UN-Habitat & UNECE
Sustainable Housing and Urban Development Guideline Modernization
Challenge:
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) traditionally used a 60-page manual of guidelines to develop policies related to sustainable housing and urban development. I was approached to transform the manual into a modern, accessible resource. The challenge was to map out the information architecture of a new website and determine a prioritized information hierarchy, with an approach for managing less important content in an unobtrusive way.
Project Category:
Approach
The existing manual consisted of dense text, complex boxes of information, and hard-to-navigate annexes. I reviewed the manual in detail. Then, I met with the project manager to identify the key information from the guidelines and sketch out a general structure for the new site.
After I had the list of "chapters" I decided how to create the flow to make it easy to navigate and validated it with UN officials who worked within those guidelines to make sure the structure makes sense. We agreed that the website should be fluid to ease navigation, and prevent users from having to jump from "one page to another". I drafted my first ideas and validated them with the project manager to make sure I was headed in the right direction.
I also reviewed existing data from other UN partner websites, which showed that users either get lost in the information or lose interest before they find what they are looking for. We created a goal to not create a maze of information. It was essential that each click not open another page, or take the user to external websites.
After I had the list of "chapters" I decided how to create the flow to make it easy to navigate and validated it with UN officials who worked within those guidelines to make sure the structure makes sense. We agreed that the website should be fluid to ease navigation, and prevent users from having to jump from "one page to another". I drafted my first ideas and validated them with the project manager to make sure I was headed in the right direction.
I also reviewed existing data from other UN partner websites, which showed that users either get lost in the information or lose interest before they find what they are looking for. We created a goal to not create a maze of information. It was essential that each click not open another page, or take the user to external websites.
Result
My solution allows users to slide from one "chapter" to another. When they navigate to a new chapter, assisting text displays to explain the intent of the chapter, while also displaying the "whole picture" (not jumping from one page to another). Supplemental information and links open in a pop-up window to the right of the page allowing easy access, without disrupting the user flow.
User Impact
The website is still being migrated to the official servers and is not public yet. Once the site goes live, the impact will be better measured using metrics such as the number of downloads.
Can’t get enough?
My mission is to make information resources available, appealing and accessible for the user, while utilizing a creative problem-solving approach. Want to know more about this project? Let’s talk!