Problem
A multinational Management Consulting firm needed help redesigning their Knowledge Management Library, a vital tool for consultants around the world to help them prepare for pitches and share information. The only problem? People weren't really using it. Because they hated it.
Besides the search engine being wonky, the interface wasn't intuitive, it didn't allow users to share information easily, and it looked like it was from the late 90s. People used it only as a last resort.
Solution
After multiple stakeholder interviews, I began with contextual inquiry, speaking with users in their location to find pain points and see how they actually used the system.
I broke the users into 2 user types/personas, and made sure to speak with at least a half-dozen of each over a week-long period to ensure capture of a solid amount of data. I then took my findings and turned them into insights through my beloved post-it note clusters.
Next, after reviewing site analytics to get quantitative data, I did a user flow to show how people were actually using (or not using) the library. Most of this wasn't a surprise, though some of it was enlightening to the client.
After reviewing all of the data with stakeholders, next up was iteration of design. The look and feel came quickly, and we ended up iterating hi-fidelity wires/comps, since it was just as easy to turn around.
After multiple iterations, the stakeholders and I came together on a UI we liked, and proceeded to test it on the users we spoke with before, gathering lots of useful (and overwhelmingly positive) feedback. After a few more iterations, and more testing, the UI was ready to hand off to production.
