RETAIL HR PLATFORM RESEARCH · 2022
Albertsons
Benefits
Platform
Usability research, strategic assessment, and findings synthesis for Albertsons' enterprise employee benefits platform, delivering prioritized recommendations to improve the Oracle HCM experience for a national workforce.
USABILITY RESEARCH
HEURISTIC EVALUATION
STATEGIC ASSESSMENT
SYTHESIS
12
USERS
4
RESEARCHERS
4
GROUPS
4
WEEKS
ORACLE HCM PLATFORM
Test whether the Oracle HCM platform actually meets employee needs, then give the product team a clear, prioritized path to fix what doesn't."
A team of IBM researchers partnered with Albertsons to evaluate their Oracle HCM benefits platform during development. The platform was intended to streamline the employee benefits journey for a national workforce. Our objective was to test real usability against real employee needs, assess the Oracle workflow against industry standards, and deliver a strategic readout that product teams could act on immediately.
Improving the platform
01 - Research Strategy
THE CHALLENGE
A complex platform, a high-stakes rollout
Benefits platforms touch every employee. A confusing interface doesn't just cause frustration; it causes enrollment errors, missed coverage, and calls to HR. Albertsons needed confidence that the Oracle HCM experience was actually working before deploying it to their workforce.
THE APPROACH
Two methods, one complete picture
The research combined moderated usability testing with four focus groups and a structured heuristic evaluation graded against industry standards. Running both methods together gave the team both behavioral evidence from real users and expert analysis against professional benchmarks, making the findings harder to dismiss.
Testing, evaluation,
synthesis
02 - The work
NOTES & SYNTHESIS
HEURISTIC EVALUATION SCORECARD
HEURISTIC EVALUATION
FULL SYNTHESIS READOUT
Why it was
designed this way
03 - Creative Direction
01
Pairing usability testing with heuristics
Usability testing tells you what users struggle with. Heuristic evaluation tells you why. Running both methods gave the team behavioral evidence and expert diagnosis in one engagement, producing recommendations that were grounded in real behavior and validated against professional standards.
02
Structured note-taking as research design
Notes from each session were organized by pain points, opportunities, body language, quotes, and questions rather than just transcribed. This taxonomy made synthesis faster and ensured the findings reflected the full texture of each user's experience, not just what they said aloud.
03
Prioritizing recommendations by feasibility
The final readout organized recommendations by both impact and feasibility. A finding the product team can't act on before launch isn't useful. Framing recommendations around what was immediately actionable versus longer-term gave stakeholders a clear decision framework rather than a list of problems.
04
Accessibility testing as part of the evaluation
Manual accessibility testing was built into the heuristic evaluation phase rather than being treated as a separate workstream. For a benefits platform touching a national workforce, accessibility isn't optional. Including it in the core evaluation ensured it was weighted alongside usability findings in the final readout.
Research that
protects people
04 - Outcomes
Pre-launch confidence
Usability findings from 12 real employees gave Albertsons evidence-based confidence in the platform before deployment, reducing the risk of adoption failure and HR escalations at scale.
Prioritized recommendations
A full readout organized by feasibility and impact gave the product team a concrete action plan, not just a list of problems, with clear guidance on what to address before launch versus post-deployment.
Accessibility baseline
Manual accessibility testing integrated into the evaluation established a compliance baseline for the Oracle HCM implementation, supporting Albertsons' obligation to serve a diverse national workforce.
MY ROLE
UX researcher across testing, heuristics, synthesis, and strategic readout.
USABILITY TESTING
STRATEGIC ASSESSEMENT
HEURISTIC EVALUATION
STAKEHOLDER READOUT
USABILITY TESTING
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS
Tools: Miro · PowerPoint