Prepare IA guidance 1st tranche for launch

[sarawilcox]

To do:

• [x] Collect feedback from the service manual team on the changes
• [x] Make any changes based on the service manual team feedback
• [ ] Finalise coded examples with IA team - not possible, so decide on images
• [ ] Finalise content around them
• [ ] Review by IA team
• [x] Content crit if time - 27 October
• [ ] Design huddle review - 28 October
• [ ] Proofread/2i all content
• [ ] 2i design
• [ ] Transfer to staging
• [x] Change content on start page to link, where appropriate, to IA guidance
• [ ] Prepare What's new, updates page and SM home page card - including mentioning removal of beta banner from service standard
• [ ] Changelog

[henocookie]

@sarawilcox will be taking the first tranche of IA guidance to a content crit this afternoon and @henocookie will be taking it to an NHS Digital design huddle on 28th October 2021.

This is to gather feedback from the wider community.

[sarawilcox]

Content crit

Service manual nav

• Change copy on information architecture card on home page for people who don't know what IA is, or if they need it. E.g. Organise and label your content and services so people can find and use them. Don't just repeat IA. Explain.

General comments

• Perhaps organise it by top tasks - who needs to do what. Not many people will restructure their website. Is this about learning about IA or doing? What other tasks might people come to the IA guidance for? What is the purpose/are the purposes of the guidance? Some of it is about commissioning or designing an IA, some is about fitting a page into an IA.
• There's some overlap between pages.
• Are we sure these are the pages people want?
• What is IA and why IA is important describe IA, quite conceptual and abstract. Too much emphasis on the model rather than the task. Users may want more about how to create and use an IA. This bit is more about "doing IA", which is helpful: Organise and label content to make your websites and other digital products easier for people to find and use what they need.
• Some of this comes across as over-confident ("elitist"). There isn't a universal way users use website.
• This is a good first iteration.
• Some additional stuff it might be useful to include: guide to page types and hierarchies on the NHS website – hubs, curated hubs, etc. Also examples of bad IA.

IA guidance index page

• Most of the side nav headings are clear, but not "Your topic in a wider IA". (This came up in the UserZoom research too.)
• The nav is confusing. We have "Guidance by topic" in the breadcrumb and the side nav. In the side nav, it looks like it'll take you back a page but you can't get 1 level up this way.
• The definition of IA is important here but the guidance defines it in different ways. (E.g. re it being structure and underpinning structure). The wording for the SM home page is good: Organise and label your content and services so people can find and use them.
• Get in touch - delete the word "matters".

What IA is page

• How does IA "underpin" structure? How does it "power" a website?
• How does IA "store" information? Isn't it stored on the server? Take out "store"?
• The bit about "Well structured, tagged content" is better on Why IA is important page, not here.
• First example under "IA is structure" heading is good - it's worth the page.
• Explain why you would connect topics, e.g. chemo and cancer. (This is worth saying but explain.)
• Explain that it's about where you put content and how you label it.
• "IA is structure" is a confusing heading. It seems cryptic. You could have 1 heading "IA is structure" and a 2nd "IA is how it looks" but it's still cryptic. (Note, you might have a great structure but not see it because the visual representation is bad.)
• This page might work better sequentially. 1) Work out your structure. 2) Work out to present it your structure. Use verbs rather than nouns. 1) Define your structure. 2) Show your structure.
• "Visually" may be problematic (see below).
• In the bit about IA as interface, there were questions about the elements mentioned here. Are headings nav elements? They're not clickable. Within a page, headings help you navigate but in UI terms, people think nav elements should be clickable.
• Should side nav be sideways nav? (Yes)
• What's the difference between local and global nav? This isn't clear. Is global on every page and local may vary? There's too much detail for this point in the guidance. Do we need to mention local and global at this point? It gets in the way. Just explain the basic concepts that IA includes nav elements that help people find what they need.

Why IA is important page

• Does it help "maintain" a website? Governance etc helps maintain it. Make it clearer that the effort you put into the underlying logic makes it easier to keep the website updated.
• "Sustainable" suggests green. It's about being easy to maintain for longer.
• "Better prepared for future innovations" is worded like a business case. Say it's means you can migrate it, move it to other tech more easily, to move it to different systems, to share.
• What does "placemaking" etc mean? Avoid using nouns, use verbs. E.g. help users know which site they're on. Help them know where they are on the site.
• Is this section about what users do or what we do for users?
• Delete "works hardest" re nav bar. it communicates this. (And logo probably works harder.)
• "Information scent" is "a bit gross"/"stinks". Good to mention it as people will hear it but don't put in inset text which makes it seem important. Avoid jargon like this. Instead mention it in passing in 1 sentence, not 3, e.g. "People sometimes use the phrase "information scent" to mean" and then don't use it again. Note we talk about visual representation, then about "scent" - confusing to refer to different senses in the same section. Get rid of the term.
• Take out "Your IA" in "Your IA helps users get to where they need to go."
• When we say "visual cues" for example, what about accessibility? Should we talk about navigation labels and stuff being clickable so screenreaders can use it?
• "Search helps users locate things that are more difficult to find." People have different behaviours re search. Some go straight there. Instead say "Search is an alternative way to find things".
• This sentence is confusing: "The work done to document hierarchies and the relationships between content on the NHS website underpin the site search engine and content management system (CMS)." How does it underpin the CMS? Are we documenting hierarchies and relationships? Is it just that structure and labelling content helps search? Talking about the CMS at this stage confuses me.
• "It's also vital for accessibility". Is this about consistency? How is it vital for accessibility? Don't add this as an afterthought. Explain. Give it more weight.
• Note something can be consistently bad.
• Consistency shouldn't be on this page but on the principles. Look at moving the bit about consistency over to principles and shortening it.

Feedback on images on this page

• 1st image works - it shows nav and search.
• I quite like the images.
• I think they're helpful. Since it's talking about different elements on pages it's useful to have images.
• The first one could perhaps be the actual main nav rather than a simplified graphic, since it's a real example.
• The second and third images are useful and the simplified version makes sense there since it's just an example.
• The last one of the search bar doesn't add quite as much, but probably doesn't do any harm.
• The images are very generic - to the point where I had to consult the caption to understand them. But image/caption together worked OK."
• Of the four, the most effective in order were 3, 2, 4, and a long way behind, 1.

Principles of IA

• "small, mobile device" - delete comma
• item 5 - the bullets don't all follow on from the lead in line
• item 6 - can you link to offline services?
• item 9 - "controlled vocabularies" needs some explanation
• item 10 - I'm not sure about the advice to not use brand names (or why it's in quotes). We do often use brand names on medicines pages for example, if that's the term users are more likely to know.
• I expected "Make your IA machine-readable" to mean accessible by a screen reader - but it didn't mention that.
• The IA guidance says to "Use clear language" but isn't doing it very well. It's full of "jargon, expert vocabulary or niche brand names".

Your topic in the wider IA

• Typo synonyms.
• Use a health example, as on the other pages, rather than cheese.
• This bit starts off with instructions. Is this the How to section? But it's a specific use case - about working on one page or topic, not devising a whole IA. I prefer this tone. But make the heading clear it's to do with implementing something.
• It assumes you've read the other bits, e.g. the principles.
• Avoid use of future, e.g. "will do"
• The bit about talking with your IA team is confusing. Which IA team? Working with other IA teams? (Had to explain this.)

Measure success page

• "Add synonyms for your topic and prioritise results" needs more explanation. Is it about how you set up the search in the back end, to determine what results people see? Would many teams actually have any access to be able to do that? Also isn't that about how you set things up in the first place rather than how you measure results?
• "Show that users pick up a good information scent "- this section could have a lead in line before the bullets, to better match the other sections.
• "performance framework" is jargon - you just need a way to measure success.
• "metrics" or "measures" - pick one and be consistent.
• "priority tasks", "most common tasks", or "top tasks"? Pick one.
• "Show that users pick up a good information scent" needs an intro for the bulleted list (GDS standard capitalisation too). (We don't always do this but review it if it's confusing content designers.)

See also comments from Brie in #ia-service-manual NHS.UK Slack channel.

[henocookie]

A summary of feedback for the first tranche of IA guidance from service manual team members: @EllenDoyle, @PeteKowalczykNHS, @CatherineReader, @georginaplatt and @ambchang:

What works well

• Pages aren't overloaded and follow logical sequencing.
• The Guidance by topic in the top navigation makes sense, as in time this section could include more guidance.
• Good to see links from the start page pattern and service standard to the IA guidance.

What doesn't work well

• [✅ Changes have now been made following this feedback] On the information architecture principles page, inclusion is currently number 10 - but it's likely very closely linked to user needs which are number 1. Would suggest moving inclusion to number 2.
• Guidance by topic home page could use some work to allow it to accommodate future sections.
• Confusion about where to find the design principles now that the card linking to them has been removed from the home page.
• On the information architecture guidance home page under "Get in touch", the last sentence doesn’t seem clear as to which slack workspace to contact the team? Would think it’s a different workspace but there’s no link, unlike the first paragraph.

What needs more testing

• Bringing Accessibility and Information architecture guidance together in a new Guidance by topic in the main navigation, yet having a card for each on the service manual homepage might be confusing.
• Expected to see Guidance by topic as a card on the home page too.
• What are the use cases for this guidance? Who would be expected to refer to it and when?
• Expected there to be a lot more than two topics within the new Guidance by topic section. Could work as a section that is useful but will work better with more guidance, if added over time.
• Duplication of the link back to the Guidance by topic page in the side navigation and the breadcrumbs. This is by design as seen in the styles, components and patterns areas of the design system. Is this duplication good design?
• By only linking to the design principles under the design system (and not also the content style guide), will people think that those principles, therefore, don’t apply to other UCD areas such as content design?
• On the What information architecture is page, there is some confusion around the actual guidance. For example, it says “IA is structure” but also “IA underpins the structure…” then suddenly “IA is infrastructure” and “IA is also the visual representation of the structure” - so which is it?

[henocookie]

A summary of feedback for the first tranche of IA guidance from the IA team, including @BrieWhyatt:

IA guidance home page

• Sentence that says "get started by reading"… "why it’s important" also could be a link to the page
• Get in touch - these paragraphs are very repetitive? Should we be signposting internal users to the #information-arch channel in the NHS.UK Slack workspace?
• Could the contribution section heading be more of an open question? Such as "have you used this guidance?" People may be more likely to carry on reading rather than being immediately asked to contribute.

Why information architecture is important page

• We use "good" a lot on this page

Information architecture principles page

• Is there a clear reason why we are including the NHS design principles here? It doesn’t feel like it flows with the rest of the page.
• Need to be conscious of the length of the measure success page.

Placement of the IA guidance in the service manual's IA

• Happy where the IA guidance will sit for now (within a new Guidance by topic section, along with Accessibility guidance). It will be interesting to see how much the card on the homepage linking to Information architecture guidance will be used.

[henocookie]

The IA guidance for the Service Manual work is now on hold for the remainder of 2021.