website workshop series at the school of government

(Re:)Designing the School of Government Website

Workshop SeriesI. Introduction

Current School of

Government website:

+ interesting content

– no meaningful

structure

– conflicting approaches

to organize knowledge

The Problem

• “An information unit located at a place when it is not needed at the time has a good chance of being ignored” (Passini, 2000, 91).

• “Although it is true that electrons are cheaper than paper, human patience is a limited resource“ (Hart, 2003).

Our Goals:

Create structure

Improve transparency

Increase interactivity and

engagement

Provide flexible building blocks

Foster frequent updates

Aggregate information for different

purposes and target groups

The Solution

• “Information design is defined as the art and science of preparing information so that it can be used by human beings with efficiency and effectiveness“ (Horn, 2002).

• “Information architects make the complex clear; they make the information understandable to other human beings” (Wurman 2000, 23).

The Process

• Workshop Series: Client Groups, Content Types, Categories & Tags, ‘Exhibition Map’

• Duration: 90 Minutes• ITD task force: – Workshop moderation & documentation– Implementation

Personas:

Turning abstract

customer data

into vivid,

detailed narratives

Personas

• Depict typical users with fictional biography, name, age, profession, interests, …

• Bring goals, priorities, situational context to the site

• Allow to build rich scenarios

“Content on the

Lawn”:

Assess what kind of

information you provide

Identify patterns

Define content types

Content Types

• Customizable puzzle pieces

• Allow to structure content in logical unit

• Aggregate information for different purposes / target groups

• Example: Publications

Categories

Labels that give

information about

information

Categories

• Sorting content into different categories supports aggregation for different purposes

• Content can appear in more than one place

• “Digital information does not have to be structured the way our socks are!” (Weinberger, 2007)

• Precise, understandable, flexible: Categories = Defined on group level

• Tags = Defined on individual level

Mapping

How do our

clients find our

content with the

labels we provide?

Exhibition Map

• Connecting the dots: Navigation, search options, entry points and features

• “With information systems, there’s often no single ‘right’ answer to a given question” (Rosenfeld & Morville, 2002).

Outlook

• Wireframes• Prototype

implementation• Triangulation of results

with focus groups

It’s a journey – thank you for joining us!