Documentation Design

Request

Assisted with the architecture of ingested content during the integration of Thermo Fisher Scientific and Life Technologies.

Solution

At the end of 2013, as our Life Tech CQ instance prepared to ingest a massive amount of content from a soon-to-be-legacy Thermo Fisher Scientific website (also built in CQ, by the way), I was tasked with handling UX for the Digital Content team.

The amount and types of data we consumed were vast. Rather than follow the assumed path of creating 30 different templates that would force most of the content into only somewhat relevant structures, I proposed looking at the data in terms of simple, easy-to-understand informational design patterns that would help end users determine if the content suited their needs.

Rarely did our users enter through the homepage and drill down. The levels and segmentation proposed by other departments created conflicts among the Content Editors. I suggested abandoning that approach altogether, as those classifications were primarily internal, business-defined, and essentially unimportant to our customers.

Instead, I proposed a flatter hierarchy with better SEO tagging, fewer clicks to reach content (if the user arrived on a landing or content collection page), and modular, easy-to-document information components. These components were designed to be added to the page in whatever way the document or article flowed naturally.