UX redesign: Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital

Project summary

Holland Bloorview’s website UI and UX had grown to become outdated, unresponsive to mobile devices, and inaccessible to assistive devices. It also required a manual process for updating content by one person via Dreamweaver which often caused delays due to high-volume backlogs.

I was hired to work with the communications team, vendor, and stakeholders to update and migrate Holland Bloorview’s suite of 4 corporate websites and enhance the organization’s web, mobile, and social media presence.

New website

Vendor management and 70+ stakeholder interviews

I worked with the Chief of Communications and Strategy and our 4-person vendor team in managing 7 information gathering interviews with over 70 internal and external stakeholders.

We gathered and assessed requirements for both the website and CMS custom-built for each content owner’s unique needs. I filled most of my notebook!

A commonality across the interviews was how important each department’s content was – and life-changing to the kids with disabilities and their families who Holland Bloorview serve. Thus, our goal was to “unbury” content by creating dynamic menus and home pages to make finding information easier and faster.

Wireframe and UI approval

I collaborated with the vendor to finalize the information architecture and wireframes that they proposed. 

My Senior Communications Manager and I then presented the new designs to the executive team and received positive feedback. We received approval with only a few minor suggested changes to the information architecture and began construction.

Content clean up and freeing up budget

We needed to purge a lot of orphaned files/images/PDFs, and outdated content that accumulated across the website over the years. Otherwise, we’d be spending budget on migrating content that was irrelevant to user needs. 

I led the cross-corporate content clean up by managing my team of seven communication colleagues and over 20 content owners across the enterprise. This project took about two months and resulted in a reduction of over 1000 pages, images, and PDFs – and freeing up vendor budget.

Accessible videos

Holland Bloorview uses videos a lot to tell its many incredible stories. I ensured they were all transcribed and captioned before going live by working with our internal videographer in updating and captioning over 30 existing and new videos.

I also developed a new corporate policy and procedure for transcriptions and captions.

Training sessions

I led ten training sessions on our new CMS and got content owners up and running quickly. I have often been complimented at how effective I am at explaining technical concepts to non-technical people and how adaptable my training style is to each individual’s learning style.

I also provided training in making content accessible as well as provided ongoing help desk style support.

As a result, web content was uploaded quickly and in compliance with WCAG guidelines and AODA regulations.

Launch

Holland Bloorview and it’s three sister organizations launched a beautiful new website that was easy to browse and find diverse information.

Stakeholders reported a reduction in incoming phone queries, an increase in efficiency in posting content, and pride in this updated home on the web.