User-Centered Design Methodology
Purposes & Features
How Assessing Your Purposes & Features Ensures Better User Results
Once you've defined who your users are, the next critical step is to find what your users need. Incorporating this information into your web site or application design can help you increase customer satisfaction and retain your users.
Purposes & features is our method of gathering pertinent information to determine what is needed to make your web site or application more user focused.
The purposes & features process consists of seven elements: business objectives for the client, expert review, competitive analysis, log analysis, card sorting, use cases and usability measures. After consulting with you, TerpSys will employ elements based on your specific needs.
- Business objectives for the client - We meet with you to establish what users want to accomplish at your site or using your application, based on your mission or business goals.
- Expert review - Using a set of research-based guidelines, we analyze your existing site to identify potential problem areas for your users.
- Competitive analysis - We research what is on your competitors' web sites.
- Log analysis - Using web tracking systems such as WebTrends, we analyze user browsing habits for your web site or application. We then identify potential problem areas, such as leaving the site before completing a donation transaction or not finding desired information.
- Card sorting - We study how users group elements printed on index cards, to structure your web site or application.
- Use cases - These are descriptions of features within your web site or application that describe how users accomplish their goals. We use these descriptions as a basis for creating usability test scenarios to learn how users will actually use your web site or application.
- Usability measures - We collaborate with clients to define metrics for users of the website or application.
Purposes & features is the second stage of our TerpSys User-Centered Design Methodology. By employing this methodology, we produce web sites and applications that enable users to achieve their specific goals with ease, efficiency and satisfaction.
Learn about Information architecture - Phase 3 of the TerpSys User-Centered Design Methodology
