Websolutions, Inc.

Client/User Analysis Memo and Initial Site Sketch

You will demonstrate your rhetorical sophistication by showing how your understanding of audience and research skills have developed since the beginning of the term. You will write a business memo to be given to me and the client. The memo will clearly articulate the client’s needs for their website or redesign, the audience for the website, the genre of the website you hope to create, the features of the site you hope to include, and the reasons why you have chosen the features to meet the needs of both the client and the users (audience of the site).

Additionally, you will articulate your vision for the site and the features (colors, logos, design elements) that will help to put this vision in place. What do I mean, you ask? I mean that you need to articulate the type of experience that you hope your site will inspire for its users. You should also explain how this experience could be documented or measured. You will articulate a plan for testing the prototype, so you can figure out whether or not the site prototype actually meets the goals and how you can improve the design.

Initial Site Sketch/Storyboard

You will also make a paper map for the overall architecture and individual parts of the site itself. Think of these sketches as a storyboard of ideas that will necessarily evolve as you continue to work on the site and interact with the client and users. I want you to have something written so that you have something to work from, build upon, and go back to when you need to redesign. It’s easier to manipulate and play with concrete ideas, and it’s easier to visualize site flow if you have a plan of screens and pages. It is much easier to work on navigation and organizational issues BEFORE you start mucking around in HTML, though no matter how much pre-planning you do, the site will continue to evolve until you turn it in.

Tips

In order to do a good job for this part of the assignment, you will need to have done additional research to determine what the client and user needs are. Research might include, but is not limited to interviews, genre investigation (i.e., if you’re designing a corporate site for a product, you probably want to surf around to see how other companies have handled similar products, features, or tasks), and questionnaires. If you’ve got another idea, please let me know.