Category: information architecture

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A New Website for the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry

Screenshot of an LDAF website page titled "Supporting agriculture producers and sellers"

My first project at Ad Hoc LLC was an overhaul of a state agency’s website, the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry (LDAF). Check out the website we launched last fall at: ldaf.la.gov. 🎉

Partnering with LDAF stakeholders, we were able to improve task success rates, reduce time on task, and increase user confidence in the website overall. I led research for the project, which included market/competitor analysis, a top tasks survey, card sorting, tree testing, first-click testing, and usability testing (pre- and post). There was also a ton of information architecture and content strategy work.

It comes as no surprise to most that government websites can be hard to use. And getting a chance to improve this website for the people of Louisiana was really rewarding.

Learn more about the project:

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IT Summit: Creating User-Centered Website Navigation

Over the past several months, our UX team has been preparing for updates to our primary, global drop-down menus on the library’s main website. We started this project in anticipation of significant building renovations and the launch of associated new services to happen in 2020 (see CATalyst Studios). We realized that our existing menu structure didn’t allow for this evolution in our services.

We still have some work to do to before launching our new menus, but in October, I presented with two colleagues, America Curl and Lara Miller, on our progress to date. This was part of the University of Arizona’s IT Summit.

In this talk, we covered our user-centered and content-focused process, with our main techniques being card sorting and tree testing. We’ve also done some prototype testing and first-click testing. Hope you enjoy!