Food recalls, fishing rules, and forestry: creating an IA strategy for diverse audience needs

Ruth Hendry
Consultant: Content strategy, information architecture and content design
Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand

Speaker's Bio:

Ruth was Springload’s Content Director; now she’s Head of Strategic Growth. She has broad experience in content, UX, and customer-led design. A data nerd at heart, she uses analytics, research and testing to drive decision-making, resulting in digital experiences that put the customer at the forefront.

At Springload Ruth has worked on large-scale content and information architecture projects for organisations including Massey University, Vodafone and Air New Zealand. She got into the world of websites in her native UK, working on Wildscreen’s ARKive project. After she arrived in Aotearoa, she spent four years looking after Te Papa’s digital content, including the live broadcast of the colossal squid dissection. She’s Springload’s resident cephalopod expert.

She finds joy in a beautiful information architecture, but her desk is as messy as her websites are tidy.

Talk Description:

The Ministry for Primary Industry’s (MPI) customers have some of the most varied information needs — possibly the most varied in New Zealand. MPI provides information on how to follow fishing rules, what the requirements are to sell dairy products at the market, and how to go about exporting honey to Asia. Their website mpi.govt.nz has all the information.

However the previous website was dense and complicated, and MPI’s customers were struggling to find the information they needed, often calling the contact center instead — one of several indicators that people were lost and confused on the website.