Comcast HR Communications
2017
UX Designer
Over the years, Comcast had amassed multiple internal tools to communicate with employees. Many of these tools were important for connecting employees with important job-related information. However, because there were so many tools and various information hierarchies, much of this content did not reach employees. I was tasked with looking at the current forms of communication teams were using to reach employees and come up with a dashboard that would combine these information sources.
The best way to understand internal communications in the timeline of this project was to speak with a few employees on the communications teams about company content viewing habits. Speaking with a few of my coworkers, many of them producing content for these tools, helped me to understand what type of content and which platforms were most effective. Through these conversations it was obvious that the final design needed to be responsive, as corporate and call center employees tend to prefer desktop computers while cable technicians and retail employees use mobile devices.v
One huge finding was how important it was for many different team members to have a say in the UI design. Product Managers, Developers, and Designers alike felt like a core piece of why they enjoyed their jobs was because of their ability to directly impact the user's experience in a project. But why was this so important to the team? And can a true Design System really support both standardization and constant changes to the visual design?
After gathering information about what platforms and content was most useful to employees, I began to explore the structure of the dashboard. I primarily wanted to focus on a newsfeed style design that was free of as much clutter as possible. By allowing employees to scroll through a chronological list of articles, they could easily find the most relevant information without missing any content. However, there were also important alerts and events employees would need to be aware of. Bringing these in with a sidebar for desktop and additional menus on mobile allowed for a flexible amount of content that could be expanded as necessary. Through talking with my team, we also decided it would be best to provide an employee profile that could bring in material from other profile pages. We wanted this profile to be short and include only the most important information.
The styling was inspired by colors used on the most dominant internal platforms. Remaining aligned with the look and feel of other tools was important in providing consistency and trust throughout different communication channels. In particular, the gradient over larger images was being used on the company’s corporate news site. This also helped when bringing in the content as much of it had already been cropped for this layout.
I quickly found that a few of my ideas for the structure of this dashboard really didn’t fit with the idea of simplicity and usability. The sidebar instantly felt overwhelming even with curated content. So, I decided to only include constantly updated alerts and reminders in the sidebar. This content was some of the most important and time sensitive, which meant that displaying it prominently made the most sense. The profile and quick links, which either did not update or only updated by the employee themselves, were then added to a drawer style menu allowing for a cleaner screen. On mobile, the profile and event reminders were placed in a hamburger menu with a secondary tab-based navigation. Events weren’t necessarily as important to the large numbers of employees using mobile as their primary device. Instead, an alert overlay allowed people to check for important alerts quickly.
The dashboard was received very well by stakeholders in the project. The focus on open content and clear organization was an aspect many found important and believed the potential to combine these different communications platforms would increase employee engagement. While ultimately this concept was simply to show a potential direction, some of the features included in this mockup have been considered for new feature sets within the company.
Successes:
A few areas for improvement:
