chapter2

Chapter Two Response
 I currently maintain six different departmental or programmatic web sites for Minnesota State University, Mankato. Each site serves a different purpose and serves a different audience and so this particular chapter by Redish definitely resonates with me.  This web site is designed to serves the 100,000+ living alumni of Minnesota State Mankato. It includes information about the Alumni Association, about upcoming alumni events, about ways to get involved with Minnesota State Mankato and more.  Of all the sites I maintain, this one has the most diverse audience and is the most complex to plan out. I am planning to redesign the web site and so this chapter by Redish is particularly relevant. In order to ensure that I am addressing the needs of my diverse audience, I want to follow the steps Redish recommends in this chapter. A little daunting, but listing the major characteristics of my audience will help me to better understand what they might hope to get from the Alumni web site. The audience of the Alumni web site ranges in age from 21 (recent grads) to 80+ (retired seniors) with a variety of interests, backgrounds, technological skills and reasons for visiting the Alumni web site.  I also hope to create several "personas" to test out the usability and functionality of the site. These major personas could be by age group, or maybe by location – alumni living out of state probably have different reasons for visiting the site than those that live in Minnesota.  This site is intended primarily for graduating seniors as well as parents and families who need information on the process of graduation and the commencement ceremony itself. There are also informational pages for commencement volunteers and marching faculty members. This site is up year-round.  This site serves Minnesota State Mankato students and faculty/staff who utilize or plan to utilize campus recreation facilities or participate in campus recreation programs or events. This site is up year-round.  This web site is active for about six months prior to Homecoming and contains information for alumni, students, and faculty and staff who are interested in learning more about the annual Homecoming celebration on campus.  This web site is active for about five months prior to Family Weekend and contains information primarily for parents and families of current students about the various activities going on during Family Weekend. Current students as well as faculty and staff would be secondary audiences that may be interested in Family Weekend information. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This web site is only active for about eight weeks – the month prior and the month during the Combined Charities Campaign and is solely for Minnesota State Mankato faculty and staff members who may be interested in donating to the annual campaign. This web site is the smallest of those that I maintain and also has the most specific user group. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I am by no means a trained web master. Most of my experience in editing web sites is purely self-taught. I maintain the Alumni Relations and the Graduation Services web site as part of duties for my job in Alumni Relations. I maintain the Campus Recreation site on a volunteer basis. I serve on the campus committees that run the other three programs (Homecoming, Family Weekend and Combined Charities) and I am the only one on those committees who has the skills to maintain these web sites. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In maintaining so many different sites on top of all of my other non-web duties, I sometimes post information when I have time without thinking how to best craft it for that specific audience. As a result, these sites are probably not as user-friendly, appealing or effective as they could be. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> My Response:
 * <span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Robyn Goldy and Lance Schwartz – Team One **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Alumni Relations **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> (www.mnsu.edu/alumni)
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Graduate Services **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> (www.mnsu.edu/graduation)
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Campus Recreation **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> (www.mnsu.edu/campusrec)
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Homecoming **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> (www.mnsu.edu/homecoming)
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Family Weekend **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> (www.mnsu.edu/familyweekend)
 * <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Combined Charities Campaign **<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> (www.mnsu.edu/charities)

The real world examples given by group one are very helpful to me, as I do not have a lot of experience creating websites. The concept was easy enough for me to grasp from the book, but these website and the different persona’s that each were aimed towards really helped to drive the point home.

In one of the few websites that I had to set up, I had to judge for myself what kinds of information people would want coming to the site. The site itself was for a friend who performed historical related shows in the persona of an actual historical figure. I could tell that most of the visitors to this site were looking for information on booking her show, or finding out when and where she was performing them.

I am pretty sure I covered most of the users of the sites needs by simply applying the same set of standards set out by Redish on personas. In that case it was relatively easy, but not being aware of the actual workings behind it I doubt that I could have made as successful a website to a more diverse audience.

The example of the Alumni web site shows me a way that I could get around the problem of a much more diverse audience by setting up a series of different scenarios in which different groups of people seek out information that is relevant to them. Not only interests are looked at, but different levels of technological skills in accessing the site, as well as backgrounds. In retrospect I probably would not have even thought about these separate aspects of the users of my site.