User Research, Web Design, User Interface Design
Background
ONESpace is GovTech’s intranet and document repository, migrated to SharePoint Online as part of the WOG Knowledge Management suite. The project focused on creating a user-centric interface within SharePoint that enhances usability, content discoverability, and productivity for internal users. Research approaches for this project were developed in close consultation with GovTech stakeholders.Objective
- Design a user-centric interface that prioritises efficiency and
ease of use within the SharePoint platform. - Ensure consistency in writing style, tone of voice, and writing
standards and establish best practices for presenting information consistently across all pages. - Enhance content discoverability, user engagement and productivity
within the SharePoint environment.
1 year (End to end)
MY ROLE As a UI/UX designer, I
- Conduct qualitative research to gather key user insights, evaluate information findability, and validate design concepts.
- Facilitating collaboration with Product Owners throughout all project phases to ensure that expectations are met and aligned.
- Worked with developer to ensure designs were technically feasible and optimised within SharePoint's functionalities
TEAM STRUCTURE2 UI/UX designers, 1 project manager, 1 developer
Design Framework
Understanding
Stakeholder’s Requirements
and Users’ Needs
- Insights on the existing intranet portal from GovTech’s perspective and;
- GovTech’s business insights
Understanding the existing portal’s challenges is crucial in identifying usability pain points and inefficiencies, while exploring GovTech’s business insights helped ensure that the new design supported long-term organisational goals.
User Research
Product Assessment
To gain a comprehensive understanding of ONESpace, an internal product assessment was conducted on our end. This involved evaluating its various subsites and the central hub navigation against Ben Shneiderman's 8 Golden Rules of UI Design. As ONESpace comprises numerous subsites, the common insights presented here were derived from key areas such as:- Homepage
- ONESpace Support subsite
- Procurement Subsite
- Finance Subsite
- Hub Navigation
A summary of the common insights that were seen in all the subsites
Focus Group
For this primary research, a focus group was chosen to leverage group dynamics for a more comprehensive understanding of organisational processes. This helps to collectively visualise end-to-end workflows, identify shared touchpoints and pain points through collaborative discussion.Objective This focus group aims to enhance SharePoint content discoverability and resolve areas of ambiguity, our approach involves:
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Facilitating discussions with participants to understand their experiences, preferences, and needs.
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Identifying motivations, triggers, frequency, pain points, and opportunities.
- Generating ideas, validating assumptions, and developing opportunities for improvements.
Pre-screening Questions As seen from filters 1 & 2, participants were selected based on specific criteria, such as their age, department representation and their experience with using ONESpace etc. This is to ensure that there is a diverse representation of participants among content editors and end users encompassing various levels of experience with using ONESpace.
Below are some pre-screening questions that we asked:
These questions represent the finalised post-discussion questionnaire, refined based on stakeholder feedback. Once validated, they were uploaded to FormSG for distribution.
- Interview with End UsersTo understand their routine tasks and workflows, seeking to uncover inefficiencies and user needs.
- Interview with Content Editors without Guide Experience
To explore their current content creation process, focusing on difficulties arising from the absence of a guide and assessing their interest in a guided approach.
- Interview with Content Editors with Guide Experience
To investigate how the guide impacts their content creation efficiency and quality, and identify areas for future improvements and innovation.
There were three different sets of questions with three distinct user groups to gather in-depth insights into their day-to-day work processes and experiences with the ONESpace portal. The questionnaire was tailored to each group to address their specific perspectives and interactions with the system. The table below outlines the key topics explored with each user segment.
Questionnaire Examples
User Group 1: End Users- "When using ONESpace, what specific information are you typically trying to find, and why is that information important to your task?"
- "Thinking about the features available in ONESpace, are there any that you rarely use, and if so, why?"
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“Can you describe any frustrations or difficulties you encounter when trying to find or understand content in ONESpace, especially when moving between different sections or pages?"
- "In what ways does ONESpace currently help you accomplish your tasks, or how could it better support your needs?"
User Group 2: Content Editors (No Guide Experience)
- "What are your current daily tasks related to creating and publishing content?”
- “How do you address the challenges you faced with ONESpace for content creation or management?”
- “Are there any improvements you would like to see added to ONESpace to better support your daily tasks?”
User Group 3: Content Editors (With Guide Experience)
- “What are some common challenges or pain points you encounter when creating or managing content in ONESpace?”
- "How do you typically locate the ONESpace support and guides when you need to refer to them?
- "What are the key differences or improvements you would like to see added to the ONESpace support and guides?
To understand common user experiences, we employed affinity mapping and thematic analysis to identify recurring patterns and key themes within the participant feedback. These insights are organised into the following key themes, each with positive and negative sub-themes reflecting common sentiments.
The themes that emerged from this analysis are:
- Visual Design & Layout
- Understanding Labels & Terminologies
- Effectiveness of Organisation
The subsequent examples illustrate how individual user comments were grouped and classified under these overarching themes:
Legend
Synthesising User Insights
- Frequency: How many times an issue has occurred with various participants.
- Impact: How much has it impacted the user trying to accomplish the task?
This systematic approach ensures that resources are allocated to problems that matter most as not all issues are equal in priority. By assessing each problem's impact (how severely it hinders a user's goal or causes frustration) and its frequency (how often it occurs), we can objectively determine its overall severity. This allows us to focus on improvements that will have the greatest positive effect on the user experience.
Setting Priority Guidelines
Impact levels are determined by assessing the severity of issues as perceived by participants. A Likert scale, commonly used to measure agreement, has been adapted to quantify this severity on a scale of 1 to 3, with 1 representing low impact and 3 indicating high impact.- 3 (high impact) Significantly hindering the user from understanding the product
- 2 (medium impact) It causes difficulties but does not entirely prevent them the user from achieving their goals.
- 1 (low impact)
A minor inconvenience that does not significantly affect their overall experience.
The table above presented the impact score and reflects how significantly this problem interfered with the user experience (e.g., impeding navigation to desired content), while frequency shows that 69% of participants experienced this issue. The calculated severity of 2.07 confirmed this as a high-priority area for design solutions.
Informing IA Recommendations
Below shows an example of the existing information architecture and what changes were made after to address issues of navigability and clarity.
User InsightsParticipants consistently used the word 'guide' when discussing finding help and instructional documentation, indicating a strong mental model and preference for this term over 'support'.
Product Assessment FindingsThe title ‘ONESpace Support’ does not clearly communicate the page’s purpose. This misleads users, who expect technical troubleshooting assistance rather than comprehensive user guides. Hence, overlooked or avoid clicking this link to access the resources they actually need.
Why This Matters (The Impact)This mislabeling results in wasted user time, frustration, and an underutilisation of helpful documentation, as users are led to believe the section is for direct technical assistance rather than resources.
Proposed SolutionRelabel 'ONESpace Support' to 'ONESpace Guides' to accurately communicate the page's purpose and align with user expectations which is also inline with one of the key issues that was discussed during the focus group.
Validating Solutions
- ToolOur initial choice of the Userberry tool was revised to Lyssna based on participant feedback during the pilot, which highlighted usability concerns with Useberry.
- Participants 61 participants in total with a mixed number of users across all departments.
- TasksA total of 7 tasks were developed for the tree test, designed to be completable within 30 minutes to avoid participant fatigue and maintain data quality. The tasks are also specifically designed to test specific areas of the IA for example some of the more frequently visited and important pages.
- QuestionsFollowing each task, participants answered a rating question and an open-ended question. The test concluded with an overall satisfaction rating and a final open-ended feedback opportunity.
Pilot Testing A preliminary pilot test was conducted internally and shared with the GovTech team to validate the clarity of our tasks and the tree structure. While 'Useberry' was initially used, feedback from the pilot indicated it was not user-friendly for participants. To ensure the test itself provided a positive and intuitive experience, we opted to switch to a different and more suitable tree testing platform.
Tree Testing Insights - Identifying Navigation Barriers
Initial Finding
Only 8.2% of participants directly succeeded in locating the 'Quick Guide.' Users consistently reported "too many clicks" and confusing duplicate labels within the 'Resources' section.
Deeper Insight
While direct success was low, our analysis revealed a potential success rate of 60.7% if the pathway to 'ONESpace Guides' were streamlined. Many users attempted to navigate through related categories or relied on the homepage link, indicating the subsite's pathway was the primary issue, not necessarily the content within it.
Recommendation
Streamline the 'Resources' section by simplifying its structure and eliminating duplicate labels. This directly supports our proposal to relabel 'ONESpace Support' to 'ONESpace Guides' to make the subsite more directly accessible and intuitive for users.
This critical insight directly informed our subsequent design iterations, leading to a redesigned information architecture that significantly improved content discoverability in our final prototype.
Post Tree Test IA Implementation
Setting Criterias
With such a huge existing IA, it is important to set and standardise a set of criterias/guidelines that determine “appropriate” levels and number of links. This was then discussed with the stakeholders for the changes to the overall IA such what is the benchmark, the primary, seconday and tertiary levels to group the respective links etc.To ensure a logical, scalable, and user-centric navigation system, we established a clear set of Information Architecture (IA) principles in collaboration with our stakeholders. These guidelines informed how content was structured and labeled across all levels of the hub menu:
Primary Level
Limited to a maximum of 6 top-level categories for a clean and manageable structure
Tertiary LinksRestricted to no more than 30 links per tertiary level to prevent clutter and maintain scannability
Descriptive & Consistent Labeling
- Labels were kept concise (max 35 characters), avoiding jargon or internal 'make-up' terms.
- Consistency in formatting (e.g., Title Case)
- Link titles were aligned with corresponding page titles, with optional brief context in brackets for clarity.
- Links within each level were ordered alphabetically to enhance predictability and ease of scanning.
Before
After
Examples of Key Changes
- Streamlined the ‘Resources’ section by consolidating redundant paths and removing any links that are of a least priority as the previous IA has an overcrowded number of links.
- Links are restructured and reorganised by grouping the links appropriately in their respective main primary category such as “work tools”, “personal & team devt” were moved from “Resources” to “Empower & Collab which is more appropriate in terms of the relevance of the links and the category.
Design Template Creation
These were categorised by their primary use cases:
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Homepage
Main landing page that includes quicklinks, shortcuts to various pages, featured news and access to up and coming happenings.
- Subsite HomepageA versatile layout for the main landing page of various departments or initiatives within ONESpace.
- Basic Information Page
Ideal for general content, articles, or static information.
- Document Listing PageFor showcasing collections of downloadable resources or reports.
- Step-by-Step Guide PageStructured for sequential instructions, often incorporating tables for clarity.
- FAQs PageOptimised for presenting frequently asked questions and their answers.
Before
Initial homepage layout with fragmented content and navigation.
After
- Prioritised Quick LinksMoved high-frequency access shortcuts to the top for immediate user access and reduced clutter.
- Elevated Spotlight StoriesRepositioned leader-posted stories below quick links, enhancing visibility for key announcements.
- Dedicated 'Happenings' BannerIntroduced a clear banner for easier discovery of company updates and events.
- Interactive 'Hero' CarouselTransformed the static hero into a dynamic carousel to display view more information regarding skills/competencies.
- Prominent Guides CTAIntegrated a clear Call-to-Action for ONESpace guides, addressing low awareness from focus group feedback.
- Streamlined FooterRevised the footer to include essential links and company information without cluttering the main content
This template redesign presents a standardised structure for general informational content, focused on improving content readability and navigation. Key features include:
- Overview SectionAn overview section (left column, below title banner) provides immediate context and a brief introduction of the page content.
- Quicklinks (External/Useful)They are positioned in the right column for immediate user discoverability and quick access.
- Jump Links (For Long Content)For informative content, a 'jump links' (table of contents) section is incorporated after the overview, enabling users to quickly navigate to specific content sections.
- Content OrganisationTo manage information density with multiple subheadings, content is structured within accordions. Each accordion section includes a 'Back to Top' link to bring users back to the jump links for improved navigation and reduced scrolling fatigue.
PHASE 4