Planning the Site
Planning Usability Activities
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Planning the Site
Planning is critical because
it helps you focus your objectives.
It also helps you plan for usability
activities that are part of the process
of developing a successful site.
Before you design, you
must think about:
1. Why are you developing
a Web site?
2. Who should come to your site?
3. When and why will they come?
• Why Are You Developing
a Web Site?
Information architects,
designers, developers, and usability
specialists should meet with project
managers, content owners (subject matter
specialists), and users to establish
objectives for the site.
What you want to achieve
is a focused vision of what you —
or your company or your agency —
wish to do through the site.
Set measurable objectives.
Think like a business. Develop measurable
objectives. Ask questions like these:
How will I know (quantitatively)
if the site is successful?
What will the consequences
be if the site is not successful?
Don't limit yourself to
objectives like "giving out information"
or "being a place for people to
come to download documents." While
those may be good places to start, they
aren't enough to determine success later.
(And don't rely on "hits per page"
as the measure of how much information
you have given out. You don't know if
a "hit" was someone who wanted
to be at that page. You don't know if
a "hit" represents a person
actually reading or understanding the
information.)
Instead, link the objectives
to business goals. Objectives might
be:
We will reduce phone calls
related to healthcare benefits by 50%
by putting our benefits information
on the Web.
We will increase email
requests for scholarship information
through our Web site by 30% within the
next year.
We will be the first place
that people think of when they want
information on cancer prevention —
as measured by increased traffic on
the site and by a public survey six
months after we launch.
• Who Should Come to Your Site?
A public Web site is available
to everyone. But "everyone"
is not necessarily the best definition
of the audiences for your site. Think
specifically about the people you want
to attract to your site.
You almost certainly have
customers you want to target, probably
several different groups of customers.
List those groups.
Decide on your target
audiences. Sometimes it is useful to
think of your target audiences by roles
in relationship to the site. A classic
division for e-commerce sites is "browsers"
and "buyers." For another
site, targeted audiences might be divided
by type; for example:
researchers outside the
agency
researchers inside the agency
other staff in the division
non-research staff elsewhere in the
agency
For other situations, it may be useful
to categorize audiences by profession,
age, gender, or other characteristics.
The categories that are meaningful are
ones that will lead you to think about
what content to include and how to organize
that content.
Keep user characteristics
in mind while designing. You should
also note several relevant characteristics
of each audience to help you build a
mental portrait of typical users in
each group.
For example, relevant
characteristics for researchers might
be:
busy
detail-oriented
knowledgeable about research and their
subject matter
may or may not be very experienced on
the Web
Relevant characteristics for cancer
patients and their families might be:
anxious
highly motivated to get information
may not know medical terminology
Remember that these characteristics
are assumptions. During the next phase
of Web design, Collecting Data From
Users, you should find out whether your
assumptions are valid.
• When and Why Will
They Come?
In the first planning
question, "Why are you developing
a Web site," you focused on your
goals for the site — or your company's
goals or the agency's goals. Users also
have goals. Most users come to Web sites
on what Jared Spool (an expert in the
field of usability) calls "missions."
They need something.
Write several scenarios.
To design a Web site that works for
users, it helps to write several specific
scenarios of when and why users will
(or should) come to the Web site.
Here are some examples
of scenarios:
Jenny, whose husband was
just diagnosed with prostate cancer,
comes to the site to find out what the
latest research says about the pros
and cons of alternative treatments.
Dr. Rachel, a family practitioner,
wants to convince her patient, who has
two small children, to stop smoking.
She thinks that hard evidence about
the harmful effects of second-hand smoke
may be very persuasive for this patient.
She is looking for something that gives
the research evidence in a form that
is short enough and understandable enough
for her busy patient who is not medically
trained.
Get scenarios from users.
While it helps to write several scenarios
as part of this phase of planning, you
can — and should — also get
scenarios during the next design step,
Collecting Data From Users.
Planning Usability Activities
Planning the Web site
with users and with users in mind is
only the first of several usability
activities that are critical in developing
a successful site.
Many people think of usability
only as usability testing. But it is
much more than that. It means being
focused on users throughout the project.
It means involving users throughout
the process. It means:
collecting data from users
before designing
developing prototypes that are organized
for users — and having users try
them out
collecting, writing, or revising content
that meets users' needs
conducting and making use of usability
testing
