Tasked with a redesign of the workplace accommodation request tool at a global company, I conducted a thorough discovery phase to understand the users and current process.

After an initial heuristic review, an accessibility review, and user interviews, we discovered both the application and the business process surrounding it were effectively unusable due to accessibility issues, user experience pitfalls, and process inconsistencies.

Employees with disabilities or medical conditions requiring accommodations were often unable to get the help they needed, and if they did, the process could take months. The tool was also only being used in 2 out of the 10 countries it was set up for–another big problem to solve.

We defined 6 distinct user types and conducted interviews to understand each one’s roles, responsibilities, and pain points. I mapped out a user journey for each type in an As-Is Scenario and recorded 168 total steps.

Realizing this effort would be more than a quick redesign, my design partner and I assembled a stakeholder group to integrate perspectives from leaders in HR, Corporate Health & Safety, and Legal.

We fostered an initial sense of alignment by facilitating Enterprise Design Thinking sessions. As a team, we crafted a To-Be Scenario and prioritized features from our new vision in a Prioritization Grid. As the project progressed, we facilitated biweekly meetings with our stakeholder group to negotiate process improvements and ensure compliance.

I also worked closely with our development team to identify possible areas for automation/integrations and connect them with relevant teams to help with discovery.

In tandem with the business process transformation, we successfully completed the design of a new application where employees could submit a request, the corporate medical team could evaluate relevant medical documentation, and managers/HR partners could record approvals.

Throughout user interviews and usability testing, we received ample feedback from users of the legacy tool that our redesign is much more efficient and usable. This feedback is supported by the goal completion rate of our tests:

Starting from the 168 manual steps recorded during discovery, we streamlined the user experience by reducing the number to 103.

We delivered a streamlined, accessible tool for users in the United States and Canada in our MVP release. Throughout this work, we created a template for a global solution with standard functions that are flexible enough to adapt to local legal needs and policies.

As I designed the request details page, I identified the need for a more complex progress bar than the one offered in the Carbon Design System. I designed and contributed a fully accessible, expandable progress bar component to the design system.

This new progress bar contains expandable sections that can hold sub-items, additional information, and calls to action. Past items show their completion date, and the more detailed sub-items show the name of the user who completed them.

I performed usability tests and collaborated with the Carbon team to iterate and improve the design.

The design team was awarded the Q1 2023 Design Hero Award. Design Heroes demonstrate behaviors that result in superior employee experiences. The Design Heroes Award program recognizes a team that demonstrates the UX best practice behaviors of radical improvement or sustained excellence in NPS, design thinking methods, improving DevOps, and more.

I was awarded the 2023 Culture Catalyst Award, presented for exhibiting behaviors that advance our culture to our future state, reinventing skills, expertise and knowledge sharing, and being an Influencer and Champion of IBM culture initiatives.