The PayPal HR Employee Experience team was responsible for rolling out two major initiatives through the employee intranet. The first was a Return To Office program that would require communication about employee specific hybrid and virtual work arrangements, on-site scheduling, and support resources. The second, was a Pathways program that would define an individual’s current role, educate them on other positions in the company, and help them identify opportunities for career advancement.
PayPal’s employee intranet serves as a critical hub for information dissemination and collaboration. However, the current state is not customized to suit a user's individual needs, so the experience lacked relevance and role specific resources.
Our task was to redesign the intranet landing page to provide a scalable launch point for high-profile HR initiatives and a more personalized user experience.
The Smart Page Proof of Concept proposes a reimagined landing page that leverages AI-driven technology to deliver personalized content tailored to the user’s role, location, and interests.
I was the only UX Designer on this project and responsible for mocking up a Proof of Concept to define project scope and demonstrate product viability for all stakeholders.
*Proprietary information is concealed and artwork has been modified per client NDA.
When the request came in for the Proof of Concept, it required a quick turnaround. I didn’t have much time to act and had to rely on existing project research that was tied to the Intranet Redesign project. Quantitative data collected in Tableau as well as support ticket analytics helped me understand what information was most frequently searched by employees globally.
I performed an analysis of intranet designs and templates to determine what were common features highlighted by other company sites.
As I talked to stakeholders who were involved with the Return to Office and Pathways initiatives, it became clear that this information had to live and launch from a prominent place that would be scalable for future HR initiatives. The current landing page served mainly as a news feed and was missing a lot of opportunities for more personalized content.
I discovered that the top search and support ticket inquiries were for:
Most corporate intranets contain a number of quick links to frequently accessed information and resources, news feeds, event calendars, people finders, and toolkits.
Customization of employee information by their unique ID was hidden behind the profile section and only contained minimal information.
I also realized that there were a lot of great HR initiatives already launched but they were hidden in pages within their respective departmental SharePoint sites and were not promoted anywhere on the current homepage.
My first instinct was to explore a dashboard feature for the landing page of the intranet. I felt that it would be a great way to give the user a bird’s eye overview of their employment data and customized layout options in a simplified format.
However, as I drilled into the content needs of this page, I quickly changed my tune. The landing page format worked better structurally since we still wanted users to navigate between different pages from the main navigation. The user data did not contain tons of analytics so the dashboard concept wasn’t the best solution and we could achieve the same tile effect in a scrollable page layout. This would also make the landing page more scalable in the future.
I decided that my hero section would prominently display a personalized message and highlight the top news of the hour. This section would help promote important initiatives such as the Return to Office which was a top priority and required a carefully crafted communication plan.
Above the fold, I used analytics to inform the decision behind both quick links sections so that users had access to the most frequently visited pages once they opened the intranet site. These links could also be further customized through machine learning of user behavior.
The next most important section would be the Work Assignment. The two main tiles would be reserved for the user’s Worksite and Role. These would be the launch points to the HR initiatives we were rolling out as well as simple interactions such as reserving a desk.
I also took this opportunity to highlight other HR programs that seemed to be buried within pages of the intranet. For example, PayPal provides a platform for 1:1 networking opportunities with colleagues and peers so I wanted to give this prominence on the homepage. I also highlighted the shout out program and featured it in the Company News & Events section (see below).
PayPal is very community oriented and tries to engage employee participation in a number of local, departmental, and global events. However, the content is a bit scattered between departments and communicated through their individual SharePoint sites. I wanted one place to aggregate content that could also be filtered by interests. This section would also lend well to a list of upcoming events that could be easily be scanned and added to the user’s Outlook calendar.
Part of PayPal's mission is to provide an inclusive environment that promotes community, service to others, and employee wellness. Again, there are multiple programs and incentives that PayPal offers to employees but they are hidden within deep levels of navigation so I felt that this section could promote some of those opportunities, collect feedback, and connect employees to internal support resources that they may not be familiar with.
Our objective for the Smart Page Proof of Concept was to identify the most useful information to PayPal employees and format it in a scannable and scalable format.
The content is structured to focus on:
Unfortunately, my time at PayPal was cut short due to technical layoffs and budget constriction midway through the year. However, I succeeded in handing over a cohesive blueprint of ideas for further discussion should the project ever pick up again.
My biggest challenge was in proving true UX value to a team of SharePoint developers who worked in a silo.
PayPal did not have dedicated enterprise design support so I wasn’t working in a mature product environment. This made it very challenging to convince other stakeholders to focus on alignment which was desperately needed in order to address multiple UX failures of the current intranet site.
With help from senior leadership, we were able to convince tech partners that the Smart Page assignment could serve as a litmus test for further collaboration on the intranet redesign.
