In order to assess your client's web concerns, your team will collect information about its organizational context. Your investigation of your client's context will consist of the two research methods discussed in this document: an interview and a document analyses. Be certain to consult both the course calender and the Project Planning Calendar in order to plan your client research.

interview

Conduct at least one interview of an established member of the client context; an interview with the client contact person likely is a good starting point for your team's data collection.

goals for interview

Your goals for your initial team interview are twofold:

1. to gain useful and relevant data about your client context.

2. to begin to assess which documents you want to collect and how you want to conduct your observation.

Your short interview provides you with an excellent opportunity to learn about how relationships function within your client context. As an established member of your client context, your interviewee has experience with the criteria, standards, priorities, and procedures related to different structures within the context. The goal of the interview process should be for you to gain insight into these experiences. Please review the Guidelines for Conducting an Interview (Word document) to learn more about the ethics of conducting interviews.

document analyses

Collect and analyze at least 2 documents from or related to your client context (e.g., policy statements, manuals, handbooks, memos, webpages, reports, forms, etc.).

goals for document analyses

Documents can provide you cues about the standards, expectations, and assumptions held by members of an organization. Documents from your client context can both provide information about the current situation at the organization as well as offer an historical perspective on the client's communicational context. Also, documents from related or similar (in terms of size, purpose, clientele, etc.) organizations can help your generate ideas that might be appropriate and effective for your client context

considerations for document analyses

After collecting your documents, you will need to analyze each of them in terms of your client's context and web needs. As you are analyzing the documents that you collect consider their:

Formal Features: The formatting, tone, and structure of a document are not accidental but instead are related to the functions and audiences perceived by a document's author/s. Thus, examining such features can provide insight into the significance (or lack thereof) of a document within a context.

Accessibility: The location, cost, and availability of a document also reflect its purposes within a context. Therefore, as you analyze a client document, consider how you became aware of it, how widely available it is, and how resources are/were allocated to its production, distribution, and maintenance.

Potential Audiences: Considering both primary and secondary audiences of a document is essential for determining its significance and functions. Thus, as you analyze a document, think about who does or does not consult it and why they do or don't.