GARMIN INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Objectives

User Needs

I conducted persona surveys with 10 target users. From the results, I developed a list of basic user needs to address their interests, goals, and frustrations:

• To lead healthier lifestyles, physically and psychologically

• Help getting and staying motivated during workouts

• Set goals and scientifically measure progress

• Improve performance in all aspects of their lives

• Track improvement over time

Persona

With the needs outlined, I created a persona of Garmin’s target user to better establish empathy and visualize the user base.

Site Tasks

Next, I analyzed the common site tasks that a user would come to Garmin’s website to perform. Understanding and prioritizing these tasks helped establish the site navigation, information hierarchy, labeling, and taxonomy.

1. Browse products and compare prices with competitors

2. Find help tutorials and/or customer support

3. Learn about the Corporate Wellness Program partnerships

4. Look up product warranty and return policy

5. Update maps for accurate route and safety information

6. Share personal stats and engage with the Garmin community

7. Look at the blog for industry related content

8. Check online order delivery status

9. See what the featured apps are to enhance device functionality

10. Look up available job positions at Garmin

Garmin’s Current IA

Garmin currently categorizes all of its main nav under Products, Maps, Support, and Discover — creating a deep navigation structure. There is a lot of content on this site, which at times requires users to go through multiple layers to find their desired information. The products are organized by market first and then by product, which have some overlap within each sub-category. The Discover category seems to be a miscellaneous section, where Garmin has just lumped in all of the other pages that don’t fall into the previous categories. Most of the subcategories in Discover are labeled with brand names, that first time or infrequent users may not understand. Luckily, they do provide a brief description for each, but it could definitely hinder the predictability for users while navigating the site. The footer also has a lot of content within it, categorized under Customer Service, Company, Careers, Garmin Sites, and Partners.

Initial Tree Testing

Pain Points

• So much information, site is confusing to navigate

• Users are overwhelmed

• Information gets buried too deep, preventing content discovery and causing link blindness

• A lot of brand name usage, not intuitive for users

• Unclear and unfamiliar category labeling

Card Sort Analysis & Insights

Redesign Goals

• Clear navigation labels and categorization, providing direction to users for easy accessibility and exploration

• Uncover and reveal information and pages for users, less layers

• Separate and provide clear paths for both consumer and business needs

• Enhance content discovery

Site Map Sketches

With the insights gathered from the user tests, I sketched some revised site map ideas to address the pain points and redesign goals.

Initial Site Map Redesign

Mocking up a first round of design, I aimed to establish clearer primary navigation labels and provide direction to users for easy accessibility and exploration. I separated out Apps & Software, Learn and Business categories to help alleviate the issues of buried content, link blindness, and vague/confusing labels. Distinguishing the paths for both consumer and business needs on the website allows users to identify with their audience type. Additionally, products are now categorized by product type, rather than by market/activity, which leads to consolidated product index pages and less overwhelming confusion for users.

Validation Tree Testing

Test Insights & Iterations

Revised Site Map

Simplifying the layout and implementing the iterations from the second round of testing, I designed the final Garmin site map.

Navigation Wireframe Sketches

Now that I had my site map solidified, I started to explore navigation revisions with primary, secondary and tertiary pages. In this exercise, I sketched different global nav possibilities — flat vs. deep, information hierarchy, visual lists, etc. Additionally, I brainstormed content navigation layouts for the secondary and tertiary pages — local nav, breadcrumbs, layout, etc.

Navigation Wireframe Design

With this proposed navigation wireframe, I transformed the initial deep structure to more of a flat structure. This allows the content to be spread out over more descriptive category labels, preventing buried information and allowing better content discovery. To display the secondary and tertiary navigation, I designed the flow from Products > Sports & Fitness > Activity Tracking. Once users clicks on Sports & Fitness in the global nav, they are taken to that category index page, where there is a visual list of each product type within that category. (Originally, Garmin did not have clickable index pages from the Products dropdown, so users were forced to choose a specific sub-category from the home page.) From there they would click on Activity Tracking, taking them to the product index page. Here, users can browse and compare products or filter their search. All pages navigating away from the homepage have breadcrumbs at the top to provide users with feedback as to where they are within the site.

Final Prototype

(NOTE: Since the completion of this project in 2017, Garmin has updated their website to reflect similar changes that I recommend here. They have since added category index pages with visual product lists, as I suggested above. I noticed this when I was putting together my portfolio in 2018.)

Were the Goals and Needs Met?

Through multiple rounds of testing, a much better understanding of Garmin’s users and their needs was achieved. I was able to determine how to reorganize the information architecture and navigation in a more intuitive and accessible way — with clear labeling, categorizations and content organization. This eliminates user confusion and leads to better content discoverability and exploration — which in turn leads to more conversions and online purchases. Common user site tasks also now have a higher success rate of being achieved — meeting users’ site needs.