Building a Content Management Website – Dept. of State Email Management Hub
The UX Challenge
New Executive Orders put in place federal mandates that required Department of State users to classify every email sent. The client request: Design a WordPress content management website (CMS) for users to provide change management support for the new Department of State program in accordance with the executive mandate. Merge multiple department knowledge management websites into one hub. Create a unified voice and improve the user experience. *Due to client sensitivity, I am happy to discuss this project with you, but am limited in what I can show.
The UX Approach
Utilizing Microsoft Outlook as the email platform, the team worked closely with the client to design, develop, and provide customer outreach and change management support for a custom Outlook plug-in that enforced these new marking mandates. A DOS Working Group was formed to ease collaboration, information sharing, and decision making.
After performing site content analysis and interviewing department stakeholders for each of the current websites, the team was able to define requirements, create a sitemap, identify a manageable taxonomy, and design wireframes. From there it was important to identify who owned what information in regards to business policy and technical systems. Once those stakeholders were identified the team could begin to develop content and utilize card sorting activities to layout what information architecture may look like. Having two different content owners meant it was important for the team to identify any gaps as well as determine if there was any overlap to reduce redundancy and mis-aligned content for users.
Website menus and workflow were then broken down by content type and user action. Training videos and User Guides were combined to form a Resource page that a user could easily scan; common questions were managed on the FAQs page where every question, was tagged for easy search and filter functionality. A Contact page provided users with the ability to reach out to the change management and customer support teams who could then direct their question to the necessary group if they could not answer it themselves. It also allowed users the ability to provide the team with real time feedback on the plug-in to encourage user input for a more agile software development approach.
The UX Impact and Final Product
Design approval from client stakeholders transformed the wireframes into a more realistic prototype. Content including FAQs, training videos, Quick Guides and Announcements were developed to populate the site. The final product was a more manageable CMS website with credible content utilizing metadata tagging and filters to search, and find, desired information.
My role: content development, taxonomy, information architecture, UAT