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Experience Abu Dhabi

Turning IA from 'Huh?' to 'Aha!’

The Case Study Breakdown

Short on time? Start with the video walk-through for a visual overview, followed by The Cliff Notes for a quick summary in just 5 minutes! Or if you are one of the select few who really want to get into all the nitty gritty details, then skip ahead to The Full Enchilada, where I break down the case study piece by piece.

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The Walk Through

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The Cliff Notes

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The Full Enchilada

The Walk Through

✨ Sit back, relax, and watch as I take you through this case study deck style! (5 mins)

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The Deck 💻

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The Summary ✨

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The Kudos 🙏

The Cliff Notes

✨ All the key insights without all the extra reading

Navigating the Confusion 🔎

Ever try to find something on a website and go ‘huh?’ That’s exactly what we were facing with Experience Abu Dhabi. Too many overlapping categories and inconsistent naming conventions were confusing our users. There was also a striking resemblance between the Experience Abu Dhabi website and app, leaving our users even more confused about where (website or app) they could find what they were looking for.

Understanding User Behavior 🧐

We wanted to know:

How do people naturally seek and process information during all phases of the travel planning process (i.e., before, during, and after their trip)?
What are people's perceptions of Abu Dhabi?
How can this help us market our product?

Talking to Our Users 👩🏻‍💻

So, we decided to talk to our users. We discovered that users leaned towards utilizing web-based travel resources when planning their trips and relied more on apps to locate resources while they were physically at their destination. We were already aware the information architecture on the website had its own challenges—and we knew the app was going to require more of a major overhaul—so we opted to tackle the website first to help make it easier for users to plan their trip.

Testing for Improvement 🧪

With these challenges in mind, we knew it was time to roll up our sleeves and put our product to the test through usability testing where we looked at:

→ Figuring out if our homepage was easy to navigate and use

→ Checking in on how our users felt while navigating and finding experience detail pages

→ Putting our interactive map feature to the test

Through our testing we found that users were having a hard time finding the information they needed, despite utilizing the main menu or following logical navigation paths.

Collaborative Solutions 🤝

With our users having a hard time accessing essential information through conventional methods, we decided our next step should be to come together as a team and sort our sh*t (aka card sorting).

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work ✨

Let’s be real—I couldn’t have done any of this alone. Navigating the intricacies of the Experience Abu Dhabi website required a team effort. So, content was tagged in, and together, we dove into the nitty-gritty details. Where does ‘Falcon and Saluki Shows’ go?

The Punch (aka Impact) 👊

Together we designed a new information architecture (IA) to simplify trip planning for our users exploring Abu Dhabi. The outcome? We successfully streamlined website navigation and elevated the overall user experience, ensuring smoother trip planning journeys than ever before.

As an added bonus, we also managed to slash our research workload by a whopping 95% by leveraging modern tools and optimizing our recruitment process, all thanks to the lessons learned in this project!