Client: Financial Institution, Enterprise
2019
With more than 10 digital products for internal users, how can we reorganise the digital ecosystem architecture so that users can easily find and access the function they need for their daily work?
Within our client's organisation, there were more than 10 digital products across the web, tablet and mobile app platforms. These products were created across different time periods in the organisation's history, and by different departments and had different product owners. Some were legacy products created decades ago: outdated interface, messy information architecture, and a steep learning curve, but which remained essential and indispensable to the daily business needs of its internal users. Some were newer products, with a narrower scope, and served very niche functions. Because of the silo-ed culture of product development in a large organisation like this one, some functions were duplicated across multiple products which left users confused about where to find things. Over the years, there had been non-stop complaints about "too many apps", which we had also personally encountered in our other projects for the same client
Our client thus engaged us to develop an evidence-based strategy to reorganise its digital ecosystem so that their users could find the functions they need easily and conveniently.
The first thing we had to do was to do a stocktake of their digital ecosystem. This meant going through every single one of their digital products, be it online portals, mobile apps or tablet apps. We listed down every single business function we found in each of their products, at every hierarchy level.
From this list, we initially selected a total of 92 items for our card set, with an equal representation from every product and across business units. Through our own internal pilot card sorting exercises, we also eliminated some cards due to duplication of the same function from multiple products.
Before we launched into the card sort sessions with actual users, we held an alignment workshop for internal stakeholders from different business units. Through the alignment workshop, stakeholders did their own card sort sessions in groups and discussed their thoughts on the future strategy for the digital ecosystem.
While this was merely an alignment exercise and the card sort results from this session were not included in the final analysis, this was an extremely useful session. For the stakeholders, they were able to visualise how themselves and their colleagues experienced the ecosystem, and discuss and understand any different views. For us, we gained a better understanding of the various functions supported by the digital ecosystem, and were able to use the session as a pilot run to better conduct our actual sessions.
We held card sorting sessions with 16 participants across 3 user groups. These were open card sort sessions: participants were first asked to group cards according to their own association, and then they were instructed to give each group a name.
On top of the card sort groups, we also had participants "tag" each group using categories we had defined, e.g. importance, frequency of use, place of use, platform, etc.
This allowed us to get more information regarding the context and use case of each group and how to prioritise them in the ecosystem architecture.
To analyse the card sort results, we used a two pronged approach: affinity mapping and quantitative analysis.
Affinity Mapping
Quantitative Analysis
Affinity mapping of group names helped us see where the commonalities lay in how users naturally categorised the functions. This would help us come up with an ecosystem architecture that would be more intuitive. The "context tags" also determined which features were more prominent and should be more accessible and higher up in the ecosystem hierarchy.
Quantitative analysis allowed us to determine which business functions tended to be grouped in which categories. Mapping the business function back to the original digital product they were from also allowed us to determine which digital products were the most "disorganised" and which were already coherent.
Based on all the information we had synthesised regarding common groupings and context of use, we came up with a proposal for a new ecosystem architecture that would be more intuitive and be contained within lesser products.
We presented the final solution to internal stakeholders from different business units. The solution included a new ecosystem architecture and suggested platforms (web, tablet, mobile) they should be available on.
The card sorting exercise and our proposed solution set in place a framework for our client to move forward with revamping the digital ecosystem. Our proposal was met with general agreement, and the evidence-based approach was appreciated by all stakeholders as an objective benchmark to refer to.
To overhaul legacy digital systems would be a huge endeavour, and our client moved forward to consider technical requirements and the impact on business operations, which was beyond the scope of our engagement.