Islington Council

SITUATION

At first glance, there seemed to be poorly-named pages and irrelevant subjects on the main page that immediately would confuse first-time visitors to the site.

The existing Information Architecture (IA) was extremely confusing, with a lot of irrelevant pages listed as links on the homepage. In addition to that, many user journeys were misleading and resulting in an increased number of calls to the Access Centre (contact centre for council services).

Furthermore, the content and subjects were mixed up together and did not have a coherent structure. After assessing the pages and their content, CE and UX staff proposed it would be best to condense pages’ content and group material together to better meet user needs and business requirements, serve users and highlight the value of services offered by the council and local organisations.

TASKS

I was asked to re-engineer the content and structure of the sections associated with various council services. The main goal was to make the content and features accessible and intuitive, and consequently reduce the volume of calls received by the Access Centre operators.

ACTIONS

After assessing the pages and their content, I proposed it would be best to condense pages’ content and group material together to better meet user needs and business requirements, serve users and highlight the value of services offered by the council and local organisations.

Each research participant received a website brief document to complete; the purpose of the document was to get thorough understanding about the current challenges for the service users and the business stakeholders. After receiving the completed questionnaire, I would arrange a meeting to go through the person's answers on a one-to-one basis and make sure nothing was missed by the participant or misinterpreted by me.

Based on the response, I would out together proposals and recommendations for features, content, structure, etc. which would then be forwarded to the relevant team and added to the product backlog.

As well as these considerations, I made sure the site’s pages and content would adhere to LBI’s corporate style and branding guidelines.

RESULTS

I collaborated with content editors, project managers, business analysts and communications team, and produced an improved online/website experience for the users, allowing user groups to navigate to their required information more easily and efficiently.

This simpler navigation, better content, faster usage speeds and greater clarity has a potential to save a significant amount of money for the council. Savings will be made through reduced customer contact to the Access Team and greater frequency and volume of customer self-serving. This is thanks to the better content and information available to users at their online point-of-contact; likewise, the smarter and more streamlined user journeys enable better delivery of services by the Council.