Encyclopedia Redesign
ITAÚ CULTURAL
CONTEXT
Itaú Cultural Encyclopedia is the main product of Itaú Cultural, an institute that promotes artistic events
and encourages artistic research and production.
It gathers information about visual arts, art and technology, literature, theater, cinema, dance, and music produced in Brazil. All content undergoes a very strict curation before being updated on the website.
It is accessed by students, academics, onlookers, editors, teachers, and it’s completely free.
PROBLEM
Due to the high volume of content that needs to be updated on the site, the team responsible for updating the siteoften miss the deadline with the schedule of other Itaú Cultural activities. The text approval takes time because of the validations and research that need to be done to identify whether the content writers have done a coherent work. The Encyclopedia team wanted people to be able to contribute to the content, but they didn't know how to make it feasible without being overwhelmed and they don't know how to guarantee the content's veracity. Our team was supposed to map the best process to make it possible, but first, we had to understand how it works today. Then, we should know if Encyclopedia users wanted to contribute to its content. Also, they believed the content was difficult to understand and wanted to change them.
Besides the previous points mentioned above, they knew that the site had usability problems and wanted to create a better experience for their users, suitable for the Itaú Cultural identity brand.
Itaú Cultural Encyclopedia Website
CHALLENGE
How to deliver the content in a complete, relevant, and easy-to-understand way for the audience of Itaú Encyclopedia?
MAIN FINDINGS
Website
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Using HotJar and Google Analytics to analyze user behavior in the Encyclopedia, we saw that people get straight to the point when looking for content, as if it was a dictionary, not a news site - like the team thought it was;
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92% of the users accessed from one to two pages per session and slightly more than half of them browsed for less than 1 minute. This showed that the business objectives weren't correct, considering that they wanted to place KPIs of engagement in their goals (time spent on the website);
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Also through HotJar, we saw that three categories of the menu represented 90% of the pages accessed, so we understood that we should prioritize them in the analysis and adaptation
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The biggest criticisms from users about the site, identified in two workshops with adults who already access the site, were:
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search results
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search for chronology
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menu organization
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images - no possibility of zooming and reference in books
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website organization
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At the same time, the biggest compliments were on the texts, images and text updates. They felt it's relevant, reliable and of good quality, both in the workshops carried out and in an online survey with users.
Lego Serious Play activity with employees
Workshop #1 with users
“What do you like most about the Encyclopedia website?”
Question from the online survey
Anonymous answers
“The didactic way of approaching content and the great approach to themes. It also calls attention to the quality of the texts. ”
“How the information on the author, date, type of work, is presented.”
"Complete information about the artist: description, writer credits, biography ..."
"I use it with my students in college. They need clear, challenging texts, but with a size that doesn't intimidate reading and with a reliable reference."
Content Quality
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After interviewing 25 Itaú Cultural employees, we identified that the stakeholders most willing to collaborate with the site may be the artists' heirs, the academic community, freelance copywriters, and artists. Reasons and rewards vary for each audience.
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High rejection rate for the pages of "arts" and "artists". Contrary to what they thought, the problem isn't the quality of the content, but the mass of text and the organization of the information in each text. We found this out through the analysis of interface utilization tracking videos and during 2 workshops with users.
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In previous surveys, in addition to a questionnaire made with 26 people, many teachers endorse visits due to the reliability of the information and are the main audience of the website.
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With heatmaps, we identified that the most visited content was depreciated on the website's home and the excess of information discouraged the search.
Team Processes
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In the individual interviews with the product team members, we found out that the team spends a lot of time with activities outside the scope and does not collaborate to finish the entries together. Only 20% of their time is for managing website content, so creating an extra process for validating external collaboration can be a risk.
Stakeholder matrix - power x interest
We asked users to map which features they like most and don't like - then explain how we would they change.
EFFORT PER ACTIVITY
60%
20%
20%
exhibitions
production
content
management
external
activities
5 internal journeys like this were mapped:
text creation, external activities and projects, exhibition production, media uploads, IC content help
CHALLENGE REFRAMED
How we adapt the way the content is consumed by the audience while also making the process of developing it more streamlined and participative?
Deliverables
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Evolution of experience, prototyped in medium fidelity and validated (home, search result, and page model)
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Engagement strategy: content governance journey
SOLUTION
The solution got tested with 9 people in a guerrilla test.
My partner and I had some difficulties when recruiting for this validation test, so we decided to go to the Itaú Cultural exhibition and talk to people who already knew Itaú Encyclopedia
The pages tested were: home, search result, and an example of an artist page.
Home
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The decision was to create the first version on mobile, as we discovered that most of the accesses were through mobile devices, and to consider the cases in which the text was too big on small screens.
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We prioritized:
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Highlight the cultural exhibition that is currently active, always held on Avenida Paulista, in São Paulo. Then there's a brief description of the artist, directing the user to visit the entry about the artist.
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Only the 6 most visited posts, instead of the complete list, as it was before.
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The Teacher's Space, a page with tips on how to create classes using the Encyclopedia. Teachers are the main target that accesses the website.
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In the footer, we added the option of “sending suggestions” and “producing content”, to suggest improvements and another to prospect new writers and understand the appetite for content production.
Search and Artist Page
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The menu has been reorganized, prioritizing the most accessed categories.
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The search colors result and content page follows the Itaú Cultural brand's new patterns, and the search term appears in bold text.
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At the end of each page, we added the content feedback feature to validate that the content was good for those who read it. We understand that it's good to measure whether the content passes the perception of future readers' reliability, both the number of thumbs up / down and the number of people who decide to give their opinion on the content.
TEST RESULTS
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2 of 9 people didn't understand what the Teacher's Space was, so the team considered changing the name of this session
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6 of 9 people thought the first banner was an invitation to go to Itaú's exhibition instead of the artist page
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Colors in search results didn't have any impact on the speed of finding the search term
METRICS
More than engagement, we wanted people to:
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quickly find the information they were looking for on the site
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feel that the content is trustworthy, useful and pleasant to read
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contribute making the site more relevant through active feedbacks.
The HEART framework was used to define usability and product metrics, and we defined that happiness and task success were our main goals.
Signals:
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amount of visitors that rated well Encyclopedia's specific pages (binary answer)
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amount of people who searched for a term and spent the less time as possible until finding the desired content and didn't left the website
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time spent on an artist/art page
Recommendations were sent to the product and development team so they could track the experience, as well as prioritizing the development of features.
Finally, we co-created with the Encyclopedia team what could be the management and content creation when they open up the production
of content to the visitors and main stakeholders.
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The governance flow aimed:
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giving more autonomy for Encyclopedia employees to think about other initiatives
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bringing more efficiency
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publishing more new content for the site more artists and works beyond the Southeast region of the country
User flows directed at better time use of the team, greater collaboration between people and continuous improvement.
THE TEAM
Marina Domingues- product designer
Fernanda Sessa - product designer
João Aleixo - developer
Tânia Francisco Rodrigues - Encyclopedia IC manager
Glaucy Tudda - Encyclopedia IC coordinator
Bruna Ferreira - Encyclopedia IC analyst
Camila Nader - Encyclopedia IC analyst
Elaine Lino - Encyclopedia IC analyst
Icaro Mello - Encyclopedia IC content analyst
Marcel Caldeira - Encyclopedia IC content analyst
Ítalo Girotto - IC innovation specialist
MY ROLE
Responsible for identifying pain points of site visitors, facilitating activities to identify and solve problems based on the research done, prototyping the defined solution and validating it with my partner.