the challenge

The challenge with this Stratays project was to design a custom communications and collaboration hub within the confines of SharePoint. The project was actually two fold. First, design a company wide communications hub for internal use that would house internal company information and communications. The second would be creating a collaboration portal for sharing of information across teams and the overall company. These portals would be fully customized SharePoint sites. The most difficult aspect was designing for what could be done with SharePoint customization and the difficulties that go with that process.

gathering

The design process began with working with our internal team who had already begun the discovery phase, pre project kickoff. I collected materials from them including some requirements details, use cases, and user stories. I gathered reported pain-points and issues related to the current methods of communication and collaboration across the different business units and its relative failures. I collected some information related to individual personas, which had already been collected from the business and only needed to be organized and brought into presentable form and details worked out.

research

The research began with stakeholder workshops of different department heads and users. I conducted and participated in many information gathering and design workshops with key stakeholders to gather direct feedback and pain-points and refine the wishlist and must haves. These workshops were conducted over several weeks and resulted in some intense information gathering. I received logos and a current style guide. I refined user journey maps and created detailed user personas and use cases. I created governance templates, contributed to roadmapping and solution architecture as well as a business process study.

design

The design began with 15 very detailed personas that represented a vast sample of the user base for a company still very fragmented, having to do with acquisitions. These were well documented and presented to the business. Initial basic wireframes came next to present the basic suggested concept and to hammer out details of what could be done with SharePoint and what needed to be refined or rejected. A feasibility study was conducted jointly between myself and the dev team to give pros and cons related to SharePoint customization and our related recommendation based on those findings. These findings were presented to the business as an advisement and recommendation. The resulting design workshops and revisions that followed resulted in a high fidelity mock up of which the basic design would be based. Seven other high fidelity visual designs and 30 other low fidelity wireframes were designed following, including tablet and mobile views. During the entire design process, close collaboration took place with the dev team in order to verify and validate feasibility. Many rounds of refinement and feedback workshops solidified details and fine points resulting in numerous revisions. A basic style guide with css call outs was also created. I worked with the dev team throughout the project to answer design questions and help guide design problems not specifically addressed in the initial design and other like issues.

the solution

The solution was a design that somewhat deviated from the original project concept, but ultimately was the better solution. Due to restrictions and complications with SharePoint customization, only the communications portal would be custom and to a more limited degree, since it would be more stable and less frequently updated. The collaboration portal would be more out of the box than initially intended and merely "themed." This project was a great exercise in the importance of researching for the correct solution.

results

The resulting portals were not what was originally intended, but were the right solution, thus saving the business a great deal of headaches and issues going forward and yet providing a fair compromise to the original vision. Deliverables were 15 detailed personas, eight visual mock ups, and 30 high fidelity wire frames.