UBER | WHOBER
Enabling employees to create and discover internal communities
Content
Company
The research revealed three major problems.
Product
Whober
My Role
Senior Product Designer
Date
Improve the experience of discovering, creating, and managing internal communities.
Scope
Improve the experience of discovering, creating, and managing internal communities.
Context
Uber operates globally with 40,000 thousands of employees distributed across 70 countries, with different teams and time zones.
Although many internal communities existed, employees struggled to:
• Discover relevant groups
• Understand different community types
• Create new groups without engineering support
This fragmented knowledge sharing across the company. So Whober was created as a centralized platform where employees could create and participate in internal communities.
However, the experience had major usability challenges..
Problem
Internal research revealed several friction points in the experience.
Employees reported difficulty navigating the platform and understanding how to create or participate in communities.
Key issues included:
Confusion between different types of groups
Difficulty discovering relevant communities
A slow and complex group creation process
Dependency on engineering support to create new groups
These issues prevented employees from actively participating in the platform and limited the growth of internal communities.
Research
To better understand the challenges employees faced when using the platform, I conducted a combination of qualitative and quantitative research.
This included:
User interviews with employees from different teams and regions
A survey to capture broader usage patterns
Usability analysis of the existing platform
The goal was to understand how employees discovered communities, participated in discussions, and created new groups.
Through this research, I was able to identify the main pain points affecting user engagement and map the most critical friction points in the experience.
Key Insights
The research revealed three major usability issues that were limiting employee participation on the platform.
Confusing group structure
78%
of users reported difficulty understanding the differences between group types.
This created uncertainty when deciding:
• where to join a community
• which group type to create
• how communities were organized
Poor community discoverability
71%
of employees struggled to find relevant communities within the platform.
Users often faced challenges when trying to:
• search for existing communities
• navigate on group categories
• identify communities related to their interests
Complex group creation process
92%
of users reported that creating a new group was slow and complicated.
The process often
required:
• Multiple manual steps
• Manual requests
• Dependency on technical support
Benchmark Analysis
In addition to user research, I analyzed existing platforms that successfully support community building to identify patterns that improve community structure, discovery, and participation.
Three tools were analyzed: Workplace from Facebook, Facebook Groups, and LinkedIn Groups.
These platforms were selected because they manage communities at scale and provide different approaches to organizing discussions and groups.
Workplace from Facebook
• Clear separation between groups and conversations
• Structured navigation that improves access to communities
• Familiar social interaction patterns that encourage participation
Facebook
Groups
• Strong discovery through search and recommendations
• Clear group identity with descriptions and visual elements
• Simple onboarding process when joining communities
Linkedin
Groups
Communities organized around professional topics
• Discussions centered on expertise and shared interests
• Strong alignment between professional identity and community participation
Across all three platforms, successful community systems share common patterns: clear group structures, strong community identity, and efficient discovery mechanisms.
These insights helped guide the redesign of Whober’s community structure and group creation experience.
Design Strategy
Employees should be able to create communities independently without needing engineering support.
The goal was to remove technical barriers and allow teams to start communities quickly when needed.
1 - Clear community structure
The platform needed a simpler and more understandable group structure. This would help employees quickly understand the purpose of each community and where they belong.
2 - Improved community discovery
The platform needed a simpler and more understandable group structure. This would help employees quickly understand the purpose of each community and where they belong.
3 - Improved community discovery
Communities should be easier to find through better navigation, clearer categorization, and improved browsing experiences. This would allow employees to discover relevant groups and participate more actively.
User Journey & Story Mapping
To better understand how employees interacted with communities, I mapped the end-to-end journey of how users discover, evaluate, join, and create groups on the platform.
This exercise helped the team visualize the full experience and identify where the biggest friction points occurred.
Early Exploration & Sketches
With the key problems identified and the design principles defined, I began exploring different ways to simplify the community experience.
The goal during this phase was to quickly test ideas for improving community discovery, group structure, and the creation flow.
I started with low-fidelity sketches to rapidly iterate on multiple concepts before moving to higher-fidelity prototypes.
Prototyping
Based on the early explorations, I developed interactive prototypes to validate new approaches for community discovery and group creation.
The prototypes focused on two critical areas of the experience:
• Discovering and browsing communities
• Creating new groups through a simplified flow
Improved community discovery
The new exploration introduced clearer navigation and a more structured way to browse communities.
Key improvements included:
• Clearer group categories
• Improved visual hierarchy
• Easier navigation between communities
These changes helped users quickly understand what communities existed and where to find relevant discussions.
Simplified group creation flow
A new step-by-step creation flow was designed to make it easier for employees to start a community.
The new flow focused on:
• Reducing the number of steps required
• Clarifying group types and requirements
• Allowing users to create communities independently
This approach significantly reduced the friction that previously required manual processes and engineering involvement.
Usability Testing
To validate the proposed solution, I conducted usability tests with employees who had previously interacted with the platform.
The goal was to evaluate whether the redesigned experience improved community discovery, clarity of group structures, and the group creation process.
Participants were asked to complete common tasks such as:
• Finding relevant communities
• Joining a group
• Creating a new community
Final Solution
The final design introduced a clearer and more intuitive experience for discovering, joining, and creating communities within Whober.
The redesign focused on reducing friction, improving clarity, and enabling employees to participate more actively in internal communities.
Final Solution
The redesign significantly improved how employees interacted with Whober and reduced the friction that previously limited community participation.
By simplifying the platform structure and enabling self-service group creation, employees were able to engage with communities more easily and start new initiatives faster.
Key outcomes included:
• Employees could create communities without engineering support
• The group creation time was reduced from around two weeks to a self-service process
• Communities became easier to discover and navigate
• Participation and collaboration across teams increased
The improvements helped transform Whober into a more accessible platform for internal collaboration, enabling employees across different regions and teams to connect and share knowledge more effectively.
Final Solution
This project reinforced several important lessons about designing internal platforms at scale.
Empowering users through self-service
Reducing dependency on technical teams enables faster adoption and encourages employees to take initiative when creating new communities.
Clarity drives engagement
When structures and categories are easy to understand, users feel more confident navigating the platform and participating in discussions.
Internal tools deserve great UX
Even though Whober is an internal product, improving the experience had a meaningful impact on collaboration, knowledge sharing, and team connection across the company.