The Problem

Vanguard's intranet is a very important source of information for all employees. There is a multitude of content from many sources - HR materials, corporate news, employee info, and even working documents from Microsoft SharePoint. The search experience was disjointed and not reliable. The experience was old and outdated with user feedback almost all negative and a desire for it to be “more like Google.” Of course users wanted it work like Google, so we had work to do. Displayed below are some screenshots of the old search experience. The search results were unreliable and full of superfluous text for each result. Also, let’s be honest, it looks bad.

The Process

The process of understanding how to approach the search redesign started with the user. We did both qualitative and quantitative research to understand the user needs and what was most important when searching. Additionally, we broke down click-tracking data to find patterns in user behavior, this way we could surface commonly taken user paths.

Initial sketches of our solution of the "All" tab. This view includes all sources: News, Employees, Intranet, and SharePoint. This allows users to see a snapshot of all results and drive down deeper to the specific source if needed. Our research showed that 75% of clicks were within the first 5 results, so we chose that as the snapshot for each source. Sound like google? (Answer: yes)

Next, we sketched out how each tab would look and behave. This tab shows the “sharepoint” results from the companies internal sharepoint websites. On the left side, there is a feedback widget as well as filters. This is a huge step up from the existing designs because it is more focused and easy to navigate using the provided filters.

Another section included in the results is the search to find employees so that you can contact them, know where they sit, and see where they sit in the org structure. The biggest point of feedback with the existing employee search was that only the names appeared! There can be many people named John, so let’s include pictures to help identify people easier!

The Solution

The new, clean look has a modern feel. A surplus of whitespace was great for the search page to be easily scannable. In the image, you can see that all sources are displayed with the tabs across the top for a specific data source. After launching, our data showed that 86% of searches were clicked on the "All" tab! Success!