Colgate Palmolive Intranet Portal - Ethics & Compliance
Our team redesigned the Ethics & Compliance site within the Colgate Palmolive Intranet Portal. The purpose of this site is to provide Colgate employees with guidelines on how to conduct ethical business. Originally, the site was cluttered and very difficult to navigate. We wanted to give it a fresh, clean, user-friendly design for our users.
Research
Interview Colgate Employees
First, we drafted a thematic interview script. Then, we interviewed approximately 15 Colgate employees from different departments and jotted down notes during the sessions. As we collected more data, we altered our interview script accordingly.
Affinity Diagram
After collecting our qualitative data from our interviews, we amalgamated the each interview’s data into a board of sticky notes in order to make sense of the information.
Main Discoveries:
Users thought the primary use of the Ethics & Compliance site was to file complaints. However they were reluctant to do so because they were unsure to to how confidential/anonymous their complaints would be.
Users would rather ask others than read the full policies provided on the site.
People used the “Learn, Act, Speak Up” categorical structure to find what they were looking for without a concrete understanding of it.
Optimize Information Architecture
The Ethics & Compliance site consisted of over 50 webpages, so we created an excel document to keep track of possible information architecture structures. Our team then recruited around 15 Colgate employees (some of whom participated in the earlier interviews) and used Optimal Workshop to conduct a card sort.
One of the key findings from the card sorts was that users perceived the “Core Standards (Code of Conduct, Third Party Code of Conduct, and Business Guidelines) were the most important documents on the Ethics & Compliance site.
After the card sort procedure, we narrowed our information architecture options into two structures: a content type sort and a topical sort. Then, we recruited Colgate employees to participate in a tree jack test using Optimal Workshop.
We found that most new users found the content type sort easier to comprehend because they were not familiar enough with the information to know how they sort, topically.
Prototype
After taking feedback from our qualitative research into account, we built our first prototype.
Some Major Design Changes:
The top navigation is sorted into five categories of different content types. Then, within each tab is a topical sort.
Each webpage summarizes its corresponding document for users who are only looking for a brief overview.
We made the Core Standards and Contacts accessible to users by displaying them on the landing page.
Usability Tests
Once we had a first prototype, we tested it with our users.
Main Discoveries:
About half of our Usability test participants utilized the “Learn, Act, Speak Up” to navigate the site rather than the top navigation.
On the policy webpages, users looked underneath the brief overview and to the right for an option to view the full policy document.
