Site Architecture
Consolidating three enterprise platforms into a unified information architecture: 37% fewer content topics, 68% fewer pages.
One employee experience, three platforms' worth of content.
T-Mobile was consolidating three core internal platforms into a single employee experience, but lacked a unified content structure. Content was scattered and duplicated, making it hard for employees to find what they needed. I owned the inventory, heuristic analysis, and initial categorization for T-Nation, the platform's largest repository: a full audit across 58 SharePoint sites. Then card sorting and business validation alongside UX researchers and content SMEs.
Before any architecture decision: a clear picture of everything that existed.
There were no centralized metrics of what content existed, how relevant it was, or how it was used. I pulled metrics for content across T-Nation's 58 SharePoint sites: page volume, engagement, update frequency, access restrictions, and content type. Partner teams ran the same process on the other platforms.
Example: the T-Nation inventory, the platform's largest content repository.
Five factors decided what migrated, what consolidated, and what got removed.
Using the inventory metrics, I analyzed each content area for migration value. The analysis reduced topics from 60 to 38 and pages from 9,000 to 2,000.
- 01 RELEVANCEWhat is the content purpose and audience?
- 02 ACCURACYIs content up to date? Do components function properly?
- 03 COMPLETENESSDoes it follow design standards? What is the scope end to end?
- 04 ENGAGEMENTIs the content visited, and to what degree? How do users interact?
- 05 REDUNDANCYCan the content be consolidated or removed?
A proposed taxonomy, pressure-tested by 39 employees across three archetypes.
I mapped topics into an initial two-level hierarchy, drawing on existing site maps, SME input, content journeys, and AI-assisted grouping exploration. Then a hybrid card sort: participants sorted into provided groups and could create their own, surfacing gaps and validating whether the structure matched how employees naturally group content.
The research went to the people who own the content.
We presented the proposed structure and user-generated site map to content owners and the project team. The first two levels of hierarchy were largely approved, with taxonomy revisions and category re-prioritization. Content teams then mapped the remaining topics and pages into the full four-level hierarchy.
Placing platform features where the content structure couldn't reach.
With the core IA approved and mapped, I worked with development and platform governance teams to place platform features across top navigation, side navigation, profile, and home page: features addressing gaps research surfaced outside the core content structure.
The content audit forced a close examination of every page and section across platforms, raising the bar of understanding for all partner teams. It also surfaced the need for a stronger governance model, opening the discussion of how content gets managed going forward.
The IA became the platform's navigation. I designed that too, in two weeks.
A year later, with delivery behind schedule, I was brought back to design the primary navigation end to end. The side nav surfaces the IA directly: L1 categories always present, L2 revealed on click, L3 in a flyout on hover. Categories expand in place instead of routing through landing pages, and the structure mirrors the site backend dynamically, so content teams manage it without developers.
Because the side nav mirrors the site backend dynamically, content teams manage the structure directly, without developers. Designing for a tablet-first frontline and turning the late logo curveball around in three days kept a behind-schedule launch on track.