CITATION AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
Cite as: Ferreira, S. M. S. P. & Melly, M. (1999, May). Using Sense-Making to study user information needs at the basis for design a complex website: An application at a major university. Paper presented at a non-divisional workshop held at the meeting of the International Communication Association, San Francisco.
© Sueli M. S. P. Ferreira and Mylene Melly (1999).

ESSENCE OF PROJECT:
The School of Communications and Arts of University of Sao Paulo is a large and complex organization with 2,000 undergraduate students, 800 graduate, 205 lecturers and about 160 staff, grouped in 8 departments. Last year, we developed a web site for the School, and we realized that the information system achieved could be improved by: a) organizing a more convenient information structure based on the user needs, so that the system would be designed to accommodate the way people work; b) designing a system that could be managed and updated in a semi automatic way. The second goal is not relevant to this precis, so it is not going to be detailed. In order to construct a more convenient information structure, we realized we would have to define the user information needs, the way people search for information, and the complex flow of information throughout the school. This will be achieved by researching the information needs for all types of users in the system (lecturers and staff from all departments, students from different years) using the following two-phase methodology: 1) Focus Group Interviews: in order to identify the range of information needs in all segments of users at the School of Communication and Arts. One of the advantages of this step was to provide some hints about the contents of the web site, showing us the local (specific needs) and global (generic needs) contexts; 2) In Depth Interviews (Timeline Interview): after the focus group interviews we were able to classify the categories of information needs, and then start the In Depth Interviews in order to understand user behaviour. This second phase is giving us some hints about: i) the information structure for the web site; ii) the user interface (such as the interactivity of the system); iii) the retrieval mechanism; iv) the information flow inside the School that can be used to build the system and define the information path.

THE REASONS WE TOOK THIS ROAD:
We are concerned about the problems of information flow in the School and we believe that electronic information systems can help the establishment of new communication behaviours and solve part of user anxieties and problems. We also believe that any information system has to respect the users’ perspective and especially the existing information flow. Also it is important to extract the ways in which people see their problems and how they solve their information gaps. Identifying the information needs is a very complex task but the challenge of the project is precisely to map the user needs onto a user interface.

THE BEST OF WHAT WE HAVE ACHIEVED:
From the interviews, we learned that the School has communication problems because of its physical dispersion, its completely different departments, and its complicated structure. The current web site has an information architecture very similar to the School organization, and from the partial results of our research, we know we have to change this information architecture radically. We heard that, in many situations, people could not find the information that was concealed within an unfamiliar structure or had to struggle to find it. This is a major problem in web sites, and we believe the Sense Making methodology can help create better information architectures, and consequently help people solve questions such as What, Where, Who, Why, When and How. Our main interrogations are: Will it be possible to formulate a meta-methodology to help the design of the information architecture? How do we transform people’s behaviour into an efficient cognitive user interface? Will this meta-methodology give us hints about the best communication language and labelling to use? How do we use the interview results to make people realize their co-participation in the management and update of the site? With the interviews, we are gaining a better understanding of the work environment and the way people accomplish their tasks. We were happy to see that people realized the importance of their individual participation in the whole system. With the focus group interviews, we also created an opportunity for people to get to know their colleagues and their functions in the organization; this in itself has already provoked some minor changes in the school communication system. As another indirect result people leave the interview lasting almost two hours feeling good about what they have discussed and wishing meetings like this took place more often.

WHAT HAS BEEN HELPFUL:
We felt that we could make the necessary contacts and understand the communication issues raised during the meetings in an easy because we were part of the same system.
We also noticed that people liked to know that we have been involved in the design of the existing School web site, not only providing maintenance but also forming people in how to manage and update the chunk of information in the site under their responsibility.
Although our participation in the design of the current web site, we were aware, and we said it during the focus group interview, that their participation are fundamental for a better design of a information system to be of real use. This had a good influence in the user participation, since, we think, they were touched by this fact.
Also, past experiences with the Sense-Making methodology, and the form samples provided in the Sense-Making web site were very useful.

WHAT WE HAVE STRUGGLED WITH:
It was difficult to read the transcripts of the focus group interviews and see behaviour problems that, we believe, are difficult to solve because they have political implications. We are concerned about the fact that people often do not face these problems and do not try to motivate themselves to solve them. It also has been difficult to isolate ourselves in order to achieve a more critical and impartial view of the issues raised, mainly because we work at the same organization. In addition, we are concerned as to how to publish the results in a useful way, without exposing ourselves too much. From a methodological point of view, it was difficult to collect useful information to carry out the timeline interview and we remain puzzled by the following questions. How can Sense-Making help us achieve a more convenient information structure? How can it give us hints about the best user interface to be developed?

WHAT WOULD HELP NOW:
We would like to hear about similar experiences using Sense-Making for the design of Electronic Information systems and to discuss the issues involved in mapping Sense-Making results onto a user interface. Finally, we would also like to learn about content analysis for the Timeline Interviews and available softwares.

PROJECT ABSTRACT:
Currently, Electronic Information systems, such as web sites, have an important role in the communication process of any institution, not only allowing people to communicate but also creating new forms of interaction and new work environments. We have been working with web design issues for two years now and we have learned that the maintenance of complex web sites is a difficult task that calls for collaboration. We define complex web sites as very large information systems with enough specialised information distributed in several independent subsites using all kinds of information resources, making use of multiple software and hardware. In this kind of web site, there are a great number of actors (webmasters, content generators, programmers, etc.) who generate such a huge amount of information, that standardisation, control and planning of the information structure are fundamental. This experience has made us realize that the most important factors for the success of any information system using a web site environment are: a) deep understanding of the information needs and seeking behavior of all potential actors and users of the system; b) an automatic way to generate, manage and update the information of the system. In order to achieve these goals, we proposed a project to develop a methodology using contextualized information - called MeGAWeb (Methodology for the Generation and Administration of Complex Web Sites) The defining characteristics of this project are: a) organizing a more convenient information structure based on the user needs, so that the system will be designed to accommodate the way people work; b) designing a system that can be managed and updated in a semi automatic way. We have adopted Sense-Making Methodology to develop this user study.

REFERENCES:
(For references to works by Dervin and colleagues, see Dervin’s writings: Chronological listing.)

Rosenfeld, L. & Morville O’Reilly, P. (1998). Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly.

Mok, C. (1996). Designing Bussiness: Multiple Media, Multiple Disciplines. San Jose, CA: Adobe Press.

OTHER MATERIALS BY THESE AUTHORS ON THIS WEB SITE:
For Ferreira,
See: http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/AAauthors/authorlistferreira.html
For Melly,
See: http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/AAauthors/authorlistmelly.html