SMART Technologies
Rebuilding the support portal serving a global network of over 3,000 resellers
Overview
Rebuilding a global internal portal for clarity, consistency, and scale
The SOURCE was SMART Technologies' internal portal for over 3,000 global resellers—a one-stop shop for product documentation, training, marketing resources, support, and order management.
Built on a Sitecore framework using a design developed by Frog Design, my responsibilities as Information Architect on this project were:
- →Audit the portal's content and identify stakeholders
- →Maintain a content pipeline across 20+ business units
- →Create a system for tracking content state and keeping the project team updated
- →Design new templates, icons, and visual standards to accommodate restructured content
Challenges
Outdated content & poor usability resulted in over-reliance on SMART's support team
- →Conflicting or outdated documentation across business units
- →Unclear ownership of portal content and no lifecycle management
- →Navigation and structure that didn't reflect reseller needs or reflect their mental models
- →Lack of visual cues or hierarchy to support information scanning
- →Time-sensitive and evergreen content handled the same way
Content audit & stakeholder mapping
Compiling a comprehensive view of the portal's content and stakeholders
- →Mapped every section of the portal and identified content owners
- →Built relationships across 20+ internal teams to evaluate needs
- →Used inferred personas to align structure with user expectations
Keeping the team informed
The sitemap was updated daily and displayed for all project stakeholders
Structural design & content lifecycle
Adapting content to fit the new design system
- →Proposed new navigation to surface high-value content
- →Introduced visual system for tracking content status during drafting and review
- →Distinguished between archival and time-sensitive content in layout design
Custom icon sets
I created custom icons to help distinguish training categories
Templates & visual language
Ensuring consistency and clarity across the portal
- →Created layout-aware templates for writers and editors
- →Designed icon sets and color standards to reinforce structure
- →Authored a developer-facing style guide mapping visual language to class names
Structured content templates
Microsoft Word templates reflected the site layout to help writers and editors visualize content in the new structure
Results
Increased clarity, consistency, & collaboration
- ✓Launched with improved navigation and consistent visual structure
- ✓Reduced user confusion by eliminating outdated/duplicated content
- ✓Streamlined collaboration between writers, designers, and developers
- ✓Enabled ongoing maintenance through defined ownership and structure