Information Architecture

Lunapads is a vertically integrated manufacturer and web retailer of natural menstrual products. They primarily sell online through their website to an international clientele, with their primary market being individual women in the United States. As typical of most web retailers, the majority of visitors to their website are browsers/prospective customers and their conversion rate is approximately the industry average.

Lunapads hired ADGi to conduct user research, via a usability study, to find out what customers needed from the site and to suggest recommendations for a redesign of their website.

Working with Lunapads, ADGi defined the user segments and recruited participants for the study.

Twelve women were interviewed, each in an individual session with an ADGi facilitator, some online using an online meeting tool and some via face-to-face sessions at the ADGi office. The sessions were recorded and the facilitator watched the participant navigate through the Lunapads website. The women were given a set number of tasks to complete; however, much of the study was focused on understanding the underlying reasons and motivations for these users to get at the core reasons for why the conversions were not higher. To this end, the facilitator initiated discussion with the women during the test as well as left a lot of time to explore motivations and beliefs during the post-test interview.

We then wrote a report that contained the interview findings along with actionable and detailed recommendations for improving the website based on user feedback.

After the study was completed, Lunapads engaged ADGi to create the wireframes for the site. Armed with the extensive knowledge gained through the user research, ADGi created a set of wireframes. Working with Lunapads, the wireframes were refined through an iterative process and the final set of wireframes were delivered to Lunapads for them to work with their developers.

The BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) provides provincial and national leadership in public health through surveillance, detection, treatment, prevention and consultation services.

BCCDC’s website contains rich information but over time had become difficult to navigate and out-of-date. The site also serves diverse audiences: both the public for information on public health and health professionals needing forms and other tools. The site was not serving either audience effectively and was in need of an overhaul.

BCCDC hired ADGi to create a blueprint for a redesigned site that would include a new site structure and details on how users would navigate through the site.

The Process

For the first stage of the project, we developed the IA and then validated it with the three target audiences for the site: members of the public, health professionals, and the media. Using our online navigation testing tool, Navtester, we conducted three rounds of testing and refined the IA between each iteration.

We then created the redesign blueprint showing the new information architecture and site layout. 

The Solution

The first version of the IA that we tested was organized by either audience (general public, health professionals) or type of resource (publications, research, news). We discovered during the first iteration of testing that users did not easily identify with their audience.

We then moved to a topic based information architecture and began consolidating all information about a given topic together. The results in the navigation testing improved.

For the final site we have 7 main topical categories and all information related to a particular topic is found together. If a user goes to a particular disease page, for example, the section not only contains an overview but all related statistics, research, and news.

We also provide two alternative ways to navigate to content: resource pages and audience pages. The resource pages allow users to find content based on type of resource while the audience pages provide content of interest to particular groups. As all the content is cross-referenced, people can find information quickly no matter what path they use to navigate the site.

Raised Eyebrow then took the blueprint and created the visual design and final layout for the website. BCCDC launched the new site in June 2009.

TransLink engaged ADGi to create a new information architecture (IA) for their website. The overall objective was to design a new user-centric IA that supported the existing content and allowed for planned growth.

The Process

TransLink has a market research department that has done extensive research into the habits and preferences of the website users, and they have developed an active online focus group panel, called TransLink Listens, whom they survey often for opinions and attitudes.

ADGi reviewed the user research that TransLink had already done and reviewed the existing site's content and structure. Then ADGi proposed a new site structure, which we validated by doing iterative online navigation testing with members of the TransLinks Listens panel.

This iterative testing allowed ADGi to create an evidence-based site structure that met the needs of the diverse users of the TransLink website. Because the proprietary tool that ADGi uses tracks the success rates and pathways of each iteration, ADGi was able to show the many stakeholders within TransLink how the new site structure would meet their objectives of focusing on easy access to customer information.

The Solution

ADGi created a detailed site map for TransLink, that they were able to hand over to their development partner to create the new site.

TransLink launched their redesigned website in April 2009.