IMD Business School is one of the world's top business schools, consistently ranked in the global top 10. When I joined as Head of Design & Customer Experience, I managed a team of 10 designers, product owners, and researchers across Executive Education.
The problems with the IMD homepage were well understood — confusing navigation, cluttered layout, lack of wayfinding. But this project had been attempted before, and it failed to deliver. I had to gain trust and build confidence in why this project was essential, and how we would achieve it.
A business that had a negative attitude to user testing
The organisation believed user testing was just subjective opinion. Before a single pixel moved, I had to justify the methodology to the Director and the management team. I articulated why research matters:
- User research ensures all design decisions actually benefit the customer, while also achieving business goals
- Every stakeholder working on the project gains empathy for their customers
- User research methods help produce data and insights based on motivations, needs, and goals — not assumptions
I also had to navigate: a very high number of stakeholders, a management team with a lack of technical understanding, and a business impatient to see results.
Three methods, 300+ participants
I defined a testing strategy with a local research lab, split into three approaches:
Remote Usability Testing
Compared a new proposal for the navigation and homepage design with the current implementation. Two prototypes tested with 200 persons across 4 tasks using the Loop11 platform.
Tree Testing
Asked visitors to the IMD website 10 questions regarding navigation. 95 participants answered in an average of 6 minutes using the TreeJack platform.
In-Person Usability Testing
3 tasks testing usability and brand perception with 9 participants. Provided evidence that supported the hypothesis of design issues.
What we found
Navigation: Users didn't know where they were on the site. They were unable to find what they were looking for. The search engine delivered confusing results.
Content: The grouping of content wasn't understood. The layout was cluttered and overwhelming. Titles were missing or too small.
Three strategies, one goal: get stakeholders invested
Focus on usability low-hanging fruit
I insisted on initially focusing on low-hanging fruit — redesigning section titles on the homepage to improve scannability, and homepage CTAs to improve wayfinding. Neither required stakeholder signoff, so we could move fast and build momentum.
Engagement of stakeholders
Getting stakeholders to feel part of the process engaged them through workshops — allowing us to work together to put customers first and get results like cutting down the amount of content.
Testing, more testing
The first round of tree testing failed to help users find information the way we'd hoped. We kept testing with stakeholders and iterated until the category labels worked.
Reflections
This project taught me that the most important design skill is sometimes not design at all — it's building organisational trust in the process. Getting a research-sceptical business to invest in three rounds of testing required as much effort as the design itself.
The failed previous attempt was actually useful — it gave me a clear mandate to do it properly, with evidence. Sometimes the best thing that can happen to a project is that a bad version tried and failed first.