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Best Buy Connect Ecosystem
Objective
Create a native and web-based, digital ecosystem for supporting all employee needs both on and off the job.
Background
Up until this initiative, Best Buy has provided employees with resources and tools via a multitude of internal as well as external, 3rd party platforms. Leading to overspending on licensing of platforms, and a disjointed and unreliable experience for employees.
Key Impacts
39%
reduction in monthly calls to internal support teams.
62K
Mobile App Downloads in first Month
95%
Adoption rate across workforce
My Role
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Formally defining problem statement
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Working with research team to identify user audiences and their needs.
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Defining Information architecture.
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Delivering all design deliverables for platform framework.
Discovery
User Feedback
"Too many websites, I never know where to go"
"Workday says one thing and TLC says another."
"Why can't there just be one website for everything"
"I'd rather just ask my manager than look for stuff"
Discovery
Problem Definition
Employee Problem
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Best Buy's employee resources and on the job tools are spread across multiple digital touchpoints. This is resulting in inconsistencies in information, and leading to additional time spent and frustration for employees, when seeking out information to help them perform their job or manage their pay and benefits.
Business Problem
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Employee's inability to find the information they need, is creating downstream performance impacts and lower employee satisfaction rates. Also, reliance on 3rd party platforms is leading to high rates of expenditure on licensing contracts for the business.
Discovery
Identifying User Mindsets
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Discovery
Building Empathy
Discovery
Solution Hypothesis
Hypothesis
Consolidating all employee tools and resources into a single digital touchpoint, will improve findability of information for employees, lead to performance improvements, generate revenue for the business downstream, and create immediate cost savings by reducing licensing costs.
Reasoning
Repeated employee feedback about the need for one source of truth, as well as finance team forecasting of cost savings in centralized vs decentralized model.
Discovery
Vision & Rollout Strategy
Short Term
Develop, launch, and test a singular, digital shell framework that will serve as a host/launching pad to all internal and 3rd party employee resources and tools.
Reasoning
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Account for a time sensitive need to sunset an existing tool hosting system, and to surface its tools elsewhere.
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Creating a shell framework will allow us to test and validate assumptions while minimizing development efforts and costs.
Long Term
Iterate into a singular, seamlessly integrated digital ecosystem of all employee tools and resources, that is both optimized based on user needs and customizable.
Reasoning
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Allows for the development of unified and consistent, messaging, branding, and user experience.
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Increasing cohesion for our product teams by transforming them from disparate feature focused teams to product teams with a shared goal of supporting a larger unified product.
Discovery
Defining Measurements of Success
Goals
Measurements
Improve findability and employee access to the information they need.
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Search abandonment
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Task completion rates.
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Time to completion.
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Calls/chats to support team via platform link.
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Qualitative user feedback.
Become singular go-to destination for all employee needs at Best Buy
Monitor App adoption rates, engagement rates, and active users.
Reduce Impact on support teams
Compare support calls and open support requests pre and post launch.
Design
Information Architecture
4 Central Elements
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On/Off the job tools -
Allow users to find specific information as well as take action related to a specific topic.
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Informational resources -
Knowledge articles dedicated to provide information and instruction around specific subjects.
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Employee communications timeline -
Allow for employees to receive important, time sensitive information in a timely manner.
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Employee Profile -
Serves as singular destination for employee's personal details.
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Design
Design Concepts for Pilot Test
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Design
Pilot Findings
3 Main Findings
Users engaged mostly with native tools in tool drawer and not content timeline.
Users wanted the tools that they used most often to be more accessible.
Users did not browse for information relying on search almost exclusively.
Design
Finalized Designs
Web Portal
Design Decisions
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Tools were moved front and center of the experience.
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Low engagement with content timeline addressed through new visual treatment for company news and the creation of a dedicated notification center for personal communications.
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Tools were audience managed based on role, and employees were given the ability to customize a "Favorite Tools" section to support goals around optimization and custom experience.
App
Design Decisions
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Home screen experience centered around optimized/customizable view of most important tools based on job role.
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Tool widgets developed to provide easier access to most important actions and insights for specific tools.
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Focus search experience on tools exclusively, in order to promote tool-centric experience, and creating appropriate safeguards to account for certain information only being available as informational resources.
Discovery
Competitive Analysis
Once alignment was reached on the basic needs of the site, the next step was to conduct a competitive analysis of similar websites for inspiration and a better understanding of best practices. One site in particular stood out for the quality of the user was the Coach Art website which served as the main source of inspiration for the Best Buy Foundation website's information architecture.
Reflection
Key Challenges
Aggressive Timelines
Aggressive timelines were set for an initial release of the product to account for a need to sunset other tool hosting platforms.
This was navigated by leveraging user research and feedback to prioritize critical features for MVP, and by using the initial iteration as a test to inform subsequent releases.
Gathering Feedback
It was critical to collect feedback from users during the initial MVP test that was in-the-moment and coming from diverse sets of user groups.
This was addressed by providing a feedback sharing interaction as a central part of the MVP experience.
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Gathering Feedback
Maintaining Quality at Scale
As product teams began working on integrating features into the Connect ecosystem as tools, it was crucial to ensure that visual and experiential standards were maintained.
Quality standards were protected by sharing the vision statement for the Connect ecosystem with product teams across the organization, as well as developing and sharing a design system that clearly communicates quality standards effectively.
Looking Forward
Reaching Long Term Vision
Focus areas
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Creating more internally developed tools to support employee needs and address problems.
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Developing a retail store, workstation view that is geared specifically to the needs of employees in the context of working in the retail store environment.
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Work to integrate data and APIs from 3rd party platforms more seamlessly to create a more consistent, and cohesive experience for Connect.
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