What do they need to accomplish on your website?

These are critical questions in the design process. One way to help answer them is the development of "Use Scenarios" that describe typical users and what they do on a specific site. One leading advocate of these scenarios is John M. Carroll in his book Scenario-Based Design: Envisioning Work and Technology in System Development (1995).

The advantage of writing various Use Scenarios is that it makes the analysis of your goals, users, and settings much more concrete. This will help you decide how to design the site, guiding such things as how you structure it, what you put on the home page, how the navigation will work, and so on. For most websites you will likely need more than one Use Scenario.

Among the elements in a Use Scenario are

• A description of a specific user who represents one of the major types of users who might use the site.
• A description of the environment in which this user is working.
• A description of a typical task that this user will complete on the website.
• A step-by-step description of how this user will do this task.

Here's an example (perhaps briefer than it should be):

John is a 28-year-old man returning to college to get a degree after working at various low-level jobs for several years. His high school record was mediocre, but he usually tested well on standardized tests. John has matured in the years between high school and college, and he is willing to work hard to do well. He is not used to studying, however, and has some difficulty extracting key concepts from textbooks. John does not live on campus and must drive over half an hour to go to class. He accesses the Internet through a modem from his home and would have difficulty affording broadband access.

John typically uses his course website for two basic tasks: finding out an assignment and finding materials to help explain what is in the textbook.

Can you fill in a step-by-step description of one of these two tasks?

Can you create another scenario focusing on a more traditional on-campus student with different uses for a course website?