- I. Definition
- II. Roles
- III. Dependencies
- IV. Examples
- V. Review
Definition
The main purpose of the Strategy phase is to form a realistic, comprehensive project plan that meets the needs of the client and their audience.
The Discovery and Analysis period is meant to gather information and identify what created the need for a web design project in the first place.
Key questions to research:
- What are the business objectives that the project hopes to accomplish?
- What is the message that the client organization must deliver?
- Who are users that this website is being built for?
- What do these users want to do?
Building a Proper Foundation
The information gathered during this period informs all the major project decisions to come. Conduct your research as thoroughly as possible! The time you spend during the strategy period pays off exponentially in quality and saving effort later in the project
Research
In the Discovery and Analysis period, the project team (including the client) explores what opportunities this project creates, they identify and profile the target audience, and they generate ideas about how the website can serve the audience’s defined needs.
Information can be gathered through such methods as:
- Documentation Research
- Internal Client Expert and Stakeholder Interviews
- Competitive Analysis
- Audience Research and Profiling
Common Subjects to Explore
Below are topics that most web projects will need to investigate and usually warrant their own focused meeting during the Discovery period.
- Business Needs and Objectives
- Audience Definition and Needs
- Design Guidelines and Approach
- Content Audit and Strategy
- Technical Requirements and Specifications
- Project Logistics and Communication
This is by no means a complete list of subjects and many times that special needs of the project require their own specific discussions.
Logistics
Also during this period, the team evaluates the client’s internal requirements:
Technical
- The developer team reviews the technical infrastructure of the client (their IT architecture, databases, and existing web services)
- Interviews stakeholders to understand high level business requirements
- Develops a shortlist of technical solutions that meet the needs of the client’s internal assets and provides consultation in integrating new technology into their existing IT architecture
- Interview stakeholders about the minimal system requirements of the end user (what browsers, operating systems, color depth, monitor resolution, etc. must be supported). Many times this information is available from server logs that track visitors to a current website.
Operational
- The producer and sponsor may investigate how the new website will need administrative support from internal client resources after the website is launched
- Organizational processes regarding how new content is approved and published may need to be worked out
Results
At the end of the data collection process, there should be a clear understanding by all parties as to:
- What the overall goals and objectives are for the website
- What organizational requirements need to be accounted for during the course of the project
- Who will the website be targeting
- What the audience wants from the website
Roles
Sponsor: This is when the project requires the most from the client. The agency needs every scrap of information about the needs and goals of the client organization that they can provide. Without this critical information, there is no way to determine success factors for the project.
Everyone: All team members should be included in this process. Everyone represents a different skill-set and can bring a different perspective to the table. During this planning stage, having different perspectives helps ensure that all aspects of the project plan (design, strategy, development, etc.) are considered and accounted for.
Dependencies
Over the length of the project cycle, all activities will be dependent on deliverables produced by the preceding phases. Most phases cannot be properly started without the finalization of preceding work.
Since the Discovery and Analysis period is the first phase of the project, its dependency is to gain access to existing assets and knowledge.
This includes access to:
- Client stakeholders to define business objectives
- Target audience to define needs and motivators
- Existing documentation and market research
- Client guidelines (brand, design, technical, operational)
Examples:
Some techniques used to idientify business needs and audience objectives:
Card sorting
Card sorting is a user-centered design method for determining audience priorities and assisting in establishing content hierarchy. The process involves sorting a series of cards, each labeled with a piece of content or functionality. Users or stakeholders are invited to place the cards into groups that make sense to them.
”Information Architecture for the World Wide Web” (Morville & Rosenfeld, 1998) describes card sorting as a great method to gain “insight into users’ mental models, illuminating the ways they often tacitly group, sort, and label tasks and content within their own heads.”
By understanding the users’ mental model, we can increase findability, which in turn makes a website easier to use.
Personas
Personas are fictitious characters that are created to represent different target audience demographics. Personas are not "made up"-- they are discovered as a by-product of the investigative process. Personas are given a variety of characteristics that are meant to illustrate the mental model and personality of their represented type of users. The projectteam can use these personas to base design decisions and to identify additional research topics.
The persona characteristics include information about the persona’s demographics, attitude, goals, environment, and how they will interact with a website in a given context. More advanced personas will also include detailed descriptions of activities or scenarios that would illustrate what would motivate them to visit and interact with a website.
Deliverables
The following are examples of physical deliverables used to capture research and document the team’s findings.
Project Brief, sometimes called a Kickoff Brief, is a simple document that outlines all the project details that are understood prior to the kickoff of a project.
Discovery Report is the milestone document that captures all the knowledge collected during the Discovery period
- Stakeholder interviews
- Competitive analysis
- Best practices
- Brand architecture
Competitive Analysis is meant to
- Review competitor features
- Identify best practices for the project to leverage
- Heed warnings from the poor performance of others
- Research desired features that have been successfully implemented by organization outside of the client marketplace
Audience Personas contain
- Rich characterization of customer segments
- Captures attitudinal, demographic and behavioral information
- Surface critical insights about the customer
- Drives the process to design the customer experience
Review
Click the button below to launch a quick review of the Discovery and Analysis period. Once you are done, close the review and move on to Chapter 2: Advise and Plan.
- Develop the project plan with goals and objectives
- Set the project context based on information collected
- Define audience and their needs
- Determine the organizational requirements
