Norfolk Southern Smart Workplace Enterprise Solution
Project Overview
Norfolk Southern values their employees and wanted to provide a mobile experience to help transition into the new company headquarters.
Norfolk Southern (NS), a transformative tech company, opened a new headquarter building in late 2021. Along with a new building, they’ve been redefining their company culture. The new building and office environment represents the shift in company culture emphasizing communal space, a shift in management styles, employees no longer tied to their desks, and providing resources and amenities on campus.
App Goals
Optimize system for room booking and amenities using the office365 integration
Space utilization metrics (find out which rooms are not getting used enough within their office and which are getting more use)
Effectively manage employee parking reservations
Better feedback on IT and Facility issues
Navigate through the new building to find meeting spaces and resources
Communicate important updates about the office and increase employee engagement by notifying important events and opportunities for all employees
Easy transition into new culture and adoption of the mobile app for daily use
My Role
Lead UX/UI Designer
Project Duration
February 2020 – January 2022
Project Scope
Tools Used
Discovery Workshop
We, the Phunware (PW) team traveled to Norfolk Southern’s headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia for a comprehensive two-day discovery workshop to align on business objectives, expectations, and mobile platform capabilities.
The intention of the Discovery Workshop is to produce and discuss a plan for implementing the mobile experience and for PW to provide direction and a refined project plan.
I helped lead a 3-day Discovery Workshop to understand the vision, goals, and audience. The Discovery was critical to providing direction for the project and prioritizing features. I designed activities for the workshop and facilitated sessions with the customer. I researched to understand the industry, competitors, and how to make them stand out from the crowd.
Our Team
Program Manager
VP of Customer Success
VP of Engineering
iOS & Android Development Managers
VP of Sales
UX Manager
UX/UI Designer (me)
Workshop Activities
All activities were done onsite in paper format and later transferred to digital documentation.
User Archetypes
Through the discovery process, our primary users were defined. There were two subsets of users we would be designing for.
User Journey
Understanding our users day-to-day routine to explore other features that may be useful and enhance understanding for features requested.
Empathy Map
This exercise helped define priority features. Some features were mentioned multiple times allowing us to see what our stakeholder thought was most important and where users would benefit most.
Affinity Mapping
Gathering more qualitative data about our users.
App Architecture
Through card sorting, the feature set was mapped out so users would intuitively know where to find features they are looking for. Because of the many features and complexity of the app, some features are shown in multiple areas of the app for ease of use.
App Map & Wireframes
App Map and User Flows were made in Overflow. Wireframes were created in UXPin.
App Map and User Flows were made in Overflow. Wireframes were created in UXPin.
Below are some wireframes.
Visual Identity
Design System
Icons
NS Sourced by OpenSource Material
Theming
Following Material Design Theming Structure
Final Designs
Fusion 650, The Norfolk Southern Employee App is available in the Enterprise App Store for iOS and Android. This app has been in support since February 2022.
Typography
Family: Adelle Sans
Styles: Light, Regular, Semibold, Bold
Buttons & Cards
Project Takeaways
As a team, we learned so much on this project. The Norfolk Southern Fusion 650 app is the largest app Phunware has worked on to date. Norfolk Southern worked with third parties on API integrations for the Fusion 650 app. Some APIs were being built custom for this project and based on our designs. This caused many timeline inefficiencies and testing issues. The challenges faced with APIs led to many adjustments to the designs after approval and while in development. Documenting a change log and keeping version history was my biggest takeaway for the best communication. Planning phased app releases is a great way to stay on track with launching new features and updates while keeping your client engaged with their new product.