Task testing is a way to run a client’s site structure through some typical scenarios and get quantitative feedback on how easily users can navigate to relevant or appropriate content. It is normally used as a quantitative research method, although it can also be a qualitative method. In this article, I talk about the quantitative method.

Page flows show how users would move between navigational elements on a website. This article explores page flows and when to use them on a project.

Wireframes are typically a low-fidelity representation of the navigation, structure, and page layout of your site. They are typically drawn up from an end-user perspective. Wireframes are first and foremost a communication tool. This article explains more.

Some people use the terms “site maps” and “information architecture” interchangeably to describe the page structure for a site. This article look at the purpose of site maps.

On the surface, audience-based navigation seems to make sense. After a few attempts at audience based navigation, here are my lessons learned.

Dynamic content display is content on your site that automatically appears without manual curation. This article explains why you should use it.

Often I’m asked what is the difference between site maps, navigation, and taxonomy. This article explains the difference.

Metadata are the workhorses of a content management system (CMS). Simply put, metadata tell your CMS platform what your content is about and let you do things with your content.

Content types, metadata, and taxonomy are all part of a site’s content model. A content model defines all the content types, metadata, and taxonomy.

Often I hear, “We want to make the process better, we just don’t know how.” The secret to business process improvement isn’t (just) inviting in an expert who will magically change things. The secret is to know what your process are now so that you can change them.

Many projects fail because they don’t engage the right stakeholders early enough in the process. Depending on the tasks of the project, we would engage different stakeholders for different reasons.

User research allows us to improve our information structures (such as metadata models, data models, websites, intranets) in ways that are helpful to the people using the structure. When I work with clients who are new to user research, they need to know what the process of user research is like and what to expect as an outcome.