Accenture COBE

Accenture's Code of Business Ethics chatbot and responsive website design

Summary

We were challenged to redefine the user experience for Accenture’s Code of Business Ethics, transforming it from a mandatory document into an engaging resource employees actively want to explore. Our solution needed to be mobile-friendly and highly marketable, showcasing Accenture’s commitment to a culture of ethics while mitigating the risks and costs associated with unethical behavior.

Highlights of my work include:

1. Interviewed and gathered requirements from stakeholders and users.

2. Led stakeholder workshops.

3. Defined concepts and brand identity for chatbot.

4. Designed responsive website experience.

5. Worked with instructional designers to help manage consistency between training materials and design.

Deliverables:

1. Research & analysis readout

2. UX strategy

3. Chatbot identity design

4. Wireframe design

5. Prototypes

6. Style guide

7. Final hi-fi design for dev handoff

Research

Accenture employees from around the world were surveyed and interviewed to learn what people expect from the Code of Business Ethics, how they need to use it and how they need to access it.

We found that Accenture employees want their Code to guide and educate employees, be highly accessible, inform company culture, and connect Accentures values.

“Trying to find what you need feels like going dumpster diving for policies.”

— Employee from Italy

“Give [us] information as if we were talking to a physical person.””

— Employee from North America

An intuitively designed web experience for the Code of Business Ethics (COBE) was essential, but users also emphasized the importance of having a more human, conversational option for accessing information quickly in specific situations. Additionally, the ability to report ethics concerns anonymously was a top priority, particularly in regions where workplace retaliation is a significant concern.

“It’s important to encourage all at every level to speak up and make sure they feel comfortable to raise concerns at any time.”

— Employee from India

Workshops

Design Principles

Our user-centered UX strategy was led by 6 design principles based on research themes of education, engagement and trust.

Ideation led to consensus that a chatbot, embedded into a responsive website, would be an effective tool for users to quickly engage with the Code and receive a more personal experience.

Design

Interaction Design & Wireframing

We designed the bot to guide users through teachable moments with simple, intuitive, conversational interactions. When a user asks the bot a question, the bot encourages them to read relevant sections of the Code. If the user’s question is broad or unclear the bot will provide a menu of contextual choices with which the user can respond. For some topics, the bot will be clear about how the user can reach out to a person.

We divided to conquer and began tackling various aspects of the work simultaneously. We added a content strategist and began focusing on content design, interaction design and visual design while communicating daily with an offshore, MS Bot Framework development team.

Storyboard showing MS Teams collaboration concept.

Wireframes of various states of the bot and website integration.

Bot Branding

Branding work included brand definition brainstorm sessions and research of bot design trends for inspiration.

We had a lot of fun designing the bot’s personality and chose the COBE acronym for the name to reinforce it’s purpose.

Bot design trends researched for inspiration.

Visual Design Exploration

As we moved to established a voice and tone that was trustworthy, friendly and positive, we began working on visual design treatments that imbued those same characteristics.

Working with our stakeholders from Accenture, we explored various options for color, typography, iconography and the COBE avatar.

Stakeholder presentation of early visual design treatments.

Final Bot & Website Design Integration

Code of Business Ethics website internal page. — Ethics behavior fundamentals

Style Guide

We provided a design style guide for developers and future phase designers as well as an editorial style guide which defines how bot content is structured and maintained.

The design style guide includes styles for the COBE identity and avatar and site design, including the grid system, typography, fonts, color, photography, iconography, chatbot elements, etc.

The editorial style guide includes the chatbot function, parts of a chat and the steps for writing a response.

Part of the editorial style guide showing how a bot response is structured.

Promotion

The global face for Accenture’s Code of Business Ethics

The COBE chatbot is the global face for Accenture’s Code of Business Ethics and is part of their current “Integrity in Action” ethics promotion campaign.

The COBE website and embedded chatbot experience are utilized by Accenture in recruiting efforts and in ethics training for all 450k+ Accenture employees.

the COBE chatbot has been written up by the Wall Street Journal and promoted by Accenture in lead-up to their participation at the WEF in Davos, Switzerland in 2018.

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