WHAT IS BOARD GAME GEEK?
THE PROBLEM
HOW DID WE SOLVE IT?
BENCHMARKING THE OLD MENU
DRAFTING THE NEW MENU
TESTING THE NEW MENU
FINAL DESIGN
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Boardgamegeek.com
Overview

About the project

Improving the information architecture of a large, content-heavy website: BoardGameGeek.com

For a quick summary, click Here

My role
UI Designer & Researcher
Team
Me, Austin Allen
The Problem

Problem

The current menu is confusing and unclear. Interviewees could not easily find their way to the content they wanted.

How might we make it less confusing and more clear?

Solution

We rearranged the menu based on how interviewees would do it themselves.

Because of the nature of the website, cutting on content was not an option.
‍
Everything needed to stay.
Benchmarking The Old Menu

Outlining the issues (Tree test #1)

We ran a tree test of BGG's current menu.

Participants were asked to complete certain tasks that a BGG user would do.

Here are our key takeaways:

Drafting the new menu

We let users guide us

We took an user-centric approach and ran an open card sort test. They asked to sort tasks into groups that made sense to them.

Using the card sort data

Based off the data we got, we made the new menu. But we didn't entirely base it off the data.

‍Why didn't we entirely base it off the data?

Users grouped similar labels such as:

  • GeekMail
  • GeekList
  • GeekGold

But would it make sense to group these together?

  • McCafe
  • McDouble
  • McNuggets

We didn't think so. Therefore we chose to move some labels around to create menus that were more logical.

We also came up with clearer menu labels.

Testing the new menu

Performance increase! (Tree test #2)

We ran a tree test again. More green!

Personal takeaways
& Next steps

During this project, I learned the effectiveness of using data to make decision, and how important a well executed user-centric approach can be. At first, I was kind of intimidated by the amount of content. But working as a team and having a methodical approach made all of that possible.

Our next steps would be to test the new menu and iterate on it. We also need to account for mobile and tablet users, making a mockup for these formats would be important as well.

© 2023 Yung Thach