NBC Now

A new global communication platform for NBCUniversal's 45k staff. 

While working for Carrot Creative in 2017 I lead all research and design of the next generation of NBCU's corporate communication platform and intranet. As the project leader I was also responsible for client management throughout the 7 month engagement. 

The challenge

With 40+ companies and 45,000 staff, fostering a sense of community had always been a challenge for NBCU. 

The company’s existing internal communication platform, MyNBC, was introduced in 2004 with the aim of connecting staff with the latest company news and resources. 

With upwards of 500 calls being made to the NBCU employee support line each day though, it became clear the current platform needed a major rethink.

discovery 

Kicking off with a stakeholder workshop it quickly became clear our client's vision for the platform was limited in detail. With that in mind we defined 4 basic universal objectives:  

1. Increase local and international engagement. 

2. Reduce support line calls by to 25%
3. Develop a modern and flexible design system. 
4. Build for future growth and needs. 

We then divided the discovery phase into 2 work streams: User Research and Information Architecture (IA). 

The user research portion of the discovery stage saw us speak to almost 40 employees from as far as Japan and Australia. Insights gathered from these interviews allowed us to develop 15 personas and mental models that would be used to identify the features of an MVP and roadmap. Each persona was designed around the phases of the employee lifecycle (first day, first 6 months, long term), location (country, city, building) and work environment (desk, on set, on the road). 

We quickly learnt the need areas that had to addressed in order to achieve widespread acceptance and adoption: 

1. A reason to stay connected: The new platform would need to allowing for rapid updates including emergency announcements so the platform would become a necessary part of daily life at NBCUniversal.
2. Reduce operational friction: An intuitive content architecture and robust search strategy were necessary to reduce support requests and increase productivity.  

3. Be "locally global": The platform experience needed to create greater visibility  into the global community to generate a more authentic sense belonging and unity.  

We then divided the preliminary features into one of three phases: 

Overview of features: 

Search: Following an evaluation that included Swiftype and qbox.io, Algolia was chosen as the 3rd party search platform having scored highest in each criteria:

• Fluid experience across multiple platforms and devices.
• Enables users the ability to search progressively and in real-time.
• Search functionality should be forgiving (spelling mistakes).
• Returns relevant, time sensitive, and faceted results. 

Personalization: A common request heard throughout our interviews was the ability to "personalize" the experience both on a individual and organizational level. While most employees working under the NBCUniversal umbrella were proud of this association many felt the individual company they worked for needed equally representation. In response to this we developed the Dashboard, a customizable homepage that would greet each user with tailored news, branding and color schemes: 

Employee Directory: We connected all businesses under one roof, for the first time, through an employee directory. Designed as an internal social network, the employee directory allows staff to locate domestic and international resources, discover and join specialized support groups as well as manage a profile page. 

Flexible design system: We designed multi-use templates to ensure there was a consistent experience across all pages. This design system, including iconography, color palettes and content panels was also constructed to allow for future growth. 

In parallel with the user research effort we began the task of auditing the 2766 pieces of existing content that would serve to inform the information architecture. Following the audit we engaged NBCU employees from NY and LA to participate in multiple rounds of both open and closed card sorting exercises that were used to build a consensus for content categorization. 

1. Single value search: Direct search for specific items using known names or types. Users have preexisting knowledge of the content a user is looking for. Search queries begin with specific keywords entered into a search tool. Search results are delivered in the form of predictions, suggestions or relevant search results. 
2. Filtered search: Faceted search through the process of elimination. Starting point is much more vague with search teams iteratively refined until desired tools and content are surfaced. 

Results in the 3 months following launch: 

1. 80% Adoption by international businesses 

2. 64% Reduction in support line calls