Client: Ford Motor Company

Working with agency clients means there are limitations on what I can share related to either work in progress or exploratory sprints. Within those limitations I'd like to share an exploratory project. While there was a much larger team focused on the mobile first design of this automotive retailer’s landing pages, I was tasked with prioritizing the evolution of the global primary menu navigation IA. Along with a lead strategist I worked through months of client workshops, discovery, exploration, research and multiple rounds of A/B user testing iterating to a menu that, ultimately, tested spectacularly. As often happens with agency work, at the end of Q2 2022, the project was absorbed into internal client teams, and I was reassigned to a different workstream for the same client at VMLY&R.

• Project launched with a client workshop where I presented competitive and comparative analysis of other mobile menu experiences across twelve brands

• Workshop 1: Four team break outs (each with client and agency representatives) to explore different IA structure concepts and the challenges and opportunities for each

• IA exploration was broken into four approaches: Name Plate, Category, Lifestyle or Type

• Grounding preliminary user research survey­

• Converting workshop boards into four distinct menu IA breakdowns in Miro

• Tree Testing Round 1: Testing and synthesis of four IA structures developed during the workshop

• Card Sorting Round 1:  comparison between the two most successful structures identified during tree testing

• Tree Testing Round 2: Applying the same tree test criteria to a modified IA structure based on earlier learnings and against the menu IA that was live at the time­

• Nomenclature testing for category menu titles

• Workshop 2: Presented initial wireframes for two navigation structures identified as A and B and revised based on direct client feedback

• User Testing (4 Rounds)

  • Created a user test outline and scenario/task document to be applied in unmoderated testing with UserZoom.

  • Observed all user testing videos with audio to capture direct successes, indirect successes and direct failures navigating the IA

  • Calculated the success rates per scenario/task for each user test as iterations evolved (total of 105 user tests recorded and synthesized)

  • Iterating on the IA structures based on discoveries from user tests across three rounds before testing the final, very successful, navigation structure C

• Validating and presenting the final IA iterated on through the four round of A/B testing

PROCESS OVERVIEW

Our purview for this project was to optimize the user experience in navigating the global website through exploration, testing and design validation.

While I was tasked with the IA exploration and iteration process there was a larger team focused on many other aspects of this large innovation task. As the process unfolded and discovery and exploration lead to great customer insights, I often presented these findings and next step the executive leadership both internally and with the client leads. It was an exciting opportunity, daunting in its expansiveness, but when we landed on a navigation that tested amazingly well, after months of work, it was very gratifying!

The approach outlined above goes into extensive detail about how this project unfolded so I’d like to get into some of the exploration details, insights and outcomes.

GLOBAL NAVIGATION BEST PRACTICES

For this project our UX strategist wanted to focus on best practices that relate to the structure and interactions and gestures of mobile site navigation. There were a few areas of focus related to this effort that included:

• Limiting the number of primary level navigation categories to no more than seven to reduce the sum of effort users would need to interact with a site

• Adding search functionality to provide users with a shortcut that supplements the menu without replacing it entirely

• Avoid overly specific categories in the first level of navigation

• Include other thematic guides in the main navigation while separating those from the main menu content

CHACK BACK FOR THE COMPLETION OF THIS CASE STUDY

Working full time, this case study is a work in progress. I’ll be adding to this as time allows in the coming week. Check back soon!