INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
You’ve been hired by National Geographic Expeditions to assess their desktop website.
METHODS
Heuristic evaluation
Sitemap
Open card sort
User flow
Closed card sort
Sitemap
TOOLS
Sketch
Google Sheets
Webaim
WAVE Extension
Draw.io
MY ROLE
Information Architect
TIME
1 Week
The User
The user is someone who likes a unique travel experience and who is interested in purchasing a trip package.
HEURISTIC EVALUATION
I wanted to make sure that out of the four pages that I chose that every element met best practices and was accessible for all users
I used Google sheets to organize all the credentials and each score for the four pages. It was here that I listed the design opportunities for each problem I came across.
At a glance it did not seem like a site that would have this many issues but it shows the importance of information architecture.
Colour contrast accessibility issues came up on every page.
The primary user wanted to find last minute style trips and there was not category that offered this.
There is no where on the site for the user to be able to sign up for a membership.
SITE MAP
I created a site map of the Primary and Secondary navigation of the current site using draw.io.
The site map gave a visual on the navigation break down and truly indicating how overwhelming the trips navigation was on the site.
OPEN CARD SORT
The sitemap also highlighted some labels that assumed to be confusing to the user. To test this I commenced five open card sorting sessions.
Through a majority rules process led to the relabel suggestions. Something to note that only one of the original site label was kept.
CLOSED CARD SORT
Now that I have the new labels, it was time to double check them with a closed card sorting using the new labels and five new users.
It was clear that the amount of activities brought confusion to the users
There was a clear need for sub categories or a new primary navigation.
SITE MAP 2.0
Now that I have gained the users insight on what they understand the content to be and how they would like the navigation to be labeled. I created a new site map.
What I learned from the card sorting was that users wanted to break up activities by what they strictly consider to be an activity and the type of trip.
USER FLOW
Our persona Jace likes to go on exciting, unique trips and has a particular interest in people and Culture.
Creating a User Flow reinsured that that the user could get to their end goal from any click they took there was never a dead end reached, thus eliminating the sites bounce rate.