A temporary portal while CSA and Hadopi become ARCOM

The initial familiarisation phase is essential to understand the stakes of this merger and to make a smooth transition to this new entity that ARCOM represents. The exchanges with the project team and the documentation made available let us understand how these long-standing bodies work and their roles for users. This context framing aligns the project’s objectives with the ambition of centralising the content and services of both structures in a single platform. This first phase comes with a benchmark at several levels:

• analyse institutional sites from different countries: how content and services are foregrounded, navigation, the support offered to the public and to professionals
• study media sites (newspapers, online magazines, radio, television…) from a public-facing angle, identifying entry points by media type

Preparing the workshop builds on target audiences defined by the project team, split into two distinct categories: B2C and B2B. This workshop is the chance to validate the typical profiles defined upstream and to identify the goals to reach on this new platform for each of these profiles. We then formalise the steps taken to reach these goals using the Note-N-Map methodology, which makes it easy to map the user experience and the main journeys. This gives us an overall view of the screens that address different needs:

• being able to lodge a complaint with ARCOM
• learn about the lawful content offers
• understand the missions of this new authority…

The journeys defined during the first workshop help structure the information architecture of the future platform. The difficulty lies in addressing users’ needs as they navigate this portal while meeting the internal demands of both institutions: CSA and Hadopi. Concretely, we ask the project team to classify the different tabs into categories, using the card-sorting methodology. The aim is to address user needs as much as possible and make navigation easier on the platform. Compromises are reached to foreground the content and services offered by both institutions, while taking an educational approach to introduce the new authority that is ARCOM. The workshop’s outcome leads to an information architecture centred on users’ expectations and search strategies, while meeting the project team’s strategic objectives.

Following the mapping of the journeys and the formalisation of the information architecture, a co-sketching workshop is organised with the project team and the technical team. As a preamble to the exercise, we prioritise with the project team the different screens and features: referral form, FAQ, news, legal area… The challenges at this stage are many:

• Show pedagogy by introducing this new authority, its purpose and its missions
• Focus mainly on the general public without forgetting the professional audience
• Make the user understand they are on a temporary platform that gives access to content present on the legacy sites of CSA and Hadopi
• Address users’ needs while fitting within current uses

Participants build on the benchmark results, the information architecture and the journeys. They can then structure the screens by confronting the business view with technical feasibility. On our side, we facilitate the workshop by bringing our expertise on usability, user experience, and accessibility too.

The UX sprint is launched to design the prioritised screens in desktop and mobile responsive format, matching the uses. Design takes place in close collaboration with the development teams to respect the technical scope and meet the time constraint. Components are reused as much as possible across each screen to gain in consistency and productivity. A prototype is also put in place to simulate the user journeys. This gives an overall view of the navigation on the portal. And it is also the chance to identify improvement points in terms of uses and information placement on certain screens.

And what about the users? A dedicated time is used to test the journeys, the information architecture and the usability with users. The tests are run in a “guerrilla-test” approach (we invite you to read our blog article on the subject). Simple and quick to set up, these tests let us gather in-the-moment feedback to quickly identify blockers. We can, for instance, check whether the new portal is explicit enough about the transition to ARCOM following the CSA and Hadopi merger.

The project team is brought together again to rework the information architecture to better meet users’ expectations. The preparation of the workshop mainly builds on the quantitative and qualitative user tests run on the temporary version of the portal. This feedback highlights certain blockers:

• The lack of access to a space reserved for professionals
• The confusion between resources and services
• The redundancy of certain information, particularly in the presentation of ARCOM and its missions

The first year helped explain the CSA–Hadopi merger via this temporary platform.

This second phase aims to offer a genuine portal of services, tools and news for the general public, as well as a dedicated tool for sector professionals.

This iteration aims to make navigation and information gathering easier on the platform for the user, while meeting accessibility criteria.