What were the problems?
Bauer Xcel Media was restructuring their IA - cleaning out unused categories, tags, and other hierarchy to strengthen SEO. A part of the strategy was a redesign of the navigation.
- How do we show the many categories now in the new navigation?
- What kinds of utilities are also required on the navigation?
Bauer Xcel Media
- My role - Design, UX
- Tools - Coda
- Platforms - Jira, Realtime Board
What was the approach?
Stakeholder Interviews
BXM took on a massive cleanup of their information architecture to create a flatter hierarchy. Stakeholders were interviewed to get a better idea of their requirements: how many categories, how often the navigation might be updated, category naming conventions, and utility requirements such as search and social sharing.
Competitive Analysis / Focused Ideation
Analyzing competitor's websites with similar flat navigation IA, I teamed up with Product and Audience Development to determine which features and styles would work best for BXM. Focus on the mobile experience was paramount because 80% of users are on phones.
Hi-Fi Prototypes
I created a few hi-fi prototypes to present to the editorial teams. Based on their input, we were able to narrow down the design to the best possible configuration to suit stakeholders and users. I had data from previous A/B experiments on utilities such as a newsletter icon and subscription CTAs and I incorporated those findings.
What were the learnings or compromises?
- Stakeholders and I are not the users! Since 80% of users are on phones, the designs had to be mobile first.
- To make more content discoverable, the navigation needed to include more tags/categories and should be configurable by the editors as needed. The navigation needed to hold a lot of information, while also being flexible enough to change without breaking the layout.
- If a category is important enough to include in the navigation, the design should accommodate everything. Hiding them behind a "More" tag signals unimportance.