Improving IBM BluePages through User Research

Background: BluePages, before it was rebranded as People, was IBM’s internal personnel directory with over 350,000 people at the time

Objective: Improve the design of the Profile page and determine people’s preferences on editing

My Role: Lead User Experience Designer. Even though I designed the user interface this case study focuses on the user research part of the project

Tools used: Figma, Sketch, Photoshop

Impact: BluePages was one of the most highly trafficked tools for IBM personnel and any improvements we made was hugely impactful

Recruitment

After determining what kind of user research is needed (e.g., interviews vs. surveys), I recruited users. For this step I had access to a database of IBM employees. I used a spreadsheet to track the activity name and type (e.g., interview), the target sample size, the participant list size, expected start and end dates of the user research and to organize the users recruited along with information such as their geographic location.

Outreach

Next I sent everyone on my distribution list an email.

“I'm a designer on the BluePages team and got your name from a list of users who volunteered to help with user research. We're currently exploring potential updates to the BluePages website. I would like to set up a 30-minute interview with you next week or the week after. I will send you a calendar meeting invitation based on your availability.”

Not everyone will respond or accept which is why my participant list was larger than the target size in case I have to reach out to more people. Once I had eight people accept and scheduled I was able to move on to the next step.

Planning the Research

This part is key as you want to make sure you’re asking the right questions and that the user experience of the test itself is good and as clear as possible. I like to put my thoughts onto paper which I edit and then write a script / guideline for the interview. I ran this by a couple of senior user researchers for feedback and they also agreed to do a test run with me.

The Script / Guideline

I start off each interview with standard language: “Thank you for participating in today’s interview. The purpose of this meeting is to get your thoughts on a new design of the BluePages profile as well as profile editing. I will start with some general questions about you and your role and then ask you about the design. During the study, I encourage you to think out loud. Please know that I am not judging or testing you, but rather getting your insights to improve our product. Also, I would like to record this session so that I can focus on our conversation. Is this OK?”

I begin with general questions to get information about the users’ individual backgrounds (e.g., how long they’ve been with IBM, what their role and responsibilities are, how often they use BluePages, etc.)

After this set of introductory questions I give them a link to a prototype and ask them to share their screen at which point I ask them specific questions such as, “Where would you find your mobile phone number and email address.”

This is the fun part of the interview as I’m getting feedback on my designs. Even if the user finds something hard to use—especially if they find something hard to use—I am getting valuable insights. It’s important to note that you should not interrupt users and patiently listen and watch. While I encourage people to think out loud, even if they’re completely silent it can be telling. For example, if a user says nothing but it takes them 30 seconds to locate their mobile number that tells me that the information might be hard to find.

Recording and synthesizing the data

Ideally I’d have a note-taker but in this case I didn’t. Thankfully I have recordings and I might go back and watch parts and refine my notes. Then I put my observations and what people said on a spreadsheet and make a summary of my findings.

Summarizing my findings

I generally write a summary of my findings to help me convey them to my team and to document them.

Impact

At the time we had a design system called Northstar. Actually, to call it a design system akin to today’s Google Material Design would be generous; it was more like a set of design guidelines. While I had existing brand assets to use I was free to come up with something different from the rest of IBM.

While the iX site eventually went away—the last of its custom kind before the entire company website became templated and managed by a content management system—you can still see its impact on IBM.com today. The short bursts of large type on ample white space, the modular content boxes, the use of the grey isolated background in the portrait photographs of IBM leadership (though not everyone, alas; it looks a bit inconsistent now), and the intentional design of vertical space between elements. On this last point, before it was only horizontal space that mattered but now explicit guidelines for vertical space are in Carbon, IBM’s own modern design system.