Kiruthika Mani – Platform Navigation Design

Summary

Tadaweb’s Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) platform allows research teams to collect, enrich, and analyze publicly available information.
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The platform’s navigation design had evolved organically and inconsistently over time, reducing the findability, interconnectedness, and clarity of the platform’s key features.
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I was responsible for redesigning the navigation experience – to help users access and utilize the platform’s full potential.

What I did

Between August and November 2023, I conducted stakeholder and user research, designed and tested prototypes, refined the solution, supported implementation, and socialized the new platform experience with the C-suite, and wider company.

Who I worked with

Business & Product leadership on long-term market positioning goals.
Product team partners on creating quarterly, project-specific milestones.
Feature teams on feature-specific constraints and navigational needs.

Discovery & Planning

An NDA protects all my work with Tadaweb.

The case study below is intended primarily to explain my process. All confidential content in my designs has been blurred out or replaced with abstract labels. Reach out if you’d like more details.

Discovery & Planning

With time, complexity, and increasing UX debt, our navigational UX had become a multifaceted problem. Through kickoff interviews and synthesis sessions, we arrived at specific, time-bound objectives to focus our efforts.

Improve feature findability

Novice users should be able to locate start points clearly and consistently. Expert users should be able to kickstart regular tasks quickly.

Improve feature differentiation

Users should be able to distinguish internal Tadaweb applications and tools from external links/third-party capabilities that are also displayed on the platform.

Improve platform cohesion

Users should be able to seamlessly travel within the platform, with minimal to no breaks in their task flow.

Create futureproof architecture

The information architecture should accommodate current, planned, and future features with logical placements and hierarchy.

Experimentation

Through benchmarking, ideation, evaluation, and early elimination, I focused on two navigational models - multi-level and hybrid.

Option 1: The multi-level model

The multi-level model arranged key navigation pathways within two levels. Global navigation pathways were displayed first, then local navigation pathways were progressively disclosed based on where the user clicked.

Option 2: The hybrid model

The hybrid model displayed key navigation pathways upfront. Unlike the multi-level model, the hybrid model sacrificed some aspects of hierarchy and organization to facilitate easier movement between internal apps and external links.

Testing

Via moderated usability tests, participants performed real-world tasks on each prototype, moving frequently between internal apps and external links. They compared both prototypes on how quickly they could find their way around, easily complete tasks, and travel to multiple regions. In post-test interviews, I evaluated how well each prototype conveyed Tadaweb’s market positioning ambitions.

Option 1: The multi-level model

Required more clicks.
Limited quick transitions.
Interactions felt more “familiar” and “safe”.
Improved the overall experience.

Option 2: The hybrid model

Unconventional. Not immediately intuitive.
Offered more visibility over different areas.
Offered more freedom of movement.
Elevated the overall experience.

Screenshot of a whiteboard displaying the test criteria, test flow, test script, and learnings.

Solution

Flexibility over Familiarity

We chose Option 2 - the Hybrid navigation model, as more than 80% of our test users preferred its flexibility and freedom of movement, even if it required additional onboarding. It also offered more opportunities to integrate the future features we had planned.

Outcomes

Users could now

Locate individual features easily, quickly, and consistently.
Pivot quickly between features often used together.
Perform combinations of tasks in ways they previously couldn’t, or hadn’t thought of.

Feature teams could now

Better visualize how their features integrated into the larger platform UX and use navigational possibilities between different feature areas to plan new initiatives.

Sales Teams have now

Used the new UX to reposition how the platform is demoed and promoted in new and existing markets, with positive results.

Takeaways

Anchor bold experiments with realistic goals

Using conventional navigational patterns would have resulted in an evolutionary improvement, but we would have missed an opportunity for revolutionary impact. Instead, we explored unconventional ideas grounded in realistic milestones.

We launched a version of the design that met project objectives, with a clear understanding of where risks and unknowns lay – so they could be targeted and mitigated in future iterations.

Unlocking user value through navigation design

Discovery & Planning

Experimentation

Testing

Solution

Outcomes

Takeaways

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