Another researcher and I decided to team up to work on a navigation study together. We had both heard from users that they get lost in the UI sometimes. In addition, the current navigation structure will not scale as we continue to add new features. A tree test was done by a former team member the year prior, and it confirmed that people struggled to find items and complete tasks.
We needed to explore ways to redesign the app’s information architecture. We anticipate that this research will have multiple stages due to its complexity, and the fact that there is no product manager assigned to this area. We each started by looking for examples of complex enterprise software products that we could learn something from. We made notes and presented our examples to each other. It became clear that we were not ready to try designing a new information architecture, and needed to go back to the users to learn more about their mental models.
I undertook a hybrid moderated card sort with non-Netlify users to see how they group web development terms. The other researcher was assigned the same card sort with Netlify users; that study is still in progress. I created the screener and script used for both studies. These results helped motivate the product leadership team to prioritize redesigning the navigation the following quarter.
Please see the Loom recap above for the study’s background, process, and results.