I spoke about how much usability testing helped shape our redesign effort. We learned invaluable information about our former site's navigation that really affected our approach to the new site. We contracted with the Bentley University usability lab and spent two days with them back in March '06.

We learned that our information architecture was sound, but the way our navigation was displayed was confusing for the eight students doing the testing. It was fun, and sometimes incredibly frustrating, watching the students conduct the 15 tasks assigned to them.

I also spoke at the conference about launching a new site, and the importance of planning this out to ensure all the hard work that goes into the project doesn't fall apart at the last minute. Having your IT team in on this discussions, early in the process, is critical. We also worked closely with our vendor to make sure the new code would work on both our staging and then production environments. All of our major stakeholders were shown the site, so there were no surprises.

A redesign can be incredibly hard work, and there were a few horror stories at the conference about internal politics scuttling projects. But, if done properly, and I believe that means transparently, it can be rewarding when your new design is popping up on browsers everywhere.