Bluelink

THE PROJECT:

Overview: Finding and connecting with colleagues across an organization as large as American Express can be a challenge. Colleague information is often stored in multiple systems which can confuse users as to which system of record to use. This is where BlueLink comes in. BlueLink provides an easy way to connect with colleagues across the company on a mobile device.

My Role: Work closely with the mobile product team to refine the design which was created during the hackathon in order to release a best-in-class colleague finder application for the organization.

INITIAL STAGES:

During a hackathon, my team and and I envisioned an app that would enable colleagues across the organization to easily find and connect with each other. In doing “desk” research we did not see apps that were similar to ours and so BlueLink was born (the idea came before LinkedIn released a similar app).

As a team, we crafted the strategy and a few “main” screens to show what our concept would look like. Although we did not win, my leadership loved the idea of BlueLink and asked me to work with the mobile product team to bring this app to life.

THE PROCESS:

I took the ideas and strategy that were set forth during the hackathon and improved upon them by looking at social networking apps, apps that I admired and speaking with colleagues to understand their needs. Wires from the hackathon were put in front of colleagues in order to get a sense of usability and sentiment. Feedback was then incorporated into the wireframes.

Once I had a sense of where I wanted the design to go (and colleague feedback to backup my decisions), I worked closely with the product manager and developers to build the application. Building the application as device agnostic was critical in order to ensure consistency across iOS and Android.

WIREFRAMES:

VISUAL DESIGNS:

NEXT STEPS:

As colleagues use this app, feedback will continue to be gathered in order to facilitate continuous improvements to BlueLink.