Partner Hub
Starbucks | Desktop, Tablet, Mobile
Designing for Task-Focused Simplicity
Partner Hub is Starbucks' primary intranet platform for employees and is the central destination for operational resources, benefits, company news, and critical updates across desktop, tablet, and mobile. I designed Starbucks' primary employee platform from the ground up, transforming an existing complex, difficult-to-navigate experience into a task-focused hub optimized for speed and clarity.
Designing around what partners need
The new site created an opportunity to better support the Starbucks' workforce. It was essential to understand how retail partners used the platform in their day-to-day work. My approach included:
• Conducting surveys and interviews with Starbucks retail partners
• Identifying the highest-value tasks and most common use cases
• Prioritizing usability issues that created friction during task completion
• Building and validating prototypes with partners in active store environments
• Iterating designs based on real-world feedback and testing insights
Below you can see some of my initial lo-fi designs in my process:
Elevating and improving the platform
I focused on the areas with the greatest impact on partner productivity and satisfaction. Key design initiatives included:
• Creating a modern visual language aligned with Starbucks branding
• Redesigning the home experience to surface the most relevant tools and content
• Simplifying a complex mega-menu navigation system
• Improving information architecture to reduce searching and guesswork
• Designing intuitive content experiences that help partners complete tasks faster
The result was a cleaner, more focused experience that made critical information easier to discover and navigate. As an example, here are some of the templates that helped make this possible for content-creators of the site:
Delivering measurable business impact
The redesigned Partner Hub produced significant improvements across both usability and partner perception.
Results included:
• 32% increase in System Usability Scale (SUS) from fair to above average
• 48% improvement in partner satisfaction and approval
• 100% task completion success rate for multiple high-frequency workflows
• Strong gains in perceived efficiency and ease of use
Major SUS score improvements:
Reception by Starbuck's partners
"It's much more functional than the old Partner Hub."
"Easy to navigate to as my task is very front and center."
"Content is so easy to find, there is no guesswork."
"Having the buckets of work and communication easily visible makes it easy to execute certain tasks."