Information Architecture to the Rescue!

Internal Learning Portal - Responsive Website

Timeline

1 Week

My Role

Senior UX Lead

Skills used

Product Strategy

UX Lead

User Research

UX Design

Usability Testing

Goal

Determine why the internal education resource portal was not being utilized by employees and suggest changes to increase usage.

Constraints

Limited time frame for research and design due to budget for this project from that department

Summary

After evaluating the existing site and talking with users, I determined the information architecture of the existing site was the cause of the low usage. I used card sorting and user testing to create and refine a new information architecture.

Process

01 Research & Evaluation

I worked with stake holders to determine the needs, purpose and goals of several projects and or features prior to evaluation, suggestion and design work.

The hope for this internal site was that employees would use it regularly to find asynchronous learning resources as well as stay up to date on events.

Upon evaluation of the existing portal and talking with users, I found the cause of lack of use was the information architecture.

The existing portal organized content by type (article, book, video, event) rather than by use case.

By contrast, users were expecting to find resources of all types in one location that were about the same topic.

02 Information Architecture

I suggested that they move from the current infrastructure of utilizing Microsoft Sharepoint to a CMS such as Wordpress.

The Sharepoint structure meant that each file had to be in a folder to be displayed in that category - this prevented a resource from being able to be displayed in multiple categories. Since they couldn't display it in multiple categories (such as leadership and management), they defaulted to organizing by type since each resource was clearly only one type.

By moving to a CMS, they could tag resources with multiple tags and they'd be dynamically pulled onto those pages.

I completed a card-sorting activity based on the various resources that already existing and input from uses about what use case they would have in mind when arriving at the portal.

03 Testing

The information architecture was tested with several users and refined based on feedback.

Usability tests showed the improved information architecture and clean layout of the re-designed site allowed users to find what they wanted more quickly and have fewer users giving up without being successful!

Streamlined Choices
Students can choose to view their skills by unit or roadmap, by the skills we suggest to them or by filtering on their own, and by skill card or spatial-relational map.
Teacher content organizeD For how Teachers Teach
Teacher don't teach discrete skills in their classrooms - they teach in the context of units or topics. We've aligned our skills to their units and provide them information on student progress in easily digestible format to help them plan small group and individual instruction to support their core instruction.
Streamlined Choices
Students can choose to view their skills by unit or roadmap, by the skills we suggest to them or by filtering on their own, and by skill card or spatial-relational map.
Teacher content organizeD For how Teachers Teach
Teacher don't teach discrete skills in their classrooms - they teach in the context of units or topics. We've aligned our skills to their units and provide them information on student progress in easily digestible format to help them plan small group and individual instruction to support their core instruction.
Streamlined Choices
Students can choose to view their skills by unit or roadmap, by the skills we suggest to them or by filtering on their own, and by skill card or spatial-relational map.
Teacher content organizeD For how Teachers Teach
Teacher don't teach discrete skills in their classrooms - they teach in the context of units or topics. We've aligned our skills to their units and provide them information on student progress in easily digestible format to help them plan small group and individual instruction to support their core instruction.
Streamlined Choices
Students can choose to view their skills by unit or roadmap, by the skills we suggest to them or by filtering on their own, and by skill card or spatial-relational map.
Teacher content organizeD For how Teachers Teach
Teacher don't teach discrete skills in their classrooms - they teach in the context of units or topics. We've aligned our skills to their units and provide them information on student progress in easily digestible format to help them plan small group and individual instruction to support their core instruction.

Streamlined Choices
Students can choose to view their skills by unit or roadmap, by the skills we suggest to them or by filtering on their own, and by skill card or spatial-relational map.
Teacher content organizeD For how Teachers Teach
Teacher don't teach discrete skills in their classrooms - they teach in the context of units or topics. We've aligned our skills to their units and provide them information on student progress in easily digestible format to help them plan small group and individual instruction to support their core instruction.
Streamlined Choices
Students can choose to view their skills by unit or roadmap, by the skills we suggest to them or by filtering on their own, and by skill card or spatial-relational map.
Teacher content organizeD For how Teachers Teach
Teacher don't teach discrete skills in their classrooms - they teach in the context of units or topics. We've aligned our skills to their units and provide them information on student progress in easily digestible format to help them plan small group and individual instruction to support their core instruction.
Streamlined Choices
Students can choose to view their skills by unit or roadmap, by the skills we suggest to them or by filtering on their own, and by skill card or spatial-relational map.
Teacher content organizeD For how Teachers Teach
Teacher don't teach discrete skills in their classrooms - they teach in the context of units or topics. We've aligned our skills to their units and provide them information on student progress in easily digestible format to help them plan small group and individual instruction to support their core instruction.
Streamlined Choices
Students can choose to view their skills by unit or roadmap, by the skills we suggest to them or by filtering on their own, and by skill card or spatial-relational map.
Teacher content organizeD For how Teachers Teach
Teacher don't teach discrete skills in their classrooms - they teach in the context of units or topics. We've aligned our skills to their units and provide them information on student progress in easily digestible format to help them plan small group and individual instruction to support their core instruction.