Digital Workplace

The opportunity: Creating an easily re-deployable, 'Digital Workplace' - a feature-rich intranet platform that's designed to increase collaboration and innovation for organisations and their staff.

The challenge: People embrace social media in their private lives, so they naturally expect this experience within the enterprise. We were asked to create a modern intranet product that encourages engagement, collaboration, content generation, allows for instant information dissemination and encourages new ways of working across staff silos.

The approach:

1. We leveraged knowledge from previous custom intranet projects for clients, such as Latrobe University, Department of Trade and Investment and Vision Australia. We filled research gaps from an extensive intranet research report by Nielsen Norman Group.
2. We then gathered requirements and wish lists from various clients that were interested in this product, as well as their staff members.
3. Information architecture was developed on a client-by-client basis.
4. Three major iterations were built, building on key features and functionality each time.
5. A major user interface overhaul was done for the most recent release, where we, as a multidisciplinary team, ideated key features to improve their usability and interfaces.
6. The interface has the flexibility to apply different client brand colours, as well as feature customisations.

Features based on user research:

• An ‘Activity’ tab available from the homepage shows a live stream of all posts, so everyone can keep up-to-date with what’s going on across the organisation.
• Business tools and favourites can be managed and personalised on each user’s homepage.
• Any staff member can @ ‘mention’ other staff with their username.
• Users receive instant notifications when someone likes their post, @mentions them or replies to one of their posts.
• News and events of importance to a particular user can be curated and bookmarked to appear on their homepage.
• An organisation’s private messaging functionality can be accessed via an individual’s profile page.
• Approved topic-based community pages can be created, allowing staff to share resources and engage in discussions.
• Interactive organisation charts allow users to quickly see the company structure and reporting lines, and access individual profile pages.
• Users are able to follow/unfollow any staff member or community page.

The outcome:

Clients who purchased and customised Digital Workplace for their work force:

• Australian Department of Communications
• Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation
• Australian Broadcasting Corporation
• NSW Ombudsman
• Geoscience Australia