Manager Center Redesign

Overview

Manager Center is a centralized hub where people leaders access tools, guidance, and resources to support their teams. As the volume of content grew, the experience became difficult to navigate, visually outdated, and misaligned with the needs of managers who rely on it daily. I led a full redesign of the homepage and information architecture to improve clarity, reduce friction, and help managers quickly find the resources they need to lead effectively.

Role

Assoc. UX Engineer

Responsibilities

Information Architecture Evaluation, Survey Creation & Insight Synthesis, Usability Testing, Webpage Analytics Review, SharePoint Page Design

Tools

Miro, Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft SharePoint

Experience Design

Project background

Manager Center had grown organically over time, resulting in a fragmented experience with outdated components and a lack of clear hierarchy. As the organization expanded its support for people leaders, the platform needed a refreshed design that better reflected the brand, improved clarity, and supported managers in quickly finding the resources they rely on.

From here, my goal was to:

Modernize the interface without changing core functionality
Redesign the homepage for clarity and improved usability
Remove redundant or unnecessary content to streamline navigation

Exploring user sentiments

Organic feedback (via comments and colleague conversations) highlighted recurring issues:

Information was scattered, and it took too many clicks to find the information they needed

They resorted to trial-and-error searching to find the right resource

They felt like they were missing key information on how to grow in their roles

Exploring user behavior

I sought to understand which resources managers are accessing most. I was able to do this by making a map of the current information architecture and comparing web page metrics. Comparing page views to unique visitors helped me identify which pages had higher return rates and were most valuable to people leaders.

Evaluating the current site

I was able to enhance the usability of the site by surfacing the most used resources and bringing them to the forefront, but in order to enhance the visual aspect and closely align it to brand requirements, I needed to evaluate which elements were working and which were not working.

The redesign focused on the following key opportunities to improve clarity, usability, and alignment.

Strengthening clarity and visual separation in the News section
Removing low‑value sections (e.g., “More News”) to make the layout more meaningful
Elevating featured resources to help managers quickly find what they need
Improving organization and clarity within the sidebar navigation
Clarifying how anchor link navigation works across the page
Introducing more brand assets to contribute to a cohesive visual identity across the employee portal

Redesigning

I was able to use a SharePoint sandbox environment to design a mockup of the new Manager Center. Here, I took the opportunity to work with the limited functionality of SharePoint to create a more visually balanced experience.

Banner notifications

Informs users of important enterprise changes or updates
Should be used sparingly as they can be disruptive

Manager Center pages

Includes a link to each main-level navigation item within Manager Center

Frequently visited pages

Organized by frequency of page visitation

Quick links

Includes links to external websites and applications that are most frequently visited after Manager Center

Community updates

Includes Viva Engage posts tagged with the topic of "Manager Updates"

Related resources

Includes important tools and resources for managers

Leader Dose

Includes quarterly newsletters for leaders
Links to an archive of past newsletters

Testing the experience

I conducted a usability test of the new mockup with 4 leaders who logged into our sandbox environment. They were guided through several scenarios and tasks and provided their reactions.

Things that worked were:

2 participants were able to find resources they frequently look for using the homepage instead of the top-level navigation.
Participants stated that the right resources are placed in the“Frequently visited pages” section.
All participants were able to find development resources for their team in <7 seconds.
All participants were able to find manager development resources in <30 seconds.
Participants feel like the design is "clean" and "user-friendly".

Things that did not work were:

2 participants navigated to “Employment Policies” when asked about news and updates for people leaders.
2 participants wanted to see more of what’s new within the company.
3 participants did not notice the banner.
2 participants reported experiencing challenges in navigating Manager Center. They indicated
1 participant noticed that the "Related resources" section had too much content

Usability testing confirmed that the redesigned structure made it easier for managers to locate key resources. Participants reported clearer navigation, more intuitive content grouping, and reduced effort when completing common tasks. Overall, their feedback was positive and led to small but meaningful improvements.

Conclusion

Handoff:

To conclude this assignment, I partnered closely with our SharePoint developer to hand off my sandbox mockup, complete with all design elements, imagery, and portal links needed to bring the updated Manager Center experience to life. This collaboration ensured a smooth transition from design to implementation and set the foundation for a cohesive, production‑ready page.

Outcomes:

The redesign significantly improved managers’ ability to access the tools they need. Post-launch, questions submitted through organic feedback channels decreased, indicating reduced confusion and improved findability.

A notable additional win was a consolidation effort: by identifying redundant content scattered across Manager Center, I retired 8 SharePoint pages, reducing unnecessary navigation and streamlining the overall experience.

The project also sparked future work, including ongoing monitoring of frequently accessed pages and aligning content with new and upcoming company initiatives.

Reflection:

This project reinforced the importance of grounding design decisions in user behavior. Usability testing validated the direction of the redesign and demonstrated how even small structural changes can meaningfully improve the manager experience.

If given more time, I would conduct a comparative usability study (capturing time on task, errors, and satisfaction metrics before and after the redesign) to quantify impact more precisely.

Ultimately, this project strengthened my belief that even when a problem seems well‑defined, deeper research can uncover critical insights that elevate the final solution.