As part of a complete website redesign and an eventual enterprise taxonomy effort, this member-driven organization needed to consolidate existing taxonomies, create an up-to-date taxonomy, and restructure the IA of their website.
Developing an appropriate taxonomy strategy required understanding of how a technical body needs to use taxonomy to access its information while still making the taxonomy accessible to end-users. Accessing internal subject matter experts wasn’t a problem. Access to end-users was more of a challenge. Fortunately, we were able to do a lot of user testing during their annual conference. We attended the member conference and conducted one-on-one interviews and held a card sorting focus group.
We incorporated this card sorting, persona information, and taxonomy into the information architecture of the new site and illustrated how the IA worked in the navigation.
Results
At the end of the taxonomy development, the client was prepared to integrate it into the content management system and use it in future publication systems. They had clear instructions for how the taxonomy could be maintained and governed.