United Health Group
Advisory.com
Redesigning a healthcare news platform to tell better stories and remove barriers to content publishing.
United Health Group
AEM · 11 Templates · 6 Months
Project Overview
Advisory.com (AB) is a news site that aims to be a leading voice in the healthcare industry. The company was looking to revamp its operating model by improving the way it tells stories and making it easier to publish content on Adobe Experience Manager (AEM).
Tools
- Mural
- Figma
- Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)
Team
- 3 UX Designers
- 10 Developers
My Role
- UX/UI Designer
Timeline
- Overall: ~6 Months
- Discovery: 4 Weeks
- Design: 5 Months
Process Overview
Understanding the Problem
The team engaged in an extensive internal stakeholder interview process — 18 interviews with the client — to gain a deeper understanding of their objectives and any pain points that end-users had identified through their own research.
We also conducted a comprehensive template audit, which revealed that a significant number of the templates (30) on the site exhibited only minor variations. The underlying architecture didn't permit sufficient flexibility — the organization had attempted to account for all possible component combinations through static templates, resulting in an inability for the communications team to effectively convey their message.
Crafting the Solution
Development of 11 future-state AEM templates to streamline content authoring, create consistency for end-users, and allow for more efficient maintenance.
Alignment with the client's content strategy and research initiatives to standardize and unify component design and usage, with the goal of enhancing storytelling and reducing barriers to content publishing.
Implementation of more personalized pathways for users to engage with the Advisory Board at all stages of their journey, across current and future channels, with a particular emphasis on the promotion of events, trainings, and featured research.
Interview Findings
Design
- Three-column grid forces narrow space for content, creating long, hard-to-read pages.
- Components and content are inconsistently styled, creating accessibility and responsive design issues.
- Limited use of imagery makes pages feel like a wall of text, difficult to scan.
Usability
- 30+ templates and 100+ components make page building time-consuming and confusing for authors.
- Site search does not always find the most relevant content.
- Site authors struggle to translate research content from original to web format.
Content
- Promotion of critical products (events, trainings, featured research) are not considered.
- An overwhelming amount of content types, topics, and navigation filters exist.
- Content recommendations are manually made, leading to outdated or irrelevant suggestions.
Excerpt from findings deck
Template Audit
In our template audit, we identified over 30 templates that only varied slightly. We grouped them based on their high-level layout structures, resulting in 11 templates. We then mapped the 70+ components to those templates to increase flexibility for the communications team — allowing them to effectively convey their desired message once implemented.
UI Design
The new interface features 11 AEM templates to streamline content authoring, provide consistency for end-users, and facilitate maintenance. It aligns with Content Strategy and Research initiatives to standardize component design — enhancing storytelling and reducing barriers to content publishing in AEM.
During the project, the scope changed and we discovered the client desired a redesign — however, the dev team was only scheduled for a lift and shift. We found that the main stakeholder and the rest of the client team were not aligned on their design expectations. Through continued communication and exploration, we were able to determine the desired aesthetic for the client team.
11 AEM Templates
Consolidated from 30+
70+ Components
Remapped for flexibility
18 Stakeholder Interviews
Internal discovery
6 Month Timeline
Discovery through design
Conclusion
In the end, our team was able to nail down what the client wanted — but the change in scope mid-project really taught us to make sure that the client knows what they are asking for at the beginning of the project.
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