Unilever Case Study

Sam Marshall

www.clearboxconsulting.co.uk
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What We Tested
How does emphasising different aspects of
navigation help users do different tasks?
Which aspects of the landing page are important to
users?
How important is personalisation by the system
(push)?
How important is customisation by the user (pull)?

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How We Tested
 Users were allocated to one of 4 wireframe designs at random.
 They were observed on 5 tasks from a set of 20, followed by a
questionnaire
 A final ‘best of’ wireframe was created and tested with new
users

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Design A: Balanced 1

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Design B: Broadcast

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Design C: My Site

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Design D: Top Down

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Design E: Balanced 2

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Start Page Balance
Connect A: Balanced1
(P2P & P2I)
B: Broadcast – Communications
C: My Site - User Driven

Pull D: Top Down – no personalisation

E: Balanced2

Collaborate Services
(Integrate)

Push

Communicate
(Broadcast)
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MAIN FINDINGS
Success In The Tasks

% Tasks completed for each design

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User ratings in each design group
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User Scoring Of The Designs (2)

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Global Function
Localised
services

Region Local

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ClearBox Consulting
• Intranet strategy – a roadmap for the future
• Intranet reviews – what do you need to change?
• Finding stuff – intranet structure & design
• Collaboration and Enterprise 2.0

Sam Marshall
Director
sam@clearboxconsulting.co.uk
+44 (0)1244 458746

www.clearboxconsulting.co.uk
User Tasks
“How would you….”
1. Read the latest news on Customer Development.
2. Reserve a room for a meeting in the Kingston office.
3. Reserve a room in the Barcelona office for a meeting next week.
4. See what job vacancies there are in Unilever.
5. View the menu for the café (canteen) in the Kingston office.
6. Arrange travel for a trip to Singapore.
7. Submit an expenses claim.
8. Find a course on project management.
9. Find out about the Customer Development "Win With Customers Programme”.
10.Find out about the Customer Development "Indigo Project”.
11.Go to the main page for Marketing@Unilever.
12.Go to the main page for the Singapore office.
13.Find the policy on sick leave that applies to you.
14.Find communication materials on CD for use outside Unilever.
15.Find the latest news from Asia AMET.
16.Find a list of people in the Singapore office.
17.Find a page about the Finance department in Unilever Spain.
18.Look for information about Customer Development in Malaysia.
19.See your own contact details and profile.
20.See the collaboration/project sites that you have access to.
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Start Page Balance
Connect A: Balanced1
(P2P & P2I)
B: Broadcast – Communications
C: My Site - User Driven

Pull D: Top Down – no personalisation

E: Balanced2

Collaborate Services
(Integrate)

Push

Communicate
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(Broadcast)
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Other Pages

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Findings - Design A: Balanced 1
Most tasks were completed easily and positively.
 “it's very intuitive.”
 "It's more cleaned up & more obvious than presently on one.unilever.com.”

The “I need to” section was popular.

 "Has everything I need.”

People commented that PeopleFinder was missing [it’s

under the search drop down].
There was no obvious place for HR policies so users
struggled with this task.
“My Place” and “Memberships” labels were unclear to
some.
 "I'm assuming “My Place” but it's not radically apparent. I'm looking for my
collab spaces but it's hard to find…you'd need a lot of training to use this page.”

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Findings - Design B: Broadcast
Users liked the clarity of this layout.
 “I like it. The left hand navigation and latest stuff in the middle is good.”
 "Really useful as a dashboard.”

The majority of users liked the left hand navigation, but not all.
 "I would move “Functions” to the tabs with drop-downs - wouldn't have the left hand
navigation for this as tabs are better.”
 “Perhaps the navigation should be changed so that the tabs are integrated into the left
hand side.”
The “My Services” tab was liked for being simple.
 “My Services” is user-focused & it's what I want to see.”

The label “My Place” was mistakenly tried for tasks about the
Kingston location.
There was a mixed reaction to the “My Place” features.
 "Users don't use the portal “My Pages” much so I think it’d be the same here.”

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Findings - Design C: My Site
 Users didn’t feel the most important things for them were on this page
(avg. 2.7).
 Users found location and service related activities much harder than
the other designs.
 "What I'd miss is the top 5 services used, say travel & expenses.”

 Users tended to want to go to an “HR” page for jobs and training,

unless they knew that these had been outsourced.
 “It's very confusing as [jobs] should be HR & I would expect this to be more obvious from the
Home Page”.
 Two users commented that “My Unilever” meant local to them, not
global (as was the case in this design).
 “Memberships” and “SharePoint Sites” lacked meaning.
 “If I'm honest, I wouldn't really know where to go. Shared documents? To me "Memberships"
doesn't really explain it.”
 A minority of users on other designs really liked this approach.

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Findings - Design D: Top Down
Users were noticeably more hesitant about where to start
(lack of “information scent”) but were still positive overall.
 "Not sure where to go, will try this link.”
 "It's far better than I have now."

Geographic tasks (e.g. Page for Singapore office) were

done easily.
Some commented that it worked well for global or
regional roles, but not local ones.
 “It's very Unilever-like but I miss the link to people's daily work being prominent.”
 "The first 2 tasks took a lot of clicks to find & complete.”

“My Place” again confused.

 "My Place” - now let me see. I don't know if this site is the same as the location. It
doesn't look like this.”

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Findings - Design E: Balanced 2
 Most users responded very positively to the design's usability and
layout and were successful in the tasks
 "It's simple & beautiful.”
 “It's really obvious & clear.”
 “I really like “Favourite Tasks.”
 "This is much better than the current home page for the portal.”

 The main area of difficulty continued to be HR tasks (jobs, policy

and training).
 Some users still struggled with the terms “Collaboration” and “My
Team Sites” (which replaced “My Memberships” in A-D)
 More users in this group objected to Global News on the top.
 "I don't like the ordering of the news - the most important news is local news, so it should
be [a score of] 1.”

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