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Outdoor Co. came to The Understanding Group (TUG) for help with a strategic effort to redesign the universal navigation bar in ways that served all the people who visited their digital place.
The core question they were asking about their digital place was simple, but difficult in execution: how might Outdoor Co. better expose all their offerings online so people could discover and use them without compromising other people’s ability to shop?
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SoftCo. provides mission-critical software to modern software development teams. Early product designs were driven by SoftCo’s innate understanding of their user, but as they grew, they wanted to develop a research-based perspective to increase their product’s performance. TUG conducted research and created maps that allowed the SoftCo. design team to meaningfully apply research findings to solve the most important problems.
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When LifeCo, a large, digitally savvy non-profit, wanted to create a single coherent digital place they asked TUG to create a structure that would make it easy for members and non-members to find what they needed on a site that served millions of members and hosted hundreds of thousands of pages.
Read moreOur client sought a guide who could explore AI's potential by first understanding their team's needs and processes, instead of just selecting a tool and rearranging their work around the available features.
TUG’s people-first approach appealed to their core needs, and the lightweight proof-of-concept design of the project would allow the firm to explore generative AI's potential in their specific context before investing in a technology solution.
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Progressive wanted to differentiate itself from competitors with a unique digital presence that was adaptable to changing market strategies and expanding content channels. To achieve this, they knew they needed a different approach, and partners that could help them define a resilient digital architecture and uniquely ownable brand expression.
PAE selected TUG to lead information architecture design and Highland Group to transform the information models into the distinctive digital presence Progressive has today, with a focus on design, usability and content.
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Since 1992, The Innocence Project has been at the forefront of criminal justice reform, using DNA and other scientific advancements to reverse wrongful convictions.
The team at Innocence Project realized that their website made it difficult for visitors to grasp the full breadth of the organization’s efforts, muddying their core message. The Understanding Group was engaged to help them redesign the information architecture of the site.
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The University of Michigan (U-M) Division of Student Life had stakeholders representing 26 units and 100 different websites. TUG conducted 29 interviews with 60 individual participants and then helped them develop a shared language for talking about their problem space and for prioritizing and balancing strategic considerations. Our research pointed to three key dimensions that tied their work together. We also identified ten major topical themes across the grouping of sites. We mapped the current state for each of these dimensions separately and created a diagram that merged all three overlays so they could be visualized together in one place.
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The Ford Foundation is a globally-oriented philanthropic organization committed to advancing human welfare. TUG helped them improve their internal communications, and break down silos between programs and regions, by designing a new Intranet/digital workplace. Since Fordify was launched, we have continued to help them make the platform a valued and integral part of their work culture with a vibrant online community .
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TechStreet—formerly a division of Thomson Reuters—provides digital access to over 500,000 engineering and technical standards from over 350 publishers. After years of steady growth via incremental changes to its eCommerce websites, TechStreet’s digital properties had grown overly complicated; it was time to simplify. Customers needed a simple process to get, find, and choose their documents quickly.
TUG collaborated with TechStreet’s development, QA, and product management teams to provide a user-experience–driven information architecture. User interviews and analysis of customer service logs informed new personas that aligned the team on a clear definition of success. The rebuilt site emphasized that TechStreet is a store: a place to browse, search, and purchase documents. The revised site led to a 12% increase in purchases and a 10% year-over-year revenue increase.
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When we started, the University of Michigan (U-M) Human Resources digital footprint spanned nearly 30 different sites. The primary website did not fully communicate the resources available to employees and retirees nor the value of working at U-M. TUG partnered with design firm Q Ltd to redesign and develop the website to improve findability and user experience for the University’s employees, job seekers, and retirees. The top navigation was re-architected to serve user needs and the new structural framework consolidates all 25+ previous HR websites within a simple, overarching taxonomy.
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The City of Ann Arbor website serves as a place for visitors, residents, and businesses to get information and access city services. The site had grown organically over time and was organized around the hierarchy of the city government, not the needs of site visitors. People wanted to serve themselves but got hung up looking for what they wanted. The site’s web analytics showed visitors bouncing back and forth, looking for what they could not find. We created a proposed navigation plan based on interviews, tested mock-ups of the proposed navigation with users, and provided annotated wireframes and specifications for the new homepage and navigation.
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Curtin University, based in Australia, has an expanding global presence, including locations in Western Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Dubai, and Mauritius. Over 3,000 staff serve more than 50,000 students with a range of industry-aligned undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses. Curtin needed a clear information architecture strategy that meaningfully structured its ecosystem in a way that it could be easily governed and maintained while satisfying the University’s goals and those of the wide-ranging users in Australia and globally.
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Autodesk is a design software company that serves customers across the manufacturing, architecture, building, construction, media, and entertainment industries. Autodesk has taken a leading role in the development of robotics, Augmented and Virtual Reality, and 3D printing. Autodesk partnered with TUG to improve the conversion rate for a companion mobile app.
TUG identified obstacles, points of confusion, and opportunities for improvement for each kind of user depending on their stage in the journey. These models helped the stakeholders share the reality of the user’s experience with the broader product development team.
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The American Concrete Institute (ACI), founded in 1904, is the world’s leading resource for concrete standards and education, with a diverse, global membership of 20,000 individuals and organizations. The ACI website was structured with a separate silo for each kind of user. While this seemed logical, it reduced the user to just one role, sending them down a predetermined path with all the decisions already made.
ACI partnered with TUG and the design agency Q Ltd for a website and brand initiative that culminated in developing a new responsive website, logo, tagline, and brand guidelines. TUG provided strategy, planning, and information architecture services. Key highlights were defining stakeholder goals and determining user expectations based on the four discovered user groups.
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North American Bancard (NAB) built a variety of custom software systems to support new services over the years. The result was a complex and complicated digital environment where customer service reps had to juggle multiple interfaces during one service event. The confusion and poor data quality were starting to interfere with NAB’s ability to grow.
TUG helped NAB design and architect a new CRM system which integrated more than six legacy systems into an easy-to-use integrated system with a corresponding integrated data model. In the end, the client thanked us for challenging their business processes and identifying artificial complexities. Most importantly, we helped NAB transform their culture by leading the design effort that put employee success as the primary metric.
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