Develop a Plan

• Create a plan
• Determine project scope
• Identify user audiences
• Set objectives

Create a plan

Planning is a way to understand and get agreement on what you are going to do, in what timeframe, with what resources, and at what cost.

By including usability activities in your project plan, you build in the time and resources to carry out those activities. By reviewing the Step-by-Step Usability Guide, you can better understand which fit with your needs so you can put them in appropriately in your plan.

As you begin to plan, think about and get agreement on

• Scope - What are you developing? What is the Web site going to cover? About how many pages will it be?
• Audiences - Who are the major groups you want the site to serve?
• Objectives - What goals should the Web site help your agency or organization to meet?

We provide a brief introduction to these three topics here. More detailed questions to think about are in the article on Hold a Kick-Off Meeting.

Determine project scope

Are you creating a Web site for an entire agency or organization? Part of that agency or organization? On a particular topic? For a particular audience?

You should be able to name the Web site and write a short description of it.

You should also understand the requirements of your Web site. To learn more, see the article on how to Determine Web Site Requirements.

top of page

Identify user audiences

List all the different groups that you want to use the site. For example:

• general public
• researchers
• advocates
• students

Also, think about these users' needs. For example, for many different user groups coming to Web sites, you might want to remember that:

• Users are very busy.
• Users don't want to read very much.
• Users want to get tasks done as quickly as possible.
• Users may not know a lot of your technical vocabulary.

You may want to learn a lot more about your users. See the articles on Evaluate Your Current Site, Learn About Your Users, and Conduct Task Analysis.

top of page

Set objectives

What does your agency or organization want to achieve by having a Web site? You may start by saying "give information," and that's fine, but you should also think about your objectives in business terms.

For example, do you want users to get the answers to their own questions without calling the agency? If so, you might have an objective of reducing phone calls by X amount, saving Y dollars.

You can set similar measurable objectives for reducing emails, for increasing customer satisfaction, for increasing subscriptions to online newsletters, and so on. When you set meaningful measurable objectives, you have ways of measuring success after the site is launched.

The list of agency objectives are different from two other types of goals that you should also understand and set as part of a user-centered design process. The others are:

• your users' goals (These are their scenarios, what they come to the Web site to achieve.) See the articles on Evaluate Your Current Site, Conduct Task Analysis, and Write Scenarios.
• measurable usability goals for users' scenarios (These are the ways you will tell whether your site is effective, efficient, and satisfying to your users.) See Set Measurable Usability Goals.

top of page

Next steps

Another part of your plan is to think about the people who will work on the project. You may want to look at the article on Assemble a Project Team.

top of page