Analysis & Strategy

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Excerpts from TRAIN OF THOUGHTS: Designing the Effective Web Experience

07.00.00 Strategy Formulation—Reconciling Stakeholder Needs

Although there are many important steps in a process, perhaps the most crucial are those that take place during the first phase, which is strategy formulation. Without an accurate understanding of what problems a Web enterprise is trying to solve for its patrons, its sponsors, and itself, moving on to the iterative execution phases will be less than effective and could lead to total disaster.

Unfortunately for many Web enterprises, the people involved in the formulation of online resources often expend the lion’s share of their time, budget, and energy working toward the completion of tasks that don’t truly support the underlying business objectives. This is the result of following directives handed down by executives and, in some cases, experience designers who have the power to control the direction that a Web enterprise takes, yet who move forward with little more than unqualified personal insight. I call this the Foolishness of Unqualified Wisdom Syndrome.

To be effective, it’s crucial that we instead base the iterative execution phase on the legitimate research, analysis, and reconciliation of all stakeholder needs.

07.00.03 When we begin looking for inspiration from within the organization, we quickly find ourselves in a defensive position.

Rosenfeld and Morville are right on target when they state that “…designing successful sites is an incredible challenge.” ¹ I disagree, however, that the task is made easier by “brainstorming mission and vision.” As logical as this may seem, we’re still digging in our own backyards. This is the point when agenda setting begins and when things often begin to get off track with a Web enterprise.

The problem is that organizations usually have ideas regarding what they want to do with a Web enterprise that aren’t rooted in what their patrons or sponsors actually need to get done as a result of interacting with the organization’s online resource.

Rather, I believe that the process should begin more like a scientific investigation. The organization should form a hypothesis regarding the needs that it feels its patrons and sponsors have, and then speculate regarding actions that could be taken to fulfill those needs. The aim is always either to initially provide or to further increase value for these external stakeholders. To do this, the organization should take an investigative role as it begins researching various external stakeholders in a quest for either validation or, more likely, their modification and expansion of its hypothesis.

But what if the external stakeholder needs that research uncovers don’t align with or otherwise contradict the needs or the objectives of the organization?

07.00.04 An organization’s objectives are important and should be met, but meeting these objectives must be the natural by-product of serving the needs of its patrons and its sponsors.

If accomplishing the organization’s goals isn’t an extension of serving external stakeholders, then the organization should reconsider going forward with the Web enterprise. Making sure that the goals of the organization and its constituents can find common ground is the responsibility of everyone in an organization who is accountable for the success of the Web enterprise.

This statement isn’t meant to dissuade people from engaging in a Web enterprise. It’s only meant to encourage an organization to evaluate and reevaluate what the nature and scope of its project should be based on: the research and analysis of all stakeholders. If this effort overturns an initial hypothesis, this is good news! This means that the process has helped prevent the development of an off-target online resource that could lead to financial and publicrelations catastrophes.

07.01.01 Querying internal stakeholders can help us develop a working hypothesis.

The difference between a hypothesis and a mission/vision statement is that much time usually goes into the latter, whereas very little time goes into the former. The more time and resources that an organization invests in this initial activity, the more an investment is made, and the more defensive people will be when these initial ideas are challenged.

Nonetheless, an organization must still have some basis for its initial hypothesis. It must begin, therefore, by asking questions of itself, but this should not be a protracted process. The following are examples of questions that can help formulate an initial hypothesis:

• What are our business objectives for the Web enterprise?
• What are the the “givens” that we should consider?
• How is our Web enterprise currently faring compared to other Web enterprises in its category?
• Who are the primary audiences being served?
• What problems do we perceive that patrons and sponsors would like to solve as a result of embracing our Web enterprise?
• What problems are we trying to solve for ourselves?
• What are the implications of not going forward with the project?
• What are the criteria for deeming the project a success?

If key internal stakeholders are polled with a short list of questions such as these, an initial working hypothesis can in most cases be developed quickly.

07.01.02 A hypothesis is never a plan but always the basis for what should be a thorough investigation.

A hypothesis looks something like this:

“We speculate that if we did x, y would result.”

What follows this speculation is the investigation that’s necessary to qualify the hypothesis as being true or false. In the likely event that a hypothesis turns out to be false (even if it’s partly false, it’s still false), the goal becomes to try and reformulate a hypothesis that has at least the potential of being true and then investigate that.

Instead of formulating reasonable hypotheses and then investigating their validity with very little time and resources at risk, what often happens instead is that initial hunches are acted upon and developed to a significant degree. When project leaders feel that their vision has been sufficiently actualized, they endeavor to validate their designs through either focus groups or through usability studies.

In focus groups, subjects are banded together into groups that discuss the pros and cons of a given suite of design options. If you remember the dynamics of group-think discussed in Chapter One, you’ll remember how the social dynamics and pressures of these types of situation make it almost impossible to arrive at any substantive conclusions regarding what the individuals of the group actually thought. In other words, an artificial norm is produced that would not likely reflect the norm if individual anonymous surveys were employed instead.

In usability studies, subjects that supposedly constitute a random sample from the population of a target audience are put in a room and are monitored in various ways to determine which design (or aspects thereof) is most effective. But what are the results?