From User Frustration to Seamless Wayfinding

Project Overview

Caroline Chisholm Society (CCS) is an accredited community service in Melbourne that specialises in providing early intervention to vulnerable families and mitigates the need for child protection involvement. Whilst leading the website redesign, I recognised the need for a more effective way to navigate the pages within.

The Problem

The existing navigation and information architecture wasn't working. I identified four major problems that needed to be solved.

1. Users struggled to find what they needed due to vague labelling that made content hard to reach

2. Content organised in categories that didn't match the user's mental model

3. No breadcrumbs or location indicators

4. Poor visual hierarchy within the navigation bar

The website architecture failed to meet users' mental model.

Users were jumping from page to page looking for answers, eventually leading to the organisation being swamped with calls that could be easily answered on the website.

How might we match user expectations and provide simple and clear pathways to high-priority tasks?

Role & Responsibilities

UX/UI Designer | User Researcher

I was the sole contributor on this project, as I took it on in part of the website redesign. I conducted analysis of the existing navigation with existing users and users unfamiliar to the organisation, I executed multiple rounds of designs, and validated the new solution against the old through usability testing and cognitive modelling. 

The Process

1. Analysing the Existing Pattern

The first thing I did was analyse the existing menu against Heuristic criteria, conduct usability testing with users new to the organisation, as well as interviews with internal and external stakeholders, and mapping the current information architecture. This process revealed three key issues customers were having with the existing navigation.

1. Navigation categories were divided up into an excessive number of subcategories

2. Vague, jargonic labelling that meant users struggled to find their target page

3. Users disoriented by a lack of breadcrumbs and poor visual hierarchy within the navigation bar

2. Exploring New Solutions

After identifying the specific problems with the existing navigation and information architecture, I started ideating new solutions. I realised the information architecture needed to be restructured and pages needed to be culled and combined. After 3 iterations and rounds of internal feedback, I landed on a solution that was ready to test with users.

3. Comparing New vs. Old

The Outcome

The solution transforms a reactive, inefficient system into a proactive, user-friendly process that serves everyone better.