UCDW2 - Site Design

Lazar’s Development Lifecycle Define the mission & target users Collect user requirements Create and Modify Conceptual design Create and modify physical design Perform usability testing Implement and market the website Evaluate and improve the website

First step Mission statement – what is the purpose of the site ? Target user population – who is going to use the site ? Project Brief – Another document! (highly readable and concise) – How the subject will be approached – The scope of the project – The intended audience

Mission: Characterising Websites Navarro and Khan’s Taxonomy of Web Site Missions GoalExamples Inform or educateUniversities, schools, charitable foundations, non-profit organisations, government, businesses, political organisations, personal homepages EntertainMagazine, e-zines, galleries, museums, media clubs, organisation, personal home pages

Navarro and Khan’s Taxonomy of Web Site Missions Effective Web Design (1998) Question: is this taxonomy still valid today? What other categorisation can you think of? GoalExamples Market, sell or persuadeBusinesses, political organisations, non-profit organisations, universities, schools, personal resumes

Defining the Mission Statement What are the goals of the web site? – Inform or educate – Entertain – Market, sell or persuade – Different goals for different users ? What type of interaction with the users does the client want? – Buy a product, subscribe to a mailing list, read information, download a patch, play a game etc How will success be measured ? – Pages visited, products sold, customer satisfaction etc

Defining the Target User To whom is the web site targeted? Are there different user groups within the target population? Can we develop separate user profiles? Can we contact all these different user groups?

…. need to define …. baseline specification (user) – platform, bandwidth, browser version, colour resolution, screen resolution, plug-ins etc technical specifications (development) – platform, authoring tools, hardware, format etc Content – Who is responsible for it? – text, images, dynamic media etc navigation – menus, icons, hypertext etc screen layout – design guidelines, screen display, colours, fonts etc

…. information required ….. Demographic information – Age, gender, educational experience etc Domain knowledge – Previous knowledge and experience Computing experience – Support and training required Computing environment – Hardware, software, connection etc Content – Users needs Benchmarking – Exemplars, competition Other considerations – Redevelopment: previous data such as usability tests

…. decision time What categories of information need to be collected from the user ? Which data are most important to collect ? What other web sites would be good benchmarks ?

Large Corporation Web Sites Efficient process Maximum effectiveness

The Five Planes Surface = Visual Design Skeleton = Page Structure Structure = Navigation Structure Scope = Features, Technology Strategy = Objectives, Needs

The Five Planes

Design site starting from strategy plane, working upwards Each plane depends on the one below Unrealistic to finish one before starting next Better to start one before starting next + finish one before finishing next Sometimes need two-way adjustment

The Strategy Plane

Site Objectives = “What do we want to get out of this site”. User Needs = “What do our users want to get out of it?” “Why are we making this site?”

Site Objectives Business Goals: to make us money or to save us money. Brand Identity: Here we deal in concepts and emotions. (Colours and logos are Surface Plane problems.) Success Metrics: Hits per day, average time spent on site, turnover, reduced drain on support…

User Needs User Segmentation: “What kind of people are we catering for?” Profiling. Usability: Task Analysis by examining the actions the user makes. Contextual enquiry: “How does using our site fit into the way you do your job?”

Sources Garrett, J.J, (2003) The Elements of User Experience: User-Centred Design for the Web, New Riders, Indianapolis, USA. Lazar, J., (2001) User Centred Web Development, Jones and Bartlett, Sudbury, USA