Group items tagged

8. Follow the user journey: check the main tasks for each of your audiences Identify the top tasks that you want your users to accomplish and follow the path that they have to take to get there. See if and when they have to leave the global site. See if they are bounced from one office to another in search of a form or procedure. Keep your eyes open. Because university sites are so often large, with each department or office owning its own page and information, it’s common to find duplicate, contradictory, missing, or incomplete information. Follow the journey, starting at different entry points, and see what you learn. If you’re already using personas, test them out. Better yet, do some quick user testing. (Testing doesn’t have to be expensive. And, by testing with just 5 users, you can uncover 85% of the issues).

In this era of web applications accessibility is often forgotten. That is why I always include accessibility considerations in my pattern libraries. There will always be a section in a pattern definition where I make notes that a pattern should be keyboard accessible or can be interpreted by a screen reader.