Intuitive - Wall of Thanks
Intuitive Surgical is an American corporation that develops, manufactures, and markets robotic products designed to improve clinical outcomes of patients through minimally invasive surgery. They approached my client, Ph.Creative to design and develop a streamlined internal digital solution to help boost and empower employee morale across the company worldwide.
As the lead UI/UX designer and product manager for this project, I worked closely with both Ph.Creative and Intuitive stakeholders to create and define goals and create fully fledged designs. I worked closely with our in-house development team to integrate my designs into a finished product, which was launched and sent to all Intuitive employees.
My Role
UI/UX Design
Project Management
Journey Mapping
Wireframing
UX
Motion Design
Agency
Ph.Creative
Status
✅ Completed
2023
Timeline
2 months
The Brief
Intuitive seeks to enhance workplace camaraderie and boost employee morale by implementing a digital platform where employees can express and share messages of gratitude and appreciation towards their colleagues.
The Solution
A web based platform that allows Intuitive employees to write and submit heartfelt messages of thanks to fellow colleagues. The messages will be collated, moderated and then showcased onto an online “Wall of Thanks” animation loop, accessed globally and displayed across Intuitive offices worldwide.
User Stories
Firstly, I met with xxx and Intuitive stakeholders to discuss top level ideas. I attended and conducted interviews with different user types across the company to understand what they would like from the Wall of Thanks.
Using these insights, I developed personas and user stories to understand the relationship between different user types and the proposed platform. These steps guided the design of low fidelity flows and wireframes.
The Employee Pillars
Intuitive developed four pillars for their employee brand, which served as the foundational principles of the company’s work culture. The platform needed to be designed to enable users to associate their thank-you messages with one of these four pillars.
Innovating with Purpose
Energised by Challenges
Fostering Collaboration
Changing Lives
Changes Yours
User Flows
Based on the learnings from the user stories and the research conducted by Intuitive, it became evident very quickly that the submitted messages of gratitude required moderation. The messages would need to be approved by an Admin member before being fully submitted onto the animated Wall of Thanks.
User Flow
Knowing we needed moderation on the messages, I mapped out the overall UX flow. The below flow shows the process of an employee opening the website and submitting their message of thanks.
Wireframing
Next, I turned the initial user flows into low fidelity wireframe mockups. The landing page needed to introduce the 4 pillars associated with the messages of thanks.
High Fidelity Mockups
The wireframes led to the creation of detailed mockups that closely adhered to the Intuitive brand guidelines.
Cross Platform
Whilst I took a mobile first approach when designing the interface, it was important that the UI worked seamlessly across all screen sizes.
Admin Portal
With a limited budget allocated to the admin portal, it was necessary to design a straightforward system for the portal. Inside the portal, the administrator has the option to either remove or approve gratitude messages sent by Intuitive employees. Upon approval, these messages would appear on the dynamic animated display board.
Admin Portal Designs
The user interface for the admin portal was kept minimal, prioritising a clean dashboard that emphasises functionality over aesthetics.
Animation! 🎉
The animation design for the Wall of Thanks centred on the Intuitive brand, featuring a circular animated ring that functioned as a countdown timer for the upcoming gratitude messages. Each message displayed for a duration of 10 seconds before transitioning to the next.
…and voilà, the message of thanks became visible to Intuitive employees all around the globe.
Thoughts & Learnings
The launch of the Wall of Thanks was a success, and everyone was enthusiastic about the solution. The website was distributed via email to over 20,000 employees spanning the Intuitive global headquarters.
Employees discovered that sending thank-you messages was a remarkably straightforward task, while the headquarters featured the animation on a screen in the lobby, producing a subtle display of employee pride.
The team and I realised that there is future potential to further streamline the message input process by incorporating Okta (single sign-on). This would enable users to effortlessly choose an employee from a pre-filled dropdown field, using information sourced from the companies Outlook database.
Let’s connect
Get in touch for opportunities or just to say hi! 