Rushmoor Borough Council

Problem

Rushmoor Borough Council wanted to redesign their website to better engage residents and ensure people could quickly find the information they most needed.

What I did

• Analysed existing audience and usage using demographic insight (Mosaic) alongside current site activity to understand who used the site and what they were doing.
• Facilitated stakeholder workshops to capture requirements from council staff and local councillors.
• Planned and ran four user workshops (council-supported recruitment to specified user groups) to gather needs and priorities.
• Used structured workshop methods (brainstorming activities and affinity sorts) to translate real-world problems into website requirements.
• Ran open card sort followed by closed card sort to validate navigation and labels.
• Designed a new information architecture based on card sort results and business requirements.
• Facilitated sketching workshops with the project team to explore solutions.
• Built a clickable Axure prototype from wireframes.
• Conducted usability testing of the prototype with staff and members of the public.
• Presented findings and rationale to senior decision-makers (governors of the council).

Key findings / decisions

• A major public need centred on rubbish and collection times.
• There was stakeholder pressure to place this in the main navigation.
• Research (card sort + usability testing) demonstrated users could reliably find this content under Environment and related areas without distorting the overall navigation model.

Outputs

• Workshop outputs and affinity themes
• Open + closed card sort findings
• New information architecture
• Wireframes + Axure prototype
• Usability test findings + recommendations
• Senior stakeholder presentation with evidence-based rationale

Outcome

The redesign direction was validated through research: despite stakeholder pushback, testing showed the proposed navigation structure worked for residents, and the IA supported finding high-priority tasks (including rubbish collection information) without compromising the overall structure.

Methods / Tools

Workshops; affinity sorting; open/closed card sorting; IA design; sketching; Axure prototyping; usability testing; stakeholder readouts. (Mosaic used for demographic insight.)