Penn Vet School Intranet: UX Redesign and Restructure

My Role

I was brought in as a UX/UI Web consultant to manage and execute this project for the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine. I audited existing content and identified outdated materials and content that could be consolidated. Then, I interviewed stakeholders and content creators, noting their issues with the current site and their requests for specific improvements. Working closely with the web editor, I migrated the content manually into the new WordPress site I designed. After the launch, I trained stakeholders on the new system.

Existing Intranet Challenges

• The site had competing desktop navigations (top, primary, and left side), which made it confusing and difficult to find information quickly.
• The site was not well-optimized for mobile. Scrolling was excessive, mobile navigation was confusing, and right-side content was cut off on some pages.
• The home page duplicated the links found in each subsection in one long scrolling page. This was visually overwhelming to users due to a large number of links. In addition, some links were not part of a hierarchy but instead floated above the sections.
• Search results were not helpful, as often they served up outdated content

Intranet Project Goals

• Migrate the site to a new CMS (WordPress). The WordPress theme must be mobile-first and designed and modified to fit Penn Vet’s brand and content.
• Serve as an internal knowledge base for faculty, staff, and students, allowing users to share business documents and company news.
• Help onboard new staff by providing an easy way to find HR information, SOPs, orientation media, etc.
• Optimize communication by reducing excessive group emails and allowing for quick questions and answers.
• Build a community between people who are onsite, hybrid, and remote.

Solutions

• Identified a Gutenberg mobile-first WordPress theme and customized it to meet Penn Vet’s brand standards.
• Researched available WordPress plugins and identified a knowledge base plugin that met the desired criteria in both functionality and price. This served to house the majority of the content and allowed the content to be categorized efficiently.
• Developed a mega-menu drop-down navigation to consolidate the current site’s left nav and primary nav. A utility navigation was placed at the top of the site to allow for popular external links.
• Pathing of the site was significantly simplified as duplicates were removed and the site was flattened from four levels to three. Breadcrumbs were implemented, and search results accuracy was improved.
• Reduced the number of pages from 712 to 127 pages) — a reduction of 46% of content items and 82% of pages. Pages with outdated content were removed, redundant pages were eliminated, and other pages were consolidated.
• Implemented a calendar plugin that allowed for easier management of events.
• Wrote a series of training pages on how to use the Gutenberg editor to manage content.

Results

The resulting intranet site was well-received by both internal stakeholders and external audiences, including staff, students, and faculty.