Applying rich data to improve page content and inform IA

A home internet research at Telstra, 2019

My squad and I were engaged by the Win & Grow, Digital Sales channel at Telstra to help them design a dedicated page that would educate their customers about their internet plans and products.

How Telstra connect your home illustration by Ye Yint Aung features a man at his laptop with a Wi-Fi booster, a woman watching TV with modem and a man on his tablet standing behind his smart lamp

Techniques and methodologies

• Human-centred design framework
  Lean Double Diamond process
• Agile framework
  Lean & Scrum methodology
• Lean discovery
  Atomise with Affinity map support
• UX Canvas
• Empathy map
• IA map
• Online whiteboard
• Perception testing
  · Visceral
  Five Second Test
  · Behavioural
  First Click Test & exploratory interviewing
  · Reflective
  Highlight test

Outcomes

• A logical and consistent information architecture for Telstra’s public facing site
• An educational and search engine optimised page to help internet customers in their decision making
• An avenue for building brand trust, and increasing sales traffic and conversion

Disruptive innovation without interruptions

Risk

The purpose of the page would naturally fall into a higher hierarchical position in relation to our existing top-ranking pages. An early concern we had as a team was how to avoid affecting the sales measures and targets of these pages in the space.

A nebula of ideas

Workshop techniques

The broad brief from the business created an array of objectives from the stakeholders. Within our budget and deadline, I ran a lean discovery workshop to get consensus and better understand the problem, and define the objective. The workshop consisted of an exercise called Atomise, with the support of Affinity Map as needed. By the end, everyone was enthused, and our key driver was agreed upon.

Online whiteboard from L to R: UX canvas, mobile view of design, and desktop view

Bringing the data alive

Research design

A new page has no baseline and to rigorously test our page I designed a qualitative test to investigate the three connected levels of perception in cognitive science known as Norman’s three levels of design. For the visceral level, I used Five Second Test; the behavioural was covered by a combination of First Click Test and exploratory interview; and for the reflective level, I ran both digital and analogue versions of Highlighter Test.

Highlighter test in action where green indicates where our participants are more confident with purchasing in mind and red is less confident

Our participants’ feedback was a mix of direct, agreeable and generous, but they had all unanimously said the page was not recommended.

“It’s good… but for me, I would go straight to internet plans.”

Affinity map organised our large amounts of data from user testing into groups or themes based on their relationships

Up, up and pivot

Search Engine Optimisation tool

SEO keywords tracker created in Excel validates the strength of our content

Although the feedback on the initial direction was not favourable, the user testing identified the elements and the amount of content we needed. To ensure we got the suitable traffic through to the page, we created a tracker in Excel that would help us validate the strength of our content based on the number of times top search terms were used. Our template proved successful has been standardised and shared across the channel, and the page will be launched in the new financial year.

Online whiteboard of revised design based on participants’ feedback from L to R: revised UX canvas, information architecture map, empathy map, mobile view of design, and desktop view with SEO keywords highlighted and its reading hierarchy

Team

Project owner and Excel wiz — Matt McLeod
UX designer and researcher — Wendy Cooper
Content writers and kickass notetakers — Greg Williams & Bethan Jones
Visual designer and diagram king — Ye Yint Aung