In late 2013 the B.C. government’s central communications office issued a mandate to stop new web development and consolidate all public web content on the main government website. To comply with this mandate, the Ministry of Justice had to organize thousands of pages and documents spread across several domains into a new citizen-friendly taxonomy. It also had to ensure its online services and forms–accessed by thousands of people daily and essential to the operation of the justice system–could be easily found and used.
We started this project by conducting some baseline research. The nForm team reviewed the domains used by the ministry, worked with ministry staff to inventory all of its web content, and examined the analytics data available through WebTrends. We designed and conducted a survey of website users to better understand who was visiting the site and the tasks they were trying to complete. And we held a workshop to dive into the complex stakeholder landscape in the Justice sector. Over 180 unique stakeholders were identified in the workshop; participants grouped them into five key stakeholder groups we needed to serve. Based on this research we were able to create a new information architecture that focused on the needs of two key stakeholders: the public and legal insiders. Tree testing helped us validate the structure and labelling
in our site map. We also created content models and wireframes to show how the ministry’s content would fit with the existing government website (and how they would look on mobile devices).