IA and screenflows working in paralel

Process & Techniques
#1

hey all - i have a situation where I have a project squeezed for budget and time and am trying to see if I can run an IA process (content audit, basic card sort) in paralel with testing some screenflows (following a basic strategy and audience/task workshop) - it is an organisation that takes a truckload of bookings online to deliver its service).

In a perfect world we could work the IA and feed those isights into the flows but there may not be time.

Anyone else been in this dilemma or am I just overthinking this a bit?

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#2

Andrew! :grinning:

I’ve missed you!

Possibly.

I have been in a similar situation and I ended up spinning my wheels a bit and doing things that just weren’t going to bring me any closer to my goal of fixing that IA. I was doing things for the sake of doing them and it was silly. Eventually my practical and pragmatic self showed up and took charge! I cut all the noise out and focused on doing what would solve the problem and deliver the most value in the shortest space of time. Sorry I can’t be more specific than that.

Question: are you designing a completely brand new IA or are you redesigning an existing one?
Sounds like it might be the latter. If that’s right, in the very first instance I would run a Treejack study on the current state to find out exactly what’s wrong with it and while that’s running its course, I would do a content audit of some description - it would depend on how big a job it was and how much time I had. Next I would take what I learned in the tree test and the content audit and update the IA and then run a tree test on that in parallel to testing the screen flows.

Another approach might be to tackle the IA in sections - a series of continuous iterative improvements over time. That could work if it gets too big to wrangle. For me it’s all about creating a strong foundation with that first tree test to benchmark the current state of the IA and then you build it up from there always moving forward and continually getting shit done.

PS I still drink that beer that I can never remember the name of and I am NOT ‘in a gutter somewhere’ in Brisbane :rofl:

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#3

Hey! - you to Ash - pardon my disappearance - I got lost in some kind of Corporate Narnia and forgot to contribute properly.

Its a site redesign, but the site is very task focussed and old and rambly content wise, so an audit first will cut heaps out. I like your idea of testing a revised IA and flows concurrently. Will give that go a try. Thanks!

Sometime I wish I was in Brisbane (although i am to old to party to the gutter these days :slight_smile: . I didn’t make it to UX A this year. Did you get there? I am hoping to go to the next one if I can…

Cheers

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#4

:rofl:

No, not this year sadly - I gave a talk last year! That was fun :slight_smile:

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