Website Relaunch

Context

The Akron Art Museum site was organized around how the institution thought about itself, not around what visitors came to do. Finding hours, planning a visit, or seeing what was on took too many steps, and the writing assumed knowledge that many first-time visitors did not have.

My Role

I led the relaunch as Chief Experience Officer: the research, the information architecture, the content strategy, and holding brand and usability standards across a cross-functional team.

Approach

1. Listen. Audience research and stakeholder interviews to map what visitors needed against what the institution wanted to say.
2. Explore. Card sorting and journey mapping to rebuild the information architecture around real visitor tasks: plan a visit, see what is on, go deeper.
3. Test. Usability testing on the new structure and content, iterating before launch, with analytics to benchmark against the old site.

Why It Worked

• Structure the site around what people came to do, not around how the institution is organized.
• Accessible language widens the audience without losing curatorial credibility.
• Research settles internal debates with evidence instead of opinion.