Stakeholder Interviews & Project Onboarding

During our kickoff meeting, we interviewed our stakeholders to determine who their users are, how they advocate for generic medicines, and the new direction they were looking to take their website in. Through our intake questionnaire, we collected information about current business priorities, available user data, and goals/expectations for the new website. Our initial discovery sessions with the team yielded the following project goals:

• Increase credibility of AAM
• Increase brand awareness
• Position AAM as the patient advocate
• Encourage new membership

Rapid UX Report

Inputs Heuristic and Competitive Analysis We conducted an in-depth review of the main GPhA website and a few of their closest competitors’ sites, such as PhRMA and Biotechnology Innovation Organization. Our heuristic review of their site and the competitor sites were intended to identify what users might expect to see on this type of website, and identify questions for the client team of what was working and not working on their current site. We also loosely reviewed other advocacy organizations outside of the pharmaceutical industry to determine best practices for advocacy and registration websites. Web Analytics & Heatmapping Using Hotjar, we followed users' paths through the site; collected click, hover, and scroll maps; conducted a poll of user type to determine the overall mix of the different user types; and recorded users' journeys through the site. Users were most interested in finding general information about biosimilar medicines and reading up on AAM's most recent advocacy campaign. On the homepage, however, that information was buried at the back of a carousel, making it hidden on page load and less prominent than some information of lower importance that might be more timely. Outputs Personas & Journey Maps We outlined personas and journey maps for six of their primary user audiences to help communicate the overall strategy for the website back to our stakeholders to begin laying the foundation for the design and content strategy.

• Congressional Staffers
• Patient Advocate Groups
• Media
• Non-Member Companies
• Patients
• FDA Employees

One finding that surprised the team was to learn that the primary visitor group within Congress were staffers instead of actual Congress people. They are typically coming to the site to summarize content to share in their briefings.

Sitemapping & Navigation

Our discovery research helped us uncover our main goals around how we direct users to the content that will help them achieve their desired outcomes: - Provide users with engaging, focused content through media - Compelling messaging and calls to action - Increase ability for social media sharing - Intuitive and easy navigation through the site Our stakeholder interviews helped us learn about their three major business goals of helping people, improving the pharmaceutical industry, and transforming society as a whole. In building our sitemap, we focused on highlighting their advocacy campaigns (society), events (industry), and patient testimonials (people). To pitch our proposed sitemap to the AAM team, we prepared a set of slides (below) that primed them to better understand the proposal and how our solution would meet user goals. The second half of our sitemap presentation session was a collaborative critique and page naming workshop to determine names for the new content groupings that would resonate best with their planned brand and industry.

Wireframing

We designed wireframes of the homepage, and four other interior pages with a specific focus on a template-based content hierarchy and create visual representation of site depth to make the site more scalable. Since the AAM team was looking to improve their brand awareness through thought leadership and registration processes for their main event, our wireframes included pages for these, as well as a sample landing page and interior content page. Our initial wireframes helped the AAM team better visualize the navigation elements and page layouts for the proposed sitemap and they were excited to begin the visual design, so the wireframes were approved quickly with minimal revisions to the layouts and content hierarchies. From here, we updated the creative brief to document any relevant findings and feedback that would help onboard our graphic design and content strategy teams to continue work on the project. We were available for brief consultation with those teams to share our research findings and ensure that the strategic plan for the site was reflected in those phases of the project as well.