Assignment 1: Website Planning

Your name: _______________________

Part 1: Strategy (5 points)

A: Describe your project (5 points)

In 1-2 paragraphs, describe the website you want to build. What is its name? What problem
does it solve? Why is a website the right way to solve that problem?

B: Identify your goals (5 points)

Per the video on goals, identify your goals in a paragraph or less.

Organizational goal(s):

User goals(s):

Website goals(s):

C: Identify your users (5 points)

Identify the most important user for your website. This user may be the most common visitor,
the one that spends the most money, the audience you may want to develop, something else --
any of these are fine and should align with your goals.

For this user, create a persona similar to those shown at Usability.gov. For your persona,
address the following:

• Persona Group (i.e. web manager)

• Fictional name
• Job titles and major responsibilities
• Demographics such as age, education, ethnicity, and family status
• The goals and tasks they are trying to complete using the site
o What is your person motivated by?
o What are they looking for?
• Their physical, social, and technological environment
• A quote that sums up what matters most to the persona as it relates to your site
• Casual picture representing that user (cite your source!)
Part 3: Structure (5 points)
Watch the card sorting video provided in the video portion of this unit's module.
Perform a card sort as demonstrated in the video.
• Take a photo of your sticky notes on a wall or a table to show you completed
the exercise and submit it.
• Type a bulleted list in Word of the navigation items you've identified.
• For each navigation item, identify what type(s) of content this is: page, post,
plugin, widget, something else?

Part 4: Content (10 points)

For each page in your website, as outlined in the site map, please complete the following:

• Identify photos, illustrations, video, and/or other enhancements for each page
-- there should not be a page with only text.
• Answer the following questions:
o What is the point of this page?
o What are users supposed to do?
o Why should users care?

For three of the pages in the site map (your choice), write the content for those pages.
Bear in mind your answers to the questions above in your writing.
• Include at least one paragraph of text.
• Format with headings, lists, or whatever else is needed to keep the page
scannable.