Ruth has a broad experience in content, UX, and customer-led design. A data nerd at heart, she uses analytics, research and testing to drive decision-making, resulting in digital experiences that put the customer at the forefront.
Ruth is now a consultant, but used to be the Head of Strategic Growth at Springload. During her time Ruth worked on large-scale content and information architecture projects for organisations including Massey University, Vodafone and Air New Zealand. She got into the world of websites in her native UK, working on Wildscreen's ARKive project. After she arrived in Aotearoa, she spent four years looking after Te Papa's digital content, including the live broadcast of the colossal squid dissection. She's Springload's resident cephalopod expert.
She finds joy in a beautiful information architecture, but her desk is as messy as her websites are tidy.
The Ministry for Primary Industry’s (MPI) customers have some of the most varied information needs we’ve seen — possibly the most varied in Aotearoa. How to follow fishing rules when catching snapper on the weekend? What requirements to meet to sell dairy products at a market? How to go about exporting honey to Asia? What funding is available to reforest a lifestyle block? mpi.govt.nz has all the information.
But the previous website was dense and complicated, and MPI’s customers were struggling to find the information they needed, often calling the contact centre instead — one of several indicators that people were lost and confused on the website.
We were asked to create a new information architecture to help customers find the information they want when they want it. We’ll take you through the tips and techniques we used to create an IA that met a wide variety of user needs. We’ll cover the challenges we faced, what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what we’d do differently next time, including:
