Phase 1: Marketing and Business Assessment
This phase formed the business context for the project and thus helped us to develop the design for the listening labs in Phase 2.

Steps included:

• Corporate strategy review. As a first step in building the business context for the project, Creative Good reviewed Rand McNally's corporate and ebusiness strategy, as well as past and present Web-based initiatives.
   
• Internal stakeholder analysis. Because the organizational and cultural challenges are often the biggest barriers to change, Creative Good interviewed key stakeholders and managers to assess the organizational perspective and uncover critical viewpoints and internal challenges.
   
• Marketing and customer review. Creative Good reviewed market research already conducted, and any other needs assessment or customer segmentation analysis.
   
• Expert review. Creative Good conducted an expert heuristic analysis on the current process and evaluated competitor strengths and weaknesses.
   
• Performance and usage metrics. Creative Good analyzed current site performance, usage metrics and other behavioral data.
   
• Listening lab setup. Creative Good conducted the preparations for the listening labs. This included reviewing customer segmentation, creating a screener, creating the lab design, scheduling the facility and recruiters, and identifying key stakeholders to invite to attend.
   

Phase 2: Listening Labs
Creative Good's version of user tests, listening labs combine the best of traditional usability research and less directive market research methods.

• 16 customers attended one-on-one sessions, each lasting 45 minutes, followed by a discussion among the client team members observing from "behind the glass."
• Rand McNally had more than 15 members of its management and implementation teams there to observe and participate.
   

Phase 3: Creation of the Customer Experience Strategy
Creative Good developed a simple high-level strategy to guide the rest of the redesign project, based on everything that had come before in the project: business analysis and expert review, stakeholder interviews, data analysis, listening lab results.

Phase 4: Prototyping
Creative Good created 25 pages of "wireframe" prototypes to show, tactically, how to implement the customer experience strategy in the redesign.

Phase 5: Advisory Services
Creative Good reviewed design mock-ups to ensure that the strategy was maintained throughout the design and development process.

Implementation
As stated above, Rand McNally measured results after the re-launch, which included Creative Good's recommended changes:

• Homepage abandons/exits dropped by 19%
• Reduction of interim maps/directions input pages by 34% -- requiring fewer clicks from visitors
• Metrics show that users are getting to deeper content and more "company" oriented content more quickly from the homepage