Treemap of Reading Public Library’s Website
Using Excel, I was able to create treemaps using two different methods of sorting (one from the top to the second and third levels and one sorting by the second and third levels only). The amount of branching pages displayed in the result surprised me, especially compared to my previous incorrect approach that I tried without weighting the data or whittling it down to just items with data in all three levels. It took some difficulty, especially the first steps of writing down every page cluster and what the navigation items connected to, but I ended up with a series of colorful text boxes illustrating a visual representation of Reading PL's website's organization.
What did I learn?
In lab 5, I learned that I missed a key part of treemapping in Excel at first, as following the Microsoft tutorial resulted in a blank white square with “chart title” at the top. I eventually realized that I needed to pare the data down and weight it with numbers for how many level-three items were in each of the higher levels. Once I got a correct result, I learned that treemapping is one of many different kinds of infographics that are useful for visually displaying data that would otherwise be difficult for users to see.
Link to comparison of Reading Public Library's websites at 3 different times
Link to usability test of Reading Public Library current 2019 website