Minnesota Monthly

Homepage redesign

The Minnesota Monthly is an iconic Minnesota-based publication. For over five decades the magazine has highlighted the best Minnesota has to offer: travel, health, food, arts & entertainment.

Our Goal: Create a clear content hierarchy and simplify existing navigation options.

Homepage Redesign

Content hierarchy creates a logical progression from article to article. The user can navigate the site with ease while acquiring the necessary information.

Our Process

embodies the spirit of Minnesota while celebrating the best arts, entertainment, food, culture, philanthropy, sports, and lives of our community.

Minnesota Monthly is a publication creating content that connects readers to advertisers and marketing partners.

Every issue serves as your guide to all that's cool, fun and interesting around town and throughout the region.

Improve the user experience of the Minnesota Monthly website to give users a more efficient way to navigate and find information throughout the site.

Competitive Analysis

After analyzing and grading each homepage (for Mpls/St. Paul, Twin Cities Business and Star Tribune) on design, content and layout, we found that taking a minimalist approach and highlighting the content would be our objective.

We planned on creating a layout that would not crowd the content or images but seamlessly blend from one topic to another.

User Interview Topics

Do you or have you ever searched for online directories, events, or publications? What was that experience like?

Have you ever read or encountered the Minnesota Monthly’s website or publication?

Tell us about your experience visiting the Minnesota Monthly website?

How do you feel when exploring this website?

Are there any areas of growth in content or design for this website?

If you were to change one thing about this website what would you improve?

Key Findings

User Statistics

Site Mapping

Upper header from the original website navigation

Lower header from the original website navigation

Footer from the original website navigation

Revised header and footer

UI Elements

Navigation

Moodboard

Lo-fi Wireframe Iterations

Lo-fi Wireframe

User Testing

Feedback

Implementation

Final Wireframe

Takeaways

We went through countless iterations before deciding on our final wireframe. With each iteration, new ideas were brought to the table and informed future design.

The guiding principle throughout this redesign was creating strong content hierarchy. This allows for a very clean, understandable and accessible wireframe.