Project: Navigation

Navigation Optimisation

2024

Overview

In this project, I led the UX effort to enhance a platform’s navigation structure, improving discoverability and task efficiency. By conducting a comprehensive audit, gathering user insights, and iterating on new navigation structures, I crafted an intuitive and scalable experience that streamlined user workflows. The final solution improved content grouping, reduced cognitive load, and ensured a seamless navigation experience.

Problem statement

The platform’s navigation is disjointed, making it difficult for users to quickly access key features. This inefficiency disrupts workflows and reduces productivity. A seamless, intuitive redesign is needed to improve task flow and enhance the user experience.

Roles and responsibilities

As the UX Lead, I was responsible for:

Auditing the existing navigation structure to identify pain points, redundancies, and areas for improvement.
Leading user research initiatives, including usability tests, interviews, and analytics reviews, to gather insights.
Developing multiple navigation structures based on research findings and validating them with stakeholders.
Creating low-fidelity wireframes and prototypes, iterating based on stakeholder feedback.
Collaborating with product managers, engineers, and designers to ensure alignment between design, business goals, and technical feasibility.
Presenting research findings, design proposals, and final recommendations to stakeholders for approval.
Delivering final navigation documentation, including content inventory, navigation map, user research report, and implementation roadmap.

Scope and constraints

Scope:

Redesign the navigation system to improve findability and task efficiency for both new and experienced users.
Streamline access to key platform features, enhancing overall user experience.
Optimize content grouping and information hierarchy to align with user workflows.
Ensure scalability to accommodate future platform expansion.

Constraints:

Must adhere to brand guidelines and existing design language.
The project must be completed within a tight six-week timeline, requiring efficient iteration cycles.
Existing technical limitations affect the scope of feasible design changes.
Limited resources for restructuring legacy content, necessitating strategic prioritization.

Users and Audience

Primary Users: End-users navigating the platform for daily tasks.
Secondary Users: Internal teams relying on an optimized structure for efficiency.
Stakeholders: Product and business teams ensuring strategic alignment.

I identified key stakeholders and mapped their involvement to ensure alignment throughout the project. Additionally, I created a structured roadmap to track progress, set clear milestones, and maintain transparency in deliverables and decision-making.

Roadmap & Stakeholders

The Audit

In order to define the redesign strategy, we conducted a comprehensive audit, including a content audit to inventory existing features, a user flow audit to analyse navigation patterns, and a structural audit to identify redundancies and inefficiencies. These insights helped pinpoint areas for improvement and informed the redesign approach.

Audit based Navigation

Building on insights from our internal audit and stakeholder workshops, we crafted an ideal sitemap that aligned with user needs and business goals. Based on this, we defined our research goal to validate the proposed structure, uncover usability challenges, and ensure the new navigation system enhances discoverability and efficiency.

Research

To validate our approach, we first outlined key questions and assumptions, ensuring a clear research direction. Given time constraints, we prioritised user analytics and card sorting over interviews, allowing us to quickly gather insights on navigation patterns and user expectations. With stakeholder consensus, we decided to conduct in-depth research at a later stage to refine the structure further. This approach enabled us to make informed design decisions while maintaining a balance between efficiency and depth in our research.

User analysis

Building on our key questions and assumptions, we conducted a user analysis in Pendo, uncovering valuable insights through user clicks, engagement percentages, and heat maps. These findings provided a clear picture of navigation patterns, highlighting pain points and opportunities for improvement.

Card sorting

Next, we conducted a card sorting exercise to further refine the navigation structure. This helped us understand how users naturally categorize and group information, revealing patterns in their mental models. By analyzing these results, we identified inconsistencies in the existing structure and validated potential improvements, ensuring a more intuitive and user-friendly navigation experience.

Informed Structural Redesign

Based on insights from user analysis, card sorting feedback, and SME collaborations, we refined the navigation structure to better align with user expectations. With this updated foundation, we moved into informed design ideations, ensuring that every decision was backed by data and expert input, ultimately enhancing usability and efficiency.

Proposed Navigation

Here are the two proposed redesign concepts. The first introduces a radical shift, significantly improving navigation but potentially disrupting the experience for regular users. The second takes a progressive approach, addressing inefficiencies while preserving the familiar side navigation, ensuring a smoother transition for existing users.

Outcomes

Validated Navigation – Balanced innovation with familiarity, ensuring seamless adoption.
Data-Driven Decisions – User analytics, card sorting, and SME insights shaped a user-centric redesign.
Two Powerful Concepts – One radical for efficiency, one iterative for a smooth transition.
Stakeholder Alignment – Secured cross-team buy-in, ensuring feasibility and execution.
Scalable IA – Built a future-ready structure, adaptable for growth and enhancements.

Before

After

Informed Structural Redesign

Stakeholder alignment comes from guiding discussions, not managing opinions. By focusing on insights over debates, we drove decisions rooted in user needs.

Smart research isn’t about ideal conditions but making the most of constraints. Prioritizing analytics and card sorting ensured actionable insights despite limited time.

Innovation isn’t about just changing things—it’s about knowing when to challenge and when to refine. True impact comes from balancing bold vision with practical adoption.