U.S. Bank Pivot – Q4 2024Pivot Top Navigation: Unraveling Complex Enterprise Navigation with Data-Driven Insights
Led the discovery to kick start the redesign of the navigation experience, providing a more modern, engaging, and efficient experience for users.
Intro
What?
My recent discovery work focused on dissecting and optimizing the navigation of a large-scale enterprise platform, revealing critical insights through research and data analysis. This demonstrates my approach to tackling complex information architecture and navigation challenges, emphasizing data-driven decision-making and user-centric design.
Why?
Pivot is designed to manage vast amounts of data, support complex workflows, and adapt to evolving business needs. Modernizing user experience that meets contemporary standards preserves or even increases the business value. Aligning to the bank’s design system and accessibility standards, provides a more inclusive and efficient experience for users.
Who?
Lead Design: Julie Cho
Experience Design: Chloe Carroway
Content: William Dorman
Research: Brent Shelkey
Product: Grant Cardone
Engineer: Andre Crouch
Where should we begin?
Imagine improving the UI/UX design of a legacy system—one that has reliably served your Pivot’s business for years but is now slow, unintuitive, and outdated.
How might we optimize user performance while maintaining productivity for clients already accustomed to the older version?
How might we lift and shift the current elements into the new navigation while finding way to enhance the user experience?
Upgrading the UX/UI design of legacy enterprise applications is uniquely challenging. Unlike single-user apps, enterprise systems are often deeply integrated into daily operations, particularly in investments services. Even minor UX issues in these systems can lead to costly disruptions, and small inefficiencies can snowball into larger problems.
-
Structuring and organizing information. In the enterprise world, think of it as creating a logical system for managing a city’s worth of interconnected data, not just a house.
-
How users move through that organized information. For enterprises, it’s less about creating a simple map and more about designing a dynamic GPS system that adapts to complex, changing landscapes.
Immediate and noticeable UX issues (low hanging fruit).
Not built to be mobile first. Missing responsive breakpoints (XL desktop, tablet, mobile).
Missing interactive states in menu buttons (focus, active).
Missing second levels in menu dropdowns (no child levels).
Accessibility standards not met (color contrast, keyboard navigation, tab order).
For demonstration purposes, this recording uses dummy data, not client information.
IA Content and Navigation are deeply intertwined
Product Ecosystem: We're dealing with entitlements and role-based access, client-specific views, and context-dependent information needs.
System Integration: These products must seamlessly integrate with existing systems and data sources (~15 sources).
Scalable and Adaptable: Need IA to evolve gracefully, accommodating new features and changing business needs without complete overhaul.
Regulatory Considerations: Compliance, security, and industry standards are fundamental design constraints.
Pivot Site Map
Current state
Provided input and assisted in the update of this site map.
Future state
Led the development of this site map (most up-to-date version)
Rethinking IA Process with a Data-Driven Navigation Discovery
I decided to shake things up and assembled a team instead of going in alone with a team of brilliant minds – engineers, researchers, product owners, designers, SMEs, and leadership. Together, we dove into both the "why" and the "how many" with our research, mixing qualitative and quantitative approaches.
Mind mapping all Pivot sites
(a simplified mind map of Pivot’s product connections of a bigger matrix)
One-to-one Mapping
To really wrap my head around how everything was connected, I drew up a map of the platform – kind of like a treasure map, but for data and system interactions. I wanted to see how everything flowed together.
Then, I teamed up with engineers to make sure our navigation ideas weren't just visuals, but actually worked in the real world. We wanted to avoid any roadblocks later on. By getting early access to coding and input early, we spotted potential bumps in the road.
Scenario-Based Architecture: How people actually use the platform
Users aren’t just clicking around randomly. They had real jobs to do. So, let's build and design navigation based on all those tricky business scenarios and workflows, making sure it made sense for real-life tasks and fits into product roadmaps (QPP plannings, vision, requirements). And to make sure everyone’s voices in our teams were heard and counted, I hosted workshops before we gave our sitemap a makeover based on technical feasibility and research input.
I wanted it to be super clear and easy to use, like a well-organized map, with all the important landmarks highlighted based on previous data and stakeholder buy-in. Basically, I wanted to make sure getting things done was as smooth and simple as possible, no matter how complicated the idea.
Research and Data Analysis
To really figure out where folks were getting stuck, the researcher and I dove into the data with Quantum Metric. It's like having a magnifying glass for user behavior tracking. We used it to spot those navigation bottlenecks, those "uh-oh, where do I go now?" moments. And to make sure we weren't just looking at numbers, but understanding the why behind them, the gathered insights helped us connect the dots and make sure our interpretations were on the same page.
Mainly a lift/shift effort, but it presents with an opportunity to re-evaluate our navigational elements and overall strategy. Aiming to refine and optimize our navigation strategy, these workstreams are designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of user behavior and industry best practices, ensuring we improve the navigation.
Key research workstreams
To deliver a navigation experience that truly resonates with our users, we adopted a data-driven strategy, leveraging various research methods to translate user mental models and priorities into actionable design decisions. This approach ensured that our initiative aligned with user expectations and industry best practices.
Nav analysis of current state
Gathered data of web elements on Pivot through heat maps, scroll depth measurements, click rates, user interviews, stakeholder interviews, surveys, and other tools (recordings, analytics).
Competitive review (not shown yet)
Collected insights and common nav patterns from adjacent teams, industry competitors, providing a broader perspective on user expectations as they jump from Pivot to another site in the same realm.
Card sorting and tree testing (in progress)
Currently underway through interviews and surveys, this testing, which I championed, is designed to validate abstract content groupings and refine the navigation based on concrete user feedback.
Click rates (insights):
Searching, drilling into details, notifications are high areas of interaction.
Conversion:18% = 559,700 clicks
Path Analysis (insights):
Over 22% of users with access to multiple products often switch during a single session.
File Cabinet, Portfolio, and Reports make up more than 60% of users’ activity.
Not everyone uses the front door starting from Home. Over 33% of users start their session in a deeper link.
Key insights and solutions
Non-negotiable navigation elements
Improve Search: User feedback has elevated global search from a 'nice-to-have' to a 'must-have' requirement. To meet this critical need and replace inefficient page-to-page search, I proposed and will spearhead a dedicated development effort, requiring close collaboration with developers.
Streamlined Information Architecture: User data revealed that the left local navigation contributed to cognitive load and was frequently bypassed, indicating a disconnect from user needs. To address this, the content was reorganized, minimizing redundancy and prioritizing discoverability.
Group notifications/news/updates together: Based on click-through rate analysis, we consolidated all notifications into a single area to improve user efficiency. A new notification icon state was also developed to clearly communicate updates.
Results and Impact
Anticipate to reduce task completion time by 30%, cutting out 40% of extra clicks of the flows.
Increased user satisfaction with navigation by 30%, via surveys and testing.
Improved data discoverability and accessibility.
Decrease unnecessary API calls and system utilization during peak hours by 33%.
Future is Al-Driven
Retrieve more data and leveraging Al to create adaptive and personalized navigation experiences. By analyzing user behavior and business priorities, Al can:
Automatically reorganize information hierarchies (recently viewed, last saved settings, recent searches)
Generate dynamic navigation paths (suggestions in empty search results).
Predict and address potential user roadblocks (intraday, timezones).
Conclusion
In essence, this discovery process, while demanding, yielded positive results. It demonstrates my ability to tackle complex enterprise navigation problems using a data-driven and user-centered approach. By combining research, analysis, and strategic design, I'm creating navigation solutions that improve user efficiency and support business goals on a portfolio-level.
The next phase involves designing and testing. More updates to follow.