Agency • Digitas Pixelpark
Rethinking work.
With the Digital Labour Society Think Tank, the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs has set up an interdisciplinary and agile organisational unit that is new to ministries and combines the functions and working methods of a classic think tank and a contemporary future lab.
As an organically grown project, the website strategically needed a new information architecture and accordingly an adapted navigation. In the course of a TYPO3 update, fundamental changes were proposed that enable direct access down to level 3 in order to guide users quickly to their intended destination.
Special attention was paid to the fact that individual sub-pages can also be specifically advertised in the main navigation in order to draw attention to innovations on the website. Previous navigation elements were also adapted to the operating habits of the users in order to improve the intuitive handling of the offered services.
Integration of a Full Text Search
The search function, which was also missing up to now, has now been implemented. The operation follows the mechanisms that users are accustomed to with suggestions for search terms after entering the first characters in the input field.
In addition, it was suggested to filter the search terms according to specific criteria in order to be able to offer the users a preselection and limitation of the page and topic areas.
It was suggested that the mentioned filter criteria are assigned as tags to each post, which provides an additional kicker navigation through which users can navigate within a topic cluster without having to resort to the main navigation.
Clicking on a part of the kicker line triggers a search in the background and all posts with corresponding tags are displayed on a results listing page, which in turn can be refined in its sorting and by further filter criteria. In this way, the focus is on the content and navigation is via the content of the web offer.
Event Filter
In order to provide users with a quicker way to access the recordings of past and upcoming events, it was suggested that the relevant page be equipped with clearly visible selection criteria.
Easier Contact via the Website
User surveys revealed that many respondents did not have a default mail programme set up on different devices. For this reason, the previous MailTo link was replaced by a contact form that offers users a contact option directly via the website.
In all implemented and proposed optimisations, attention was paid to strategically working towards a joint multi-client system with the KI-Observatorium and the Civic Innovation Platform, which will significantly speed up the internal workflow, but also the future development of new modules and offers.
Suggested Global Improvements
The strategic recommendation to use a multi-client system based on TYPO3 for the three projects Denkfabrik Digitale Arbeitsgesellschaft, KI-Observatorium and Civic Innovation Platform also made it possible to make cross-project, global improvements.
It was therefore advisable to adapt the typeface to the actual needs after the organic growth phase. The initially chosen fonts caused breaks in headlines on mobile devices, which considerably impeded the flow of reading.
To illustrate this, sample pages were designed with alternatives that visualised the effects on concrete content.
It was therefore advisable to adapt the typeface to the actual needs after the organic growth phase. The initially chosen fonts caused breaks in headlines on mobile devices, which considerably impeded the flow of reading.
To illustrate this, sample pages were designed with alternatives that visualised the effects on concrete content.
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