Course Description

Almost anyone can put up a website or online tool; but ensuring that people can use it effectively is the challenge. This introductory course will provide you with usability tools and techniques to ensure that you're getting direct citizen input to drive the content and design of your site or online engagement tool. Through lectures, discussions and lively group exercises, you'll learn proven techniques that you can apply to your website and ensure that you're effectively engaging citizens online.

Why You Should Attend

Learn why usability is a critical factor in making sites and applications effective, especially for government sites.

Understand the critical factors within the usability process, in particular:

• Developing a meaningful strategy for your site/application
• Identifying your users and their needs
• Creating a prototype that meets their needs
• Evaluating the design iteratively to ensure that it's on target
• Focus on getting direct citizen input (through usability testing, card sorting, etc.) to drive the design and content.

Learn how to efficiently incorporate these proven usability techniques in your projects with minimal cost and schedule implications.

Who Should Attend

This course is applicable to all web managers and anyone responsible for providing content to a site or application, as well as anyone aspiring to be part of this new face of government. It's primarily aimed at the beginner level, but current web managers can learn new skills as well as refine their repertoire of techniques

Level of Course

Beginner (though it could be a good refresher for seasoned web managers as well)