Target Group Testing

[rcrisler1]

We'll have to see how the focus groups rank ... I think it's important to prioritize them and weight their responses. It's impossible to be all things to all people, and our first priority for any and all communications, it seems to me, is recruitment and retention.

Your suggestion is likely an accurate one, that parents have difficulty with the most straightforward navigation struuctures. It may be that students and prospective students favor a more complex structure than parents do. If that were the case, we'd need to factor in some weighting.

Parents, though, are probably fairly easy to get to if we're looking at parents of prospective students. We might be able to get them to participate together.

[dsockrider]

Some parents never use the web and others are very web savvy...heck my dad taught me the basics of HTML/FTP back in 1997.

I think it's important to have an interface system that is very easy to use and self explanatory for anyone and everyone.

To target all parents, I believe the content of the site needs to show why the University is worth the amount of money it charges. We need to show why UNL should be chosen over other universitys and other 2 year schools and other technical schools. I believe focusing on what UNL has over our competition would be a main focal point in attracting the potential student parent.

[soni]

I agree - the templates have to be accessible and easy-to-understand for all.

Our local Extension office is busy migrating resources to the templates. The target audience is youth, general public-at-large, educators, who are accessing content-based resources on the web. (example below)

http://lancaster.unl.edu/hort/

While we know many folks may be accessing the site for the information on head lice (as an example), others may continue to explore UNL if the site meets their needs and is appealing.

This summer, we will be using the UNL templates for our 4-H/youth Web sites - target audience ages 5-19, their parents, club leaders, grandparents and educators. The current template designs are not "kid-friendly" - but we will make them work with some creativity. What a great marketing opportunity for UNL!

I'm hoping the next generation of resources we can utilize will include some designs appealing to youth/general public.

thanks for letting me post my 2 cents.

[rcrisler1]

What we're attempting to get to is a navigational framework that allows for maximum creativity within the content area. Clearly the visual appeal of the outer navigational framework is very important, as it in effect sets the look and feel and functional tone for the rest of the page.

We've had discussions in the Redevelopment Group meetings and at WDN meetings that we need to offer reference designs for content to be placed within the templates. We intend to create a forum for people to share their designs with other developers. Content-area designs will not be imposed on anyone, but I think we should all encourage a generous give-and-take among developers so that we all can create compelling pages without having to build everything from scratch.

Soni - I think that the designs we're seeing so far will be flexible enough to have appeal for children. Perhaps they won't be 'stretchable' to Nickelodeon proportions, but I think you'll be able to get much closer to that kind of kid appeal. Have you had an opportunity to see the design prototypes that have been created thus far? David - Is that a content issue or the design issue that we're involved in right now? We'll shift focus a bit, if everyone still has energy to contribute to this, and start tacking some of those content issues as we move forward after the initial set of designs are frozen.

[soni]

Yes, we viewed the ideas on the bulletin board and are excited about the prospects. The new designs look like they appeal to a broad audience. Hopefully, we'll continue to have great choices in what we can utilize to develop web sites.

I also agree we're not interested in the Nick-at-Nite approach, but something appealing and easy-to-use for students, teachers, parents and their children. After all - they are our future Huskers