One EY is a consolidated profile and networking platform built to optimize resourcing, to leverage institutional knowledge and to facilitate cross capability collaboration at EY.
PROJECT INTRODUCTION
Client Ernst Young
My Role User Research, Information Structure, Wireframe
Team Scott Zachau, Alex Zhang, EY Sponsors
Overview
As a part of MFA Interaction Design of SVA program, we collaborated with EY Digital Transformation Unit on a semester-long design competition to build a more unified and connected EY workforce. As a result, we created a consolidated employee profile and networking platform, OneEY.
Success
• Winner of SVA’s Strategic Innovation in Product / Service Design Case Competition 2019.
My contribution to this project
In the Discovery phase, I was responsible for the user interviews, interview analysis and defining problem space.
In the Design phase, I mainly contributed to the information structure, including ideation map, search architecture, wireframe, and user testing analysis.
Problem
Ernst & Young is a consulting giant with over 270,000 employees working in 150 countries. Under this situation, EY employees need to have more effective communication and connection beyond their current networks and form teams that involve a combination of different abilities.
However, team building, networking, and collaboration across silos is extremely difficult since employee data is disorganized and inaccessible.
Goal
To optimize current networking and team building process and platform
To leverage employee data that currently exists within EY’s internal system
Challenge
How do we uncover each other’s skills & experiences at EY?
FINAL DESIGN
DISCOVERY PHASE
Contextual Research
We set up a meeting with stakeholder of our EY sponsors to understand the current work force and labor landscape to frame problem space. We agreed upon a set of constraints that would serve as a guiding light in the design process. The hardest part is not to create a standalone product. We have to optimize current processes and platforms to leverage employee data that currently exists within EY's internal systems.
Primary Research
Based on the contextual research, we established our primary research goals:
To learn about EY existing cloud platform and primary use cases and source of data in each platform
To understand the current networking/team building behaviors, processes and paint points
User Interviews
We collaborated with our sponsors and divided users into different user groups:
4 employees
3 Managers
The Director of Experience Managers
The Digital Transformation Unit Director
We wanted to understand their networking and team building motivation, and the ways and the tools they are using.
Analysis
After the interview we synthesized all the information and created empathy maps for each group of interviewees. Then we coded them and came up with understanding of current behaviors.
Networking motivation & Current tools
We found that employees hardly use EY internal networking platform which is EY Discover. They preferred to use their personal networking tool such as Slack in order to obtain documents and knowledge, which makes the current situation harder to created a more connected global workforce.
Define Problem
After the interview analysis, we found out that disorganized employee data was not the real problem. The core issue was that the skills and experience data employees and experience managers desired did not exist.
Problem Space
We created the opportunity map to communicate the problem spaces with our sponsors.
Under the current regulations and constrains, we found two areas for the design which would require the least amount of regulatory changes and provide the most amount of value to all four user groups:
employee usability issues
guidance/management
DESIGN PHASE
According to previous research and analysis, we developed a new series of design principles:
Assume there is a proper database of engagement summaries, goals, and deliverables that the platform can access.
Ignore NDA governance
Assume employee CV maintenance is tied to performance metrics
Finally, we decided to create an internal networking tool to adapt user needs and asked three key questions:
Employee Content Creation
How might we make the process of updating CV’s less time consuming?
Employee Search
How might we integrate contextual engagement information (experiences) & skills into one easy to use networking platform?
Resourcing Automation
How might we speed up the process of resourcing employees based on their skills and experiences?
User Journey Map
We created the user journey map for employees and Experience Managers to draw their ideal experience of using the platform in order to define the specific sections for ideation.
Ideation
Search Architecture
We wanted to create a search engine that could interpret the context of a query, which would provide employee, business unit, and engagement profile suggestions to the user. To achieve this, we created an indexing system that defined the relationship of each attribute to the three profile page types.
Wire Frame
For the profile redesign, we wanted to create a scannable and visual layout to address the needs of both Experience Managers and employees.
User Testing
Validation
We tested our initial iteration and ranked search filters through scenario-driven co-design exercise with 14 EY Digital Transformation Unit employees. We created 4 prompts inspired by our filed search:
Teaming Focus
Knowledge Seeking Focus
Mentor Focus
Collaboration Focus
Each participant was directed to read the prompt and put stickers on the top three search filters
that would most likely help them discover the individual or asset they were seeking.
Result
66% of the filters selected fell under the categories of engagement experience and skills. This result validated our assumption:
The information not currently presenting in EY Discover are the most essential factors for finding people, knowledge, and documents.
Main Pages
WHAT I’VE LEARNED
In the first semester of working with Ernst & Young, I realized that designing for large enterprise is very challenging. Technology cannot solve all problems. To identify the real problem, we must first understand the organizational and business structure as a whole.
What ’s more, there are constrains when we cooperate with large enterprise such as internal regulations and limitations. I learned how to design and develop the product based on current constrains by iterating and testing over and over again to find more possibilities and come up with effective solutions.