# World Information Architecture Association (WIAA) Content Strategy Project ## The challenge WIAA had a website crisis. For 7 years, they'd been trying to redesign their site while running a global organization with 60+ local chapters. The website was hacked, running on outdated software, and volunteers couldn't update content without hiring developers. Meanwhile, the organization itself was transforming from a single annual event into a year-round professional association. Nothing was working, and they'd become the running joke: "How many information architects does it take to redesign the IA website?" ## My role I started as a volunteer community member in 2018 and gradually became embedded in their content challenges. Over 7+ years, I: - Participated in community discussions about what members actually needed - Observed how volunteers struggled with content management - Listened to recurring pain points about websites being too complicated - Eventually led the strategic thinking about how to fix these problems ## What I did **Deep Stakeholder Research:** Through surveys, interviews, group interviews, workshops, I spent years having real conversations with organizers, sponsors, and volunteers about what frustrated them and what they actually wanted to accomplish. **Platform reality check:** We tested everything - Drupal, Craft CMS, Bubble.io, Framer, Sanity.io, even tried making a website work in a spreadsheet (we were looking at no-code solutions). I learned that volunteers needed simple content management more than fancy features. **Federated architecture solution:** I realized WIAA needed a structure that matched how they actually worked - a main hub plus individual spaces for each location, rather than forcing everything into one complicated system. **Proof of concept:** Selected GitBook because it was free for nonprofits, didn't require technical expertise, and eliminated ongoing maintenance headaches. Plus, we were already using it for a section of the website. ## The results ### **Immediate impact:** - Eliminated the need for developers to update routine content - Gave 20+ locations simple content management they could actually use - Achieved unified search across all content while maintaining local autonomy - Removed ongoing platform costs and security concerns ### **Organizational impact:** - Enabled volunteers to focus on community building instead of fighting with technology - Created a sustainable content model that works with volunteer capacity, not against it ### **Personal learning:** - Sometimes "good enough" solutions that people can maintain are better than sophisticated solutions that require experts - Real user research happens through sustained relationships, not just formal interviews - Technology decisions should serve how people actually work, not how we think they should work