Improving the Uffizi Galleries website through research

Where did I start?

First of all, collectivelly, it is a well designed website; it presents a very pleasing aesthetic, meets accessibility requirements, is consistent across pages, and is well maintained even in microinteractions. But it has some problems as well, especially in terms of information architecture and also usability.

So I started by meticoulously analyzing it by conducting a heuristic evaluation. I chose to use the Abby method, which is specific to information architecture.

This activity gave me a great point of view on the status of the website and allowed me to define tasks for a usability test.

I conducted this usability test with 6 participants, in presence. Some important evidence came out which confirmed what I did notice during the heuristic evaluation. In short, behind an aesthetically pleasing design lay a sometimes illogical organization of content, some major issues such as the fact that clicking on 'tickets' totally masked the change of page by the permanence of a hero section that, moreover, presented a carousel whose use was not intelligible to all.

Card sorting

at this point it was definitely necessary to conduct two types of card sorting tests; first an open one, that is, I took all the secondary navigation items and asked each of the 10 participants to arrange them as they saw fit, without providing them with categories, and see what happens.

the result, predictably, was to find myself with 10 different categorizations, among which patterns nevertheless stood out. The participants had quite a bit of difficulty in choosing how to match the content, and this test gave me a way to establish starting categories, change some names, delete pages with no content, and eliminate a couple of hidden duplicates to conduct a second card sorting test, this time a closed one.

Here you can see the results:

Sitemap as-is

So let's take a look at the 'as-is' version of the sitemap; you can see a red X beside every content that I subsequently modified, moved, or eliminated.

Sitemap to be

And now here is my redesign for the sitemap; you can see a green check beside every element that has a new name or position.