map, User Survey, Persona Generation, Environmental Analysis, Wireframes, Usability Testing, Visual Mock-up, Iteration

"... revamping the experience of the

          employees in regards to I.T. Support."

_The Challenge

Coming into the project, I interviewed our Senior manager to understand his vision. He wanted an iconic brand for the department, evoking a sense of friendliness and support. What I later found out, was that the I.T. department was one of the most disliked departments in the company, due to a contrast of culture between it and the rest of Fitbit. In hopes of mitigating that reputation and eventually improving relationships, I would be key in re-envisioning the end-user experience.

TASK

There were several things that needed to be done:

  1. Determine all User-Facing Products by the Dept.

  2. Determine supports and blockages in work

  3. Evaluate efficiences, deficiences, and excesses

  4. Utilize Fitbit employees for feedback

  5. Develop alternatives based on all prior objectives

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SOLUTION

In a company that is seeking to evolve beyond the Startup classification and into an Enterprise level, there were a lot of moving pieces. Fortunately, the I.T. Department was in a fair position to act as a sort of anchor amidst the shifts.

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First and foremost, developing a fresh format for the I.T. Wiki would be a strong anchor-point for other processes to rally around. From there, it would act as a rallying point to develop a more unified front in later projects.

_Research

Research was done through interviewing I.T personnel familiar with process, plus overall employees in the company.

PRODUCTS

Aside from the targeted Wikipedia page, I learned that there were several other products within the I.T. Department that needed attention:

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  • Day-1 Onboarding Document

  • New Hire Equipment Acquisition Form

  • Global E-mail Blast Template

USER RESEARCH

There were three phases of User Interviews that I conducted. First was a selection of a half dozen of non-IT employees scattered across the company, where I pulled a general idea of how useful certain I.T. products were and how they achieved I.T. support. Second was using a different set of users to test how intuitive the current products were. And the third was to assess their needs and how those needs are often addressed by the I.T. staff.

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SUPPORT

In terms of understanding the end goals of this project, I quickly learned that I was on my own in terms of developing the product. More importantly, I learned that our stake-holders were hands-off about their expectations. However, when it came to the development of branding and iconography, Branding/Marketing were very strict of its usage. Furthermore, the Branding/Marketing department was inundated with other projects for the company and therefore could not assist our project. I reached out to the UX Department and they were likewise unable to supply additional support if I was unable to finish certain milestones.

_Design

Before I dove into the visual joy of utilizing Fitbit branding as a launch point, I needed to evaluate the way pages were connected on the Wiki page. After that, I went into the diction of the various products playing into a tug-of-war between user-friendly and concise wording. Afterward I looked at composition and visual design.

DAY-1 ONBOARDING DOCUMENT

One of the things I noticed in a few onboarding sessions is that people were hung-up on one page in the process. Culprit? The landscape format of the multi-page guide was formatted like a presentation, thus causing people to stall on one page that looked like a checklist. This checklist created the assumption that users needed to finish it before moving to the next page.

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My initial assumption was to develop a portrait format for the guide. However, it dawned on me to move the checklist out of the guide as a separate sheet. This allowed users to still follow through without feeling the checklist had to be done prior to moving forward.

NEW HIRE - EQUIPMENT ACQUISITION FORM

The original format of this digital form was full of details and links, causing many managers to gloss over it and making various assumptions. I had several meetings with the team and we worked out what was valuable in the list. It forced the team to assess what was important and what could be moved off to a different time.

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At the same time, I attempted to reword the form to be more user-friendly. In the end, it was best to keep things concise moreso than user-friendly. I helped to organize the logic of the form's flow, ensuring certain sections were in the same region as its like. 

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GLOBAL E-MAIL BLAST TEMPLATE

Initially we had a rough time figuring out how to reformat the E-Mail Blast, since it was originally used by a neighboring department. However, towards the end of the project, we learned that Marketing had full access and control of the template editor.

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Given the strict branding guidelines, I did not tweak the template much. At best, I used the branding that was officially given to I.T. by the Branding/Marketing department. We did some tweaks to distinguish our blasts from the rest of the company and this was done through section lengths within the composition.

I.T. SUPPORT WIKI

By the time I was able to fully work on the I.T. Support Wiki, I had accrued a handful of Personas, created a site map, isolated branding, tested out icon styles, and removed several past iterations that did not pass usability tests. I also needed to work around Confluence's limitations.

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There were two things I wanted to emphasize by the time I finished working on the Wiki. One, Icons served as access points and anchors. Two, consistent formatting in both composition and visuals would unify the identity of  the space I.T. sits in.

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BRANDING

The challenge with designing with a strict brand guideline: is determining how far off I could go away from it and how much should I adhere to it. At one point, I wanted to utilize the iconography style that is present in all of Fitbit's products. At another point, I wanted to go independent of most other department Wikis and do something in line with various product websites. Instead, I stuck with what allowed users to access their content immediately and stay within the parameters of an easily adjustable site template.

_Outcomes

NEXT STEPS

From here, the continuous evolution of Fitbit at this stage offers some challenges. One of the conditions that would determine next steps is the relationship between the I.T. Department and the departments it supports:

  • Iterate on branding material

  • Iterate on composition

  • Continue work on policies and process in I.T.

    • Policies and Process will determine flow​

  • Determine changes in overall I.T. due to inclusion of ServiceNow versus current standard of FreshService

  • Continue User Survey and Usability Testing

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