Förskoleforum - Improved Search and Navigation

Odd Hill took over responsibility for operation and maintenance of Preschool Forum in early 2020. Preschool Forum is an information service built in Drupal 8 where Student Literature gathers articles, expert panels and researchers to support preschools in their educational work.

Large groups of children, lack of trained staff and limited time for planning and continuing education characterize everyday life in many preschools. Therefore, it is crucial that the preschool staff can quickly find specific information and at the same time discover other relevant material. Based on those needs, we further developed the search function and navigation and helped Student Literature with a tool to be able to follow how the use of the product changes over time.

A better search for a time-strapped professional

In light of the fact that in today's preschool world there is very limited time for planning the educational activities, it is important that the staff can quickly find ideas and valuable information that can increase the educational quality. It was precisely this that formed the starting point when the search function on Preschool Forum was further developed.

The search engine used on Preschool Forum is Solr, one of the largest and most powerful on the market. There isn't much that can't be customized in Solr. But in a search function where you can do "everything" there are also big challenges. Together with Student Literature, we defined some important areas to further develop in the search, including search suggestions, the synonym function and new functions for sorting and filtering.

Thanks to a close collaboration with Student Literature, we were able to work iteratively with screwing and changing the configuration to reach the result we were looking for.

Navigation with a focus on creating more taste

Another important aspect of the project was to create more flavor and make the user want to take part in more related information. At the same time, we wanted to make the navigation more user-friendly. After interviews with product owner Eva Hansson at Studentlitteratur, we were able to identify the following main areas for improvement:

• The main menu
  Changes in terminology and a more airy, clearer menu.
• Pagination
  An improved pagination that makes it easier for the user to navigate through multiple pages.
• Theme pages
  The overview pages for different themes were revised to provide a faster overview of which themes are available to be able to find what the user needs and is interested in.

Statistics - a tool for the sales department

Student literature wanted to help the marketing and sales department to get an overview of trends in the use of Preschool Forum in a simple way. To help Student Literature with this, we built a tool where they can monitor the use of the product continuously and in detail.

Usage tests show that we succeeded

After launch, structured usage tests were carried out in collaboration with Studentlitteratur. The tests confirm that users interact very well with the new parts of the search function, understand the structure of the menu and find the right way in the theme overview.

Do you need to improve your digital product?

We at Odd Hill have helped hundreds of companies improve their products or build internal tools for better profitability. We work according to a scrum methodology where we build the most important thing first and we like to work iteratively in a process where we further develop → measure and test → improve. Contact us to discuss how we can help you with your biggest challenges!