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Large US Healthcare System

Unified Healthcare Intranet

2024

UX Strategy

Leadership

UX Research

Enterprise UX

Visual Design

ServiceNow Platform

Designed a modern intranet to unify 175,000+ employees across a newly merged healthcare organisation.

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85% reduction in IT/tool support tickets.

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4.7/5 average satisfaction in employee survey.

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Established the single 'Source of Truth' for employees.

ROLE

Lead Product Designer

CLIENT

B2B SaaS (Fortune 500)

INDUSTRY

Enterprise Software

TOPICS

Product Design

Master Data Management

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CONTEXT & BACKGROUND

After the merger of three major healthcare systems, employees spread across the U.S. were still using the residual intranets and portals of the legacy organisations. We were brought in to design a single, unified digital workspace where everyone could find what they needed in one place.

This project was part of a larger initiative to transform the organisation’s intranet into a unified, employee-centred experience. We needed to bring together multiple legacy systems, tools, and sites into a single, connected platform that better supported how employees work, access information, and engage with their community.

The goal was to consolidate these into a single, scalable intranet that could support a wide range of roles and remain upgrade-safe on the ServiceNow EC Pro platform.

This project sat inside a larger Master Data Management (MDM) program to create a single, trusted Golden Record for every all the data records this client held across numerous domains.

While designing the new MDM system, we needed to create a bespoke merge experience to support one of the key use cases, merging records within a new layered data model replacing their old flat structure.

In this case study

The Problem

The Objective

UX Strategy

The Research

The Solution

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the problem

The merger brought 175,000 employees under one digital roof, bringing a bunch of legacy tools and systems with them. People didn't know where anything was anymore, and felt frustrated and annoyed by the change.

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THE OBJECTIVE

Unifying the employee digital experience post-acquisition

Our core task was to establish a single, cohesive intranet experience for a newly merged organisation of over 175,000 employees.

The goal was to dismantle fragmented digital silos and create a unified, trusted destination where every employee, from frontline care staff to corporate teams, could access essential tools, find information instantly, and align under one digital brand identity.

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THE CHALLENGE

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Separate organisations maintained disparate intranets, governance models, and tools, meaning there was widespread content duplication, sunset systems, and a lot of confusion as to where to go.

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Employees were relying on bookmarks and other colleagues to locate necessary resources. Workarounds like this should exist in an organisation where employees were already so busy.

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Legacy department-based site structures didn’t reflect actual employee workflows and information needs, so important tools and documents were hard for them to find.

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Our solution

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Designed and implemented a single, consistent intranet framework and taxonomy that connected content across newly merged organisations while keeping local governance and content ability.

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Design a custom merge portal connected to the ServiceNow Workspace.

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Introduced new features like Employee Recognition and Giving platforms, to foster a sense of community and support cultural alignment across the newly formed brand.

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Defining UX Strategy

The discussions, research and framework that got us here

Ahead of us lay a web of competing priorities, technical constraints, and the very human challenge of designing for 175,000+ people who all have different needs, different devices, and different levels of tech comfort.

Using this framework, I created a structured approach to defining the UX strategy and research plan.

We started by aligning on the big goals and challenges, then worked closely with stakeholders to make sure everyone was clear on scope and expectations. I came to the stakeholders with a semi-finalised plan, and we worked together to refine it.

This meant that the research plan we ended up with was focusing on the right problems, that we were speaking to the right people and were gathering the right insights.

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THE Research

Findings from our tailored research approach

DISCOVERY

Reverse demos

We asked stakeholders to walk us through their current systems. This helped us deconstruct the existing digital landscape and understand the main issues.

We began by asking Data Stewards to walk us through how they navigated between systems when merging records, explaining each step and its purpose.

This helped us understand

Stakeholders mainly wanted a single entry point for all employees.

They wanted a “front door” that connected all employees to key tools, resources, and new features like Employee Giving and Recognition that would bring everything under one consistent experience.

They wanted information to be quick and effortless to find.

Resources and tools should be accessible within one or two clicks within a central hub rather than searching across multiple systems.

Map of the process stewards had to go through when merging data before

DISCOVERY

Content and system audit

We catalogued about 20 portals, tools, and systems being merged into the new intranet. This gave us a clear map of what needed a place in the new experience.

Content was organised around departments, creating unnatural silos

Content was structured around departments rather than how people actually searched, as well as being scattered across separate systems. So unless users already knew where to look, finding what they needed was almost impossible.

There was overlapping content across the organisations

The three organisations often had overlapping versions of the same content across systems. This made it difficult to know which source was accurate or up to date for employees post-merger.

Early data architecture explorations used to understand survivorship logic and inform UI design

USER RESEARCH / CO=CREATION

Contextual inquiry and focus groups

We shadowed employees across four locations to understand how they accessed tools and resources, and what workarounds they relied on.

Because the project had a lot of technical depth, I spent extra time learning about data management and MDM systems.

I took short courses, read documentation, used AI tools to quickly explore schema relationships and merge logic. This helped me to

Trial and error was a primary approach for most

Most seemed to rely on trial and error when looking for items. When asked to find something, they would jump between tools or voice that they didn’t really know what or where to go.

Bookmarking seemed to be a reliable workaround

People told us (and showed is) that they often saved pages as bookmarks to be able to find them again, some even had documents with the links listed for newcomers.

Colleagues helped each other out

When all else failed, employees turned to the person sitting next to them for answers.

Early data architecture explorations used to understand survivorship logic and inform UI design

USER RESEARCH / CO=CREATION

Stakeholder workshops & taxonomy card sorting

While onsite, we ran workshops with stakeholders across departments. Through card sorting and discussion, we got a clearer view of how people actually searched for and labeled items, shaping a more user-centered intranet structure.

I worked closely with the data architects as they introduced a new layered data schema, connecting the parent-child relationship.

This related to my design work because

Inconsistent terminology was breaking the experience.

Employees usually used everyday terms like “FAQs” or “help articles,” while the systems labeled the same content “Knowledge Base.” We needed a shared vocabulary that was more natural and made information easier to find

People think in tasks, not departments. We needed to organise according to how people think.

Our research showed that users searched for actions like “book leave” or “reset password,” and didn't know what deprtament it was siloed in. We worked with stakeholders to design a topic-based navigation to align with how employees would search for information.

Working with architects to visualise relationships and understand the new data model.

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THE SOLUTION

We now had the information we needed to design a people-first intranet

After weeks of research, we went through our findings identified some glaring patterns, and finally we had a clear direction to begin shaping the intranet experience.

HOMEPAGE

A personalised, employee-centred homepage

The homepage puts the most important employee information front and centre so they can see their upcoming shifts, track time and attendance, and access frequently used tools without digging through menus.

System-suggested "Surviving Record"

Adding or removing records

Content

STEP TWO

Selecting attributes for Golden Record

Stewards review all records side by side and select which attributes should form the Golden Record. The system preselects attributes from the suggested record based on survivorship scores, but stewards can override any value with a single click

Filtering for conflicting attributes

To reduce visual noise and speed up decision-making, stewards can toggle “Show only conflicting attributes” to display only fields where record values differ.

STEP THREE

Reviewing related data / child records

Next, stewards need to review child or related records that are connected to the parent records being merged. This step reflects the new layered data schema, where company data is linked across multiple related tables.

STEP THREE

Confirm and submit the merge

Once stewards have reviewed attributes and related records, they submit the merge and move to the final confirmation step where the modal simply asks them to verify accuracy and confirm submission. If they want to double check any details, they can navigate back through previous steps before submitting.

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LESSONS LEARNED

What this project taught me about designing for data

When it came to the design, I focused on making the new, more complex data model easy to follow while giving stewards the clarity and control to navigate it confidently and make the decisions they needed to make.

I wanted stewards to

feel confident in what they were seeingIn this case study

to understand system suggestions at a glance

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