Year 2 of my bachelor started of with one of the biggest projects I worked on. The Dutch National Bank (De Nederlandsche Bank – DNB) was going to change location.
What was the assignment?
With this change, the employees didn’t have a fixed desk anymore. DNB wanted to their employees to work flexible. It was up to us to design a new possible digital intranet. This design was accompanied by a implementation rapport.
Gathering data
After a few weeks of conducting research, we started to gather all the current data we could find. With this data we tried to categorize different employees based on how we thought they would see the change.
The data also revealed the functional requirements necessary to provide an optimal working environment.
Together with some staff and A/B testing, a navigation design was made.
What does it look like?
We made a few prototypes before finally setting on the following lay-outs.
Mobile 
Desktop
How to deal with the change?
After designing the digital workplace, there was a problem of implementing. How will you make sure everybody will use the new Intranet?
Using the Ist/Soll and 7s model, we looked at different situations before settling on a strategy for change.
The conditions for successful implementation were taken into account but they had to be in line with the business strategy of DNB.
The biggest challenge of this project was taking in account the resistance of current employees towards the change. Having described the probable causes for resistance, we tried to prepare for it. The question asked most among the employees was ‘why’. Why did they needed to change.
Advise given
Our main advise to management was to let employees in on the plans. Give them updates. Let them choose the name for the new Intranet. Make instruction video’s on how to use the intranet. Use a ‘walking helpdesk’ in the first few months of the change. Keep training employees. Hold feedback meetings. And most importantly; Celebrate succes!
Lessons learned
Designing something is easy. Taking into account the different personalities of the users makes it more difficult. But change is hard. With every little change there is resistance, so the resistance is big when the change is big as well.
This was one of the hardest projects I’ve ever done. I was annoying to try to imagine all the different possibilities and scenario’s. But the results were definitely worth it!
Plus, I got to work for the Dutch National Bank which in itself is already really cool 🙂
