s512: information systems design spring ‘10 understanding the client and the organization i....

S512: Information Systems Design Spring ‘10

Understanding the client and the organization

I. Working with the client

• Taking the client’s point of view

• Formal communication with the client

II. Understanding the organization

• Organizational informatics

III. Working with the user

• User needs and information seeking behavior



The relationship with the client is one of the important factors that determines the success or failure of a project

Lash: “The bottom line is that no one wants a Web site. A Web site is just a way to help someone get whatever it is that they really want.”

Your job is to figure out what the client wants

For example: decrease abandoned shopping carts, increase inquiries, reduce customer service calls, increase ad impressions, increase traffic

In general: increased revenues or decreased costsLash, J. (2003). A user-centered approach to selling information architecture. Digital Web Magazine http://www.digital-web.com/articles/a_user_centered_approach_to_selling_ia/



Effective collaboration in a design project requires a structured development process

Research: gather information to develop a high level understanding of business context, goals, existing IA

Strategy: high level framework for site, content types, initial metadata

Design: wireframe, style guide, page guides, database structures, prototypes

Implementation: build, test, change, launch

Administration: maintenance, evaluation, improvementRosenfeld and Morville, Ch. 10



Research areas and methods

Context

Background research, presentations and meetings, stakeholder interviews, technology

assessment

Content

Heuristic evaluation, metadata and content analysis, content mapping, benchmarking

Users

Search log and clickstream analysis, use cases and personas, contextual inquiry, user interviews

and testing



Getting buy-in

Managing client expectations is essential to the success of the project

Who is the client?

A person, a group, a department, or a company

Who signs the contract?

What are the best strategies for developing and maintaining good relations with the client?

You are working to ensure that the client will trust you throughout the project



What does the client want?

As a website designer, you should be finding out your client’s aspirations for the website

If the clients are an airplane parts distributor, do they want to become the world's leading parts store, shifting as many units as possible every day?

If the client is an engineering company, do they want to show the world their services?

What do they want the visitor to be able to do when they come to the site?



Internal clients

These clients are within your own company

You must understand how the project fits into the company’s organizational structure and processes

This is an exercise in systems analysis and competitive intelligence

Who supports the project? Why?

What are the political risks?

What is the budget?

What is necessary to build and maintain consensus?



External clients

These clients sign a contract with your company

Where does the client fits in the organization?

Does he or she have the authority to make decisions about the project?

Does he or she have good relations with superior, peers, and subordinates?

It is important to get the client to “buy in”

What are the best ways to do this?

It will depend on your ability to communicate with the client throughout the development process



Stakeholders are individuals or organizations who stand to gain or lose from the success or failure of a system

Their perspectives are needed for a project succeed

They typically have positive or negative views and often don’t agree with one another

It is a challenge to reconcile their varied viewpoints

Problem: IAs tend to favor one stakeholder the users

Understanding user needs and goals is necessary but not sufficient for producing a successful designBoutelle, J. (2006). Understanding Organizational Stakeholders for Design Success http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/understanding_organizational_stakeholders_for_design_success



Stakeholder analysis

Identify all the people who are impacted by the project, who have influence over it, or have a stake in its

successful completion

Prioritize them

1. High influence, high interest: they have influence over the project, and are interested in it

Work to understand their viewpoints — specifically what objections they might raise

Spend most time on these stakeholders




Prioritize them

2. Low influence, high interest: they have interest, but little influence

If positive, they can be valuable sources of information

They can provide documents relevant to the project, provide institutional history of past efforts and help identify the organizational challenges

Meet with them early since it is relatively low-risk




Prioritize them

3. High influence, low interest: they have power, but low interest

They won’t pay attention to details of the project, since they don't see it affecting them

They have influence on whether it will be a success

Goal is to give them enough information about the project that they will not create obstacles

4. Low influence, low interest: spend less time with them since they have little influence and little interest



Taking the client’s point of view

You should expect that your client will not be as interested in or knowledgeable about web development as you are

Education is important

The client should understand

How the project will be carried out

Steps, phases, responsibilities, and deliverables

What critical factors could affect the project

What the level of client involvement should be throughout the project



Problems with clients

Spending too much time with “problem” clients who don't pay or who are difficult to work with

Turning one-time clients into ongoing sources of revenues and referrals

Failing to extract the most revenue possible from “good” clients by converting them into “great” clients

Spreading too thin among many clients

Dealing with poaching as competitors encroach on your “exclusive” clients

Neitlich , A. (2005). How a Core Relationship Strategy Can Help You Increase Profits http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/core-relationship-strategy



A core relationship strategy: focus 80% of your time on the 20% relationships that can help you reach 80% of your financial goals

Systematically move past the clients and referral sources taking up too much time for too few returns

Develop criteria for ideal and nightmare business relationships

Rank your relationships

Focus on the core

Fire the bottom

Watch the middle



Understanding business strategy

It is the selection of ideas and assets to meet long term goals and sustainable competitive advantage

What to do, how to do it, how well it is being done

What are the org’s strengths and weaknesses?

What differentiates the org?

Takes place within a shifting competitive environment

Business strategy drives design and informs IA practice

IA provides alignment and exposes gaps in business strategyRosenfeld and Morville, Ch 18



Business strategy and IA are interrelated

Organizational communication should support strategy

Web sites, extranets, and intranets play key roles in defining relationships between a company and its customers, investors, suppliers, and employees

The design, implementation, and maintenance of these channels become critical success factors

They should be carefully aligned with business strategy

Requires understanding of organizational structures, processes, and culture



A graphical depiction of business strategy

Morville (2000) http://argus-acia.com/strange_connections/strange006.html



A graphical depiction of IA

Morville (2000) http://argus-acia.com/strange_connections/strange006.html



One key is understanding what the client thinks about the project

Envisioning the project from the client’s point of view

Why does the client want this project done?

Where does this project fit into the client’s overall view of the business? Is it central? Peripheral?

What is at stake for the client in this project?

What is critical to the success of the project?

What resources are necessary?

What people are necessary?



Try to determine the client’s understanding of their audience

Who do they think their users are?

What type of experience do they want people to have when using the site? What do they want them to do?

Where do they want them to spend the most time?

Do the research

Learn about the client’s business

What is their value proposition?

What are the main ways in which they generate revenue?



Communicating the work process to the client is a good way to build a relationship

This indicates your professionalism

What is the methodology?

What are the deliverables?

What will you deliver to the client and when?

What does the client have to deliver to you so that you can meet your goals?

What approvals are necessary?

These should always be in writing



Presentations and meetings

Introductory kickoff: to bring the team up to speed

Strategy team: meet with the decision makers in the organization to find out about the site

Content management team: meet with content owners and managers to find out about types, policies, processes

IT team: meet with system administrators and software, database developers to understand the technical infrastructureRosenfeld and Morville, Ch. 10



Formal communication with the client

Legal communications

Letter of agreement

Your company has been contracted to do the work

Work begins after receiving a deposit

Brief description of the project

Non-disclosure agreement

Protects the exchange of confidential information and both parties’ intellectual property

Contracts specify constraints and deliverables



Project communications

It is important to document project-based communication

Assumptions should be discussed openly and early

What are your responsibilities?

What are the client’s responsibilities?

What steps depend on deliverables from the client?

Scope and costs

What is the size of the project?

What are the deadlines?

Should emphasize time frames and costs



Approval documents

The client should sign off on each benchmark and deliverable

These detail the various components and features

Could include: high-level IA, prototype navigation, search functions, forms, database design

Site reviews

Purpose of the review is to obtain client feedback and maintain communication and buy in

You explain how your design fits their needs



Conducting the site review

Presenting the creative concept to the client on or offline

Prepare in advance by reviewing the site with the team

Anticipate the client’s reactions based on what you have learned

Frame the concept around the objectives of the site

Be ready and able to explain the reasoning for the design decisions

Clearly link these decisions to the project objectives and requirements



Organizational informatics

The study of organizations and their uses of information and ICTs

People using ICTs are within organizational boundaries

A main focus is on the social organization of work

The social shaping of technology in the workplace

Digital technologies are embedded in a “web” of computing

This includes the machines, those who use and maintain them, those who pay for them,

those setting policies for their use…



The context of ICTs use directly affects their meanings and roles

Design of ICTs is linked to social and organizational dynamics, and these dynamics are contextual

ICTs are always linked to their environments of use

ICTs are not value neutral

They are often designed, implicitly or explicitly, to support social and organizational structures

ICT use leads intended and unintended consequences

Use has moral and ethical aspects and these have social consequences



ICTs are configurable collections of distinct components

These are assembled into unique collections for each organization or group

The multiple functions and ability to reprogram them means that ICTs highly re-configurable

ICTs follow trajectories that favor the status quo

An evolving series of products or versions with a history and a future

Preexisting relationships of power and social life are often maintained and strengthened

Their evolution is social history and technical progress



Organizations consist of individuals in social networks

Create, share and act on information and knowledge

Social structure: social relationships persist over time

Organizational structure: connections and dependencies among organization members

Connections may reflect

Authority: who reports to whom

Informal organization: who communicates with whom

Structure and workflow: who depends on whom

Social relationships who likes whom



An example of organizational structure: Arizona Department of Transportation

http://www.azdot.gov/Org_Charts/ITD/images/ITD_OrgChart_081407.gif



Organizational size matters

There are differences between large and small organizations

Also in working on large and small scale sites

And between single and multi-departmental sites

Who is responsible for doing the work?

Who manages the workflow?

“Ad-hoc” coalitions are typical (Burdman; 112)

What are the costs and benefits of this approach?

Is there a need for a dedicated team to manage the site?


A example of workflow

Center for Technology in Government

http://www.ctg.albany.edu/publications/reports/xml_lessons/images/web_workflow2.jpg




How does the web fit into the overall organizational culture and structure?

Who funds the web work?

What major groups are involved in developing and maintaining the site?

This may be individuals instead of groups

What is the role of IS? Marketing?

What is the position of the major stakeholders (executives and decision makers) on the web

effort?

What do they want from the site?



Multiple departments and groups may be involved

Typically they provide content

How can their needs be met and balanced against each other?

What do these stakeholders want from the site?

Who gets onto the home or top level pages and why?

Managing this issue becomes more complex if these groups contribute financially to the costs of the site

Having a clear sense of the larger organizational business strategy is essential here

Understanding organizational politics is important



Conflict in web work: Eschenfelder argues that web classification systems contribute to conflict in site design

They create interdependency and goal conflicts

They are social creations that reflect organizational politics

Also there problems with the conception of the customer

Different sub-units with different needs and goals draw on the idea of customer needs or expectations to argue for different design outcomesEschenfelder, K. (2003). The customer is always right, but whose customer is more important?: Conflict and Web site classification schemes. Information Technology & People, 16,(4), 419-439.



Conflict in web work

One major source of goal disagreement is the difference in perception of customer needs and expectations

Difficulty: prioritizing and meeting the differing needs of different stakeholders

Design elements associated with conflict Eschenfelder, 429



User needs and information seeking behavior

Modeling user behavior: how can we do this?

Stimulus response model

Query to the system

System processes query [black box]

Response from system

This is a mechanistic model based on a systems metaphor

The user engages in predictable behaviors

Under what type of conditions does this work?



A different approach is based on information needs and information seeking behavior

Why is it important to understand the user?

Users have information needs

Where do information needs originate?

ASK, gaps, anomalies

Information needs lead to information seeking behaviors

These behaviors vary as the needs vary

Browsing, broad searching, directed searching



It is important for IAs to understand information needs

It is more than ask a question--> Magic --> get answer

There is more complex interaction at query

What type of need? What is the best way to ask the question?

In the system

What is the best way to store, arrange and retrieve and matching?

At the output

What is the best form? How can it be interpreted?



Types of information seeking

Direct answer (perfect catch): you know what you want

The criteria for relevance are precise

Exploratory searching (lobster trapping): an open-ended question with a range of potentially relevant answers

The criteria for relevance are vague and emergent

Thorough searching (driftnetting): exhaustively gather information

The criteria for relevance may or may not be precise but are broadRosenfeld and Morville, Ch. 3



Holscher and Strube’s model of information search behavior

Holscher, C. and Strube, G. (nd). Web Search Behavior of Internet Experts and Newbies http://www9.org/ w9cdrom/81/81.html



Information seeking as a process

It is a bounded series of one or more episodes

Integration: using two or more components in a single episode

This allows comparison and expansion of the process

Iteration: repeating the process in a single session by returning to areas of the site or resource

This can lead either to query expansion or contraction

How do people know when to stop?

Satisficing (Simon)



Another approach

Berry-picking (Bates, 1989): begins with a need

Formulate a query

Move iteratively through a system, gather information along the way, using available resources

The need and the query may change as you move

Chaining (pearl growing)

Start with information that is exactly right

Search for more like it

Search for sources it cites or that cite it



A model of steps in information seeking

Feldman, S. (2000). The Answer Machine. CRM http://www.infotoday.com/ searcher/jan00/feldman.htm



Gathering user data

Usage statistics

Page information: hits per page

Visitor information: what domains and referral pages they come from

Search log analysis: what terms are people using

Error logs: where do they have problems

Customer/technical support data: what kinds of problems are people having

Methods: surveys, contextual inquiry, focus groups



Google analytics

http://blog.upupresults.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/google_analytics_dailyvisit.gif



A search log

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/images/glinks/screenshots/search-log.jpg



An error log

http://www.devarticles.com/images/asplog_1.gif

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