Understanding and offering the right content to coworkers and external stakeholders via an intra- and extranet
It all started with the internal wish to make it easier to maintain the intranet and make communication with clients easier. The IT department saw the solution in upgrading the technical platform but saw also that functionality and design needed upgrades. The need was big, all needed to be delivered in 6 months. We balanced the research and involvement of users to manage the timelines. Understand piece by piece, design and iterate.
A lot of desk research happend to understand the as-is situation and the processes between Vopak and client. Many documents landed on our desk, reading, asking questions and trying to capture the essence. This all helped us to be prepared for creative session where we visualised together possible lay-outs and flows. The output was used to create spotplans and first versions of wireframes .
Using powerpoint was easy to see the flow but it was not optimal for early testing with co-workers and selected clients so we switched to Axure as prototyping tool. And at the same time we stepped into setting a visual identity for Vopak for digital channels.
We also documented everything in a functional document for the intranet and extranet. We started that document with the simulation so that the reader could see and feel the described functional part. This helped to make it easier to implement and make plans for maintaining the portals.
