Web Manager University – Spring 2009
Class Title: Website Makeover: Focusing on Your Visitors' Major Tasks
| Class Format: | One–Day Course | |
| Instructor: | Janice "Ginny" Redish, PhD, Redish & Associates, Inc. | |
| Date: | Wednesday, June 17, 2009 | |
| Time: | 9:00 am – 4:00 pm | |
| Place: | Department of Labor (DOL) | |
| Fee: | $200 federal, state, or local U.S. government; $300 for non–government |
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Register for this course (registration form hosted by a third–party vendor)
Course Description
People come to websites with their own goals and tasks in mind. A successful site allows your site visitors to accomplish those goals and tasks quickly and effectively. It's time to focus your website on your customers and their major tasks. Come work with Ginny Redish and learn practical techniques for finding out:
- Who comes to your site (and who should be coming to the site)
- What tasks they come to do
- How to redo the information architecture, design, and writing of your site so it allows people to accomplish those tasks successfully
- Why and how to reduce the size of your site so that the new task–orientation stands out and all your information is appropriate and up–to–date
The day will be very practical. We'll use a case study for examples and exercises so that you'll have strategies and tactics to use immediately after the class.
About the Instructor
Ginny Redish has 30 years of experience in helping designers and developers think about users and those users' tasks. She is passionate about sharing her knowledge and experience by mentoring others. Ginny is a dynamic instructor—her courses for Web Manager University consistently receive rave reviews.
Most of Ginny's current work focuses on creating successful websites. She has worked with many government agencies, including the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Health and Human Services, and Transportation and agencies within those departments, including the FDA, FAA, and several institutes in NIH.
Ginny has helped to improve the usability of a variety of products, including websites, for private clients such as AARP, American Airlines, Marriott International, Nokia, and Xerox.
Ginny's book, User and Task Analysis for Interface Design (written with JoAnn Hackos) is considered a classic on how to find out about your customers and their goals and tasks. Morgan Kaufmann/Elsevier has just published Ginny's new book on writing for the web, Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works (see the book's website).
Ginny's work has brought her several awards, including a plain language award from NIH, the Rigo award from ACM SIGDOC, the Alfred N. Goldsmith award from the IEEE Professional Communication Society, and the status of Fellow from the Society for Technical Communication.
Ginny is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Harvard University.
Return to the Fall 2008 Schedule of Classes
Content Lead: Meghan BurrowsPage Updated or Reviewed: January 7, 2008
