North Carolina Department of Commerce
Work samples are available upon request.
Our client was beginning a website redesign process and we were hired to conduct initial discovery. One of the biggest challenges of this project was considering the vast range of people who use the site, from business executives, to government workers, to unemployed people looking for job seeking assistance.
Stakeholder Interviews
First, as part of a two person team, I conducted stakeholder interviews with a range of key stakeholders from the client’s team. In order to facilitate better feedback from stakeholders with varying levels of experience with web strategy, we used basic workshopping techniques like affinity mapping to draw out priorities, goals, and needs for the redesign.
User Interviews
Aside from gathering feedback from stakeholders, we also conducted user interviews to better understand specific user types related to business development. These users were of great strategic importance to the Department of Commerce, yet were less well understood from a web use perspective than other user types. Our interviews were remote and, without going into specific client detail, yielded insights that were previously unknown and had major impacts on the information architecture of the site. We were able to prioritize certain types of content based on user workflows identified through research.
Information Architecture
Using information gathered through user research, we held an information architecture workshop to plan a preliminary site structure. This was chosen over card sorting with users because previous card sorting had shown that a lack of domain knowledge made it difficult for users to complete card sorts with much confidence. Based on our workshop, we then tree tested with two panels of research participants: general public and local business developers. The results of our tree test led to site structure alterations as well as preliminary navigation design.