Interior Define – Navigation & IA Redesign
APR 2018・UX RESEARCH・PROTOTYPING & TESTING・UI DESIGN
Interior Define is an online furniture startup. My first project with them (and their first major UX project as a company) was leading a redesign of the site's information architecture (IA), including top and bottom navigation.
My goal was to reduce clicks to common destinations, better showcase product categories, and to surface pages that drive conversion (ex: “Locations” pages, “Book an Appointment”, and “Complimentary Design Advice”).
To do this, I wrote a research & testing plan which included two rounds of in-person and online card sorting that I’d use to help generate an intuitive new IA structure. Afterwards, I led several rounds of tree testing to test different IAs against each other and to quantify their performance against the existing IA (tree testing results here).
I presented my process and results to the executive team, iterated on wireframes, and used first-click testing to show the new navigation’s performance against the existing one.
The click-testing results were overwhelmingly positive and showed a dramatic increase in user success rates for completing important tasks (ex: Finding a location, learning about returns policies, checking an order status, etc.). Overall average success rates went from 37% to 87% on mobile, and 53% to 90% on desktop.
I iterated on high-fidelity versions of the top and bottom site navigation, helped prep for another round of usability testing, and worked closely with the engineering team to implement and QA the final product that’s live on the site today.
Measuring Results 📈
We saw a dramatic improvement in the speed and success of users completing common tasks on the site. By adding “Locations” to the top nav, we also saw a ~600-900% increase in traffic to individual Locations pages, and a significant increase in appointments booked on the site (appointments typically convert at ~60%+).
The project also helped cement our design team’s research and testing process, and we used my project plan as the template for all UX projects going forward.