The Huntington Historical Society (HHS) is a historical society based in Huntington, New York. Since its formation in 1903, it has been an invaluable resource for local history and educational programming. HHS’s website was difficult to navigate, however, due in large part to the organizational structure of its content. Our team was engaged to help improve user interactions with the HHS website by reorganizing and restructuring its content.
Challenge: Improve visibility of, and access to high-value content, specifically for members of HHS’s target user groups: historical researchers, genealogists, people interested in local history and history-related events, and parents looking for educational activities for their children.
My Role: Information architect. I worked with a team of three other information architects to improve how content on the HHS website was organized & presented.
Project’s Impact: The HHS website was given a complete redesign, which incorporated our recommended navigation and content category changes; these changes ensured that important content would be more visible and accessible to HHS’s target user groups.
We began by conducting (1)RESEARCH in order to fully understand the website and problems users may be having with it. This research was subsequently analyzed during the (2)SYNTHESIZE stage of the study, and our findings were then used to (3)IDEATE recommendations that could provide remedies. Finally, we sought to (4)VALIDATE the efficacy of our recommendations by conducting user tests on a digital prototype and on the website itself (post-redesign).
Before we could provide recommendations on how HHS might be able to improve the organizational structure of its website’s content, we first needed to have a thorough understanding of the website itself. To achieve this, we explored the HHS website, starting with its homepage (Fig. 1). We paid particularly close attention to the navigation and how the content was being categorized. Next, we created a complete content inventory of the HHS website (Fig. 2). By cataloging each page, this process gave us a comprehensive overview of the website and informed how we would approach reorganizing and restructuring its content. Upon completion, we realized that the website had even more content than we had originally anticipated (including more than two hundred unique pages and hundreds of JPEGs, GIFs, and PDFs), and that much of this content was outdated and/or redundant.
After completing the content inventory, we began work on the site map, which would represent the website’s current organizational structure in a single, simplified graphic (Fig. 3). Upon completing the site map, we discovered that while the website had both horizontal breadth and vertical depth, the content was not equally distributed and much of it was unnecessary. Going forward, we would reference this site map frequently, particularly when building our card sort.
Next, we would take a look at the websites of institutions we felt were comparable to HHS. For this, we selected the Essex Historical Society, the Kent Historical Society, and the Tenement Museum; three institutions with similar scopes and mission statements, which also focused on promoting their events and collections. When analyzing the websites of these institutions we looked specifically at their content, their navigation, how their information was being organized, and their design. We learned a great deal about how other institutions were presenting their content online, and determined that for the HHS website to be successful as possible we would need to:
CONSTRUCT a static global navigation menu with drop-down functionality.
CULTIVATE categories of information that are more user-centered.
CREATE a design aesthetic that is modern and functional.
CURATE the website’s content to reflect relevant information and the interests of target user groups.
Having completed our analysis of the website itself, we next began looking into who the website must serve if it were to meet HHS’s institutional goals. Based on what we knew about HHS and the content we’d discovered on its website thus far, we identified four target user groups: historical researchers, genealogists, people interested in local history and history-related events, and parents looking for educational activities for their children. Each member of our team explored one of these target user groups in order to better understand their particular expectations and needs.
I elected to explore the user group historical researchers. For the purposes of this project, anyone who might use a historical society as a resource for research material (e.g., high school students writing papers for their classes, doctoral students preparing dissertations, academics gathering information to write peer-reviewed articles or books, etc.) would be considered a historical researcher.
In-person user tests and a survey were used to ascertain historical researcher expectations and their familiarity with the types of research materials maintained by historical societies. The user tests addressed how a historical researcher would instinctively navigate the HHS website in order to access its research materials. Participants were selected based on having previous historical research experience. The survey focused on how familiar historical researchers are with historical societies, and specifically, with using historical societies as a resource for research material. Surveys were distributed to individuals with previous historical research experience. The user tests and surveys revealed three main takeaways:
Visibility Is a Must
Today, historical researchers frequently begin their research online. In order to ensure that a historical society’s research materials are properly utilized and regularly consulted, having a website that clearly lists available resources and is indexed by, and accessible from, online search engines is incredibly important. For those historical researchers who prefer to begin their research with library resources, advertising historical societies and their collections at local libraries—both at the physical buildings and on the libraries’ websites—would be beneficial to both historical societies and historical researchers.
Resources Must Meet User Expectations
In order to reach historical researchers who aren’t necessarily knowledgeable about a historical society’s resources and tend to rely on familiar means (i.e., web searches), a historical society’s website must be able to provide access to information in a fashion that is similarly convenient to the resources these historical researchers prefer to use. Ideally, this would include matching the ease of information access that is available online, including hosting digitized versions of their materials on their website. Obviously, digitization projects may not be in a historical society’s budget, but other small steps, such as maintaining a website with clear, logical navigation and concise instructions for access, will help attract and maintain new users.
Historical Researchers Will Have Different Needs
Historical researchers will need to access a historical society’s resources in different ways, and accordingly, will require different types of information about resource access. Some historical researchers may be across the country and will need information about reproduction costs; others may be local and would benefit from information about a historical society’s on-site research policies. Regardless, the information about resource access must be clear, concise, and available in an intuitive location on the website.
We were now ready to begin the process of restructuring the content on HHS’s website based on the expectations and needs of our four target user groups. We started by selecting the content categories from our site map that we felt would be most important to these users. When appropriate, we also merged similar categories to avoid redundancies and added content categories that weren’t currently on the website, but that we felt would benefit navigation and improve user satisfaction. This process resulted in a list of forty-four unique content categories.
Using the OptimalSort online card-sorting program, we transformed this static list of forty-four content categories into a dynamic set of forty-four cards that could be combined in any number of ways. We disseminated the card sort and waited to see what kinds of patterns would emerge in the resulting data set.
Ultimately, eleven participants from our four target user groups completed the card sort. Patterns emerged, but not necessarily in the ways we had anticipated or desired. Particularly disconcerting was the emerging pattern that participants simply didn’t understand the terminology used to describe some content categories. “About Our Properties” and “Resource Center” were cards participants had a particularly difficult time sorting.
Lack of terminology comprehension ultimately produced a muddled data set, as participants placed a disproportionate number of cards in the “About” category, which appeared to have become a catchall for unfamiliar cards. The “About” category for the majority of participants contained an average of ten cards each by the end of the sort. With the exception of the terminology issue, the card sort did result in some useful findings. For one, we discovered that participants tended to sort their cards into a small number of broad categories rather than a large number of specific categories. Only one of the participants completed a card sort with more than ten categories.
Next, we combined the participant categories that we felt described the same idea but used slightly different terminology (this process is more commonly referred to as standardizing). For example, we combined the “About Us” category and the less descriptive but intellectually comparable “About” category. Our standardization process resulted in a total of fifteen categories. Standardizing participant categories allowed us to more effectively utilize the data visualization tools offered by OptimalSort. Two such data visualization tools that were particularly useful were the similarity matrices (Fig. 4) and dendrograms (Fig. 5).
By analyzing the overlap within the participants’ fifteen categories, we were able to reduce the total number to six. These six categories (About, Events, Museum, Research, Get Involved, and Contact) became our new main navigation categories. From there we revised our original site map to reflect these new categories and reorganized their subpages to align with what we’d learned about the expectations and needs of our four target user groups (Fig. 6).
We felt confident that our revised organizational structure would make sense to users and help support their needs, but in order to be sure we needed to test it. Our team did this by producing a paper prototype of the website that reflected this newly revised organizational structure. The first step was to sketch a template page, which we would use to create our individual pages. After numerous drafts and many revisions, we finally came to a layout we all agreed worked best. This layout included a prominent header, a simple, easy-to-understand global navigation menu (which would include drop-down menus for subpages), and a footer along the bottom (Fig. 7).
Our next step was to define a few tasks that we would like to test using our paper prototype. With our four target user groups in mind, we defined a total of three tasks we felt would be representative of actual use cases. In order to better understand which paper prototype pages would be needed to support each task, we created a task flow for each (Fig. 8). The first task we defined was for an out-of-town researcher, the second was for a potential museum visitor, and the third was for an individual interested in renting an HHS venue for a fundraising event.
With our task flows in hand, we next created the individual paper prototype pages necessary to support each task. We elected to use Post-it flags to represent drop-down menus and mini Post-it notes to creates tabs that would allow for easier navigation between pages (Fig. 9). Our team observed eight user test participants perform each of the three tasks.
We found that while participants, on the whole, had little trouble completing the tasks, certain tasks required additional pages that we hadn’t originally anticipated. For example, participants performing the out-of-town researcher task could have benefited from a page that provided an introduction to HHS’s archives.
We also learned that providing contextually appropriate contact information (e.g., the contact information for HHS’s archives on pages that pertained to its archives) would be very helpful to users, particularly when they were having difficulty navigating the website or had a specific question they couldn’t find an answer to. In the few cases where participants were having trouble completing a task, they each mentioned that having someone to talk to from HHS would be useful.
Our first step in the digital prototyping stage of this project was to translate each of our paper prototype pages into digital wireframes using the design program Sketch. We would eventually combine these digital wireframes to create our digital prototype. In order to increase efficiency and ensure consistency across all of our wireframes, we first created a pattern library. By identifying repeating elements in our paper prototype and assigning each of them a unique identifier (Fig. 10), we were then able to create corresponding digital elements (Fig. 11), which could be reused in our wireframes as needed.
By combining elements from our pattern library with elements unique to each page, we were able to quickly and efficiently produce the wireframes for our digital prototype. My focus was on building the wireframes for the out-of-town researcher task, which included the Research page (Fig. 12), the Archives page (Fig. 13), the View Finding Aids page (Fig. 14), and the Records Search Services page (Fig. 15).
Using the prototyping tool InVision, we then linked our digital wireframes to create a digital prototype. We employed this digital prototype, along with the defined tasks listed below, to run a second round of user tests. These tests were administered in order to determine if our new content categories and navigation would help members of HHS’s target user groups find the information they required. The participants of these tests were able to complete the defined tasks with little difficulty, but given the limited scope of our prototype, further testing would be needed to determine if content not included in the prototype would be similarly easy to find.
Digital Prototype, Task 1: Out-of-town researcher
You’re a researcher living in Chicago doing a project on Long Island history and have stumbled upon the Huntington Historical Society website, which you gather has a number of primary sources that would help you in your research. Because you’ve done research at a historical society before, you think that their finding aids would be the first place to look. Searching online, you need to:
Part 1: See if HHS has their finding aids available online.
Part 2: See if someone at HHS’s archives can help you find what you need and send you copies.
Accomplishing Part 1
To accomplish the first part of this task, the user can:
Click the RESEARCH button in the global navigation menu on the HOMEPAGE.
Click the ARCHIVES button in the body of the RESEARCH page.
Click the VIEW FINDING AIDS button in the body of the ARCHIVES page.
Click any of the PDF buttons.
Accomplishing Part 2
To accomplish the second part of this task, the user can:
Hover over the ARCHIVIST CONTACT INFORMATION (either telephone number or email address) in the body of the VIEW FINDING AIDS page.
Alternative path to completing part 2 of this task
Hover over the RESEARCH button in the global navigation menu on the HOMEPAGE.
Click the RECORDS SEARCH SERVICES button in the RESEARCH drop-down of the global navigation menu.
Hover over the ARCHIVIST CONTACT INFORMATION (either telephone number or email address) in the body of the RECORDS SEARCH SERVICES page.
Digital Prototype, Task 2: Potential museum visitor
You’re planning a trip to Huntington, New York early next year to visit your twelve-year-old nephew, Kevin. Kevin’s mother mentioned that he’s recently become interested in studying the American Civil War. You’ve heard from a friend (a real history buff) that the “Huntington During the Civil War” exhibit at the Huntington Historical Society is supposed to be great and is family-friendly to boot. You think it would be a lot of fun to take Kevin to the exhibit during your visit, but you’re not sure if it will still be up then. You want to:
Find out if the “Huntington During the Civil War” exhibit (Exhibition D) will be on display during your visit.
Accomplishing this task
Hover over the MUSEUM button in the global navigation menu on the HOMEPAGE.
Click the EXHIBITS button in the MUSEUM drop-down menu.
Hover over EXHIBITION TITLE D to view information about the exhibit, including the dates it is open.
Alternative path to completing task
Click the VISIT button in the global navigation menu on the HOMEPAGE.
Click the CURRENT EXHIBITIONS button in the body of the VISIT page.
Hover over EXHIBITION TITLE D to view information about the exhibit, including the dates it is open.
Digital Prototype, Task 3: Fundraising Event Planner
You’re a local Long Island resident planning a big fundraising event and you need to find the perfect venue. You’ve visited the Huntington Historical Society’s properties before and think the Conklin Barn located on the Conklin House Estate would be great, but you’re not sure if it’s available to rent for private events. You need to:
Locate information about the Conklin Farmhouse and Barn to find out if it is available for rental.
Accomplishing this task
Hover over the ABOUT button in the global navigation menu on the HOMEPAGE.
Click the ABOUT OUR PROPERTIES button in the ABOUT drop-down menu.
Click the CONKLIN FARMHOUSE button (or the RENTAL INQUIRIES link below) in the body of the ABOUT OUR PROPERTIES page.
Hover over the RENTAL AND VISITOR INFORMATION area to view information about the property, including if it is available for rental.
Alternative path to completing task
Click the EVENTS button in the body of the HOMEPAGE.
Click the BOOK AN EVENT button in the body of the EVENTS page.
Click the CONKLIN FARMHOUSE button (or the RENTAL INQUIRIES link below) in the body of the ABOUT OUR PROPERTIES page.
Hover over the RENTAL AND VISITOR INFORMATION area to view information about the property, including if it is available for rental.
Following the completion of our study, HHS engaged the web design agency Go Digital NY to redesign its website (Fig. 16). Go Digital NY’s redesign reflected our simplified, user-centered content categories and incorporated a static, global navigation menu with drop-down functionality (of the type featured in our final digital prototype). With the goal of understanding how the website’s revised navigation and content categories would affect HHS’s target user groups, we ran a final round of user tests on the website. For these tests, we used modified versions of the tasks we employed during our digital prototype user testing, but we altered them to reflect the actual content on the redesigned website. We found that participants in these tests were able to successfully complete the tasks with little to no prompting. Our team also noted that participants were able to navigate between tasks more effectively because the static navigation menu was consistent throughout all the pages on the website.
The success of the HHS website redesign was due, in large part, to its focus on HHS’s target user groups. We felt that our understanding of HHS’s target users and their needs contributed to this success because it allowed us to make better, more informed decisions about how content on the HHS website could be more effectively organized and presented.