The Piedmont Region official web site was completely redesigned in 2019 after about 20 years, with two main objectives: to improve the availability of content and to make the management activity less expensive.

The adoption of the latest techniques of the UX Design has allowed to address the informational and technological complexity of the project in this way:

• co-planning, together with the client, of the extensive and articulated information architecture, with the aim of completely rewriting the contents and then classifying them in a structured and coherent way;

• conception and design of the interaction through Design Thinking techniques, with particular attention to the use of content on mobile devices;

• ex novo realization of an essential, institutional Design System in line with web design trends;

• redesign of the technological architecture of the site, with the adoption of a single CMS (Content Management System) for the whole communication part of the portal, with the consequent shutdown of about 20 CMS previously in use.

The distinctive feature of the project, however, was the strong involvement of users, thanks to the creation of end-user tests and interviews with main stakeholders. These elements constituted the starting point of the design, along with AgID guidelines and Teamdigitale indications.

Thanks to the design of the technological and informative architecture, it was possible to organize an articulated editorial distributed within the institutions, able to manage content in a widespread way and to dialogue with the Central Editor through regular meetings.

Six months after the switch off, the two initial objectives have been achieved, if we consider the savings in maintenance costs for the CMS switched off, the zeroing of the costs of content insertion by CSI, thanks to the possibility of internalizing the editing activities, but especially if we look at the analytics of the last half year. The rebound frequency has decreased from 56% to 38%, reflecting the fact that today the majority of users landing on the site of the Piedmont Region do not flee, in fact they stop on average about 3 minutes, compared to 2 minutes before.

The massive work on contents, on interaction design and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has served to make it easier to find content and improved the user experience.

June 2019

Stefano Moro