@Chick-fil-A Strategy

Ongoing enhancements to the Chick-fil-A intranet (@Chick-fil-A) to address user frustrations, content strategy, and overall experience.

Problem: @Chick-fil-A supports Chick-fil-A's internal audience of restaurant operators and staff. However, users continually expressed frustrations with locating content, utilizing search, and navigating the site.

Our Solution: Through several tracks of work, we 1) created a defined vocabulary for search enhancements, 2) formulated a content strategy for training content, and 3) proposed a reimagined @Chick-fil-A experience.

The Numbers: 30,000 search terms, 1,000+ keywords, 20+ user & stakeholder interviews.

Work was completed as an employee of ICF Olson in 2015 and 2016.

Phase I: Controlled Vocabulary & Search Enhancements

@Chick-fil-A users expressed frustration with findability of content. By establishing a controlled vocabulary, we increased consistency in content tagging and search indexing.

We kicked things off with user interviews to get a clear understanding of how search is currently utilized and where the pain points exist.

In order to enhance the intranet search functionality, we created a controlled vocabulary for the @Chick-fil-A site based on 30,000 user search terms, user interviews, and brand standards. This controlled vocabulary was used to standardize a taxonomy that ensures consistently tagged and indexed content.

In addition to the taxonomy effort, the prioritization of other search enhancements was established based on business goals, user groups, analytics, and timelines.

Phase II: Training Content Strategy

Another key functionality of @Chick-fil-A is for employee training. The existing training material content structure was siloed and unintuitive for users. We created a new information architecture and wireframes to support the consolidation and streamlining of training content.

Our first task was to gain an understanding of the various training content sources. Through stakeholder interviews we were able to establish purpose, audience, and future state asks from each content owner.

We had to account for a wide range of users: corporate employees, restaurant owners, and restaurant employees -- all of which had distinct interactions with training material. We needed to create a homepage, training modules, and reporting that supported each user group.

A key deliverable in the training consolidation effort was a revised sitemap. This brought what used to be 6 training portals all into one, down to the module level.

The existing design made navigating up to 6 levels of content complex and overwhelming.

We created wireframes to visualize a strategy for presentation of training content. In addition to a revised sitemap, our primary recommendation was to utilize a dashboard view, custom to each logged in user. (Axure)

A key pain point for trainers was being about to see a high level view of training progress across restaurant employees. This was also the source for reporting, which required extensive view and filtering options. (Axure)

Phase III: @Chick-fil-A Reimagined

Based on our extensive work with intranet enhancements, we proposed a completely revamped @Chick-fil-A experience.

Despite our presentation being conceptual, all of our decisions were based on previous findings and institutional knowledge of the @Chick-fil-A site. Brainstorming for the ideal user experience was based on content knowledge, user research, analytics, and existing Chick-fil-A priorities.

We had a clear understanding of user priorities based on a number of user testing efforts focused on the current state experience. These findings were directly reflected in proposed concepts.

Our reimagined dashboard surfaces content that is most relevant to users based on log in and segment. Final concepts were presented in tablets as we know that is the primary device users are using to access @Chick-fil-A.