Analyze Current Site

Evaluate Your Current Site

Before you design and write your Web site, you should find out how well your current site is working and set measurable usability goals. You should learn as much as you can about your users and their tasks. Personas, scenarios, and measurable usability goals all help you focus on users, their tasks, and their expectations.  Learn More

Learn About Your Users

To design a site that works for you and your intended audiences, you have to know a lot about those audiences. They may be customers, consumers, researchers, or the public. Let's call them users because what you want them to do is use your site.  Learn More

Task Analysis

Task analysis means learning about your users' goals-what they want to do at your Web site-and your users' ways of working. Task analysis can also mean figuring out what more specific tasks users must do to meet those goals and what steps they must take to accomplish those tasks. Along with user and task analysis, we often do a third analysis: understanding users' environments (physical, social, cultural, and technological environments). Learn More

Personas

A persona is a fictional person who represents a major user group for your site. A persona typically includes a fictional name and characteristics that are consistent with one of the main user groups you have identified. Learn More

Scenarios

A scenario is a short story about a specific user with a specific goal at your site. Scenarios are the questions, tasks, and stories that users bring to your Web site and that your Web site must satisfy. Learn More

Measurable Usability Goals

A measurable usability goal is the definition of successful usability on your site for a specific set of users doing a specific task.  Learn More