Portfolio > Case Study: Scaling Braindates for E180 > Information Architecture for Braindates
Problem
The overall design and organization of the product was a difficult problem. The elements that needed to be included were:
- Pragmatic admin tools to: create a community, create an event (duration, location, etc)
- Data visualization to track progress
- Recommendation system to guide users throughout deploying a single event and also over time to measure the effectiveness of Braindates
Approach
I applied a lot of approaches to understanding the information architecture for this product.
For pragmatic admin tools, I did an inventory of the properties, organized them in a wireframe and tested with event organizers.
For data visualization, I matched the data points with uses cases (and their moments in time), mapping them to the actions that could be taken according to the values of the data.
For the recommendation system – I created an ‘event timeline‘ which would serve as the home base for all the actions the admin needed to take and in what order. For urgent recommendations they were located on the timeline and embedded within the page(s) where the data (and corresponding functionality) were housed.
Solution
Through careful evaluation of the above areas of functionality, the information architecture evolved from a more standard ‘build, measure, learn’ to a specifically event-oriented structure, which maps to how event organizers think about this workflow.

This is the overall structure of the system for Community Administrators

Information architecture (for community admins)
COMMUNITY HOME
– Details and goals
– Past events
– Events in process
– Event A
Community behaviour
Timeline for {Event A}
PREPARATION
– Setup
– Engagement Plan
– User Management
– App integration
– Onsite Space
ONSITE SETUP
– Checkins
– Engagement
ENGAGEMENT TRACKING
– Notifications
– Braindating data
– Topic insights
– Reports

Information Architecture (internal teams)
DASHBOARD
– Sales + targets (redflags)
– Activity (recently active communities etc.)
– Churn (unsubscribe/cancellations etc.)
CONVERSION ANALYTICS (sales website)
– Conversion data
– A/B data
CONTENT MANAGEMENT (sales website)
– Edit/add content from (e180+cms users?)
– Onboarding to braindates/CTA/Marketing content
– Case studies
COMMUNITIES BREAKDOWN
– Size/event type
– Success of bd-ing (up or down)
– Intention per community
– Customer success: Plan type, Bio of organizer, account manager
TECH SUPPORT
– Integrated with Zendesk
– Chat support (if applicable)
COMMUNICATIONS
– E180 to community Org’rs
– Set automatic email logic
– Segment users/conditional logic lists
RECOMMENDATIONS VIEW
– Complete list of best practices, which ones have: used, worked, not worked
– Monitoring of system
IN-APP CONTENT
– Visual summaries of: Guidance copy and Emails (not editable but viewable)
Portfolio > Case Study: Scaling Braindates for E180 > Information Architecture for Braindates