Over the past several years we have had the opportunity to work with companies of various sizes as they plan and redesign their web presence. Some began using a CMS for the first time, while others were transitioning from either an open-source system (WP, Drupal, etc.) or some homegrown system to a more robust complete CMS solution (Adobe CQ5, Sitecore, Sharepoint, etc).
We’ve worked with these organizations to help them better understand the mental models of their “End Users” so that together we could design a system that is effective, efficient and satisfying. But who are these “End Users?” One common thread that we’ve noticed is that a majority of these organizations seemed to forget about a number of “end users” by focusing exclusively on the experience of visitors to their sites and their customers.
Don’t get us wrong, we think that it is vital to understand, and design towards the understanding of visitors and customers. We often create personas that help drive that design conversation.
What we are saying is that most of the organizations that we’ve worked with never completely thought about all of the user touch-points they need to consider.
