User Needs Assessment Exercise

INLS 062

Fall 2004

The general goal of a needs assessment is to understand the design space so that good system design specification and evaluation can be done. User-centered design makes people the key elements of the design space, thus conducting a user needs assessment is an important early aspect of the design process (this roughly entails the first two steps—envision and discovery—of the LUCID Design Method). Consider the system you are designing for the term project. Use interviews (with people who will use the system AND those who will maintain it) and document analysis (any written or online materials you can find) to answer the following questions. Include a list of people and dates interviewed and a list of documents consulted.

Context

1. What is the mission of the organization? [if a large organization, focus on the division or department to be served by the website you are developing]

2. What are the goals of this website? [try to be as specific as possible, get examples if you can]

3. How are these goals met now (before the new system is created)? [try to get specific actions and the order in which they are usually taken]

Users

1. Who will the website serve? (what types of people are the targeted users—not specific names..these could be internal users who work at the organization or external or end users)? [Try to determine how important is each type of user; e.g., some are daily users, some occasional]

2. Who will maintain the website? [what are the needs of the people who will operate the website---depending on the organization and mission, this could be the webmaster or it could be a user in the organization who used the website regularly to serve end users}

3. What kinds of questions/needs do people bring to the organization now? [it is useful to ask both internal and external users this question]

4. What kinds of questions/services will the website be able to answer? [try to be specific as this will help in writing specifications]

Resources and Strategies

1.What kinds of resources do people in the organization use now to answer questions/provide service? [E.g., are there printed materials? Human memory or experience?]

2. What kinds of strategies do people in the organization use to help people find information or services?