Adaptiva’s global settings
Overview
Global settings and features for Adaptiva's web platform had grown and began to clutter the settings menu. To reduce clutter and frustrations, I made features easy to find by creating and testing a site map for all Adaptiva content and features. Additionally, I designed a global settings experience. The development of this project was executed in four phases:
Background
Company
Adaptiva is a Kirkland, WA based company that provides endpoint management products for businesses to easily distribute content to and monitor compliance of endpoints.
Problem
Global settings and features for Adaptiva's web platform had grown and began to clutter the settings menu and side navigation items. The clutter made it difficult for users to navigate the platform and find the feature that they were looking for.
Project goal
The goal of this project was to improve the Adaptiva web portal information architecture and create a clear and organized navigation experience.
Role and responsibilities
As the only product designer at Adaptiva, I worked with product managers, engineers, and other stakeholders to see this project from concept to development. In order to improve the information architecture of the Adaptiva web portal, I organized content and features into a site map and conducted informal tree tests to test out the logic of the new organizational structure. Additionally, I created an interactive prototype to review with stakeholders and handoff to engineering.
Process
Research
For preliminary research, I looked up navigation patterns of other popular sites for inspiration. I compiled a list of current features and content within the Adaptiva platform and to account for scalability in designs, I consulted upper management and product managers to obtain a roadmap of planned features and products. At this point, I would have liked to use this list to conduct a card sort with customers but did not have the time or resources.
Prototype
After collecting all content for the Adaptiva platform, I created a site map using Adobe XD. Without initial customer research, I tried to consult support and engineering often to double-check the logic for site map organization. Using the new site map, I created a prototype of the navigation to prepare for tree testing.
Review
To validate the site map organization I conducted an informal tree test with my coworkers in engineering. After iterating, I reviewed designs with product managers, engineers, and upper management to produce final designs for navigation and global settings. In the future, I would like to conduct tree tests with our customers to improve the navigation experience.
Engineering handoff
After designs were approved, I handed them off to engineering to bring to life. If I could go back and redo this I would have created a site map to manage the information architecture at the start of designing the Adaptiva web portal when there were significantly fewer features and content to organize. It would have been much easier to revisit and revise the site map with every new feature instead of trying to organize everything at once.
Solution
The following are in-depth results of this project:
Site map
A site map helped to visualize and categorize information with the ultimate goal of improving the information architecture of the platform. Working through the site map resulted in a global section in the side navigation for commonly used features and a global settings page for setup and informational forms.
Global settings
As a result of improving the information architecture, I designed a global settings experience for users to easily configure platform settings.