KIEWIT CONSTRUCTION

ENTERPRISE LEVEL CUSTOM GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE SOLUTION

MY ROLE: UXD – UID

My Task: UX Design, UI Design, Wireframes, Prototypes, Branding Customized Search with XML data, Product Documentation

ACTIONS

  • The goal of the Google Search Appliance (GSA) at Kiewit was to have a universal search tool that improves efficiency for their internal users.  The Google Search Appliance(s) would be internal only and available for their users to explore relevant project data.

  • Kiewit is one of North America’s largest and most respected construction and engineering organizations.

  • The employee-owned company operates through a network of offices and projects in the United States, Canada and Australia.

  • Nearly all construction projects are staffed by one or more owners within Kiewit company.

  • This means there are thousands of workers who relay on the data that the company has, the quicker and easier they can order supplies, look at orders, etc the better the companies goals are achieved.

*Please feel free to ask me questions regarding this project. It is a private sector application

CHALLENGES

  • Kiewit did not have an enterprise class search engine that could search structured and well un-structured data.

  • Over 40% of the responses on the 2014 “Annual Application Satisfaction Survey”  indicated that employees say “information is hard to find” or “I spend too much time looking for documents, but never find what I’m looking for. 

  • Improving the usefulness and relevance of searching will impact nearly every Kiewit employee and allow each one to more efficiently find what they’re looking for.

  • Kiewit has a high priority for taking care of its employees, search engine solution to provide immediate efficiency to all Kiewit users.

  • Our team was tasked to flush out every obstacle with limitations to several systems, design a User Interface that was friendly and replicated Google Search.

SITUATION

  • Analyzed user data and created user stories, user flows, wireframes, prototypes, high fidelity graphics.
  • Created an ability to customize the search interface with ease.
  • Customize result content (combine sources ability to bring in all information in a central location.
  • Made different types of results based on what the job function is or past search queries.
  • Development of new site search. (UI/UX Enhancements)
  • A small group of us was given a war room and a blocked schedule to follow the Google Ventures (GV) Design Sprint methodology.
  • Defined and implemented the enterprise level Google Search engine solution to provide immediate efficiency to all Kiewit users.
  • Created a Initial Draft Creation + added requirements based on project initiation documentation and project team discussions.

GV Design Sprint & Value

  • Using GV was a great ideas as its use is “To answer critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers before launching a product or a feature of a product.”
  • Five-day process taking a product or feature from design through prototyping and testing. It’s also very important to have a dedicated room for the duration of the sprint, usually a conference room with lots of whiteboards.
  • Much of the magic in design sprints comes from the sense of urgency. By their very nature, startups always feel time-constrained; the short, focused time of the sprint adds another constraint.
  • Working together in a sprint, we were able to shortcut the endless-debate cycle and compress months of time into a single week.
  • The GV sprint gave our team a clear focus to learning without building and launching.

ENTERPRISE LEVEL CUSTOM GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE SOLUTION

Prototype was created using Invision application adding an easy, quick reiteration cycle with stakeholders

RESULTS & OUTCOME

  • Search engine searches, retrieves and presents the data and the artifacts from the SharePoint (BPOS-D) data source.
  • Made the ability to search the tough 20%.
  • Created ability for programs to interact with the search application via API or other means.
  • Created ability to return relevant data results.
  • Reduced level of effort to set up new content sources.
  • Created the ability to include or exclude search by source system.
  • Google Custom Search enabled Kiewit to create a search engine for their corporation,  creating a custom search engine that allowed search structured and well un-structured data.
  • Kiewit using Google Custom Search provided structured search operators that enabled them to drill down into subsets of search results based on structured data found in Kiewit’s pages or in the metadata associated with the images on their sites & internal tools.
  • Utilizing the topical search engine that focuses on a particular topic. It covers a part of the whole Web rather than a particular data set – this is possible because Google Custom Search allows you to include multiple websites & internal data in the same engine to output an internal tool that represented a Google Search, which allowed the employees to immediately be able to understand the layout and UX experience.