Portal Usability Survey (2016)

Macy's needed to understand how portal 'gatekeepers'—power users who help colleagues navigate MyMacys.net—actually found information, identifying whether official navigation worked or if institutional knowledge and workarounds dominated actual usage patterns.

Designed questionnaire targeting portal gatekeepers and power users | Analyzed results to understand actual information-seeking behaviors | Created report documenting findings and implications for portal navigation

Revealed how experienced users actually navigated portal versus design assumptions | Identified successful workarounds that could be formalized into features | Provided insights to improve information architecture based on gatekeeper patterns

Study your power users—gatekeepers develop survival strategies that reveal what's broken and what works. Their workarounds are often better solutions than what you designed, and formalizing those patterns helps everyone. The MyMacys.net Usability Questio aire—Results and Analysis. Conducted a detailed survey of gatekeepers to determine how they went about finding things on the portal. These are the results.