Sheffield City Council has recently embarked upon a major project to transform the way they use the Internet to deliver services and information. Learning of rckt’s specialist skills with intelligent design solutions the Council asked us to help them put their users at the heart of the review.
Firstly rckt had to build a logic around the process, investigating the purpose and content of the existing website, in order to learn what kind of user we needed place at the centre of the project.
Analysis of web usage feds into exploratory workshops
A review of web usage, analysis of user feedback and population research then led to the creation of web personas. These personas allow the project team to think like their users, humanising the design process.
The personas created for Sheffield City Council
]]>In a large organisation such as ours it is often difficult to keep sight of our end-users. The tools that rckt have given us allow us to do just this. Based on logical assumptions the personas also combine clever insights and real personal information, allowing us to get into the minds of our target users.
Julie Bullen
Head of Customer Services, Sheffield City Council
Organic growth over ten years, up to two hundred updates every month and at least 30,000 pages. The structure of the HSE’s website has a lot of responsibility on its shoulders. Unfortunately the structure can no longer cope, resulting in a confusing, often disorientating user experience.
Rckt we’re asked to create a web structure that delivered an engaging and intuitive user experience. To tackle this seemingly daunting task rckt employed our tried and tested information architecture model.
We base all our decision making not on gut feel or intuition, but on solid facts and objective reason. The result? Exciting design backed by a watertight rationale. So where did we begin with the HSE?
The rationale behind rckt’s approach
Alongside a team from the HSE rckt embarked upon a series of structured workshops to define and manipulate the vast quantity and variety of information into a logical structure.
Site Mapping in Progress
Rckt’s iterative workshop method delivers a user-centric logic to information architecture
This process has created a completely new approach to the structure of the HSE website, categorising all information into five distinct subject areas. These top-level areas give the user an instant overview of the whole site, allowing them to make informed decisions about where to go within the site.
The five global subject areas developed for the HSE
Are you are a digital native or digital immigrant? The fact that you’re reading a blog suggests you might be a native, Gary Small’s new book “iBRAIN: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind” might have the answer.
We’re all familiar with the concept of evolution, even if certain US vice-presidential candidates have a few issues with Mr Darwin’s theory. But did you know we were evolving at such a rate, in fact simply by reading this blog you’re brain is changing.
According to Gary’s research those of us who are tech-savvy and use the Internet daily display twice as much brain activity in regions of the brain responsible for decision-making and complex reasoning. According to the neuroscientist ‘reading’ the web stimulates more regions of the brain than the printed word.
Gary then identifies two types of web-users that display quite different brain activity. The digital native, often younger people that have never known a world without the web and the digital immigrant, frequently older and with brains hardwired long before they first saw the Internet.
It’s the digital immigrant, who is better at face to face interaction than navigating websites, that poses some interesting questions for information architecture and page design. The digital immigrant takes things one step at a time, and acts methodically.
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