Knowing your user

An increasing consideration in web site design is usability. If that was just a question of software engineering and widget design it would have no place here, but usability involves actually knowing about your users, and their reasons for visiting the site. Then the site's content and services can be designed around the needs of the users rather than the structure of the organisation. One large UN body put each department in charge of a section of the web site. Later on they found they had several different content management systems on the same site, separate silos of information, and the same things being called different names by different departments. It was time for a usability review. Imagine walking into a restaurant, and instead of a menu, being asked to choose a dish from the walk-in freezer. Your organisation's internal filing system needs to be considered entirely separate from your public-facing content. The same food in the freezer can be prepared to suit all kinds of guests.

Quick action plan for a user-centric site

  1. Identify a representative sample of interviewees from each stakeholder group
  2. Ask a representative sample from each stakeholder group, why they visit your site, and what things they would hope to find there or do there.
  3. Show your interviewees a list of randomly ordered page titles and ask the interviewee to group them. This should inform your page structure.
  4. Find a way to group the answers from (2) by requirement, regardless of stakeholder groups.
  5. Each requirement group should be addressed on the front page.
  6. Build some user stories for any requirements which cannot be addressed on the front page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story, and pass them on to the developer.