The Feed at Verizon
In Summer 2017, I led the redesign of Verizon’s internal News center. Over 150,000 Verizon employees access work tools, HR and directories through the intranet, and The Feed is its latest homepage.
As a fact, most employees land on the homepage, but immediately bounce to an assortment of work or HR functions. Still, the company asserts the space as the most natural hub for company news. It’s the first thing you see in the browser on all company devices and subsequently produces millions of views a week. Verizon’s CEC team posits functions like organization charts, expense reports and benefits information indicate a timeframe for comfortable browsing as well. The Culture and Employee Communications department relies on this audience for a range of reporting, product media and leadership updates across the business.
As a fact, most employees land on the homepage, but immediately bounce to an assortment of work or HR functions. Still, the company asserts the space as the most natural hub for company news. It’s the first thing you see in the browser on all company devices and subsequently produces millions of views a week. Verizon’s CEC team posits functions like organization charts, expense reports and benefits information indicate a timeframe for comfortable browsing as well. The Culture and Employee Communications department relies on this audience for a range of reporting, product media and leadership updates across the business.
Designed and developed in-house.
Through a series of panels and interviews, we recognized three user personas for the project. There are those that land on the homepage for a short glance and at the very most, one article click. There are engaged employees who prefer their news generated directly from relevant business groups. And finally, there’s an engaged audience of employees who casually read three to four articles per visit to remain up to date with company movements.
We designed the Spotlight for time sensitive visitors – up to two rows sit comfortably above the fold with curated stories from the editors. The space highlights a set of headlines readers can consume at a glance – fully digesting the day’s news quickly. The CEC reported a desire to reduce creative turnaround for time sensitive news, and the spotlight responds with a clean, high contast design that removes thumbnail input altogether.
The Spotlight allows for up to 5 custom dropdown items; from quarterly reporting, leadership changes, brand messaging, even webinar liveblogging – where editors choose between 4 and 8 lite articles to fill the space. Along with most liked and most forwarded posts, “stories people love” and “stories everybody’s sharing”, respectively, the Spotlight hosts 7 total filters. It represents a curated feed positioned to the top for the greatest visibility within Verizon.
Many articles pushed to the intranet previously existed as generic shells for rich media content like livestreams, commercials and interviews. These items strained the primary timeline in the previous design and produced added load times for engaged users. We developed the Media Wall to host visually driven content directly on the homepage, with an emphasis on flexibility and performance.
The Media Wall introduces the Feed as a new destination for video content. 4 panels discreetly sit inline one another. The side panel changes daily, and summarizes featured videos. The 3 remaining slots toggle out one at a time, and unfold into the VZ player. Visually, the Spotlight and Media Wall were designed together to align with our print and digital grid system – connecting our internal space to Verizon’s outside presence.
The Timeline lives on.
Our final persona identified closely with the generic timeline of the previous homepage. Strategically, CEC places preference on curated stories to align traffic with day to day company messaging. The timeline, however, maintains a personalized feed for readers engaged with specific venues of the Verizon business. We developed the new Timeline to function the same as users know it to, with items feeding into the space as they are published or promoted by their center owners. To manage subscriptions, bounce to feed preferences.
Roles
Design: Moazam Shah
Engineering: Venkata Avasarala
Art Direction: Jennifer Bennett
Strategy: Drew Fessenden
Engineering: Venkata Avasarala
Art Direction: Jennifer Bennett
Strategy: Drew Fessenden