Information Architecture, Design, Development, and Adding Content
12/5/2017 4:09:08 PM
Figuring out how to organize the information is a lot easier when you ask your audience to help guide your direction. We held a card sorting exercise using an online tool that allowed all our employees to participate, and made collecting the results easy.
Card sorting is a UX (user experience) tool to help design or evaluate the information architecture of a site. In a card sorting session, participants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and they may also help you label these groups. Card sorting helps understand user expectations, and also assists in:
We wanted something fresh and engaging, easy to navigate, and aligned with our brand. Our senior designer, our web content manager and the web development team collaborated on the design, provided art direction, and sourced photos for landing pages. Many hours of dedicated hard work went into building the infrastructure and the functionality that would pull everything together.
We planned to promote adoption after launch by having all employee browser home pages open to the new intranet site. We engaged the lead enterprise workstation management engineer early in the project to develop a process that would work for all MNIT staff in all locations.
Best Practice: Use business requirements to track concurrent tasks and dependencies with all the teams that are working on a project. That way, everything moves forward at the same time towards launch day.
Once the site structure in place, there was still a lot of work to be done! The entire Communications team pitched in to create content during the final month. Our web content manager and the project manager met with us daily to direct us and keep track of all the tasks that needed to be done.
Best Practice: Quick daily check-in meetings help pinpoint issues, and make adjustments to assignments. It’s also a great team energy booster!
Check next week for part 4 in the MNIT Intranet Story to learn about our process with communicating changes to MNIT employees.
Digital Government
