Esri Generative Research
How can we improve Documentation Resources to help people make the most of our tools?
Background & Context
Esri is the leading brand in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. Their products such as ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, and ArcGIS StoryMaps, help millions of people analyze geographic data, create visually stunning maps, and make informed decisions.
There are over 40 different products in Esri’s portfolio, and each product has their own separate help resources, including a documentation site, blog, videos, community forum, and more.
The Esri Documentation team asked me to help them with their redesign to create a unified help resource experience. They asked me to help them answer these questions…
Research Questions
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Esri product users span many different industries, from public utilities to healthcare to engineering. They asked me to help uncover patterns across all of their customers.
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Just as the user profile and industry varies wildly, so too does the use cases. Esri asked me to help discover what are the different ways that people use these help resources.
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How can Esri restructure their website experiences, information architecture, and content strategy to improve the workflow?
Methodology
Generative User Interviews
10 Participants
60 min interviews
Conducted remotely over Teams and Zoom, moderated, recorded
Recruited via Esri Research Panel and UserTesting Panel
Topics of the interview:
What Esri products do you use?
What help resources do you use?
How do you access them?
What works well? What is frustrating?
Card Sort Study
21 Participants
38 cards
Study generated via OptimalWorkshop
Recruited via Esri Research Panel and UserTesting Panel
Conducted remotely via UserTesting.com, unmoderated, recorded
Key Findings
People across different backgrounds and industries have similar learning journeys when they use Help Resources:
Discovery
Building Knowledge
Practice
People feel lost because Esri resources lack a unifying content strategy.
People are looking for categories and starting points to help them find content.
Esri needs to structure their content to promote Educational Material:
Beginner Friendly Content
Complex Workflows
Support & Troubleshooting
“But I just don’t have as much of a background in [Esri products] and sometimes if I don’t know what it is I’m trying to do, coming up with the terminology to search for help is frustrating.”
“I think just having examples that I can follow, that I can do the hands-on stuff for… it get’s me familiar with where the different buttons are, or what they do, or what the setting is for.”
“I think murky is a good way to describe my experience… And I remember, I was struggling because [getting started] seemed so simple, but now I’m on my own.”
The Learning Journey
After interviewing participants from different industries and backgrounds, I created a systematic learning journey that applied to people from all across Esri’s userbase, regardless of which product they are using or how experienced they are with the tool. These three steps are fundamental to any person who wants to use Esri’s help resources.
People Feel Lost Because There’s No Content Strategy
Next, I observed participants as they walked me through their typical workflows using these Esri tools and help resources. I was able to understand the key pain points and issues that obstructed our users. Each resource was helpful individually, but collectively they struggled to work together.
“I don’t think I read a comprehensive guide that gave me all my answers. I think I just had to search for the proper documentation and then put the pieces together myself.”
How does this website interact with other resources?
People rely on Google to connect Esri resources together
There is a lack of connectivity between different resources. Most resources (blogs, documentation, videos) are dead ends!
There is not a singular location that unifies each of these resources.
“Darren: ‘Do you ever find yourself using the Esri search tool instead of using Google?’
Participant: ‘Honestly, I straight up didn’t even realize that Esri search was there, so no. I always Google it.’”
Through the Card Sort, we identified three simple categories
Finally, I ran a card sorting exercise to evaluate the mental models of people using these help resources. I uncovered that Esri needed to simplify rather than diversify.
Participants reorganized 38 content cards into three primary groups of content (Each with two or three subgroups):
Beginner Friendly
Complex Workflows
Support and Troubleshooting
These new groupings are a reduction from 21 content categories to 7 categories.
“The educational content would be the most value adding to me. This is because it would open my eyes on the possibilities of the software.”
Recommendations
Use the Learning Journey as a north star when creating website hierarchy and architecture
These hierarchies will improve website navigation
Creates a more standardized experience for people using different Esri products
Link all the resources together
Brings multiple resource types together into a cohesive experience (videos, documents, blogs, tutorials, etc.)
Hyperlinks promote exploration and discovery, Search is only helpful to people who already know what they want
Use links and CTAs at the end of documents to keep the user engaged (suggested readings, similar to this, for more…).
Simplify the browsing experience by:
Creating clear call to actions that relate to the Learning Journey
Condense information to the important categories from the Card Sort
Make it easy to find everything above the fold, don’t make people scroll to find blogs or documentation.
