Information Architecture: Achieving Product Design Goals with UX

An extract from a piece originally published in The Martec, April 2019.

Mat Rutherford, Head of Experience at Pureprofile is leading the charge in reimagining this innovative consumer insights platform, going through “the process of rebuilding our holistic platform experience including the consumer facing web and mobile apps, to be user-centric and absolutely focussed on the experience.”

As he puts it, “We want to make sure we are, and remain, a design-led company by putting our users first.”

The process involves “techniques such as interviewing, archetype creation, storyboarding, card sorting, user flows and content mapping (to) allow us to discover what our publishers, administrators and consumers are actually trying to achieve at any given moment.”

Mat’s tips for UX design principles include:

• Keeping it as simple as possible.
• Asking what is the primary objective on any interaction, and making it as easy as possible to achieve that.
• Deciding what’s needed and what needs to get out of the way.
• Minimising cognitive load and reducing decision-making time (although sometimes you want to slow users down, for instance when making a transaction).
• Never leaving users with a dead end — ensuring they can easily fix or undo/redo actions.
• Making (the) system flexible so newbies and pros can use it as they see fit.
• Being trustworthy and credible — eliminating uncertainty and assuring users.
• Providing consistency with navigation and organising information to forge stability, reliability and predictability — without being a slave to it.
• Delighting and creating an emotional connection.