Exploring Information Architecture and National Geographic Expeditions
Overview:
Information Architecture… what is it, what is it used for, and why is it important? These were the questions I set out to answer during this case study about the National Geographic Expeditions website — an online booking expedition site that features hundreds of amazing trips each year, spanning across the globe.
Hired by Nat Geo Expeditions to assess their desktop website, it was my job as the UX designer to analyze and understand the structure of their website through the use of several different design methods. With just one week to complete this project and the help of my design methods, the end goal resulted in a revised sitemap of the sites structure.
Users/Audience
Unlike other projects where I had to conduct both stages of user research and synthesize to develop a user persona, the persona for this project was already developed and presented to me. Meet Jayse! An investment advisor who enjoys traveling and wants to experience something he’ll never forget:
With the user persona already presented to me by Nat Geo, I was able to get a deeper understanding of their users in terms of their needs, goals, pain points, and behaviors. With this information in hand, I was ready to dive into the design process.
Design Process & Methods:
A Heuristic Evaluation
For the first step of my design process, I conducted a heuristic evaluation on four different pages on the Nat Geo Expeditions website. This evaluation method was used to help me identify any existing usability problems that Nat Geo was having on their site. For each of the four pages, I conducted a heuristic evaluation to examine the interface and judge its compliance to meet best practices, with recognized usability principles such as findable, accessible, clear, communicative, usable, credible, valuable, learnable, and delightful.
Once I evaluated each of the four pages, it was time for me to create a sitemap of Nat Geo’s existing website that represented its primary, secondary, and utility navigation.
Designing A Sitemap
For the second step in my design process, I created a visual sitemap to show and communicate how the content on the Nat Geo website is currently organized. During my design process, creating a sitemap was useful in that it helped to understand one of the website basic structure, hierarchy (emphasizes the relationship between the pages, represents pages as static, and translates into navigation schema). Below is my hierarchy sitemap of the current National Geographic Expeditions website, including the primary, secondary, and utility navigation.
After I created the sitemap, I wanted to consider a user flow based on the primary goal of the persona.
Understanding a User Flow
For my third step of my design process, I created a user flow for the persona Jayse. In order to create this user flow, I needed to fully understand what the main user needs, goals, pain points, and behaviors were. Looking back at the persona, I focused on Jayse wanting to experience a memorable unique trip where he would have the chance learn about local people, culture, and people. Below is a reminder of the scenario, the task I came up with, and the user flow:
Scenario: Jayse is an Investment Advisor, working at a large bank in Manhattan. Jayse is a very busy person who enjoys traveling and tries take a trip as often as possible, but doesn’t want to just be a tourist. Jayse prefers to try new things and experience the local culture.
Task: Go to the National Geographic Expeditions website on your computer, and find an unforgettable unique journey that will give you the chance to learn, experience, and connect with the local people, culture, and places.
Once I developed and documented the user flow based on the primary goal of the persona, I was ready to conduct my open and closed card sorting in order to analyze the existing information architecture information, generate ideas for improvement, and develop changes for the final site structure.
Conducting an Open Card Sort
For the fourth step in my process, I conducted an information architecture research method known as open card sorting, to discover how users interpret and categorize information (mental model).
To begin this process, I labeled 41 different index cards, each with a secondary navigation page name from the Nat Geo Expeditions website. During this time, I realized that a lot of the content on the cards that related to “Trip Types” felt extremely vague. In attempt to give these cards more context, I added keywords and synonyms of the word ‘trip’ such as: journey, expedition, excursion, voyage, and travel.
Once the cards were created and all labeled with content, it was time to conduct the open card sorting. I conducted an open card sorting on 5 different participants. Each participant was to organize the content cards into as many groups as they wanted, while also creating their own category names for each group. A few participant groupings, as well as my results are seen below:
After further analyzing my results from my open card sorting, there were several things that I noticed that may have caused the results seen in my data: misinterpretation, a misunderstanding, and variability in mental models and in the vocabulary people use to describe the same concepts.
Misinterpretation: There were quite a few cards that were misinterpreted due to the keywords I added to give context. For example, I changed the secondary navigation page name from 'Active' to 'Active Travels.' When I asked participants to explain their reasoning behind the grouping of the card 'Active Travels,' they told me they understood it as something like an active item within your cart. This resulted in things like 'Active Travels', 'New Trips,' and 'View All Destinations' to be grouped under the same category.
There were also some instances of this on my part where I did not do enough investigating on what some of the secondary navigation labels actually meant. For example, 'Around the World' actually stood for Around the World by private jet. If I had known this before conducting my open card sort, my results may have varied.
Misunderstanding: There were a few cards that were'nt grouped appropriately because the participants did'nt fully understand the context, or the card label wasn't clear enoguh. For example, many participants thought that 'Life Explorer Program' was a type of trip when in reality it is a rewards
program with Nat Geo.
Variability in Mental Mode/Vocabulary: This was a big one that contributed to the results seen in the open card sort standardized grid. While a majority of participants unfortunately made their groupings based on the keywords I wrote on the cards, some focused more on what the actually context behind the card may have been. For example, I noticed while some participants were grouping 'Birdwatching Expeditions,' 'Photography Expeditions,' and 'Nature & Wildlife Expeditions' together because of the keyword expeditions, some participants were focused on what the label actually meant to them ("Activities" and "Things To Do"). This is also seen in the standardized category 'Travel/Transport.'
After considering all of these factors, I made several changes in hopes for a more successful card sort in my closed round:
- I changed the card 'Active Travels' to 'Active Expeditions'
- I changed ‘Around the World’ to ‘Around the World by Private Jet’
- After doing further research, I changed ‘Journeys’ to ‘Journeys with
Nat Geo’ - Worried that my participants would keyword match in the closed card sort round, I decided to take the other categories made into consideration
(“Activities” and “Travel/Transport”). Based on my data from my standardized grid and the further research I took to understand each of the labels under “Trip Types” on the National Geographic Expeditions website, I created the category ‘Trip Experiences’ from “Activities,” and I created the category ‘Exclusive Traveling’ from “Travel/Transport.” These decisions were also made based on the fact that the Nat Geo website describes their Trip Types in three different ways: The first is what type of trip it is, whether that be a student trip or a family trip (‘Trip Types). The second is what you can do while on the trip, whether that is birdwatching or photography (‘Trip Experiences’). Lastly is the way the user goes about taking the trip, whether than be Around the world by private
jet, or train (Exclusive Traveling).
After further analyzing my results, I created the final categories for my closed card sort: Destination, About Us, Trip Types, Trip Experiences, and Exclusive Traveling.
Conducting a closed card sort was important because it would help evaluate the recommended changes I made in the open card sort, and it would help me analyze the results to determine the final site structure.
Conducting a Closed Card Sort
For the fifth step in my process, I conducted a closed card sorting on 5 different participants. For this round, participants were given both content cards and category cards in order to sort the cards into the categories that made sense to them. A few participant groupings, as well as my results are seen below:
After analyzing the results from my closed card sorts, I used the data I gathered to help me determine the final site structure, in other words, the new revised sitemp.
A Revised Sitemap
For my final step in my design process, I created a revised sitemap based on the results I received from both my open and closed card sort.
In the end, the biggest changes made here were the adding of the two new categories Trip Experiences and Exclusive Traveling in the primary navigation to clarify the things you can do on a trip, and what trips Nat Geo includes travel/transportation as part of the actual trip. The smaller changes are seen in what content lies in which category compared to where they were before.
Outcomes:
In the end, I was able to successfully assess the National Geographic Expeditions website with the help of the five design methods I used to help me analyze and understand the structure of the site. The heuristic evaluation helped me to identify any existing usability problems that their site was having. The sitemap allowed me to get an understanding of how the content on the website is currently organized. The user flow helped me understand what the user’s journey through the site currently looks like. Lastly, the open/card sorts helped me with three things. First, it helped me discover how users interpret and categorize information (mental model). Secondly, it helped me to generate ideas for the websites improvement. Thirdly, it allowed me to develop changes for the final site structure (seen in revised sitemap).