Supporting “top tasks”: How to hone in on user needs (Confab Higher Ed 2017)

Gerry McGovern's book The Stranger's Long Neck makes what is, for many higher ed institutions, a revolutionary proposition: Your visitors don't care about most of your content, except as it relates to helping them accomplish a specific task. Implementing the "top tasks" methodology McGovern lays out in an "office of ..." environment can be difficult, but it can help improve your users' experience immensely.

Learn from the trials and tribulations of one university's adventures in redesigning their site around top tasks. This session will help you understand:

The basics of the top tasks methodology
How to break out of the org-chart mentality of a .edu site
How to handle a major culture shift in a distributed authorship environment

Transcript

1. SUPPORTING TOP TASKS: HOW TO HONE IN ON USER NEEDS AARON RESTER ASST. VP, WEB DEVELOPMENT, ROOSEVELT UNIVERSITY CONFAB HIGHER ED: NOVEMBER 8, 2017
2. MEET LUISA
3. Academic Catalog
4. MEET TODD
5. Academic Catalog
7. “Nobody cares about information for its own sake, except the creators of said information. The customer has a task they want to complete, a problem they want to solve. Information is only useful in the context of the task.” Gerry McGovern
8. 1. Every website has a small set of tasks that deliver a huge amount of value. 2. Every website has a large range of tiny tasks w/ potential to deliver value, but also potential to destroy value by getting in the way of the top tasks. 3. Focus relentlessly on helping your customers complete the top tasks as quickly and easily as possible. Gerry McGovern
9. ‣ 25% of effects come from 5% of causes ‣ 60% of effects come from 20% of causes Gerry McGovern THE PARETO PRINCIPLE - STRETCHED
10. LONG NECK VS. LONG TAIL
11. 1. Know your user’s Long Neck; what you think is the Long Neck may not be what your users think it is 2. Continuously improve your top tasks: measure task success rate, disaster rate, and completion time; make tweaks; measure again. 3. Manage with facts, not opinion. “Gut instinct” is the enemy. Gerry McGovern
12. STEP 1: ASSEMBLING POTENTIAL TASK LIST ▸ Goal: Generate a “longlist” of at least 100 tasks ▸ Qualitative: talk to stakeholders about their own use, and their constituents’ use ▸ Survey data: free form question, e.g. “Why do you most often come to the website?” ▸ Analytics: most visited pages ▸ Internal search stats ▸ Competitor analysis ▸ Try to word them as tasks, in natural language
13. STEP 2: DETERMINING TOP TASKS ▸ Goal: Determine your site’s “long neck” ▸ Have survey participants rank top five choices from longlist ▸ Tell them to spend no more than five minutes making their rankings
14. STEP 3: IMPLEMENTING TOP TASKS ▸ Pages = the task that can be accomplished there, not the office that provides the service. ▸ Reorganize information architecture around groups of tasks. ▸ We found that different audiences have very different top tasks. ▸ Cut pages that do not support top tasks. Be merciless. ▸ Keep testing.
15. EDUCATION AND OUTREACH IS CRITICAL WHAT I WISH I HAD KNOWN:
16. EMPATHY FOR USERS MUST BE LEARNED WHAT I WISH I HAD KNOWN:
17. YOU WILL HAVE THE SAME CONVERSATIONS OVER AND OVER WHAT I WISH I HAD KNOWN:
18. AND OVER AND OVER. WHAT I WISH I HAD KNOWN:
19. YOU WILL HAVE TO COMPROMISE WHAT I WISH I HAD KNOWN:
20. YOUR STORIES WHAT I WISH I HAD KNOWN:
21. LINKEDIN.COM/GROUPS/8478858 TOP TASKS: HIGHER EDUCATION WEBSITE CONTENT 
 (LINKEDIN GROUP)
22. QUESTIONS? CONTACT ME: @AARONRESTER OR ARESTER@ROOSEVELT.EDU