Hitachi Data Systems

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HDS was seeking an agency to solve significant problems with their global sites. As a final trial, they asked c2o to redesign their public site in 3 weeks. As c2o's West Coast UX Director, I also managed the project. Because of the time constraints, a substantial portion of what would usually be documented was left on white boards and decisions were disseminated through e-mail.

We inventoried the files being served through the site and found that they has no organization and accessibility and functionality suffered because the filing system had been developed ad hoc. Our first actions were a card-sorting test to lead us to a reasonble architecture, imposing file naming conventions, and re-coding all the pages in the site according to specifications we developed. The HTML coder was an HDS employee, as was the graphic designer, and they both worked insane hours to complete the work we needed from them. I ran interference with their internal management and made sure that they understood everything they had to or wanted to while coordinating their work with members of my team.

Simultaneously my team was doing their normal tasks, developing a strategy, redeveloping or eliminating the backend programming or interviewing users, etc., while making plans for our travel and research on the global problems.