The hospital’s website was hard to navigate, cluttered, and lacked a welcoming, child-friendly feel. Important information was buried in a confusing mega menu with no clear structure, making it difficult for users to book appointments, find specialists, or access patient records.
Children’s Nebraska Information Architecture Case Study
The Background
About the client
Children’s Nebraska is the region’s only full-service pediatric hospital, located in Omaha. With a strong commitment to providing exceptional care, the hospital serves children and families throughout the area. As a leader in pediatric healthcare, Children’s Nebraska wanted to invest in a website redesign to enhance the patient and family experience and better reflect their mission of delivering top-tier care to young patients.
The issues
The hospital’s website was hard to navigate, cluttered, and lacked a welcoming, child-friendly feel. Important information was buried in a confusing mega menu with no clear structure, making it difficult for users to book appointments, find specialists, or access patient records.
My role
As the lead content strategist, I took a deep dive into the website’s structure and content. I reviewed key pages, looked at heatmaps and search data, and did a content audit to see what was working and what wasn’t. I then reorganized the content to group related information together in a way that made more sense, helping users find what they need faster and navigate the site more easily.
Insights
People had trouble finding what they needed because the navigation labels were unclear, and the menu was too complicated.
Key information, like patient resources, was buried under too many layers, which frustrated users.
Users relied on the site’s internal search to find information because the content hierarchy wasn’t intuitive or designed with patients in mind.
The hospital heard a lot of complaints from patients and visitors about how hard it was to navigate the site.
The Objective
The objective of this project was to redesign the hospital’s website to make it easier for users to find important information, improve the overall navigation, and create a more intuitive, child-friendly experience. The goal was to ensure that families, patients, and healthcare providers could quickly access key resources like appointment scheduling, specialist directories, and patient records.
Steps and Approach
As the lead content strategist on the project, I took the following steps to redesign the information architecture
What I Delivered
This is what my IA redesign looked like. Each visual reflects a step in the process to make the site easier to navigate and align with users’ needs.
The Results
The IA exercise was very valuable. It gave us a solid foundation to build a user-friendly website that will help our users.
Big Impacts
A strong content strategy makes it easier for families to find important information, book appointments, and get the care they need. For a children’s hospital, it’s about creating a user-friendly, supportive experience that puts patients first. Here’s how our improvements made a real difference.
Notable improvements
Families can now find important information, like how to schedule appointments or find specialists, without digging through confusing menus.
We removed outdated and repetitive content, making the site more organized and easier to use.
The site now puts the needs of patients and families first, with clear paths to services like paymnets and support resources.
The site now meets accessibility standards, so everyone, including people with disabilities, can access the information they need.
Families can explore helpful resources, learn about hospital programs, and feel more connected to the hospital community.