katiemccurdy.com

Challenge

Sample survey question results.

While I was working as an Interactive Web Producer at Eating Well, they initiated a major redesign of their website, eatingwell.com As part of this process, the site taxonomy needed to be overhauled. Because the new site wireframes were created and approved prior to the taxonomy being built, we were challenged to create a taxonomy with four first-level categories.

Process

As the leader of this phase of the redesign, I facilitated the following tasks:

• Persona Creation - obtained user data and created user personas based on that data
• Taxonomy Education - Introduced concepts of taxonomy to 2 groups, most non-web-savvy
• Topic Brainstorming - Led content brainstorming sessions to divorce from current taxonomy
• Card Sorting - Led card-sorting sessions to devise taxonomy for web
• Group Facilitation - Refined taxonomy through small group sessions
• SEO - Optimized taxonomy for SEO using Google keyword tool
• Competitive Analysis - Performed completitive analysis with other food websites
• User Testing - Wrote and sent survey to representative users to test and validate taxonomy
• Presented Recommendations - Compiled results and made recommendations on problem areas to address | See recommendation brief (pdf)

Skills Acquired & Lessons Learned

During this project, I learned to perform usability tasks on a very limited budget; because we did not have access to card-sorting software, I adapted a surveymonkey survey to serve as a card-sorting tool of sorts.

I also had the very valuable real-world experience of being inserted into the design process at an unusual point (as the wireframes had already been completed); because the wireframes were approved and complete, we had to work within their constraints. I saw the problems this caused, and I am better prepared to defend taxonomy design being performed at the beginning of a website redesign project.

Outcome

Although the new website is not yet live, eatingwell.com management approved our proposed taxonomy with minimal changes.