Fujitsu - Research Social Media App
Role: Lead UX Designer
Strategy
The first stage of the project was meeting with the stakeholders which included the Director of Business Development, Research Manager and Lead Researcher. Their vision for the project was a redesign of an internal social media platform that Fujitsu researchers use to create and share research projects with other Fujitsu employees. The redesign should keep with the current Fujitsu branding including colors, typefaces and overall visual style. The goal of the redesign was to increase the number of Fujitsu researchers using the platform.
Analysis
After the analyzing the data from the surveys and competitive analysis it was time to sit down and really think about who would be using the platform and what was important to them. The user personas created for this analysis were a manager and a researcher. I then met with the stakeholders and we created mind maps for each user to learn what mattered the most to them.
Discovery
I met with the stakeholders and was introduced to a selection of similar platforms such as Naver Matome, Steemit, Scoop.it and Right Relevance. We spent some time performing competitive analysis and brainstorming what features we may want to include in the redesign. Following this, I conducted some user interviews with some of the Fujitsu researchers as well taking surveys and user conducting user testing. The overall feedback was the UI was confusing, users didn’t know where to click to create a project or how to import media into their project once it was created. The platform also required users to create an account prior to viewing other user’s projects which drastically reduced interest in the platform.
Design
Once the analysis process was completed it was time to map out the current user flows and see what could be done to simplify them. I then began sketching out screens for the flows and finally created click-through prototypes to share with the stakeholders and conduct further user testing.
Production
After a few design iterations and feedback from the stakeholders, a finalized design including hi-fi mockups was created. At this stage, I then took these mockups and created the HTML templates for each screen to be handed off to the backend engineers. After about six weeks of integrating the redesign into the backend, the redesigned platform was launched. The user base has more than doubled in the year following the redesign largely in part to the platform being easier to use and being open to anyone on Fujitsu network without the need to create an account.
