ExxonMobil
Providing clarity amidst a workflow transformation
Role: UX/UI Design Lead, UX/UI Design Mentor
Duration: January 2022 - May 2022 (4 months)
Tl;dr:
ExxonMobil's IT department shifted from waterfall to agile, but learning resources were fragmented and hard to navigate. I led the redesign of an internal site that centralized these resources - improving NPS by 100% and introducing user-centered design practices to a developer-driven team.
About the Site
This internal site was designed to support ExxonMobil’s IT teams during their transition from waterfall to agile by centralizing learning resources, tools, and references. It served as a shared hub to help employees translate agile principles into day-to-day practice across roles and teams.
Background
I joined a majority-developer team with no design precedent. My role: bring user-centered thinking to how content was structured and surfaced.
Understanding the User
I conducted user interviews with 13 IT employees across diverse roles and regions, including both content consumers (employees learning about agile) and site administrators (who managed content updates), to understand how they used the Evolve site and where it fell short. Through thematic analysis, two core problems emerged: (1) 92% of users cited missing or outdated content, while (2) 77% struggled with cumbersome navigation that made information hard to find.
I created two personas to represent these user types:
Framing the Solution
My research revealed that while users cited missing content, the deeper issue was discoverability. The existing information architecture buried critical resources - events were hidden at the bottom of the homepage, the My Role section contained outdated content with broken links, and there was no dedicated page for products and services.
I restructured the information architecture to surface high-traffic pages, elevate events to a dedicated section, and add clear pathways for both learning and content management. This addressed both personas' needs: Tina could now find training events and role guidance more easily, while Zak gained clearer access to admin functionality.
Designing the Interface
I worked within ExxonMobil's existing design library, using familiar patterns while adapting components to the new information architecture. Three principles guided my decisions: prioritize discoverability, reduce cognitive load, and create consistency.
The previous site gave equal weight to everything, so users couldn't tell where to start. I restructured the homepage around the three most common entry points based on user research, reducing decision paralysis.
The original 'My Role' section had outdated content and broken links - users couldn't trust what they found. I rebuilt this page with updated links and clearer discoverability, making it a reliable starting point for understanding agile responsibilities.
This section didn't exist in the old site - tools and references were scattered or missing entirely. I consolidated them into a dedicated page organized by use case, reducing the time users spent hunting across systems.
Events were buried at the bottom of the homepage and easy to miss. Usage showed people actually wanted this content, so I elevated it to a dedicated page in the main navigation.
An overview of the redesigned site, showing how the simplified navigation and content hierarchy work together across pages.
Visual inconsistency across the old site made it feel fragmented. I refined the icon system to create a unified visual language that reinforced the site's structure.
Impact & Takeaways
The redesigned site improved NPS by 100% post-launch. But the longer-term impact was cultural: I mentored a developer curious about UX - letting them shadow my process and ask questions along the way. I brought teammates into research sessions to see how their work affected real users, and used standups to set expectations for what design actually takes. The process established a sustainable design mindset beyond this single deliverable.