Five to Nine

What is Company Culture?

A three-week sprint with a four-person team for our client Five to Nine

Wants

  • Robust understanding of user needs

  • UX strategy tuned to those needs

  • Set of design principles to guide IA/UI design forward

  • Hi-fidelity prototypes that describe the new user experience

The Project

Five to Nine is a B2B platform for engaging employees in their company culture (think work events and programs). The platform provides metrics for HR to measure that engagement.

Five to Nine came to us with the following requests:​

  • Redesign the employee-facing portion of the platform

  • Revamp the onboarding process

  • Revamp the discovery of content/events on the platform

The ultimate goal: increase user engagement on the platform

Research & Scope

  • What is company culture? How do employees feel about company culture?

  • How do employees interact and engage with each other in the workplace? Why?

  • What are digital AND non-digital tactics for employee engagement?

  • Is this platform even viable?

Design Principles

After synthesizing all of our interview and survey data, we had a multitude of insights to guide us towards design principles- ones that can transcend both physical and digital spaces.

  • Workplace culture is built by everyone rather than the company, HR, or whoever is hired to build it.

  • Employee engagement begins with meaningful connections between employees and superiors inside the workspace. Meaningful connections are created in small teams or groups with leaders who build trust.

  • Global and remote employees are looking for a way to connect more intimately.

  • Engagement grows when there is open communication, transparency, feedback, and acknowledgments between teams fostered by a leader.

  • Self-motivated/self-recognized employees or team managers are the most important element for driving successful employee engagement.

This Culture Guide provides:

  • Strategic initiatives to bring culture to life

  • Methods to create leadership accountability

  • Tools on how to gain insights from employees and how to validate and acknowledge them in the workplace

  • How to empower employees through the digital platform

Culture Guide

Since company culture defines the environment in which employees work, we thought it pertinent to provide a non-digital approach to our design principles.

We developed a Culture Guide to go along with the Five to Nine platform so a CEO, HR, or an admin can understand how to utilize the site, while also learning best practices to form their own holistic company culture.

Platform Redesign

Our second approach was to re-design Five to Nine's current website platform - now it will be attuned to our research-backed, user-centered design principles. The platform will have purpose and structure moving forward.

This new platform provides:

  • Guided (optional) tooltips to acclimate the employee

  • More spaces for employees to interact and communicate openly

  • A way for any employee to become a "Culture Creator" (a mentor/culture driver in the channel)

  • A specific page where employees can see company accomplishments or employee spotlights ("The Culture Corner")

Iteration 1

Iteration 2

Iteration 3

Platform Prototype Recordings

Onboarding Tips

  • This is a new solution we created to promote transparency and build trust with the employee.

  • Using a conversational tone for the tips and creating a simple flow will guide the employee and help them complete their desired actions.

  • During the guided tips is a good place to introduce elements that a user/employee might not be familiar with like our "Culture Creator", our "Culture Corner", and "Claps".

  • This process and earlier iterations were tested via usability testing.

Exploring the Redesign

NEW:

  • "Create Post" on the homepage feed and filtering options. This new feed has all updates from your teams, groups, events and the Culture Corner (originally this feed was only for events and wasn't customizable)

  • "Clap" button so employees can send a digital acknowledgment to someone they want to praise

  • rotating "highlights" bar at the top of the homepage

  • "Teams" page so employees can connect with their assigned or joined work teams

  • posting within social Groups (and Teams) so employees can chat within that small space, suggest activities, etc.

  • People directory page that is searchable, sortable, and filterable so employees can connect with anyone in leadership

  • "Culture Corner" page to showcase employees who are exceeding expectations, company or team wins, community, etc.

  • "Become a Culture Creator" button because some employees want to become social leaders to drive support, community, impact, connection, and growth

Next Steps

If I were to continue on this project, I would love to redesign the HR side of the platform to really dig into measuring employee engagement. I would also create a mobile app since a lot of employees we talked to work remotely these days and a mobile app or responsive website would only make access that much easier.