Information Structure

Client
The Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) and Business Unity South Africa(BUSA)

The Challenge
1. The CCMA and BUSA wanted to reduce load on their call centers from employers seeking information on how to deal with various human resource issues in their business.

2. There was a lot of information provided by the client which would make any site design very text heavy and therefore potentially difficult for a user to find the information they were looking for.

3. Employers often saw The CCMA unapproachable and pro-employee in disputes. The CCMA wanted to correct this perception and show business a less biased and more positive and helpful face.

To counteract the negative perceptions that employers have of the CCMA and to create a sense that the CCMA was credible, serious, approachable and trustworthy mastheads showing strong, successful business leaders and positive aspirational messages were featured on key pages.

The Solution
1. Information was categorised in terms of the employee life cycle with the most common issues that employers approached the CCMA and BUSA call centers with ( e.g. appointing employees, managing employees, creating a fair and productive workplace). highlighted These core concepts formed the basis of the main menu.

2. Large "download elements" were inserted throughout the body copy in relevant places. These drew the attention of the user to useful downloads (infographics, checklists etc.). This approach both highlighted important information and created visual resting points for the eye on text heavy pages.

3. A sticky menu with in-line links to important information ran down the left of each page. This helped the user easily orient themselves in long articles and jump back and forward within the article as they looked for relevant information.

4. Type was "concertinaed" under useful headings in both mobile and desktop views to reduce page length and help the user easily find what they needed.

5. Type size was set quite large, line length short, leading wide and type contrast strong, this combined with lots of white space optimised the readability of large blocks
of text.

Small Fish UX Consulting & Graphic Design

Information Architecture