Corporate Search

Efficient and simple search for tools, processes, and more

To protect client confidentiality, I’ve changed some details of this project.

Background and problem space

The need for Corporate Search

Corporate Search is an important utility for many workers in the government. It connects them to company information, tools, processes, and procedures needed to perform their job correctly.

Unfortunately, this utility had a notoriously negative experience among workers. I had to figure out exactly why workers hated search and provide ways to help the company improve search.

User research

Determining Corporate Search’s problems

Example search results for a sample search at the company.

In order to determine where the negative feelings came from, I met with workers across the company to watch how they used search and where the utility did not match expectations.

To account for different types of workers’ needs, I ran a large and comprehensive study to bring out this information. I led 16 one-hour moderated virtual interviews over multiple work locations at the company. In each session I conducted interviews about their experience with search and had each participant complete 10 tasks with a new search prototype.

From watching workers use search and talking to them about their experiences, I learned the following:

1. Things that workers already knew (or could easily ask someone nearby) were easily findable
2. The language workers used to find something became a guessing game as to whether or not they used the right terms to find something
3. Search pulls up resources and documents that are out of date (often giving incorrect information)
4. General information is brought up, causing workers to have to do research on each result or call someone to find the right answer
5. Results would be shown that the worker does not have proper access to

Designing an improved experience

Making results actionable from testing

I used these findings to create a list of 58 prioritized recommendations for how the organization to continuously improve the search experience.

In addition, I helped the team understand how they can turn these recommendations into a new experience. I provided a series of mockups similar to the following:

Updated search results proposal with improvements based on the results of testing.

This experience would be powered by the following updates to make the experience better for workers:

1. Content managers can use metadata that the search engine can use to display current content
2. Content managers can provide timely, targeted information to allow workers to access answers to frequently asked questions
3. Search results can be sorted, grouped, and filtered to allow workers to narrow down search results more efficiently
4. Search results can show thumbnails of documents, pictures, and videos to help workers know if the search result is useful or not
5. Workers can rate search results to help others and the technology know if a resource is useful or not
6. Useful resources can be immediately saved and brought up as workers need it

When these recommendations and designs were delivered to the Corporate Search stakeholders, they were delighted to understand why their utility was hated and to get an action plan as to how to make the application more liked. Workers enjoyed the new experience, as it showed them that the organization was listening to them; they also liked the fact that their feedback was being used to create something more useful at the company.