[thelist] evaluating information

Luther, Ron ron.luther at hp.com
Wed Feb 9 07:58:52 CST 2005


Alida Ladak asked:


>>I have a question that is clumsy, so bear with me.  I work on a secure

>>site that is almost entirely a dynamic application.  The information
we 
>>present can be overwhelming for our infrequent users, but is suitable 
>>for others. I'm interested in determining what is the right first
layer 
>>of information, and what information can be retrieved through an extra

>>action or click.


Hi Alida,

Sounds like an interesting usability question!

One natural starting point to suggest, (which you may or may not be able

to implement), would be to talk to your user base - determine how they 
work with the application and how many user subgroups or user workflows 
you are actually supporting.

With the limited information you provided about the only other comment 
of possible value I can make is to challenge your pov in looking for 
a single 'right' first layer ... Why not provide multiple 'first
layers'?

Perhaps you really need different front ends for different markets or 
for different groups of users; a 'consumer' entrance and a 'commercial' 
entrance for instance.

For an internal app serving users of different levels of experience you 
could let the users set a cookie (to allow redirection after
authentication) 
to select their choice of 'first layer' - or trigger the 'includes' to 
customize a 'standard' first layer. [Naturally, you can still provide 
'breadcrumb' links to the "simpler" layers.]

Yes, techniques like these will increase your maintenance costs.
However, 
if this is a competitive application, (whether that's external or
internal 
'competition'), the increased user satisfaction and user 'stickiness'
may 
be worth the cost.


Also, (depending on what you are doing), you may need to be adding lots
of 
links to 'help' documents, 'what does this mean' documents, 'explanation

of calculations' documents, etc ... to help out those infrequent users
and 
lower your live helldesk costs.


HTH,

RonL.


More information about the thelist mailing list