CONTENT management system
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About the Project
Project Introduction
This CMS is used to add, edit and maintain content across sites that collectively hold approximately 18,000 pages. Users input an average of 50 pages per day, with high points reaching 150 pages per day. It also houses various tools, resources, and image databases. Its users range from daily power users to infrequent “I need to fix something but I’m scared” users.
what went wrong?
Well. I went into my first testing round very confident that I had solved every problem they had ever had, just like that. Boy was I wrong.
My first priority was to implement a functional left side navigation and module style interface so that the most important information was readily available and easy to find. In testing, those two things performed very well.
My familiarity with the platform blinded me to the severe challenges from the content input perspective. Previously, the CMS had expandable sections that hid the content within them. Eventually, when you had 14 sections open, it was close to impossible to find the content you needed to work on. Continuing to rely on that structure was a problem.
I am grateful that my first testing round failed miserably, because it opened my eyes to how big of a problem these users were facing. A pretty UI alone would not help here.
Content nested with its “parent” heading. Nightmare fuel.
This page in particular struck fear in users’ hearts.
how i fixed it
I dove back into my research and talked to users many, many more times. I asked for their help!
I switched to a more familiar content input structure, similar to WordPress, Squarespace and others. Content is no longer hidden within expandable sections, and it appears in the CMS how it would (relatively) on the live website.
I added Outline View, enabling users to navigate quickly within the content and to get a birds eye view.
I simplified the bottom menu bar, filter/search, forms and content inputs.
The much more simplified version of adding content
high fidelity mockups
Mockups were completed in Sketch.
Light Mode
Creating a new page
Page information
Entering and editing metadata
Entering content
Dark Mode
Site dashboard
Page version history
Entering and editing page notes
Completed content
Outcomes & Lessons Learned
User Testing Quote of the Year: “I like that it looks like a piece of paper!”
The CMS concept performed beautifully in the second round of testing. Users described it as “clean”, “fast”, and “intuitive”. Some wished that Google Docs would just integrate into a CMS already. I am eternally grateful for my users who never failed to give me ideas even as we approached building the MVP. I learned the hard way that my first solution is not always the best, or even the third best, and to LISTEN to users when I have such unprecedented access.
Ultimately the bespoke CMS was shelved in favor of a prebuilt headless CMS, sad face.
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