Improving user experiences through Information Architecture

Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity exists to provide world class care and to pioneer new treatments and cures for childhood illnesses. Having migrated their website onto the Drupal content management system, GOSH wanted to review the site navigation and user journeys to better serve the needs of users.

What we did

The charity had moved their website over to Drupal in May 2015 and had since come to the opinion that while the navigation and user journeys reflected the needs of the organisation, they weren’t necessarily set up to deliver the best user experiences.

We began an extensive review of the existing site architecture and user journeys by building a comprehensive understanding of the needs of users. By conducting stakeholder workshops, one-to-one stakeholder interviews, audience surveys, interviews with warm and cold audiences, user testing sessions and mining of site analytics, we were able to identify the needs of both new and returning users as well as pain points.

We followed up with card sorting workshops and testing of proposed new information architectures.

How it went

Working closely with GOSH’s digital team to gather data, conduct research and map user journeys, we were able to share the benefit of our experience, introduce several new techniques and tools, and help kick-start a cultural shift within the organisation towards a user-centred approach to delivering digital experiences.

We made recommendations for both short- and long-term improvements to the website. These included a new information architecture which would better serve the navigational needs of users and templates for addressing key points in user journeys. We also provided recommendations for the continuing improvement of user experiences, covering both the charity’s exclusive audience and the overlap with the audience of the hospital itself.

These recommendations have now been incorporated into the GOSH team’s development backlog and are being released to the live website as part of an iterative process.

How this helps us on your project

Balancing the needs of users with the needs of your business is crucial for developing and building an engaged audience. We’re experienced in helping organisations of all sizes adopt user-centred design methodologies to deliver better experiences, engage their audiences and generate greater value for the business.