JHPeople
Revitalizing culture and standards adoption at a fast-growing architecture firm
I led the 0→1 design for JHPeople, an internal CMS and social platform that improved culture and standards adoption for JHP Architecture employees.
Product
JHPeople
What I did
Product design
User research & testing
Feature prioritization
Interactive prototyping
Team
UX/UI designer (Me)
Backend developers (2)
Marketing manager (1)
Duration
Q4 2019 - Q2 2022
Problem
Culture and standards declined as the firm grew
At JHP Architecture's 2018 staff retreat, the CEO shared culture survey results showing sharp declines in standards and culture quality. Employees broke into groups to discuss causes and solutions.
Rapid company headcount growth and a migration to a new architectural drafting tool had decreased culture and standards adoption.
I pitched a digital solution to the company president, secured approval to run internal research, and led a small team to build it.
Stats for context
35
80
Company headcount growth over 3 years
95%
Employees working in a new platform with no prior experience
Discovery
I interviewed employees across the firm to understand culture and resource pain points:
- 01 / How would you describe the current company culture?
- 02 / What do you believe contributes to a healthy culture?
- 03 / How do you currently access company resources?
- 04 / What improvements would make finding resources easier?
Key insights
Project goal
How might we build a platform that revitalizes company culture and increases standards adoption for a fast-growing company?
Personas
Interviews revealed three primary audiences: the "New Designer" and "Seasoned Architect" needed resources; the "Architectural Coordinator" created and maintained them.
Project scope
I workshopped with the team to scope both resource organization and community building, but shipped resources first to establish business value.
MVP design
COVID lockdown started shortly after launch. I repositioned the homepage to be focused around the social feed to make it easier for employees to connect online.
Within a week of this change, traffic jumped over 600% and stayed elevated through lockdown.
Validation research
Finding resources still remained the largest barrier to collaboration. After we returned to the office from lockdown, I ran another round of testing that surfaced the problem:
Key insights
Final designs
Pre-filtered resources
Discover links now open pre-filtered resource tabs: "Newest Resources" shows different content than "Popular Recordings."
Testing showed estimated read times made content feel more approachable. content feel more approachable.
Group invitations
Early versions never notified users when groups updated or were created. The updated flow lets creators post invites to the social feed immediately after creating a group.
Quick access to your team
The Discover screen's "Your team" section surfaces teammates and contact paths so users can learn about and reach colleagues faster.
Metrics
By Q4 2021 (18 months after launch), we tracked:
95%
Website adoption rate among employees
80%
Standards usage rate among employees
+35
Number of uploaded documents
+30 hrs
Number of hours of uploaded videos
Retrospective
Defend your designs with research
I struggled early to push back on friction-heavy ideas until I had metrics to support design decisions. Over time, I learned to flag UX risks before they shipped.
Maintain documentation
I was new to UX in 2018 and didn't archive early interviews. I now document everything, especially small details, throughout a project.
You can't always win with stakeholders
Leadership changes near the end forced compromises I couldn't overturn. I defended decisions with research and educated stakeholders on the rationale.