ANDOR: Information Architecture Strategy
Imagine a fictional brand of luxury shoes, ANDOR, with a unique shopping experience: left and right shoes are bought in separate stores with entirely different identities. Our task was to design the information architecture strategy for this brand.
The Facts
What: An information architecture strategy for ANDOR shoes
When: Spring 2009
Who: Myself along with Mohammad Hadhrawi, Kathleen Fear, and Jason Stewart
Where: SI658 – Information Architecture with Dan Klyn
The Story
Our team was tasked with designing an information architecture strategy for a unique concept in luxury goods: ANDOR shoes, a brand which caters to the experience-oriented customer. This fictional shoe brand is based around a completely bifurcated shopping experience, where the left and right shoes are purchased separately and represent drastically different brand identities. The left shoe is fun-loving, relaxed, and egalitarian. The right shoe is conservative, traditional, and exclusive. To reinforce this separation, ANDOR retail stores embody these personalities in their atmosphere and exist separately (with the left flagship store based in San Francisco and the right flagship store based in New York City). These stores only share a fastidious approach to sizing, with shoes sold in much more granular sizes than typical.
How does one create a website that embodies the spirit of this unique brand? Our team began by creating a mood board that represented the essence of the left and right sides. We then performed a comparative analysis to gather best practices around key aspects of the shopping experience: sizing, store locators, check out, and browsing. We also created an audience description so that we would have a shared conception of our users.
With this background in place, we identified the strategic focus and goals of our website. Next we brainstormed ideas on how to remain true to the spirit of ANDOR and incorporate essential elements from the offline purchasing experience. We decided to mimic metaphors from two genres of online websites: dating sites and employment search sites. We also decided to investigate ways of integrating product sizing into the core of the experience. Centering on these ideas, we developed complete task flows and site blueprints for each store We used these deliverables to articulate our overall strategy on how to best represent the brand online.
My Role
On this project, our team shared responsibility on developing the mood board and articulating the brand identity. We also collaborated on the comparative analysis and defining the strategic focus. Later on in the project, we split up tasks, with my focus primarily on developing the task flows and blueprints that described the experiences while other team members focused on developing wireframes to represent each stage of the process.
Artifacts
- Final Report (PDF, 7.0M)