Vine: An Internal Resource Library
FHI 360 | 2023–2025
I conducted user interviews and designed experience updates for an internal resource library that houses 30 years of international project data.
About the Client
FHI 360 is a nonprofit organization that mobilizes research, resources and relationships so that people everywhere can access the opportunities they need to lead full, healthy lives.
Key Activities
Proto-persona Workshop
UX Interviews
Research Findings Presentation
Wireframe Creation
UI Design
Interactive Prototype
Developer Collaboration
Setting the Stage
About the Project
FHI 360 has been implementing global health, education, and aid programs for over 30 years. In that time they have produced and accumulated a huge amount of information and resources that were scattered across different offices, teams and software. FHI 360’s Vine was developed as an internal tool to document resources and information on the projects they implement, the countries they operate in, and the procurement activities they conduct.
What Were the Goals
The product had grown over time without a dedicated UX specialist based on stakeholder demands, developer insights, and unstructured user feedback. I joined the team to help identify and prioritize opportunities for improvement with a broad goal:
How might we make it easier for users to find accurate and up to date information in Vine?
Team Structure
Product Designer
Knowledge & Resource Management Director
Digital Experience Manager
Engineering Manager
Front-end Developer
Identifying Problems
How Problems Were Identified
Kicking off with a proto-persona workshop, I guided key stakeholders through a number of activities to get a sense of who we thought our primary users were. These proto-personas were then used to identify potential users across the organization to reach out to for interviews.
I then developed a research plan, conducted interviews, ran interface testing sessions, and meticulously documented the ways in which users interacted with the tool. These interviews informed a presentation I gave to stakeholders summarizing key insights, priority problems, and recommended next steps.
Who Were the Users
Business Development: Search for projects similar to work the organization is going after to cite results and establish credibility in proposals.
Human Resources: Reference country-specific labor policies and country office information across the 60+ countries that FHI 360 operated in.
Project Staff: Update their own project data including contacts, end-of-year reporting, closeout materials, and more.
What the Problems Were
While user insights from the interviews were numerous and wide ranging, I collaborated with stakeholders to identify the following problems as addressable priorities.
Frequent users were unfamiliar with a wide range of Vine’s capabilities.
The main navigation changed depending on what area of the product a user was on, this added to the cognitive load of users navigating the across the product.
The project and country detail pages were visually dense, making it hard to find relevant information on them.
The country listing page prioritized excess information that was not referenced by the majority of users.
Users seeking documents often found them missing from Vine, while users looking to upload documents frequently had to ask for help to determine where they could do so.
Designing Solutions
How Solutions Were Designed
To address these problems I created user flows, wireframes, and prototypes that fit into Vine’s existing interface. Each step of the way I collected collaborative feedback on my designs from the team to ensure we identified technical limitations or potential user concerns before moving to development implementation.
What the Solutions Were
What the Solutions Were
Problem: Frequent users were unfamiliar with a wide range of Vine’s capabilities.
Solution: Created an onboarding flow that highlighted useful content users were often unaware existed in Vine
Solution: Prioritized the listing of favorited content on the home page to encourage use and help users find frequently referenced content more easily.
What the Solutions Were
Problem: The project and country detail pages were visually dense, making it hard to find relevant information on them.
Solution: Introduced a sticky side-navigation to help manage excessive scrolling and more clearly highlight the content that exists for each project and country.
Problem: The country listing page prioritized excess information that was not referenced by the majority of users.
Solution: Consolidated information on each country card so more relevant information can be seen. Maintained access to the additional information being used by a minority of users behind a “View Registration Status” button that does not take users away from the page.
Problem: The main navigation changed depending on what area of the product a user was on, this added to the cognitive load of users navigating the across the product.
Solution: Created a unified main navigation layout that is consistent across all product areas while adding a sub-navigation to support common actions specific to each product area.
Problem: Users seeking documents often found them missing from Vine, while users looking to upload documents frequently had to ask for help to determine where they could do so.
Solution: Moved the ability to upload documents into the main navigation where it can be easily found, rather than buried on a specific project page or at the bottom of the home page.
Results
Project Status
In Development - Implementation and quality assurance are ongoing for these updates.
Personal Retro
Working on Vine required me to hone my communication and presentation skills, along with my ability to defend my work. There were multiple stakeholders who were rightfully proud of their work on the product and attached to historic decisions or functionality I was advocating be changed.
I conducted interviews with users across multiple countries, some of whom spoke English as a second language. These interviews helped me to craft more clear questions. I also gained a better understanding of how English and U.S.-centered design decisions impact the perceptions of international users.
