Steven Hart
Knowledge Architect
Designing navigation and content for clear understanding
PEI Group's content was disorganised, and ordered around business group and type of content instead of user goal.
Finding relevant and related content and data organically, across siloes, was very difficult. It also made efficient search very difficult to implement technically, with mismatched taxonomies and vocabularies across different part of the business.
Developed while contracted to PEI Group as Senior Information Architect, I create a new strategy for organising, naming and navigating different types of content and data in a seamless and simple experience, that was capable of being extended to include multiple sub-brands in one, unified experiemce.
Unpacking the user problem
Over time, many companies find themselves with a very similar content problem. Content management systems are operated by different groups or individuals, who each might understand the company differently, or have different approaches to writing and displaying content.
Content becomes mismatched to corporate style or other content, out of date or not relevant, and the whole thing becomes difficult to navigate and understand with users having to pogo-stick in and out of pages to build a narrative that the site should be providing for them.
For the user, that typically translates to varying degrees of confusion and frustration, and that feeling increases at every interaction.
AT PEI, the content problems led to a lack of further engagement from each Google search or shared link.
Instead of landing on the site and organically exploring relevant content and data, users were simply bouncing back to Google, leaving large amount of informational value undiscovered.
A structural anchor for content
Different user groups have different tasks, which the site needed to address. Accommodating different discrete tasks, or task groups, in one experience can be problematic.
But all users have similar goals: to derive a general understanding, or narrative, that different data or content individually contributes to.
Considering how the site could help users find that overview solved two problems: it provide a concept for navigational entry points (key overviews, or summaries), and an organising principle for all data and content (each key overview links to all its supporting content and data).
The site would follow Ben Schneidermann's Information Seeking Mantra: Overview first, then drill down.
Result 1: Simpler navigation, richer narratives
With a confusing information architecture, the site's main navigational categories were confused and over-reliant on a mega-menu with multiple levels:
By introducing relevant summary views, called 'Hub' pages, and by re-grouping content, I was able to propose a simpler top-level menu which simultaneously reduced the number of level-1 navigation categories, and gave the company much more space to tell its story:
The hub pages unlocked a whole new content strategy, which applied across the site to all sections and could extend to include all content from the PEI sub-brands.
The strategy consisted of several small, but significant, design patterns:
Simple level-1 navigation. No mega menu, but click or tap to go to that section's hub page.
Clear page headings for orientation (and SEO).
Second-level navigation block, which persists across pages to signpost deeper content levels and promote exploration.
Level-2 headings: introduce hub content and tone of voice to give detail and character to the brand propositions.
Additional explanation or orientation in body copy, again written to be clear and concise and in brand voice.
In PEI's case, a set of visuals to summarise market trends was appropriate, sitting over signposting to each sub-category.
Sub-categories introduced, but now in context with their hub pages so users could see how each relates to the other.
Again, with more space available in the hub page, sub-categories or concepts could be explained with explanatory copy. This shows users, at a high level, why each is important, and why they might choose to explore one drill-down path over another (missing from the previous mega-menu approach).
Contextualised links to lower-level content.
Result 2: Meaningful facets
Previously the site muddled section (News & Analysis, for example) selections with facet selections (Sector or Region).
Introducing discipline around how each was handled in the interface - only showing facets at relevant times and in the correct context - allowed a powerful way of driving personalised views onto site content:
A Market Focus tool allows fund managers or investors to select the Strategy, Sector and Region they are interested in.
Anyone using site content or data will have this selection in mind as their context: investors want to know which funds or managers operate in particular places or with certain strategies, and fund managers may want to know latest trends or investment patterns when planning upcoming fund releases.
This tool, introduced as a feature or widget instead of confusingly buried in navigation, is another way of bringing PEI content and data to life and presenting it in a way that makes sense for the users.
Outcomes
Presented as early-stage conceptual wireframes, rather than finished designs, this work influenced thinking across the design and product teams.
The approach to navigation, with less emphasis on mega-menus and more on the content itself, is currently being implemented as the company includes more sub-brands within a single site experience.
Steven Hart
Knowledge Architect