Product Experience | Service Design
WHAT IS AOTF?
AOTF is the American Occupational Therapy Foundation, a non-profit organisation that supports occupational therapy research and public understanding of the important relationship between everyday activities and health.
CLIENT BRIEF
Project Overview
Imagine as an OT Researcher, you are trying to find the funding opportunities available for your research on the AOTF website...
As you navigate through the current website, you are overwhelmed by the overload of information. You have difficulty finding information relevant to you, easily and quickly, You have to click through multiple links and read through text-heavy pages to find details you need. Also, you encountered contradictory information and application process, which is making you skeptical about what is the most updated information.
What does this mean to AOTF Business?
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Lower Funding Application Rates
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Decreased Reach of Research Resources
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Frustrated and Skeptical Stakeholders, Lack of Trust in Current Website Information
What are the Goals?
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Make information finding easy, quick and intuitive
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Increase user's site rating by at least 2x
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Provide insights to AOTF about user needs, to help them better disseminate the relevant information
MY CONTRIBUTION
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75% Designed hi-fidelity working prototype templates with dev-ready documentation to guide standardised, easy to adopt, update and maintain webpages
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50% Collaborated with AOTF stakeholders in aligning organisation's identity into a visual language and translate it into a design system and brand guidebook
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75% Redesigned information architecture and site navigation through card sorting
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50% Conducted iterative user-testing to validate, iterate & implement user feedback on solutions
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75% Translated research findings into user journey maps and design directives
SUCCESS MATRIX
50%
reduction in task completion time, through improved and efficient information finding
2x
increase in user satisfaction, through consistent interactions reducing cognitive load
z%
time reduction in maintaining and updating information, due to standardised templates
HOW WE DID IT?
Our Process: Structured for Agility, Driven by Discovery
DISOVERY RESEARCH
Understanding User Needs
We started by creating an interview guide for different stakeholders who use AOTF's website, and partnered with AOTF's marketing head to conduct 8 in-depth user interviews.
Who are the stakeholders?
USER EXPERIENCE JOURNEY MAPPING:
We gave out specific user task to different user groups to identify their current journey and pain points at each touchpoints.
SECONDARY RESEARCH
Auditing Current Site
In addition to conducting in-depth user research, we also performed a thorough audit of the current website to gain a holistic understanding of its challenges,
Site Navigation Audit
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Google Analytics-most visited pages
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Existing Site Navigation-related
content scattered across pages
Accessibility Audit
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Low color contrast impacting readability
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Inconsistent & unclear CTA
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Missing or vague alt-text for images
Competitors Research
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Clear menu structures & intuitive
categorisation improve findability -
Clean, modern UI enhance
professional trust
KEY FINDINGS:
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Unclear Navigation Labels & Structure
The naming of menus and submenus lacked clarity and intuitive grouping. This forced users to pause, guess, or click around aimlessly — a frustrating experience that breaks flow and trust.
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Scattered & Buried Information
When users couldn't predict where content lived, they felt overwhelmed and discouraged. The journey to critical information became more of a hunt than a guided path.
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Inconsistent Call-to-Actions
Calls-to-action varied in language and placement, causing hesitation. Users weren’t sure what to expect after clicking — which introduced friction into even basic interactions.
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Inconsistent Visual Styling
Inconsistencies in typography, color, and layout hierarchy made it harder to visually parse and prioritize content — increasing cognitive load and contributing to fatigue.
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Outdated & Incomplete Content
Encountering missing or obsolete information reduced user confidence. It raised doubts about the site’s reliability and made it harder for users to trust the platform as a source.
WHAT WE RECOMMEND?
Our Solution: Iterative based on User-feedback
INSIGHTS
Research-driven Design Directives
We identified three high-impact areas that should be addressed in the phase 1 of redesign.
[This website needs a cohesive content strategy which is out of our current project scope and is projected to be taken in phase 2]
INFORMATION REDESIGN
Make labelling & categorisation of site's main navigation more intuitive & organised
DESIGN SYSTEM
Define design system for consistent formatting & a guidebook in alignment with brand identity
TEMPLATES PROTOTYPE
Dev-ready page templates to reduce design & development effort, Easy to adopt & maintain
STEP 1
Lets Sort This Pile Of Information!!
CARD SORTING ACTIVITY
As an Information Architect, my core responsibility was to design a structure that is derived from user's mental model. To understand that, we conducted an open-unmoderated card sorting exercise using KardSort where participants were asked to organize content in ways that felt most intuitive to them.
This method allowed us to shift from an internally driven structure to a user-centric one—where information architecture now aligns with how users think, not just how the organization operates.
USING AI AS OUR SUPPORT TOOL
We then used ChatGPT to analyze patterns in categorization, helping us identify commonalities, confusion points, and opportunities to simplify navigation.
DESIGN OF NEW SITE NAVIGATION
We mapped the categorisation on the existing site map that we previously created to understand site's navigation system. This showed inconsistencies in not only information grouping and labelling but also hierarchicial placement.
The legend here shows the hierarchy in level of organisation with the darkest color at the top of the chain.
As we can see, the site map from 'before' shows that the pages that users would like to see first are nested further deep in the site. This added with scattered categorisation made information finding extremely difficult. So, we not on grouped the relevant information together but also discussed hierarchy in which it should be displayed with the client, based on findings from the card sort.
KEY FEATURES
From Insights to Action
1. How Might We Make Relevant Information Easy and Intuitive to Find?
User Pain Point
"I have to read through a wall of text just to find what applies to me."
Our Solution
We transformed the content-heavy page into a structured interactive table with smart filters, allowing users to narrow results by funding type, eligibility, or deadline — reducing cognitive load and decision fatigue.
Impact
As seen in user testing, this reduced average time to find relevant information from 2 minutes to 20 seconds.
2. How Might We Transform Content-Heavy Pages into Scannable, User-Friendly Experiences?
User Pain Point
"I have to scroll endlessly through dense content just to find the one piece of information I need."
Our Solution
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A call-out box at the top highlighting time-sensitive announcements (like application deadlines).
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A persistent anchor navigation bar on the left to guide users directly to specific sections without friction.
Impact
Fast, non-linear navigation where users could now skim with ease, significantly reducing information overload and providing users with more authority over the content.
WHAT WAS THE OUTCOME?
USER TESTING
Validating User Experience
We conducted A/B testing for the current website and new proposed website focusing on the two task:
-As an OT Student, find out what funding opportunity is available to you right now and what is the eligiblity criteria for the same?
-Give site rating based on ease of finding information, visuals, and overall experience
1% IMPROVEMENTS
What Can Be Done Better?
x
HI-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
Let's see how our researcher now finds the funding opportunities...
MY REFLECTIONS
What will I do differently in the future?
My biggest takeaway:
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Stakeholder Alignment is as Critical as User Needs
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Redesign ≠ Reinvention
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Test Early, Test Often
What I’d do differently?
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Document design decisions better, creating a decision tree
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Define clearly (write down, instead of just discussing) to maintain clarity in communication. This will not only save time but also reduce redundancy
“They pointed out that some of our funding programs were categorized in a way that didn’t align with how applicants search for them, That kind of insight was really helpful—things we might not have noticed on our own.”
-Kristin Bukovsky
Director Communications and Marketing
AOTF
