Employee Search Directory
Brief
Design a standalone employee directory module for both mobile & web, that helps employees in a large multinational organization (10,000+ workforce in 5 different geographies) to search, discover and connect with the right people:
- See the detailed profile of their coworkers, including their coordinates, contact details, short bio, etc.
- Search and find their colleagues by name, department, location, etc.
- Engage users with a section of profiles having recent or upcoming birthdays and anniversaries, new joinees etc.
Approach
Secondary research
User Stories
Identifying Problems
Ideating Core Features & flows
Wireframes & Designs
Research
- Read about employee directory to understand the use cases
- Watched few videos to understand and analyse different product available in the market
From secondary research i found out that in any large organisations or Even in the smallest organisations, it’s very rare indeed that everyone knows each other. Yes, everyone might be on first name terms. But is everyone aware of everyone else’s talents, experience, and expertise?
There is no single way to use an employee directory. So here are few ways they can help:
- Looking Up Someone’s information. Say you’ve got an IT error. You tell the person sitting next to you about it. They might not be familiar with the concerned person, but says Ankit might help. With an employee directory, you can find Ankit and make a call, or send an email, in minutes.
- For meeting. A long chain of emails is not the best way to collaborate on projects. A conference call is better. But for best results, you really can’t beat getting everyone in the same room at the same time. With an employee directory, you can quickly find where everyone on a project is based. This will make it easier to set up meetings. And if people are based in different time zones, you’ll know when’s best to call them.
- Finding the Specialist. Whether you’re assembling a varied team, or you’re looking for a specific skill set to help with a specific task, an employee directory makes it easy to find the talented help you need.
- Onboarding. When you first start a job, getting to know everyone can feel intimidating. And the bigger the team, the more intimidating it can feel. An employee directory makes it easier for new-hires to learn about their new colleagues. It’ll help them feel like an integrated member of the team, and they’ll feel readier to collaborate in no time at all.
- Icebreaker & Social. When you start working in any new organisation it’s difficult to find similar taste of people to hangout with. With employee directory you can get in touch with them easily.
User Stories
Inspired by the Job story framework, below are the different stories that helped me give rich insights into the actual problems that are needed to be addressed as a priority:
Situation: When I start a new project,
Motivation: I want to get insights on different elements of the interface from experienced from members from respective teams
Expected outcome: so I can move ahead with my project with better feedback and suggestions
Situation: When I try to schedule cross team meetings,
Motivation: I want to know more about the team members
Expected outcome: so I can prepare better for the meeting
Situation: When I start a new project,
Motivation: I want to get insights on different elements of the interface from experienced from members from respective teams
Expected outcome: so I can move ahead with my project with better feedback and suggestions
Identifying Problems
- New members Hesitate to initiate conversation
- Its hard to find people of similar taste & hobbies
- User Interface of directory modules are very information heavy & less appealing
- It’s hard to welcome all new members
- Missing Team wise new members information
- Less scope for personal, social connect
- People are unaware if someone is good at specific skill
What will make a good employee directory?
- Easy to access. Any employee should be able to securely access the system from any device.
- Easy to navigate. It should be completely intuitive. You shouldn’t have to offer specialist training on using the directory.
- Complete and up-to-date. There’s no point in having a directory if the information it contains isn’t reliable!
- Visual Language. A good employee directory is visually appealing. Rather than swamping employees with reams of text, it should be clear and uncluttered. It also helps to give your directory your company branding, for a more consistent feel across your systems.
Ideating Core Features & flows
Based on the above problems, here are some features & functionalities that I think one can expect from the design solution
User Feed
- Employee directory module can have a lively feed through which employees can get major benefits apart from the core search feature.
- Important events such as birthdays, new joiness will get enough attention among the company members
- If HR team decides to conduct a weekly session for extra skills from the expert employee be the speaker, everyone would have a personal connect and it will help in employee retention as well
Global Search
- Prominent Navigation to search because that’s the core
- Recent searches, search by team, search by issue etc would help a user to decide and reach to their goal faster
- Placement in bottom navigation bar makes it easily accessible for users rather than putting search bar in top
Teams
- A dedicated page for all the teams would give an overview as well as an easy access to team-wise information
- Teams can be further or initially segregated by locations
- People in individual teams can also be divided further on the basis of experience, seniority etc
Employee Profile
- Employee should be able to navigate to his/her profile page easily
- Updating profile is a crucial part for a better functioning employee directory module.
- For new joiners notifications would encourage them to properly update their profile
Hamburger menu
- Employee directory’s core functionality is covered from the above mentioned pages, but there might be several other important pages as well which a user would need such as Knowing about company, certain groups, events, awards, polls etc. Although these items would not come to use on regular basis but should be included in the product
Notifications
Without notifications it’s really hard to get realtime updates. From new joinees to some live session organised by the company needs everyone’s attention.
Rough Sketches
Visual Design
Project Takeaways
Employee Directory is a very crucial tool for large organisations and a well designed experience would add a lot to the company.
During the research I learnt a lot about the importance of the directory module gained very good insights throughout the process and really enjoyed solving the problems and ideaation features related to them. Although this not might be the ideal solution but with the given time and resources I tried to come up with core use cases of the product and tried to give entire product a visually aesthetic sense.
