Victor Lombardi

Design Strategist

AIG.com
2003

The site essentially acts as a gateway to hundreds of other sites run by AIG's business units. Underneath it all is a taxonomy engine that classifies these resources and which the content management system publishes to the appropriate page.

While there are many educational aspects of this project, the most important to me was the juncture of business goals and information architecture. The taxonomy used here struck an excellent balance between complexity and utility, using only enough facets to help customers find the right information. But in reality the business placed more weight on some resources than others because of strategic positioning, a function the conventional taxonomy couldn't account for. By enhancing the taxonomy we were able to have the resources reflect the priorities of the business as well as be findable by customers.