The HHS employee intranet had never undergone a major redesign, and it had become difficult to navigate because it had little structure, many extra layers, and unclear wording throughout the site. The primary goals for the redesign were to build community and trust (in the intranet); to improve both the user experience and employee productivity; and to create an adaptable, expandable site structure and user interface.

I designed a new information architecture and did extensive research and analysis to help HHS determine how well its existing intranet fulfilled user needs.

• Conducted interviews with 23 users, identified the main user groups, and determined the top 10 tasks.



• Mapped the existing intranet.



• Performed a gap analysis by comparing the content audit (about 18,000 files) to the site map and to input from user interviews.



• Created a site map and set of wireframes (11) for the home page and main intranet pages.



• Assisted with creating scenarios for user testing, with user testing the site map (card sort), with two rounds of user testing of the new design, and with one round of baseline testing of the existing intranet. Analyzed results, revised the information architecture, made recommendations, and created reports.



• Wrote personas. View personas: Administrator, Analyst, and New Employee.

With the new intranet design, users completed tasks with a success rate of 88%, an improvement of 36% from the existing HHS intranet.