Case Study #1
Marriott.com 2020 Navigation Redesign
Project Objectives
Marriott, the massive hospitality company that had been my career home for almost 10 years, was completely redesigning their mobile app and needed the mobile/desktop web site to align with the new voice and structure.
The Marriott.com channel was groaning under the weight of 30 brands and had fallen into a site structure that “shipped the organization.” The users needed an advocate.
I was leading the information architecture effort to support an omni-channel redesign with navigational solutions that were in alignment with the app strategies while making it easier for users to find relevant information on Marriott’s many global sites.
Discovery and planning were going better than expected. Then the bottom fell out of the travel industry due to COVID-19. We stopped the project just as we were beginning external research.
(Note: Project designs are confidential and cannot be shown.)
Adopting a Process
I created and was piloting a new process for the navigation redesign.
Project Leadership
As the IA/UX Lead, I was responsible for creating project plans, estimates, timelines, and deliverables for the IA director and her team to review and approve.
Informing Management
It was my responsibility to give weekly updates to my director and our project sponsors. I used a Trello kanban board for daily updates and a PowerPoint presentation as a sharable takeaway for team meetings.
Juggling Act
Once the budget was approved, everything began happening very quickly and I had to coordinate deliverables and meetings in the middle of what felt like a very busy freeway, but the right relationships, tools and processes made it easy to manage.
Deliverables
I was responsible for many of the IA deliverables myself and worked within the experience design team or with an external agency when I needed assistance.
Structural Inventory
I had created a visual sitemap, but it just didn’t give us enough information at a glance. The structural inventory became our most important tool for auditing the sections and pages of Marriott.com.
User Research
I created a research plan and was working with internal and external research teams to begin phased testing, starting with a bold new (and confidential) top-nav section. An A/B test of nomenclature was our first priority.
Stakeholder Interviews
We needed to understand the challenges and desires of the product teams for every section of the site so that we weren’t making decisions in a vacuum.
Sketch Pattern Maintenance
While working on the next generation of the navigation, the experience designers still needed to use the existing navigation patterns on their projects, and minor changes to these templates happened frequently. It was my responsibility to keep the Sketch files up-to-date.
COVID-19 Recommendations
When COVID-19 brought the travel industry to a screeching halt, our project stopped as well. I noticed that the content management team was updating the site nightly with new messaging, so I worked with the IA team to leave them with usability recommendations and a competitive analysis.