Problem Space
Initial Problem Statement
Dexterity Intranet 2.0
Redesigned Dexterity’s internal intranet to streamline information access, reduce dependency on HR, and create a centralized, user-friendly knowledge hub.
Role:
Lead UX Reseacher/Designer
May 13 - August 30, 2024
Team:
Me, Blake Dy (manager), Jordan Rothe (mentor), Emilie Peck, Diane Prins Sheldahl (HR)
"Confluence is like using Craigslist to bake a cake... All the parts are there, but what you're expecting to find may be VERY different from the reality"
As I spoke to people across different teams, a pattern began to emerge—not in what they were saying, but in how they were saying it. Everyone described a sense of friction with the intranet, though they couldn’t quite articulate why.
The language varied—“It’s hard to find things,” “I usually just ask someone,” “I don’t even try to use it anymore”—but the sentiment was consistent: the intranet wasn’t working for them. It didn’t feel intuitive. It didn’t feel trustworthy. And most of all, it didn’t feel like something designed for the way they actually worked.
That realization shifted everything for me. This wasn’t just a visual or structural design issue—it was a misalignment between the tool and the company’s real information behavior. The problem wasn’t just “bad UX”—it was the invisible cost of workaround culture, lost knowledge, and dependency on institutional memory.
Instead of jumping into redesigning the interface, I paused to zoom out. I needed to understand not just what was broken, but how and why people had stopped believing the intranet could serve them in the first place. This meant reframing the challenge.
Accessing company information is confusing and unclear, resulting in employees not using the current intranet effectively.
When I first began this project, I’ll admit—I didn’t fully understand what an intranet was, let alone what made one effective. Was it just a document repository? A company homepage? Did anyone actually enjoy using theirs?
These questions led me down a research path to understand not just the mechanics of intranet systems, but their evolution—how they’ve shifted from static libraries to dynamic, collaborative ecosystems. I wanted to know what set successful intranets apart, how they supported real workflows, and what features actually contributed to usability and trust.
The intranet wasn’t just broken—it was actively undermining trust, wasting time, and creating friction across the employee experience. What should have been a reliable internal resource felt more like a scavenger hunt with no map.
Each stage of the journey revealed not just usability flaws, but deeper misalignments between the tool and how people actually work:
1. Disorientation from the moment users log in
Instead of helping users get their bearings, the homepage introduced immediate confusion. There was no clear structure, no sense of hierarchy, and no entry point for action. Even first impressions felt overwhelming and chaotic.
Opportunity: Rethink the homepage as an intuitive, role-specific launchpad—one that offers guidance, not guesswork.
2. Fragmented content with no system of truth
Users didn’t just struggle to find what they needed—they often didn’t trust what they found. Outdated docs, inconsistent naming, and scattered storage meant employees had to piece things together across platforms like Google Drive, Slack, and Confluence.
Opportunity: Introduce clear taxonomy, version control, and surfacing of frequently used content to reduce mental load.
3. Broken trust = workarounds & wasted time
When employees hit dead ends, they didn’t troubleshoot the intranet—they abandoned it. The go-to solution became messaging HR or asking around, creating unnecessary dependencies and slowdowns.
Opportunity: Position the intranet as a dependable, self-serve hub by aligning it with real workflows and making content trustworthy by default.
Key Takeaways:
If people know that the intranet exists, why aren't they using it more? Why is there still such a heavy reliance on HR and other miscellaneous methods such as Slack and fellow employees?
"We have probably changed softwares three times and absolutely NO one at the company was notified.... You would think that the company would care enough to notify us about important changes like that so we wouldn't make mistakes right?"
Ideation - Disney Creative Sprint
The Disney Creative Sprint is an ideation framework inspired by how Walt Disney approached problem-solving—by separating imagination from critique. It’s designed to help teams think expansively, challenge assumptions, and balance creativity with practicality.
The sprint is divided into distinct mindsets:
🌈 Dreamer Phase
We imagined the ideal intranet experience with no limits. The focus was on the emotional and functional “dream state” employees wanted to experience when using the system.
Results:
1. Personalization by team or role
2. A simplified, non-cluttered homepage
3. A “go-to” system employees instinctively turn to first
4. Clean navigation and trustworthy search
🔍 Realist Phase:
In the Realist Phase of the Disney Creative Sprint, we began evaluating our ideas through a more strategic lens: what’s actually feasible, and what will create the most impact for users? To guide this process, we categorized every idea into buckets inspired by the Kano Model of product thinking:
Timeline:
The robotics startup I worked with faced major challenges around internal knowledge sharing due to a disjointed and unreliable intranet system. Critical information—ranging from HR policies to onboarding resources—was scattered across multiple platforms like Google Docs and Outline, with no centralized source of truth. As a result, employees found it difficult to locate accurate or up-to-date information when they needed it.
The existing intranet was rarely maintained and poorly organized, making it ineffective as a go-to resource. This led employees to rely heavily on word of mouth or default to asking long-time team members, HR, or office management—putting unnecessary pressure on individuals who often didn’t have answers themselves. This decentralized approach not only created communication bottlenecks but also slowed down workflows, diminished employee confidence in the system, and contributed to a general sense of frustration across teams.
Solution
To address Dexterity’s intranet challenges, I proposed a centralized, user-friendly platform that brings together all essential information in one easily accessible place. The redesigned intranet features intuitive navigation, improved search functionality, and clearly structured content to help employees quickly find accurate, up-to-date resources. By streamlining access and ensuring consistency, the new system reduces dependency on HR and office management, empowering teams to work more independently and efficiently.
When I was first assigned this problem, these were the exact words that were given to me by my primary HR stakeholder.
After having just struggled to find some team-specific information myself—and eventually resorting to asking a teammate because I didn’t even realize the intranet could help—I admitted I agreed: it was time for an upgrade.
But her comment stuck with me—
“Too much of a burden on HR.”
What did that actually mean?
Company Wide Survey
In hopes of better trying to understand intranet usage on a deeper level, I decided to launch a company wide survey that would be completed during a weekly All-Hands meeting.
In-Depth Interviews
Third Generation
Modern third-generation intranets adopt a user-centered approach, prioritizing communication and collaboration. They recognize that employees often seek assistance from colleagues rather than relying solely on documents and policies. These intranets embody an organization’s culture by emphasizing effective communication, curating targeted content, and providing tailored information to meet the specific needs of users.
Other Intranets Researched
"People treat their managers and the HR team like Google when they can't find something.... I'm in the same boat as them, so how am I expected to find them what they're looking for when I can barely find what I am looking for"
Revised Problem Statement
Personal Education: What IS the purpose of an intranet?
Second Generation
Second-generation intranets sought to replicate the social features of platforms like Facebook within the enterprise, introducing tools such as activity streams,status updates, and collaborative spaces. However, this approach largely failed because the focus on entertaining and engaging employees with social tools did not align with their primary need for quick and efficient access to information and resources.
Journey Mapping
After conducting competitive analysis and speaking with friends and relatives working at other corporate companies, one insight stood out: a well-functioning intranet isn’t something employees spend time on—it’s something that saves them time.
In effective systems, information is centralized, intuitive to locate, and regularly maintained. Employees know exactly where to go, can quickly find what they need in under 10 minutes, and most importantly—they trust that what they’re seeing is up to date. This understanding helped reframe my expectations around usability and set the foundation for mapping out the experience gaps in Dexterity’s existing intranet.
First Generation
First-generation intranets were primarily designed for document storage and sharing. Their main purpose was to centralize access to important documents and resources. However, they often provided a static and non-engaging user experience, as they lacked interactive features and dynamic content.
⭐ Attractive
These ideas weren’t required—but they made the intranet worth using. They added delight, ease, and a sense of ownership.
Some improved convenience—like sharing quick links or surfacing popular content. Others leaned into culture, introducing features like content bounties, team mind maps, and storytelling to keep the space dynamic and engaging.
⚙️ Performance
Performance ideas targeted features that directly shaped usability, speed, and reliability. When done right, they improve satisfaction—when done wrong, they create friction.
Suggestions focused on making the intranet smarter and more efficient: unified search across tools like Slack and Google Drive, generative AI support, validated content, and features like following topics, reporting broken links, and ensuring cross-platform access.
✅ Must-Be
These were the non-negotiables—the basics the intranet needed to earn trust. Users might not notice them when they worked, but they would immediately notice when they didn’t.
The focus was on clarity, structure, and reliability: easy navigation, up-to-date content, consistent templates, clear ownership, secure access, and leadership support. Without these, adoption would stall and trust would collapse.
Information Architecture
Informed by insights from the Disney Creative Sprint, I restructured the intranet’s Information Architecture to align with how people actually think, search, and work—prioritizing ease, clarity, and trust.
I focused on four core principles:
1. Role-aware homepages that surface key tools and content up front
2. Task-based categories that reflect user intent, not org charts
3. Minimal, intuitive navigation to reduce friction and uncertainty
4. Template-ready sections to ensure consistency, ownership, and scalability
Wireframes
Research revealed a core problem: employees didn’t know where to begin. The original intranet lacked structure, relevance, and visibility—leaving users lost from the start.
To change that, I designed a personalized, modular homepage to:
1. Create a clear starting point with a friendly greeting and search bar
2. Surface high-priority updates like leadership news, culture highlights, and key memos
3. Build trust and engagement by keeping content timely, dynamic, and human
This design repositioned the homepage as a central touchpoint, helping employees quickly access what mattered, stay informed, and feel more connected to the company.
This section brings Dexterity’s mission—and the people behind it—to the forefront. It’s designed to foster connection, recognition, and a sense of belonging through:
1. A concise “About Dex” overview to ground users in purpose
2. Visual snapshots of company missions to align teams
3. Employee Spotlights to highlight individual impact
4. A “Celebrate Our Dexers!” stream for milestones, birthdays, and shoutouts
More than a homepage feature, this becomes a space where culture lives and people feel seen.
This view streamlines active tasks by urgency, giving teams a quick, clutter-free snapshot of what’s next. Splitting items into “Today” and “Tomorrow” keeps priorities front and center, while team icons make collaborators instantly visible—boosting clarity, accountability, and momentum across projects.
This centralized hub makes it easy to find the right team, owner, or contact—without relying on word-of-mouth. A simple search bar and clearly labeled team cards help employees connect across departments like HR, IT, and Product, boosting transparency and reducing friction.
Tools:
Figma, Confluence, Whimsical, Miro