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Maplewood Library Site Redesign
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About the Project
Public libraries serve an integral role in public communities throughout the world. As a part of the Information Architecture class course work, I was asked to update the current Maplewood Public Library website in order to give the public a better experience to ensure both them and the library stakeholders are meeting their goals. For this redesign, I assessed the overall look and feel, the current information architecture, and where information can be reorganized and streamlined in order to better address user goals. This reorganization ensured that the content within the site is easily findable for all users and the overall site structure is intuitive for various audiences to navigate.
The Challenge
The current structure of the Maplewood Public Library website follows a mixture of schemes that may make it confusing for users to navigate. When looking at the global navigation, there is a mix of both topic and task based items for the user to explore. Given the depth of this website, this approach may make it difficult for users to form a mental model and experience the website efficient
The Process
Discover
The project kicked off with proposal creation to achieve stakeholder buy-in. The proposal covered current problems with the library site, the goals of the redesign, and the proposed timeline.
Once the proposal was approved, the redesign started with field research. In order to get a better understanding of the target user to drive thoughtful and accurate updates, two librarians were interviewed. A comprehensive literature review was also conducted to dig deeper into previous studies that have been done on this topic. Three primary pieces of literature were reviewed and used to draw conclusions about the target users of a library website.
Based on the research results, key tasks were pulled out of target users. With this information, three key personas were created to represent the varying needs and types of library site users.
Define
The key tasks addressed in the interviews and personas were carried into the next phase of content organization and site map creation. The primary tasks influenced decisions on what to cut, keep, or redesign when considering the IA of the site. Once the initial site map was created, participants were recruited to participate in a Treejack study to assess structure and taxonomy. Based on those results, revisions were made as needed.
Design
After finalizing the site map, wireframes were then created to reflect the navigation structure and content hierarchy. The wireframes that were created represent the key tasks that were found in research and underwent first-click testing. Revisions were then made as needed.
Results
Final Project
The final project resulted in a cumulative project with clear illustration of the iterative design process. The revised information architecture and content hierarchy tested well with participants during the one-click study, proving that this redesign will allow users complete the primary tasks more efficiently.
Lessons Learned
This project revealed how important it is to test designs throughout the process. As many designers and projects face tight timelines, it is easy to push testing to the side in order to meet these deadlines. As designers, it is important to advocate for incorporating testing into the timeline in order to ensure the decisions made throughout the process are tracking well with the target users.
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