CNNMoney.com began as a reasonably clean website. It begins at the top with some pictures and as you move down you get lost in headlines and small print shortcuts. My redesigned website contains five rows with large tiles containing the top headlines if the category. To the right of that there is a visual that pertains to the subject. Clicking on the arrow to the right of the row will bring up other categories less popular then the five on the main page. At the bottom are some quick links to other categories. The keyword search can also be arranged by date. Visual work is minimized because you only have 10 big boxes to look at. Cognitive work is minimized because there are just headlines to read and from there you can choose to read the article. Memory work is basic because the use is simple. Motor work is limited often to one click of the mouse. Sometimes you might need to click on a category or the arrow, but limited clicks. If doing a search, the user may need to type in the search bar but very limited keyboard use is required.
A Business Man who runs his own small business and wants to see what is going on with other small businesses as well as the world economy. He would be able to see if there is a need worldwide for his product and if he can refine his products to better fit the needs of his customers. The information will help him better his product by seeing what the world is looking for. This will allow for him to focus his effort on to a certain aspect. The businessman is very busy, so he is looking to obtain only information important to his business and product. He doesn’t care about gossip or celebrities, but only wants the information he is looking for presented to him in a clear and concise way. Since the small businessman works in his office which is also the shop producing his product, he is often working on the product and cannot sit for a long time in front of the computer so the information must be worded in a short way and should be available quickly. The businessman is not very technical. He is lucky to turn on the computer and open the web browser. This is why the news site should be visual. He gets upset when things are over complicated and he cannot find information he is looking for.
An economist, who enjoys cheese curls, wants to know about the stock market and wants to see how large businesses are doing. She likes to read long articles detailing the specifics of business sales and services. Following the economy and the stock market, she likes to read about predictions that other economists make. With this information she makes her own consensuses and formulates ideas. When the economy is doing bad, she is disappointed and gets frustrated easily. This makes the need of a website to be easy to use and convey information very important as she will leave the site if not satisfied. She must visit many sites to gather information, so the more that is available on one the longer she will stay. She looks for a section of the page that pertains to her, and lives there while she is using the site. She is not interested in off topic information, though she does find time to read a couple of twitter feeds and post her own on her lunch break at Starbucks. She is very proficient with computer use, and uses many RSS feeds in her browser that take her right to top stories she is interested in. Since she enjoys reading information on the economy and not looking for it, she is frustrated when information has to be looked for and not presented to her, and she will leave the site.
An engineer at a local television station wants to know what new groundbreaking technology is shaking the economic market. He knows that companies like Apple can release a product that will drive all other companies to produce products to compete with them. He likes to stay up to date with technology and knows that it is so quickly changing, he only wants to learn about that which pertains to his job or information that will be around for some amount of time. He likes pictures and videos and doesn’t necessarily want to read or have time to read large articles. He would prefer to visit a site and have the information directly in front of him. A category of information with a couple of headlines would be effective to draw him in. He likes a clean presentation of video that is easy to find and clearly presented links to the video. He works extremely well with computers, but doesn’t want to have to Google stupid little things that are easy to do but hard to find. He is frustrated when information that he knows is available to him, is hidden and requires effort to find. Also, he gets mad when he searches in the search bar, and old and irrelevant information appears, not the latest and most relevant.
