Setting the scene
One of our clients had been using Confluence as an intranet for storing and sharing internal information. Their pages and entire intranet were in an “out-of-the-box” format with mostly default settings and appearances.
The knowledge base hadn’t been organized or structured, so different pages were often discovered by browsing through a list of all of them or using the search function, which, according to them, wasn’t really working well. Additionally, the intranet's visual appearance was seen as uninteresting and unappealing.
It became apparent that their intranet could improve its visual design, user experience (UX), and information architecture. They requested help giving their Confluence pages a new makeover.
What we offered
We returned to them with an offer to do a full UX service package, including a UX workshop, UX/UI design, and UX research. The first part, the UX workshop, would enable us to discover any current user issues, needs, and desired architecture for their Confluence intranet.
The second part entails the core of the design work—creating a Figma prototype to show how their intranet could look and function. The third and final part allows us to validate our design and show the client what their users think. Ultimately, the client accepted the offer, and we launched the project shortly after.
Conducting the UX workshop
For the first phase, we designed and facilitated a UX workshop focusing on the functions, features, user scenarios, and information architecture the end users and stakeholders wanted for Confluence.
The client sent us a handful of stakeholders and end users to attend the online workshop. Everyone who attended had to complete exercises individually and then work together in teams to discuss what their intranet means to them.
After the workshop, we summarized our findings and showed them to the client before proceeding to the next stage.
Working on the UX/UI design
Based on the workshop's findings, we started working on the UX/UI design. First, we created wireframes on Figma to conceptualize some ideas and get feedback from the client on their preferred direction. The wireframes contained some of the most commonly used intranet pages, such as the landing page, personnel directory, profile, company information, and an example team page.
Once the client chose their favorite design, we polished these wireframes to a more visually pleasing look and connected the frames to a functioning prototype of Confluence. After the client gave us the green light, we proceeded to the user research phase using the prototype.
Beginning the UX research
In the user research phase, we invited a handful of end users from the client’s teams to test the prototype while thinking aloud and giving their opinions. To ensure a representative sample, the test users were from different departments with differing uses for Confluence.
Their appraisal of the prototype was overwhelmingly positive. They mentioned the fresh visual look, the dashboard, and the improved navigation as positive changes to the previous Confluence version. The dashboard, which all test users praised, had a welcome message, company news, quick links to important pages, and recent activity, among other things. Additionally, they had some ideas and suggestions to improve the experience even further in the future.
Closing thoughts
After completing all three phases, we presented our research findings and recommendations to the client and our development team. Our developers then implemented our design on the client’s Confluence with adjustments suggested by the user research report and client stakeholders. Ultimately, we handed over the keys and gave the client training on how to modify their Confluence to their liking, should they want to implement new changes.
In sum, we approached the client’s needs for a better Confluence experience with a full UX package consisting of a workshop, design, and research. The full method ensured we understood the user needs thoroughly, delivered a robust Figma prototype, and validated our design with user research, ensuring that the end users would be happy with our direction. The resulting Confluence was refreshing and easier to use, and it introduced more powerful features that responded to what the users wanted out of their Confluence experience.
Published: Dec 19, 2024
