Forest Professionals of British Columbia
Empowering clients on a UX research and information architecture project
FPBC regulates forest professionals in British Columbia. In Canada, forest professionals are regulated much in the same way as lawyers and accountants. FPBC is an arm’s length organization that implements regulations created by the Government of BC.
Changes in professional governance impacted FPBC’s website, requiring better UX research, a restructuring and redesign of the site.
Website: fpbc.ca
Challenges
FPBC’s greatest challenge was its lack of knowledge around website structure, development, and plain language writing. However, they were eager to do the work and excited to learn new techniques.
My role
UX researcher and information architect. I engaged stakeholders, interviewed members, educated the client on the usefulness of deliverables, and educated the writer on how plain-language and how to write for the web.
Skill used
User interviews, stakeholder engagement, content strategy, information architecture, wireframes, page flows
Process
I held several stakeholder engagement sessions to discover business needs, pain points, and outline proto-personas.
I also did a content audit to learn about FPBC and evaluate the structure and quality of the content.
User interviews helped me further understand member needs. Then I fully developed the personas.
After the user interviews, personas, and workshops, I created a content strategy with guiding principles. These principles would steer the information architecture, wireframes, and content rewrite. With the content strategy approved, I moved into creating and reviewing the new site map.
A content model informed the wireframes, while page flows helped the client understand how all the pages worked together. Finally, content migration documentation made sure to clearly communicate how to move the old pages to the new site structure.
