Understanding the client and the organization

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Understanding the client and the organization

• I. Working with the client
• Taking the clients point of view
• Formal communication with the client
• II. Understanding the organization
• Organizational informatics
• III. Working with the user
• User needs and information seeking
  behavior

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I. Working with the client

• http//justbloggin.org/ archives/cat_fun.html

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I. Working with the client

• Effective collaboration in a design project
  requires a structured development process
• Research gather information to develop a high
  level understanding of business context, goals,
  existing IA
• Strategy high level framework for site, content
  types, initial metadata
• Design wireframe, style guide, page guides,
  database structures, prototypes
• Implementation build, test, change, launch
• Administration maintenance, evaluation,
  improvement
• Rosenfeld and Morville, Ch. 10

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I. Working with the client

• Research areas and methods
• Context
• Background research, presentations and meetings,
  stakeholder interviews, technology assessment
• Content
• Heuristic evaluation, metadata and content
  analysis, content mapping, benchmarking
• Users
• Search log and clickstream analysis, use cases
  and personas, contextual inquiry, user
  interviews and testing

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I. Working with the client

• Getting buy-in
• Managing the client is essential to the success
  of the project
• Who is the client?
• The client can be a person, a group, a
  department, or a company
• Who signed the contract?
• What are the best strategies for developing and
  maintaining good relations with the client?
• You are working to ensure that the client will
  trust you throughout the project

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I. Working with the client

• What does the client want?
• As a website designer, you should be finding out
  your clients aspirations for the website
• If the clients are an airplane parts
  distributor, do they want to become the
  world's leading parts store, shifting as many
  units as possible every day?
• If the client is an engineering company, do
  they just want to show the world their
  services?
• What do they want the customer to be able to do
  when they come to the site?

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I. Working with the client

• Internal clients
• These clients are within your own company
• You must understand how the project fits into
  the companys organizational structure and
  processes
• This is an exercise in systems analysis and
  competitive intelligence
• Who supports the project? Why?
• What are the political risks?
• What is the budget?
• What will be necessary to build and maintain
  consensus?

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I. Working with the client

• External clients
• These clients sign a contract with your company
• Where does the client fits in the organization?
• Does he or she have the authority to make
  decisions about the project?
• Does he or she have good relations with
  superior, peers, and subordinates?
• It is important to get the client to buy in
• What are the best ways to do this?
• It will depend on your ability to communicate
  with the client throughout the development
  process

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I. Working with the client

• Taking the clients point of view
• You should expect that your client will not be as
  interested in or knowledgeable about web
  development as you are
• Education is important
• The client should understand
• How the project will be carried out
• Steps, phases, responsibilities, and
  deliverables
• What critical factors could affect the project
• What the level of client involvement should be
  throughout the project

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I. Working with the client

• Understanding business strategy
• It is the selection of ideas and assets to meet
  long term goals and sustainable competitive
  advantage
• What to do, how to do it, how well it is being
  done
• What are the orgs strengths and weaknesses?
• What differentiates the org?
• Takes place within a shifting competitive
  environment
• Business strategy drives design and informs IA
  practice
• IA provides alignment and exposes gaps in
  business strategy
• Rosenfeld and Morville, Ch 18

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II. Understanding the organization

• Business strategy and IA are interrelated
• Organizational communication should support
  strategy
• Web sites, extranets, and intranets play key
  roles in defining relationships between a
  company and its customers, investors,
  suppliers, and employees
• The design, implementation, and maintenance of
  these channels become critical success factors
• They should be carefully aligned with business
  strategy
• Requires understanding of organizational
  structures, processes, and culture

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II. Understanding the organization

• A graphical depiction of business
  strategy
• Morville (2000) http//argus-acia.com/stra
  nge_connections/strange006.html

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II. Understanding the organization

• A graphical depiction of IA
• Morville (2000) http//argus-acia.com/stra
  nge_connections/strange006.html

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I. Working with the client

• One key is understanding what the client thinks
  about the project
• Envisioning the project from the clients point
  of view
• Why does the client want this project done?
• Where does this project fit into the clients
  overall view of the business? Is it central?
  Peripheral?
• What is at stake for the client in this
  project?
• What is critical to the success of the project?
• What resources are necessary?
• What people are necessary?

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I. Working with the client

• Try to determine the clients understanding of
  their audience
• Who do they think their users are?
• What type of experience do they want people to
  have when using the site? What do they want
  them to do?
• Where do they want them to spend the most
  time?
• Do the research
• Learn about the clients business
• What is their value proposition?
• What are the main ways in which they generate
  revenue?

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I. Working with the client

• Communicating the work process to the client is a
  good way to build a relationship
• This indicates your professionalism
• What is the methodology?
• What are the deliverables?
• What will you deliver to the client and when?
• What does the client have to deliver to you so
  that you can meet your goals?
• What approvals are necessary?
• These should always be in writing

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I. Working with the client

• Presentations and meetings
• Introductory kickoff to bring the team up to
  speed
• Strategy team meet with the decisionmakers in
  the organization to find out about the site
• Content management team meet with content
  owners and managers to find out about types,
  policies, processes
• IT team meet with system administrators and
  software, database developers to understand the
  technical infrastructure
• Rosenfeld and Morville, Ch. 10

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I. Working with the client

• Formal communication with the client
• Legal communications
• Letter of agreement
• Your company has been contracted to do the work
• Work begins after receiving a deposit
• Brief description of the project
• Non-disclosure agreement
• Protects the exchange of confidential
  information and both parties intellectual
  property
• Contracts specify constraints and deliverables

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I. Working with the client

• Project communications
• It is important to document project-based
  communication
• Assumptions should be discussed openly and early
• What are your responsibilities?
• What are the clients responsibilities?
• What steps depend on deliverables from the
  client?
• Scope and costs
• What is the size of the project?
• What are the deadlines?
• Should emphasize time frames and costs

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I. Working with the client

• Approval documents
• The client should sign off on each benchmark and
  deliverable
• These detail the various components and features
  
• Could include high-level IA, prototype
  navigation, search functions, forms, database
  design
• Site reviews
• Purpose of the review is to obtain client
  feedback and maintain communication and buy in
• You explain how your design fits their needs

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I. Working with the client

• Conducting the site review
• Presenting the creative concept to the client on
  or offline
• Prepare in advance by reviewing the site with
  the team
• Anticipate the clients reactions based on
  what you have learned
• Frame the concept around the objectives of the
  site
• Be ready and able to explain the reasoning for
  the design decisions
• Clearly link these decisions to the project
  objectives and requirements

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Understanding the client and the organization

• I. Working with the client
• Taking the clients point of view
• Formal communication with the client
• II. Understanding the organization
• Organizational informatics
• III. Working with the user
• User needs and information seeking
  behavior

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II. Understanding the organization

• Organizational informatics
• The study of organizations and their uses of
  information and ICTs
• People using ICTs are within organizational
  boundaries
• A main focus is on the social organization of
  work
• The social shaping of technology in the
  workplace
• Digital technologies are embedded in a web of
  computing
• This includes the machines, those who use and
  maintain them, those who pay for them, those
  setting policies for their use

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II. Understanding the organization

• The context of ICTs use directly affects their
  meanings and roles
• Design of ICTs is linked to social and
  organizational dynamics, and these dynamics are
  contextual
• ICTs are always linked to their environments of
  use
• ICTs are not value neutral
• They are often designed, implicitly or
  explicitly, to support social and
  organizational structures
• ICT use leads intended and unintended
  consequences
• Use has moral and ethical aspects and these have
  social consequences

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II. Understanding the organization

• ICTs are configurable collections of distinct
  components
• These are assembled into unique collections for
  each organization or group
• The multiple functions and ability to reprogram
  them means that ICTs highly re-configurable
• ICTs follow trajectories that favor the status
  quo
• An evolving series of products or versions with
  a history and a future
• Preexisting relationships of power and social
  life are often maintained and strengthened
• Their evolution is social history and technical
  progress

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II. Understanding the organization

• Organizations consist of individuals in social
  networks
• Create, share and act on information and
  knowledge
• Social structure social relationships persist
  over time
• Organizational structure connections and
  dependencies among organization members
• Connections may reflect
• Authority who reports to whom
• Informal organization who communicates with
  whom
• Structure and workflow who depends on whom
• Social relationships who likes whom

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II. Understanding the organization

• An example of organizational
  structure UN Human Rights
  Organizational
• http// www.unhchr.ch/hrostr.htm

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II. Understanding the organization

• Organizational size matters
• There are differences between large and small
  organizations
• Also in working on large and small scale sites
• And between single and multi-departmental
  sites
• Who is responsible for doing the work?
• Who manages the workflow?
• Ad-hoc coalitions are typical (Burdman 112)
• What are the costs and benefits of this
  approach?
• Is there a need for a dedicated team to manage
  the site?

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II. Understanding the organization

• A example of workflow (IA)
• Tal Herman for Merrill-Hall New
  Media
• http//www.seralat.com/.../ ia_work/ia_job_analysi
  s/.gif

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II. Understanding the organization

• How does the web fit into the overall
  organizational culture and structure?
• Who funds the web work?
• What major groups are involved in developing and
  maintaining the site?
• This may be individuals instead of groups
• What is the role of IS? Marketing?
• What is the position of the major stakeholders
  (executives and decision makers) on the web
  effort?
• What do they want from the site?

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II. Understanding the organization

• Multiple departments and groups may be involved
• Typically they provide content
• How can their needs be met and balanced against
  each other?
• What do these stakeholders want from the site?
• Who gets onto the home or top level pages and
  why?
• Managing this issue becomes more complex if
  these groups contribute financially to the
  costs of the site
• Having a clear sense of the larger
  organizational business strategy is
  essential here
• Understanding organizational politics is
  important

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II. Understanding the organization

• Conflict in web work Eschenfelder argues that
  web classification systems contribute to conflict
  in site design
• They create interdependency and goal conflicts
• They are social creations that reflect
  organizational politics
• Also there problems with the conception of the
  customer
• Different sub-units with different needs and
  goals draw on the idea of customer needs or
  expectations to argue for different design
  outcomes
• Eschenfelder, K. (2003). The customer is always
  right, but whose customer is more important?
  Conflict and Web site classification schemes.
  Information Technology People, 16,(4), 419-439.

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Understanding the client and the organization

• I. Working with the client
• Taking the clients point of view
• Formal communication with the client
• II. Understanding the organization
• Organizational informatics
• III. Working with the user
• User needs and information seeking
  behavior

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III. Working with the user

• User needs and information seeking behavior
• Modeling user behavior how can we do this?
• Stimulus response model
• Query to the system
• System processes query black box
• Response from system
• This is a mechanistic model based on a systems
  metaphor
• The user engages in predictable behaviors
• Under what type of conditions does this work?

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III. Working with the user

• A different approach is based on information
  needs and information seeking behavior
• Why is it important to understand the user?
• Users have information needs
• Where do information needs originate?
• ASK, gaps, anomalies
• Information needs lead to information seeking
  behaviors
• These behaviors vary as the needs vary
• Browsing, broad searching, directed searching

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III. Working with the user

• It is important for IAs to understand information
  needs
• It is more than ask a question--gt Magic --gt get
  answer
• There is more complex interaction at query
• What type of need? What is the best way to ask
  the question?
• In the system
• What is the best way to store, arrange and
  retrieve and matching?
• At the output
• What is the best form? How can it be interpreted?

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III. Working with the user

• Types of information seeking
• Direct answer (perfect catch) you know what you
  want
• The criteria for relevance are precise
• Exploratory searching (lobster trapping) an
  open-ended question with a range of potentially
  relevant answers
• The criteria for relevance are vague and
  emergent
• Thorough searching (driftnetting) exhaustively
  gather information
• The criteria for relevance may or may not be
  precise but are broad
• Rosenfeld and Morville, Ch. 3

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III. Working with the user

• Holscher and Strubes model of information
  search behavior
• Holscher, C. and Strube, G. (nd). Web Search
  Behavior of Internet Experts and Newbies
  http//www9.org/ w9cdrom/81/81.html

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III. Working with the user

• Information seeking as a process
• It is a bounded series of one or more episodes
• Integration using two or more components in a
  single episode
• This allows comparison and expansion of the
  process
• Iteration repeating the process in a single
  session by returning to areas of the site or
  resource
• This can lead either to query expansion or
  contraction
• How do people know when to stop?
• Satisficing (Simon)

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III. Working with the user

• Another approach
• Berry-picking (Bates, 1989) begins with a need
• Formulate a query
• Move iteratively through a system, gather
  information along the way, using available
  resources
• The need and the query may change as you
  move
• Chaining (pearl growing)
• Start with information that is exactly right
• Search for more like it
• Search for sources it cites or that cite it

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III. Working with the user

• A model of steps in information seeking
• Feldman, S. (2000). The Answer Machine. CRM
  http//www.infotoday.com/ searcher/jan00/feldma
  n.htm

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III. Working with the user

• Gathering user data
• Usage statistics
• Page information hits per page
• Visitor information what domains and referral
  pages they come from
• Search log analysis what terms are people using
• Error logs where do they have problems
• Customer/technical support data what kinds of
  problems are people having
• Methods surveys, contextual inquiry, focus
  groups

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III. Working with the user

• Google analytics
• http//blog.upupresults.com/wp-content/uploads/200
  7/05/google_analytics_dailyvisit.gif

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III. Working with the user

• A search log
• http//www.gossamer-threads.com/images/glinks/scre
  enshots/search-log.jpg

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III. Working with the user

• An error log
• http//www.devarticles.com/images/asplog_1.gif