Drawing America architecture
navigation redesign
Role: UX Architect
When: June 2020
Duration: 1 Month
What: UX Architecture & Design

Objective
Drawing America was a group created with the intention of helping artists develop their skills and form a community to grow within. With the circumstances of the global pandemic, the community has moved entirely online. Online classes and communication come with challenges unique to artists, while creating new opportunity to expand the user base. In addition to new challenges, the current site lacks organization and proper labeling. The quantity and overlap between navigations has become overwhelming, and the homepage doesn’t clearly explain Drawing America and its offerings for potential members.
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My goal was to present a plan to understand and improve the site architecture, while increasing the user base and site engagement
Navigation Approach
Consolidated
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Remove any duplication
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Flexible overall structure
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True global navigation design and structure
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Consistent way-finding approaches
User Centric
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Different content based on registration status
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Reduce cognitive effort and repetition
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Standard visual cues and emphasis
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Move toward simplified, user-friendly language
Currently, the navigation is split between a horizontal navigation and an additional vertical navigation on the left side. Ideally, there would a single navigation for users, making it easier to know where to find the content they were looking for.

Original Site Navigation
Currently, the navigation is split between a horizontal navigation and an additional vertical navigation on the left side. Ideally, there would a single navigation for users, making it easier to know where to find the content they were looking for.

Proposed Navigation
Through open card sorting exercises I was able to come up with a simplified, proposed navigation that removes duplication and simplifies the users paths. Reducing the horizontal navigation from 9 to 5 items, removing the vertical navigation and adding a footer creates a less cluttered navigation and more opportunity to engage the user.
In addition to removing duplication and reorganization, renaming items to better match their content (for example news becoming articles and events) will simplify the user experience.

Original

Proposed

Wireframes
I created a couple concept pages to further improve the user experience of the site, and illustrate how certain duplicative elements are combined. I focused on the homepage and the course page
Currently, the homepage is the same whether or not a user is a member, and logged in to the site. The homepage should work to explain what Drawing America does, clearly introduce the content of the site, and provide clear CTA’s to join and view content.

Currently, even after a user has registered for courses, the course page remains the same. Instead of creating a separate page for “my courses”, as it exists currently, I’m proposing that the course page reflect when a user is registered for courses, and include a dedicated area to display them. Including this allows the registered courses to be removed from the course list, and other courses become more visible to the user.


Next steps
With the navigation currently being implemented, the next step will be conduct usability tests and interviews with current users to see how their paths have improved