Project Duration
January 2022 - June 2022 (6 months)
The Problem
BNY Mellon was in need of a collaborative networking application
Role
Designer & Researcher
Responsibilities
User Research, Wireframing, Prototyping
Research
Designing Hamilton required deeper understanding of how teams across the bank share information and collaborate. My design team and I conducted interviews with 30 employees from various lines of business, uncovering key insights into communication gaps, content discovery challenges, and varying workflow needs. These findings directly informed our design decisions, helping us create a platform that improves collaboration and fosters a stronger sense of community across the enterprise.
What are desired features and functionality in the Hamilton mobile application?
Ability to share news and praise
A tool that allows users to easily post content related to team efforts and successes
Features that allowed interacting with posts
Fun and easy interactive elements, like likes, comments, tagging, etc.
Organization of posts
Users need a structured and categorized way to view content, such as a digest to avoid cognitive overload
Feed Customization
The ability to choose what kind of content a user is exposed to, as well as other privacy options was widely requested
Who are we designing for?
Established bank employees who would like to share work and boost morale
Goal: Users would like to like to communicate their team's recent accomplishments to the rest of their colleagues in an effort to create a sense of community, promote collaboration across the bank, and further encourage high quality work.
Pain point: There isn't a frequently used or widely accessible medium for this kind of communication, besides email, which is easily ignorable and lacks a significant interactive or engagement component.
Employees who are new to the bank
Goal: Users need a way to get to know their colleagues at the bank while also familiarizing themselves with relevant projects and goals
Pain point: Connecting with others as a new employee has proven to be increasingly challenging, especially with many individuals working remotely or from different locations. In addition, users often feel like they are working in silos and seek opportunities to learn about roles and projects related to their own work.
Solution
Create a social content tool for both establish and new employees that empowers users to connect and share information with the rest of the bank, while allowing for more fun and interactive engagement methods.
User Flow & Wireframes
The insights gathered from interviews with 40 employees were instrumental in shaping the structure of content within the Hamilton application. Employees consistently expressed the need for quick access to relevant updates, a way to catch up on missed information, and clearer visibility into content requiring their attention. In response, we structured the app around four main navigation points:
1. Feed for real-time content sharing.
2. Digest for curated summaries of key updates.
3. Mentions to highlight posts directly involving the user.
4. Settings for personalizing the user's experience.
This structure directly reflects user priorities, streamlining how content is accessed and making it easier for employees to stay informed and engaged. Below is a user flow we created while synthesizing data from research.
We then created wireframes to further solidify the information architecture and navigation of the application.
Designs and Prototypes
We started our design phase by focusing on the main newsfeed screen which included the most recent posts by colleagues, along with the ability to like and comment on posts. In a later design iteration ,we added a sticky label at the top of the screen that changes from "Today" to "Yesterday" when a user scrolls past the most recent newsfeed updates.
Next Steps
Flesh out the Digest and Settings screens
Conduct further research to determine further customization settings that may be included in future versions of the application
Create a light mode version of the application