We’re engaged by one of the leading insurance companies to design a digital workplace for their over 50,000 employees. When I joined the project, the desktop application is designed. I was in charge of providing design concepts for the mobile application of the digital workplace which enables users to view and take actions on business process requests, work to-do’s, and corporate announcements on their smartphones.
The desktop application’s main feature was leveraging Google Now concept: It works like a web browser extension that enables the employees to view their work tasks and take actions on it. To keep consistent with desktop application’s design concept, I leveraged the similar cards design patterns and smartphone native push notifications features. The design goal was: users only need to check the application when they receive notifications. The notification should display sufficient context information and deep link the user directly to the notification content.
Desktop application design concept
After meeting with the project stakeholders and the strategy lead, we reached the agreement that the mobile application should not replicate the whole desktop experience but only keep the core features that are easy and essential to access within the mobile context. With the understanding of the core features and information architecture, I proceeded to brainstorm and sketch out different navigation patterns and design options.
Brainstormed with the strategist about the user flow and page flow
Sketching out different navigation options
Ideated different interactions between different users types
I created the page flow to help myself and clients understand how to leverage the native push notification features as a contextual entry to deep link the users to the notification content.
High-level wireframes to show different user flows of submitting manager and approval manager
Considered some users may be annoyed by too many push notifications, I also explored other alternatives to allow users to preview the notifications. I looked into iOS 8’s Today widget feature as an alternative contextual entry to the application. Today widget provides a summary of the digital workplace. Users can tap on each item to view details in the application.
High level wireframes showing Today widget design
I created low-fidelity wireframes for other navigation patterns and listed out the pros and cons of each option based on the current taxonomy and the scalability of accommodating more functions.
To better demonstrate the interaction, I used PowerPoint to create animated click-through wireframes with user journey descriptions.
