Complex Data Model

Project: Website redesign for a textbook publisher
Role: UX Strategy, UX Architecture
Scope: New product model, site architecture, content strategy, e-commerce flow, and website experience

 
Sample wireframe snippet of the textbook product model.

Sample wireframe snippet of the textbook product model.

 

The problem

Our client was a large, national textbook publisher. They were looking to do an entire overhaul of their current website and create a new experience that would allow parents, teachers, and students to browse and shop for textbooks online.

 
N - Website redesign.png
 

What made this project interesting

The client had two lines of business - a B2B business that sold books to schools and a B2C business that sold books directly to consumers. The two lines of business would share a site, but the pricing and selection of books would differ for the two types of customers.

The catalogue also had an interesting structural problem that needed to be solved. An individual title could be purchased in many formats (eBook, physical book, in multiples), or part of a kit. We wanted to make sure the browse experience clearly accounted for this without inundating the user with many repeats of the same title.

 
N - Product Model.png
 

Project Highlights

  • User flows: We mapped out the experience for the different types of users, considering their context and goals. These flows informed the eventual design and helped us better understand how to prioritize pages.
     
  • Product model: The first thing we did was define the product model. A single title could be sold in many formats, and that same title could also belong in a kit or in a series. These relationships must be made clear to the user, and it was important that product model we devised would work within the constraints of the technical partner. In addition, the redesigned product model ensured that the same title would not appear multiple times in the search results.
     
  • Information architecture: We were building a complex website with a complicated product model, so it was important that we addressed the complexity properly in the website structure. We created two sibling sites - one for each line of business. The two sides were very similar in structure and functionality, but could be easily differentiated through visual design.
     
  • New site: The outcome was a site that allowed users to self-select into a customer type to see the products and pricing applicable to them. 
    • Templated: We took a templated so that the two sites could leverage the same structure. We made use of the tiered navigation model to create a set of tiered landing pages that could be reused across sites and across product categories. For example, a landing page for B2B Mathematics would have the same general structure as a landing page for B2C Social Science.
    • Modular: Modularity facilitated the design of the product details pages - as products had varying amounts of related information. 
    • Faceted navigation: We leveraged faceted navigation for both the browse and search experience. The vast catalogue necessitated a solution that could scale across the hundreds of subjects/categories. By using faceted navigation and the redesigned product model across the entire site, we made it easier for users to find what they were looking for.