Perkins&Will・2016
Redesigning the HUB CRM and Project Data App to Encourage More Adoption
KEY RESULTS
Increased use and positive employee feedback on the new UI and improvements to the site’s UX, speed, and performance.
Read on for how I approached a project when dev resources were stretched thin and reflect on past work
Perkins&Will is one of the world’s leading architecture firms.
I joined the firm’s in-house Digital Innovations team in my first role in product design. The team had a director, 2 developers, and myself tasked with building internal tools for the company’s 24 offices.
The largest of these was HUB, a built-from-scratch CRM tool, and directory of employees, clients, and project data.
Adding SSO screens with randomized photos offering a peek into PW studios around the world
HUB 2.0 would be a refactor to improve performance, speed, and usability.
Project data in HUB 1.0 required manual entry and was almost always inaccurate and incomplete. HUB was largely viewed as broken, and few people outside of the BD team used it.
In observing though, I learned people used HUB for one thing: looking up an office crush
With dev resources stretched thin, I was limited to reskinning the UI and remediating usability issues.
Along the way, I spoke with employees across the firm and looked for opportunities to introduce low-effort, high-impact features where possible, including:
A personalized home screen with projects at a glance, making it easier to track and update BD leads and project status via drop-downs.
A typeahead/drop-down search, after seeing search as the primary way people navigated the site.
The BD team was the primary group required to use HUB, so I prioritized CRM improvements for them
I worked within the firm’s brand colors, benchmarking enterprise tools and looking to Salesforce, HubSpot, and other CRMs for visual inspiration.
I used Angular Material UI for speed and scalability, organizing components into our design library and designing HUB’s pages around them.
I’ve since learned about accessibility and color contrast— there’s a lot here I’d change
“Getting better.”
Though I didn’t have the exact numbers, the redesign and HUB 2.0 saw increased use, page visits, and the amount of project data updated on the site.
We implemented Hotjar to collect feedback, and the response was mostly positive— with callouts to the new UI and noticeable improvements in usability and performance:
Post-launch employee feedback, thanks guys!
Missed opportunities
Hindsight’s 20/20 and there’s a lot I’d change. To start, I’d update brand blue and Perkins&Will’s thin typefaces to pass accessibility and contrast tests.
Most importantly, HUB is only as good as its data. I’d push harder to make the case of customizing a 3rd party tool that integrates with projects and automates data entry.