Tata motors

agency: tcs interactive

app—UI/UX—Interaction—wireframing—prototyping—DESIGN systems—teamwork—user-centred design—automotive

Overview

Historically, owners of Tata Motors vehicles would  have to download three apps to handle distinct  tasks.

TCS Interactive were tasked with creating a single ownership experience in the form of a brand new app.

This consolidated app includes remote operation of key functions, trip navigation, booking a service, driving score, a store to purchase accessories, a valet mode, a community hub called  Tribes and much more.

Building a design system

I played a large part in the development of a design system for the app, an evolution of the web system which is better optimised for smaller screens.

Iconography

I facilitated eight workshops with the aim of creating a series of personas; semi-ficitional artifacts to help inform future design efforts.

Through an empathy mapping exercise, I sought to uncover certain traits from this diverse workforce:

  • Overview of role functions
  • Goals and motivations
  • Fears and frustrations
  • Key tasks and intranet-specific tasks

Findings

It was surprising to understand the vast scale of the work DCJ undertakes, plus the very weak state of trust in the intranet as a viable tool to assist with daily tasks.

Through peer reviews of the empathy maps, there was plenty of material to build out personas.

Personas

It was surprising to understand the vast scale of the work DCJ undertakes, plus the very weak state of trust in the intranet as a viable tool to assist with daily tasks.

Through peer reviews of the empathy maps, there was plenty of material to build out personas.

Research to action

The workshops were combined with other user research activities. These provided detailed quantitative statics backed by qualitative insights:

HR staff reports

Demographic data on 24,000+ employees

Digital survey

14 questions, 220+ responses

Google Analytics analysis

From 11 million pageviews in 2023-24

The result was a prioritised series of proposed actions, presented to the executive director and accepted.

Home page refresh

Utilising and expanding on the DCJ Digital Design System, this project’s first deliverable was a refresh of the intranet home page.

This is in response to qualitative data revealing a desire to see ‘need to know’ information as quickly as possible in the user journey.

Before the refresh

Before my introduction to the project, the intranet CMS provider was SquizMatrix. DCJ could only use a limited library and the visual styling had long felt disjointed and outdated.

Useful content now sits higher

Quick links and topical department news 'In the spotlight' now sit above the fold—the space employees see when they log in every day. These top links were identified through GA analysis and interviews.

New CMS platform = Powerful new components

A recent migration to Adobe Experience Manager CMS allowed me to access a wider library of components. A dynamically-fed table component was used for our 'News and notices' section. Before this, an employee had to make two clicks away from the home page to access DCJ news.

New visual style foundations

NSW teal and yellow colours sit atop a primarily white canvas

Adobe Experience Manager allowed us to use NSW's font, Public Sans

Utilising a new, expanding library of photographic assets

Bespoke iconography created to symbolise news and event themes

IA restructure

DCJ has 30,000+ employees. Up to 27,000 working days and $7.5m a year may be wasted by an organisation of this size, if an average of 5 mins every day is spent stuck on a site finding the correct content.

Closely following search functionality, a robust information architecture (IA) is crucial to claiming back this lost value. With no single point of content ownership since it's inception, a restructure was sorely needed.

Based on my research, I crafted a new IA which covered the entire intranet. It covered all pages that sit up to 3 levels below the home page—no mean feat for an intranet of thousands of pages.

Renaming pages for clarity

I renamed high-level pages to be clearer, more easily searchable, or to reduce high character count (as card components allow a maximum of 60 characters).

For example, ‘mySafety’ became 'Workplace safety’ to be clearer for new emoloyees and those who may simply be confused by the naming, which could signify to them a program that doesn't include them.

Housekeeping

I consolidated scattered but related pages under a single parent, moved child pages across parents that made more sense and archived redundant pages.

Some parent pages moved higher or lower in hierarchy. For example, ‘Health and wellbeing’ now became a L1 page to reinforce DCJs movement towards promoting employee health and wellbeing.

Tree testing

To ascertain that the changes would have a positive effect once implemented, I ran a tree test and sent an open invite to staff.

When prompted to find pages covering the subject of X/Y/Z, the success rate doubled from 35% in our last study 3 years prior, to 70%. Directness rate improved, so fewer clicks were recorded. The time taken to reach the intended pages was reduced by 3 seconds.

Feedback

"

Thank you Philip for leading a comprehensive user experience engagement campaign. Your vision, empathy and dedication to inclusion is making an enormous impact for driving employee centric digital products at DCJ.

"

– Jessica Meyers, Director, Digital Experience at DCJ

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