User Analysis

On Monday, September 15, our group sat down the Mrs. McGlockton to discuss the Neighborhood Health Services web site. During our meeting we established goals for the site, as well as a "wish list" of ideas we'd like to implement for her so long as time is on our side.

The in class activities have also proved helpful in our planning process. On Thursday we did an activity to help us determine specific user groups who use the Neighborhood Health Services site most often, as well as the target user groups that the web site wishes to attract. As a non-for-profit organization NHS, Inc. relays heavily on donations. If people do no donate, then they cannot afford to see patients for free. Therefore, we have decided that donors are one user group we must accommodate better.

In class we have been discussing users a lot this week. We have learned many research methods to help us better identify the users of our site. For example, we learned about web usage statistics, which give a lot of data about user activity on the site. This is very helpful because we can use it to determine what aspects of the site are working well, and which one need more work. If a critical section of the site is not being visited as often as it should be, then we need to address that. Also we should determine what causes users to get frustrated and leave the site altogether.