Mike Kippenhan
“Hewitt Associates, Inc. (Hewitt) is a global provider of human resource benefits, outsourcing and consulting services...it helps clients develop, implement and deliver strategies and programs for human resources business process design, administration and technologies” (NYSE). Hewitt provides and manages their services through a variety of different Web sites, the most often used being Your Benefits Resources (YBR). Subscribers manage and maintain their accounts as well as enroll in benefits through the YBR and Your Total Rewards (YTR) Web sites, both of which are maintained by Hewitt. Clients work with Hewitt to customize the branding of their individual Web site, their employee services and benefit packages, and in many cases, may choose to include third-party content/services.
At the begining of this project I wrote and presented a Design and Competative Analysis which compared YBR to their competition. Included in the Analysis are design and technological suggestions as well as the short comings of the current YBR Web site
Over the years, new content and pages have been added to the base YBR, which has resulted in a Web site that has lost sight of the goal to provide users with clear content and easy to use functionality. The first step in the design process was the creation of detailed site maps illustrating both content flow and complexity; two of which are 401(k) Retirement and Retirement Planning content areas. These maps identified and seperated the content in numerous categories.
Two prototypes—A and B—were created to if cascading Java Script menus would be a suitable for YBR.
Numerous black and white comps were created to test variopus aspects of design including links, “worst case scenario” content and expanding menus. 1 2 3 4
Retirement Planning is a important and complex component of YBR. I diagramed a Hyperbolic Tree that could, if implemented allow users to more easily navigate and understand all the apsects of retirement planning.