User Experience
Websites as seen through sitemaps
UX as a strategy is successful when empathy is employed toward understanding the user's wants and needs. This means identifying the client audience and getting inside their head. Once the audience is identified and understood then a strategy can be created — a strategy that aims to match the desires of the client with that of the client's audience. Now, the designer can work toward creating experiences that connect the client and target audience to each other.
The sitemap is a valuable tool and an important mechanism that visualizes a user's online journey. Armed with valuable knowledge about the target audience the designer lays out a flow chart (sitemap) of the website or app. Sometimes this is a detailed schematic and other times a 30,000 foot view. This greatly increases the efficiency later in the process with the intent of spending less time reworking page and navigation layouts — which is often the result of poorly defined and improperly placed content. In addition, sitemaps provide a way to assign codes to the various site pages and accompanying information — creating an efficient system for writers and developers to build out the site. Nowadays, much of this heavy lifting of creating sitemaps is done through site development software.
The following are just a couple examples of the sitemaps and websites that I've created. These assisted in communicating to the client how a visiter will navigate through the site without having first to commit to a wireframe or a full-blown design of a website.
Yale's AIDS Research Centers | Web site sitemap (PDF)
Los Angelitos Orphanage | Web site sitemap (PDF)
The Skills
Primary Research
UX and UI Design
Design Consultation
Web Design
Graphic Design and Production
The Goods
Sitemap
Website