Cognita is a global network of independent schools, with over 90 across the world. They have grown quickly, now employing more than 10,000 employees in 12 countries. Such a rapid expansion presented employee communications and engagement challenges. And with a global footprint they wanted to be able to highlight the varied international career opportunities.
With no central place to connect their colleagues, disparate schools in far-flung places, operating in silos, and colleagues feeling unconnected, they needed an internal communications platform that allowed them to bring everyone together. A place to promote career development opportunities as well as a place to house company information, a forum to share stories, successes, resources and to engage with their international colleagues.
Through our discovery, prototyping and digital production process, we developed an online portal for the global Cognita community of over 200 schools. We built an intranet filled with user touchpoints to allow them to explore career opportunities, share information, discover other communities, find resources and watch video messages from their CEO. The site was multilingual and developed to link into their learning platform so it became a one-stop hub.
The global intranet meant that all employees had equal access to learning, development and career resources. It is a place for colleagues to connect with others, learn about working in different countries, cultures and share the experiences of schools across the globe.
We worked with Cognita on the initial discovery phase of this build – understanding their global communities, what they wanted, what they needed, how they would interact with the platform and each other, and how the technology should integrate with their other systems. It laid the foundation for designing a user experience that would inspire their colleagues.
This is the playground stage. We mapped the site, the user journeys and how the features and functionality will work. This is where we consider what experience we want people to have, how we want to connect with them and how they want to connect with each other. Working without design at this stage means we can focus on functionality.
Once we have nailed the features and functionality, we use our research to tailor designs to the audience. We believe that striking visuals are the key to your branding standing out and for the content to grab the attention it deserves. Using clever design elements, we brought forward the most important areas of the site Cognita wanted to focus on.
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