Design Document: Defining the User Experience The second section of your design document will focus on those who will be using the web site you create. In order to develop a site that will achieve the goals set out, you must understand who the site is intended for and how they are likely to use it. The User Experience section of the design document includes identifying the target audience, understanding how the audience will use the site and exploring how your competitors are representing themselves on the Web. Determining the Target Audience If we know what we want to accomplish and who we want to accomplish it with, we can design the site to appeal to that group or groups. One of the questions you asked during goal definition was who does the site benefit. The answers you received to that question should allow you to start to identify the target audience. Be cautious if indications are the site will appeal to everyone. Few sites truly appeal to a broad audience. Even those sites that do usually have different sections within that will appeal specifically to different demographics. Careful consideration of the audience will allow you to create a web site that will appeal to and be most useful to them. Consider how the following might impact your site development age gender race education geography lifestyle finances religion If you are developing for an established business and the site will be an extension of current services, their identified customer base will be your target audience. If the site may be targeting new customers, you will want to consider who those customers are. A thorough exploration of the target audience will be required if the site is of a new or untried concept. Regardless, you will need to consult your client to help in determining the target audience. You should consider meeting with all of those that provided input into forming the goals for the site. The purpose here is to create a list of all possible audiences that will have some degree of interest in the message your site will be providing. Include as many possible audiences as you can think of. Once you have a complete list of audiences, see if you can group or categorize them in any way. Rank the audiences in importance to achieving your site goals. If you figure that 10% of the visitors will be under the age of 16, there may be little point in developing content that speaks to them, at least at this early stage of development. Review the target audience(s) with the client and get agreement. Once you have client approval, you will add this information to the Design Document. For each identified target audience, state the audience and support the statement with a paragraph explaining why they are a target audience and how that target audience supports the goals of the site. This will become section 2.1 - Audience Definition. Creating Scenarios The purpose of creating scenarios is to help you understand how the user will approach and use the site. In other words, how will the user achieve their goals for coming to the site? This is critically important in understanding how transactional functions of the web site are to perform. Typically, you will want to create one scenario for each identified target audience, site goal and functional system. For example, the goal is to provide on-line product registration for a chair lift designed for seniors. The defined target audience is senior citizens. How will a senior approach and use the site to accomplish the goal of successfully completing and submitting an on-line registration form. The scenario should state what the specific task is within the site, and how the user will go about accomplishing that task. You will want to indicate everything the user sees and does on route to accomplishing the task. You know who your intended audiences are and what they hope to accomplish (the goal for visiting your site). 1. Create a character - bring the person to life. 2. What is the task the character needs to accomplish? Be specific. 3. Write a story of how the character accomplishes the task. What are the specific steps from start to end. 4. Describe everything that happens to the user and what the user sees. 5. Create a flow-chart of the transactional processes You will add the scenarios you have developed to the Design Document. You will want to include the information from the 5 steps above. You may wish to place the transactional flow-charts at the end of the design document as a flow chart. This will become section 2.2 - User Scenarios.   modifed: 2009-04-07