Gathering Information Johns Hopkins University students gathered information from stakeholders, potential users, and others. They analyzed the former site (new window) using heuristics (rules of thumb) and helped the client envision how a new site might be structured to better support users. (See sample heuristic report (pop-up). Students evaluated the content in the 1996-2005 site, and identified needs for additional content by listing audiences and tasks (observable beginnings and ends).

Volunteers (from Info.Design, Inc.) assembled information into a planning document (PDF) which was presented to the client (Plain Language Action and Information Network) and served as the basis for the next phase of work, performed by the USDA Information Architecture (IA) class.

Evaluating content – Students in the USDA Information Architecture class and a volunteer team evaluated the content on the 1996 site. They noted the need for additional content by paying attention to audiences, purposes, and measures of success. The class viewed this content "through the eyes" of actual users by interviewing members of distinct user groups and by building personas (pop-up) as a tool for envisioning content through others’ eyes.

Chunking content – To organize the content into clusters, volunteers inventoried the current content (pop-up) and the class conducted card sorts. They organized task information they had gathered from interviews and built content groupings based on what users wanted to do. The class and volunteers began to envision how content might be arranged in a Web environment and developed rough prototypes for testing.

"Knowing content" -- Knowing how users think is essential in developing web structure and the class and volunteers developed increasingly complex prototypes for user testing. Test subjects provided feedback at three stages of prototyping -- rough paper prototypes, detailed paper prototypes (pop-up) , and design mockups (pop-up). Based on feedback, site structure evolved into the current structure coded by the volunteer information designer and developers.

Optimizing content – With our audiences and purposes in mind, we collected content from more than 20 different writers. Volunteers then revisited the measures of success identified at the beginning of the project and made changes in structure and added additional “linked” relationships. Prior to launch, the team conducted summative testing, incorporated lessons learned, and focused on improving performance of those individuals entering the site.

Websites provide an opportunity for continuous improvement. For the next phase in development, content volunteers plan to revisit the text in the site and – following the GECKO framework (PDf) once more – make shifts in tone and structure to better serve the site’s community of users.