IA
Information Architecture
Before
After
Feedback from Users
“I think it's really intuitive. A lot less clicks to get to where you need to be, I really like it!”
“It is very easy to use and very intuitive. I love the dashboard feel to this. Quick, clean and able to identify where I need to improve. For example my followers want more tech info but I am providing more Financial which I can adjust off of to fix. I love the ability to be within 3 clicks of everything I need to do. This improves efficiency, effectiveness and focus for the practice.”
“This has actually made my job easier too. Each customer's account is configured differently from the next. When I'm giving people instructions on where to do something, everything is visible in just a few clicks.”
The Goal
Applying industry best practices, we created a new IA that accurately grouped the product according to the user base’s mental model.
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User testing to validate the problem statement
Roadshow event to capture all scrum requirements in one planned attack
Broadcasting company wide progress
Documentation
Centralized communication channel
The Challenges
IA was one of the largest changes in the company’s history. Amongst limited internal expert knowledge, legacy code proved challenging.
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Change management for in-flight projects
The problem statement
The previous Information Architecture (IA) confused users and made navigating through the product challenging.
My Role
UI Lead
Tools
Figma, Confluence
Duration
June 2022 - May 2023
How we got there
Research led the charge. Once we had the data to prove where users struggled and what their mental model was, we next engaged our scrum teams. This is the project that began my love affair with research. Seeing first hand how proper research serves up a home run was illuminating, though I didn’t wait for the research to conclude before beginning to explore the UI.
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Every design decision was carefully considered and vetted with industry best practices. Side navigation was selected as the most flexible option for displaying labels without truncation.
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By comparing the top used product navigation patterns alongside our direct competitors in the financial technology sector, best practice patterns emerged, were documented and shared.
01-validate problem statement
New and infrequent users struggled with ambiguous labeling alongside a siloed content structure.
02-understand our users
Card sorting and interviews highlighted and captured users expectations from a jobs-to-be-done perspective.
03-Competitor Analysis
Analyzing direct competitors to perceive behaviors broad groups of users will anticipate.
Top Achievements
Central source of truth
In creating and maintaining a centralized file, fellow designers, engineers and PMs had full clarity on where critical assets were.
Centralized communication
Frequent updates to the file’s change log helped the entire team stay up to date.
Accessibility
I worked closely with the engineers to ensure the entire experience was designed for all users. The new IA meets WCAG AA Compliance.
success criteria
New and old users are enabled to navigate seamlessly throughout the product.
Outcome
An improvement of 88% rate of success from 44% with the release of the new IA.
observations from user studies
The previous navigational labels were unintuitive and confused users. By relabeling and grouping similar content together, users (and internal employees) were enabled to navigate freely with clear expectations.