Institute of Chartered Accountants for England and Wales- Full Information Architecture Evaluation 4-5 Months
From idea to current implemented state: ICAEW’s Universal Header
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“I can’t find the information I need.”
“How do I get back to the main ICAEW website?”
Previous user research brought to light issues with ICAEW’s former header.
All of the sites were disconnected and this made the user feel confused and unable to navigate through the website properly.
A multimethod approach using both qualitative and quantitative methods was utilised to gain a good balance of insights from users, multi-disciplinary teams and stakeholders.
As the lead UX Researcher on the project, I worked closely with product managers, software writers, technical and content teams.
Using an Agile iterative and flexible approach to product development that prioritises collaboration, adaptability, and customer feedback.
The content audit was conducted to understand ICAEW’s breadth of information and content. This enabled us to understand the problem space better.
The competitor analysis was a full in-depth report that was sent to the team, along with a high-level summary for quick reference. This piece of work was highly regarded by one of the digital managers for its clarity and depth of insight.
I conducted a content audit to understand ICAEW’s breadth of information and content. This enabled us to understand the problem space better.
We then were able to establish the header and navigation user needs which helped form the research hypothesis . We then decided to take a look at what others are doing and how we compare.
Data insights were added to a severity list after moderated testing sessions which took into consideration the number of users that experienced the issue, the level of dissatisfaction, and the level of work needed to be done.
All of the insights were implemented in the first launch of the universal header.
The UX team and key stakeholders were pleased with the outcome of the usability testing stages. Some of the stakeholders had very limited experience of UX and left more knowledgeable.
Challenges faced in this project was getting all the stakeholders engaged. To tackle this we set up interactive workshops that helped all the different departments empathise with their users
The skills gained were using new techniques such as customer journey mapping with big groups of stakeholders, and making sure everyone was engaged and involved.
The universal header solution has improved the overall usability of the website, the navigating experience and findability according to recent user feedback and quantitative analytics.
The success of the project was a key communications piece for promoting UX to the wider organisation. The universal header project has identified a user need for further website improvements. Including the re-design of the homepage.
