LSA SAF project for IPMA : the brand and the problem
IPMA has responsibilities at national territory level regarding sea and atmosphere. It’s research efforts is focused on projects that accrue to direct applications for use in operating activities, pursuing continuous improvement in the information made available to its users whether for commercial use or public service and in particular directed to the safeguard of people and property.
In this sense, LSA SAF is a project that is part of IPMA in partnership with Deimos Engineering.
The LSA SAF (Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis) is part of the distributed EUMETSAT (European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites) Application Ground Segment. It’s focused on the development and processing of satellite products that characterize the continental surfaces, such as radiation products, vegetation, evapotranspiration and wild fires.
This way, we had the challenge of developing a proposal to improve the LSA SAF project for the IPMA. In this project, there were several urgent problems to solve, namely: increase the number of users that are retained on the website, reducing the user’s frustration when navigating the project; develop a proposal in which the content is more easily understood and accessible; decrease the number of dropdowns and facilitate navigation in the menu and, finally, respect the brand making the website more modern.
Our Strategy
Our strategy started, as always, by doing a lot of research, benchmarketing, market studies and personas. Then we moved on to the analysis stage of google analytics on the website itself, in which we realized the several challenges that we were going to face.
After that, we proceeded with the development of wireframes to define the structure. The main goal would be to completely change what was already developed, increasing the dynamic performance of the page and reducing the possibility of frustrations when navigating on the website. In this phase, we closed 32 different layouts, with specific contents on each one of the pages.
When we closed the structure, we moved on to the development of the design, the UI Tool Kit and the Design Patterns of the project. At this point, we finalized the 32 different layouts, adjusted some structural details and tested the project.
The Result
The result turned out to a much more user-friendly and modern platform. Now, the LSA SAF website has exactly the same content as before, but more organized and easier to find. We ended up changing the presentation of the menus, always using icons in order to facilitate the information on the pages. There were several strategies used to make this website more dynamic and more attractive for the common user. At this point, it’s much easier to understand how we can reach any page, or even how we can access specific products, news, publications and details such as the search bar (which was previously hidden in one of the dropdowns on the menu). LSA SAF is currently a project that can retain more users and reduce the number of dropouts when browsing its pages.
