Thursday 29 October 2009

The bottom line in website effectiveness - task management

An excellent article by Gerry McGovern, in conversation with Jared Spool.
To meet the needs of the users, the team needs to make task completion their #1 objective. "Don't manage the technology; don't manage the content; don't manage the information; and don't manage the graphics," Gerry says, "Manage the tasks."
This hits the nail on the head for university website management. Most of our visitors need to get answers from several schools and units. We don't manage the tasks though. We manage the webpages. The user journey beyond our own webpages are rarely a concern to us.

Why? So few of us actually deal directly with the site visitors. We don't (or can't?) empathise.
"If you were running a restaurant or a supermarket, you'd see your customers. If you built a door with a mat that was 12 inches off the ground and people were constantly tripping on it, you'd change the mat. But we don't see that sort of stuff. People create content without any conception of its usage."
Gerry McGovern says "Manage the tasks" - article by Jared Spool

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