I Love NY… or do I?
A Case Study on ILoveNY.com’s Information Architecture
As a UX designer, I was tasked with analyzing the Information Architecture of the I Love NY website over the course of a week. This process included: creating a user flow to reflect the task of the given persona, analyzing heuristics of the different pages encountered during this user-flow, site-mapping the original site, conducting an open and closed card-sort with participants to access the primary and secondary navigation of the site and whether or not placement of navigation options made sense. Following my analyzation, my task was to then create a revised site map that reflects the data gathered during analysis.
Let’s Map It!
Creating a site map of the existing site was the most straight forward part of this process. I made note of all of the primary and secondary navigation of the site and laid it out on a hierarchy. At the top is “Home” as this is where all navigation originates from. On the right are the utilities of the site: functions that are separate from primary and secondary navigation and are typically prominently placed at the top of the website (ie. sign up, shopping cart, account information). Next comes the primary navigation, which are main categories on a website (ie. electronics, agriculture, education). Finally I mapped the secondary navigation, which are subcategories related to the primary navigation categories in which they’re located. Seeing a sites navigation through a site-map allows me as a designer to visualize the layout of a website without all the “dressing” of a fully functional site; stripping a site down to it’s barebones and allowing a designer to analyze how things are placed on a website and see any common patterns or duplicates of categories.
How do we get there and is it useful?
To give some context to the goal at hand, I was given a persona named Sam. Sam is a busy working professional with weekends free and wants to explore more of New York; one of his interests includes visiting Museums. With this information, I was able to create a user flow (a diagram of the pathway a target user can take to fulfill their needs) based on the task; “I want to find a weekend activity that includes visiting a museum.” Putting myself in Sam’s shoes, I navigated the site and made note of the pages I visited and tasks I had to perform to find a museum activity. There was a total of 4 pages I ended up going through to accomplish the task; the next step was to analyze the heuristics (examining the interface and judging its usability) on the pages visited during the users journey.
While the site overall met expectations and standards, there were a few issues with usability. The site did not make it easy for those with disabilities to easily navigate their way; opting instead to give the user the option to download a separate add-on to make the site accessible-friendly. The “contact us” page was tucked away in the secondary navigation instead of being displayed more prominently, making it inconvenient for a user to contact a real person. I also found that there were many duplicate options in the secondary navigation that largely led the user to the same page (such as History and Nature). Finally, the search bar function was tucked away in the utilities section of the site instead of being more prominently displayed and obvious for the user to discover. Overall the site had useful content and is rich in information about the different activities and areas in the State of New York; however, the layout of the site left something to be desired. Next I had to go out in the field to analyze the sites navigation with actual people; let’s card sort!
Card Sorting
Using the site-map I was able to write down the different categories of secondary navigation on index cards and had participants place these topics into groups that made sense, I then gave them cards with the primary navigation written on them and had them place each one on the group they felt most accurately encompassed by the primary navigation choice (open card sorting). After analyzing this data I created new primary navigation topics that better fit with the secondary navigation groups people were most frequently putting together. I then had new participants place the secondary navigation underneath these new categories of primary navigation which were already placed for the user (closed card sorting). Some of the opinions i heard most frequently were:
“Having an events page seems redundant, why not just put this underneath ‘Things to Do’?”
“Where does ‘Blog’ fit into all of this?”
“The ‘Contact Us’ page seems out of place”
Revision and Next Steps
With all the data I collected through this entire process I was able to revise the sitemap to make the site more useful and have placement of navigation elements make sense and easier for users to find. While the changes were influenced by data, further research is needed to discover potential issues with the revised navigation. I will now conduct further card sorting to see if the participants thought process aligns with how the navigation of the new site hierarchy is laid out. Our job as UX Designers is never truly “finished” and there will always be ways to improve the functionality and usability of a website or app. If we stay ahead of the curve and do our due diligence using tools such as card sorting and heuristics, we can suss out issues users may have with the site and aim to ensure that users don’t leave the site out of frustration with being able to find information relevant to them. The main takeaway I had from this process is, a site or app can be rich with information helpful to the target user, but if this information is hard to find or placed in sections of the site that users wouldn’t think to look for them, it makes the information almost useless.
