NBCUSoon

NBCUSoon: Empowering NBC Employees with Seamless Onboarding

Overview: NBCUSoon is an onboarding app that streamlines the first-week experience for new employees at NBCUniversal. Drawing from NBC’s vibrant brand identity, NBCUSoon leverages the familiar peacock logo and its colors to deliver a cohesive, brand-centric experience. The app’s design aims to create a welcoming and seamless onboarding experience, where employees can quickly get acquainted with their teams, explore the company’s culture, and start contributing effectively.

The Challenge:

Onboarding at large corporations like NBCUniversal can be overwhelming, with many new hires struggling to navigate their first week. Our challenge was to create an experience that eased the transition, personalized the process, and made employees feel immediately connected to the NBC brand and its unique culture.

Design Process: Crafting a Brand-Centric Experience

From the beginning, I wanted the design to feel inherently NBC. Using the colors from the iconic NBC peacock logo, I created a visual language that carried through the entire app, ensuring that new employees felt a sense of familiarity from day one. Each of the six feathers of the peacock represents one of the app’s core features, creating a cohesive and intuitive interface for users.

Six Feathers of Onboarding: NBCUSoon’s home screen features six key onboarding features—each represented by a peacock feather color:

• Get Set Up: Guides users through account creation, software setup, and IT requirements.
• Be Social: Offers networking opportunities with colleagues.
• Tour the Area: Provides virtual and in-person tours of the office space and surrounding area.
• Learn the Teams: Introduces employees to their teams through videos and documents.
• Connect: Includes important contacts, internal communications, and team introductions.
• Experience the Culture: Gives new employees insights into NBCUniversal’s core values and corporate culture.

User Research and Iteration

To ensure the app effectively met the needs of NBC’s new employees, I conducted user research through one-on-one interviews with recent hires, who expressed feelings of being lost during their first few days. Many mentioned not knowing who to contact or where to find resources, which directly influenced the app’s features, particularly Get Set Up and Connect.

I created interactive prototypes using Figma and conducted usability testing with a group of ten new hires, focusing on ease of navigation and overall usability. These tests revealed that the Get Set Up feature was the most crucial during the first two days, while Experience the Culture became more important as employees settled into their roles.

Results: Creating a Lasting Impact

NBCUSoon was presented to the company's employee orientation leaders, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. I did not stay at NBC to witness any rollout of this app, but the positive feedback from HR, especially relating to the use of NBC branding to onboard new employees made a lasting impact on the group. Later, NBC executives praised the app for its brand consistency and effectiveness in enhancing the employee experience.

Conclusion: Bringing NBC’s Brand to Life

NBCUSoon is more than just an onboarding app; it’s a gateway into NBCUniversal’s culture, offering a thoughtful, branded experience that connects employees to the company and to each other. By leveraging NBC’s iconic identity and focusing on the user experience, we created an onboarding journey that is as memorable as it is effective.

‍

‍

‍