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Case Study · Delta Air Lines · 2018

80,000 employees, and every division posting its own way

DeltaNet is Delta's intranet, built on SharePoint. Each division ran its own pages, so a safety procedure, a policy change, and a gate closure all looked the same. I designed the home page, a page system where you can tell what kind of post it is before you read it, and templates any division can build with. Nielsen Norman Group named it one of the ten best intranets of 2018.

Client
Delta Air Lines
Role
UX lead at Slalom. Research, comps, production design, and the UI style guide.
Work
User research, Card sorting, Wireframes, Design, Style guide
home

The default home page.

01 · The Problem

Delta has pilots, flight attendants, gate agents, mechanics, and corporate staff, all reading the same intranet. Each division published its own way.

  • A must-follow procedure looked just like a one-day bulletin.
  • Policy changes didn't say who they applied to or what to do.
  • Divisions needed a developer to build or change a page.
  • There was no shared rulebook for colors, type, buttons, or forms.
02 · It started with what people check every day

It started with what people check every day

We shadowed employees across divisions and turned their daily tasks into personas and a mental model: what a performance analyst checks first, what a line mechanic needs before a shift. Those answers decided what goes on the home page.

personasAccuracy Anne, a performance analyst, and Technical Tom, a line mechanic.
03 · From daily tasks to structure

From daily tasks to structure

The mental model mapped what each persona checks and in what order. That became the Axure wireframes: pages, components, and taxonomy settled before any visual design.

mental model + wireframesThe mental model, and the wireframes it led to.
04 · A home page built around your job

A home page built around your job

The default home leads with one big story and DNN feature stories beside it. Below: a news stream you can sort by type, so division news, bulletins, and SOPs stay apart. Then the market tracker, DeltaTube, performance metrics against goal, a note from leadership, and your activity feed. Press My tools and a panel opens over the hero with your job tools, projects and groups, links, and recent documents.

my toolsMy tools open: job tools, projects and groups, links, and recent documents.
05 · Division pages

Division pages

Each division gets its own page inside the same frame: its own hero, campaigns, and a news stream you can sort by date, type, or job role. The right rail holds the division's apps and communities, its scores against goal, and its videos.

division pageAircraft Customer Service.
06 · News people can talk back to

News people can talk back to

Articles open with a full-width photo and the title on a white card over it. Likes, comments, and shares show real counts, and employees ask questions right on the post. The team that wrote it answers there.

articleA news article with its comment thread.
07 · A style guide the whole team could build from

A style guide the whole team could build from

Colors, Open Sans from H1 to H6, three button families with normal, hover, and active states, icons, form fields with focus and error states, and the news slider. Version 1.0 shipped with the site.

style guideColors, type, buttons, and form states from the UI style guide.
08 · What Made It Work
  • Three page types you can tell apart at a glance.
  • A content template behind every policy update.
  • A web-part grid so divisions build pages without a developer.
  • Comments and likes on internal news.
  • A documented component system in 2018, before "design system" was the usual term.
09 · What Happened

It shipped to 80,000 employees worldwide, and Nielsen Norman Group named it one of the ten best intranets of 2018.

  • Divisions built and updated their own pages without waiting on IT.
  • Employees could tell a required procedure from a bulletin at a glance.
  • The style guide kept every new page consistent as the site grew.