Bank of America's homepage is the digital face of the company, and acts as a portal to product sales and service information for consumer and small business customers, as well as future employees.  When the company realized the digital audience was rapidly increasing, it decided to invest in the channel to meet the demand.  As a first step, we were to replace the existing homepage.

My role was Design Project Lead, and I supported User Research, Interaction, Visual design, Prototyping & Testing, and Information Architecture.  I also coordinated multiple agency engagements.

The current homepage design had not changed in many years, so most of the issues were well known.  First, we validated those challenges with customers, then align with leadership.  Next, we set up multiple workshops to iterate through solving and testing solutions to the key challenges we identified: 

Confusing information architecture.  The homepage acted as a link farm, with three columns of links in the middle of the page.  As we explored solutions, our goal was to simplify and categorize links.  Our exploration included card sorts and product categorization to reach a balance of user need and business value.

Everything screams for attention. The homepage template hierarchy had three levels, which did not offer enough variety to facilitate scanning.  As we explored solutions, our goal was to provide a flexible template and clarify page hierarchy.   Much of our exploration focused on visual design solutions and brand interpretation.