The problem:
We were given a content plan that had been created somewhat backwards. It was as if someone had decided what ingredients they would eat for dinner but not whether or how those ingredients fit together into a meal. As the UX writer and content strategist on the team, it was on me to find a way to fit these ingredients together in a way cohesive way that would make intuitive sense to customers.
 
The main issue was finding a way to categorize the various DNA test results we'd give them — how we'd split those results up into individual reports and how we'd speak about those results as broader categories.

Some of the fixes were easy. For the proposed "Colon cancer and related risk" result, I pointed out it wasn't clear what "related" referred to (nearby the colon? genetically linked? a different stage of cancer?). It added potential confusion but little value. It got dropped and the category became "Colon cancer risk."

Others were more complicated. In addition to the health risk results, the product provides results on what your DNA says about a broad range of "wellness" issues — from how likely you are to have low vitamin D, to how likely you are to drink more caffeine, to how likely you are to be good at endurance sports. In the scramble to launch, the product experience around these results had become an afterthought. Placeholder copy that had been in a design found its way into the final product, leaving us with the wellness categories
- Vitamins
- Dietary
- Body Composition

It didn't make much sense. Some were nouns, some adjectives, "body composition" was too specific to be able scale, etc. These were all fixable problems, though. In a v2 release of new report features a few months later, we had an opportunity to create a more scaleable, cohesive strategy.

The process:
I often think of IA challenges as if I'm trying to fit each category or element into a single sentence: "On this site, you can buy shoes, home electronics, furniture or pet supplies." "Would you like to search for a used truck, motorcycle, car or RV?"

That was tricky here because the items were so diverse. Not only did they cover everything from lactose intolerance to VO2 max but what your DNA could say about each of those issues varied from "may be more likely" to "suggests you could" to "people with DNA similar to yours tend to have." But, really, it was just a writing challenge — how to phrase something clearly while not distorting its meaning.


The result:
I came up with a few such sentences I was hoping might work here and give us menu labels and feature categories that held together with clear logic for our users. After looking into what future results might be added and double-checking on the science behind the results, I iterated on those alternatives and eventually came up a sustainable, accurate, user-centered solution:

Find out what your DNA can tell you about how your body responds to…
- Vitamins & Nutrients
- Food & Drink
- Exercise & Wellness

The categories were broad enough to remain accurate and scaleable over time, but simple and small enough to make it clear to a customer how they should think about this info and how it fits into the product experience as a whole. Customer satisfaction with the Wellness report feature began to increase just as we expanded the offerings with that feature.