How Heuristics and Information Architecture Drive Change
Helping The San Francisco Public Library restructure their website with the power of data and trend analysis.
In today’s professional and social environment, it is virtually impossible to stay relevant and accessible without an online presence.
All the way from what delivery app you will order from because it’s easier/funner to use, to evaluating a company’s standing in the market when considering relevance and long term standing.
In our case, when evaluating a publicly funded entity such as The San Francisco Public Library (SFPL), there are quite a few things to take into consideration.
We will be walking through different methodologies and tests we conducted, to ultimately better understand the original reasoning behind SFPL’s current online presence (more specifically, their website) and how it can be improved.
To better understand how we moved through the research, we will be breaking down the categories as follows:
- Research & Analysis: Understanding where we are and where we want to go.
- Information Architecture Research: Leveraging UX methodologies to address the problem(s)
- Proposed Solutions: Based on the research, what’s a better fit.
- Recommendations & Next steps: What to do to get there.
Let’s dive in!
Research & Analysis
We will focus on a few different methodologies that relate to SFPL’s CURRENT standing in the market, how they compare to their peers, and notable trends to mimic.
Before diving into the nitty gritty research data we have to consider — who are we thinking about when going over friction points, needs, and aspirations of using the SFPL website?
In this case, Kelley will be our guiding star. Kelley is the persona we have created after considering the different types of users SFPL attracts.
In a nutshell, Kelley loves the library, is a huge bookworm and likes to attend events to discuss them, but her biggest pain point is that she has little to no free time.
As we move along our research, we will keep Kelley front and centered in our minds.
We used the following methodologies:
- Business Model Canvas
- Competitive Matrix
- Feature Analysis — Competitive & Comparative
Why did we use these?
These can help show what the library already does, and who/what/how they help, understand and identify the core building blocks of SFPL with relation to its competitors, and how the library’s direct competitors and indirect competitors can relate through different features.
These approaches are necessary, especially this early in the evaluation, to help guide what to focus on when diving deeper into the SFPL offerings.
What did we learn?
There is a clear trend relating to the pros/cons of those industry players that are either in a fully virtual or fully physical space, those that can adapt to both have (and will continue) to overcome the test of longevity.
One of the main value propositions provided by the library are related to their knowledge & opportunity resources, and physical presence in the community. And SFPL needs to take into consideration that curated content is a growing trend in the industry, it is proven to be very desired amongst users, and this is bound to provide a competitive edge to those who offer it.
Information Architecture Research
Now that we have an understanding of SFPLs role in the industry and where we are at, we will now dive into differences in performance between the existing navigation and what we designed based on the data.
We used the following methodologies:
- Tree Testing
- Card Sorting (Open and Closed)
- Heuristics
Why did we use these?
Following the principles of UX, at a high level, these methodologies gave us insights on how a user perceives the navigational structure within a website. By creating tasks, we were able to see where the participant would intuitively navigate towards, if the flow of the existing library’s categories and content are working, and help us understand a user’s natural mental model.
These were done over 2 rounds of testing, with a total of 34 participants across all tests, all using Optimal Workshop.
Round 1 was with the original navigation and Round 2 was with the proposed navigation to be able to see the differences in performance.
What did we learn?
Across most (if not all tests) we noticed a trend where from Round 1 to Round 2 we saw it was taking users longer to finish the tasks, however, users were completing the tasks more successfully.
- This is very important data because the success rate is promising, now it’s a matter of evaluating the best location for the items to go within the categories.
An alarming data point we noticed from Round 1 is that only half of the users categorized the cards correctly on three of the 4 tabs. (based on the existing navigation)
Based on the Abby method, overall, the website has very appealing features and great tools, however, a lot of these need to be re-prioritized in terms of who will use them and in what order
Time to revise our Problem Statement
Based on what we have learned so far, we now can restructure our problem statement:
How might we restructure the existing SFPL navigation hierarchy so Kelley can find relevant information relating to her interests in a timely manner?
Proposed Solutions
Putting our research into a digestible and easy to test high fidelity mockup and prototype.
We used the following methodologies:
- Sitemaps
- User Flows
- High Fidelity mockups and prototype
Why did we use these?
Being able to see what makes natural sense in terms of similar categories and sections, while also noticing trends of why certain things might be grouped together during our user interviews.
This can help unveil a number of issues or promising trends, since ultimately, an important goal is to work towards consistency.
What did we learn?
Based on initial research (specifically open and closed card sorting), we came to the conclusion of adding a category titled “My Account” after 67% of users created this category during testing.
- Not only does this help the high level hierarchy seem more complete and consistent, but it helped us redistribute a lot of the sections into other better fitting categories.
A priority of the revised navigation was creating a drop down that shifted the entire navigation down rather than covering part of the main page.
- This was important because the previous navigation would cover important functionality, such as searching for a particular item and library locations.
Final Recommendations
Pulling action items from concrete data such as cards sorting and user testing, competitive evaluations, user flows, sitemaps, etc. helps us ensure that the time, money, and resources invested are used efficiently with a clear goal and target, always bringing it back to our persona and KPIs.
As next steps:
- Conduct 2 more rounds of tree testing and card sorting to continue unveiling the core of what users naturally sort together and how they label sections.
- Reduce the initial clutter of offerings and functionalities in the website, focus on creating an intuitive way to get to places rather than giving the user all the information at once.
