Textile Museum of Canada
Information Architecture & Navigation redesign
Client-based group project
Role
UX Researcher
Visual Designer
Client
Textile Museum of Canada
Academic Project for University of Toronto
Timeline
Nov - Dec
Skills
Navigation Design
Responsive Design
Card Sorting
Content Strategy
Tools
Figma
Miro
Dynomapper
Tasks
I performed a content audit, conducted card sorting workshops, made and iterated upon an information architecture diagram, created web and mobile navigation wireframes, presented to museum stakeholders to validate design decisions, and finally wrote a detailed business report.
The Problem
Our client from the Textile Museum of Canada initiated a significant project to revamp its website because they felt it no longer represented their mission accurately. They wanted to modernize their online presence and better reflect its role as a vibrant cultural center, while greatly improving functionality.
The Goal
The museum highlighted 3 main goals:
1.
Attract a younger, more diverse audience and expand educational outreach
In response to a post-COVID surge in interest from younger demographics, our client aimed to enhance their educational offerings. The focus shifted towards promoting workshops, residencies, and online tutorials to inspire future textile artists. Additionally, there's an emphasis on encouraging school visits from K-12 students to foster early engagement with the textile arts.
2.
Promote the "Virtual Museum" experience
Recognizing the extensive range of its art collection available online, the museum aimed to establish itself as a leading online experience, parallel to its physical presence. The goal is to capture the interest of new audiences and serve as a valuable resource for researchers.
3.
Increase overall discoverability, especially for workshops, events, and exhibitions
The museum aims to simplify navigation to counteract low engagement and conversion rates caused by complex access to workshops, events, and exhibitions. The goal is to make these offerings more easily discoverable.
Content Audit
To begin, I conducted a comprehensive content audit of the website using Dynomapper to analyze roughly 1000 links, including pages, external links, PDFs, and video content.
My goal was to:
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Assess content importance and relevancy
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Pinpoint areas of redundancy,
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Determine elements that could be streamlined for easier discoverability
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Identify gaps in the content to propose new content and features
Following this audit, I refined the content list to a concise and strategically selected collection of 150 links, ensuring each link served a distinct purpose.
Click to see the full Content Audit
Card Sort
After refining the content list, we wanted to gain a preliminary understanding of our users' mental models, where do they expect to find certain information?
We selected 50 pages and recruited 10 individuals who fit the updated demographic to perform a card sort exercise on Miro.
METHODOLOGY
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1 on 1 session
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15 minutes on open card sort activity, using the "think out loud" method
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10 minutes to ask follow up questions after the activity is completed
Participants were asked to:
​1. Look at cards and place them into groups that made sense to them
2. Create as many groups as they wanted
3. Label the groups they've made
example of one session​
ANALYSIS & KEY INSIGHTS FROM CARD SORT
Card sort results were compiled in a spreadsheet, we tallied up "group headings" to identify recurring themes and categorization to set the stage for determining an appropriate content hierarchy for our information architecture
1.
Consensus on Category Names:
If at least half (5/10) of the participants assigned the same/similar names to a category, it would be considered as a Level One category in our Information Architecture.
2.
Difficulty with Internal Jargon:
Categories labelled with internal jargon, like "Social Being" and "TXTile City" were challemging for participants. Since these terms were not understood, they were miscategorized - these terms would be nested under more general, higher-level categories to improve comprehension.
3.
Recommendations for Consolidation:
The exercise highlighted areas that could be consolidated to streamline navigation. For example, instead of dispersing donation options under "Support" and job opportunities under "About the Museum", a unified "Get Involved" category would more intuitively group actions related to engage with the museum in one place
Information Architecture
Following thorough analysis and insights gained from the card sorting exercise, I developed an Information Architecture (IA) diagram through careful iteration. In line with best practices, the IA was designed with a breadth of 7 levels to ensure a broad range of topics and a depth limit of four levels to avoid excessive navigation complexity and enhance content discoverability.
HIERARCHY & NAVIGATION
First Level = Primary Navigation:
The top level of the IA represents sections displayed in the primary navigation menu. These categories are general and encompassing, providing a useful starting point for website exploration among all target users.
It includes: Visit, What's On, Digital Collection, Learn, About Us, and Get Involved.
Second Level = Dropdown Menus:
The second level is what appears in the dropdown under each primary level category. This level offers more specific categories guiding users to more targeted information.
Third & Fourth Level = Within Pages:
The third and fourth levels are accessible within individual pages and are reached by clicking through second-level categories. This approach keeps deeper content organized and prevents the primary navigation from being overwhelming for users.
INSPIRATIONAL SOURCES & STRUCTURING
Benchmarking Against Other Museums
The IA draws inspiration from structures used by renowned museums such as the AGO, ROM, the Met, and the Smithsonian.
Alignment with Business Goals
Key sections such as 'Visit' and 'What’s On' are the initial options in the navigation bar, capitalizing on their visibility as the first options users see. Within the 'Visit' section, ticket purchasing options are placed first, streamlining the process for users to get tickets and increasing revenue opportunities. Similarly, in the 'Get Involved' section, 'Support' is prioritized, effectively encouraging contributions, whether in the form of monetary donations or textile donations, thus directly supporting the museum's operational and collection goals.
For a full detailed description of each branch, download the report, and see pages 12-18.
Navigation Design
Based on our Information Architecture we created a mid-fidelity desktop and mobile navigation to replace the current one.
DESKTOP NAVIGATION RATIONALE
1. Primary Navigation
CURRENTLY
the website's primary navigation is implemented using a hamburger menu. Upon opening it covers the entire screen
PROPOSED
Redesign suggests a horizontal menu bar at the top of the page.
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Enhances Visibility and Accessibility
Horizontal navigation at the top of each page offers immediate visibility and accessibility to users. Options are always in sight - eliminating the need for extra clicks to reveal menu. Reduces cognitive load becacyse users are not required to remember available options
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Streamlined User Journey
The navbar features 7 primary categories, each with a dropdown menu that allows users to quickly narrow down their search. These dropdowns provide immediate insight into what each category encompasses, enhancing transparency and reducing the bounce rate.
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Increased Discoverability & Engagement
By clearly presenting main categories and their subcategories encourages exploration and uncovers content that users may not have initially sought.
2. Utility Navigation
CURRENTLY
The current website underutilizes its utility navigation space, offering only a 'Donate' link instead of leveraging this area to provide essential links that could better support and promote business goals
PROPOSED
redesign incorporates a utility navigation bar in the header, streamlining access to four key actions that promote museum's income and business: Donate, Tickets, Shop, and Account.
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Access Tickets with Reduced Clicks
Addressing client concern on the inconvenient process of purchasing tickets. There is now a direct link to Tickets. Reducing the user journey from 4 clicks to 1 click (hamburger menu to open up primary navigation → Visit → Admissions → Book Tickets).
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Visible Shop Link for Increased Engagement
Relocating the Shop option from the hamburger menu to the utility navigation makes it constantly visible, this could spark curiosity and drive higher conversation rates.
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Profile Page for Personalized Experience
The addition of a Login/Profile page button encourages users to engage more deeply with the museum's digital offerings. This feature would allow users to save their favourite items from the Digital Collection and bookmark Tutorials and Demos.
3. Faceted Navigation
CURRENTLY
The digital museum offerings such as their online collection and video tutorials currently have minimal to no filtering or search capabilities. The video content exists on external Google Drive and Vimeo links.
PROPOSED
A faceted navigation presented as a persistent side panel on both the Digital Collections page and a new page which integrates all video content.
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Streamlined Navigation & Content Discovery
A persistent side panel for faceted navigation offers users a constant visual guide to refine their search.
Visible filters showcases the diverse array of items available, encouraging deeper interaction. Currently there is no filtering or search options for video content, thus the introduction of faceted navigation offers a substantial upgrade, introducing distinct categories will spark curiosity in users increasing engagement.
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Integration of Advanced Search
For more complex search inputs such as “Keyword Phrases”, “Date Range”, “Era”, and “Collection ID number”, I introduced an overlay modal. This modal shows up when a more advanced users need to input detailed information or navigate through long lists of categories, this helps maintain a clean interface.
