Shortly after assuming the role of Head of Strategic Communications with the U.S. Marine Corps, I realized I lacked an effective tool to deliver internal communications. Email doesn’t cut it anymore, Uncle Sam. Though beyond the scope and budget of my team, I made it our mission to rethink how 12,000 employees world-wide collaborated to support Marines. The result was the creation of a secure intranet that valued both utility and aesthetics.
Built on a SharePoint platform underutilized throughout the DoD, our goal was to push the mechanics to the limit to create a frictionless experience that felt unequivocally aligned with the Marine Corps brand.
We not only needed the site to be accessible across screen sizes and geographies, but optimized for usability on IE8 and other legacy systems still common within the military. This was no small challenge and required using antiquated HTML to achieve modern interactivity, but never at the expense of the UI/UX.
To maximize engagement and crowd source expansion, employees were given the ability to edit content, add pages, collect and extract data. We developed a series of virtual trainings and quality control policies, while creating custom data processing tools for individual units.
Though the largest hurdle was to overcome the negative stigma associated with SharePoint, the website received critical praise across the DoD, resulting in numerous accolades for my team and 75K net subscribers within 2 years. With smart design and code, mission accomplished.